When the federal income tax was first imposed in 1913, the richest 0.1 percent of households reaped 8.6 percent of the nation’s income. In 2007, as the recession began, the share going to that sliver of megarich Americans was 12.3 percent.
Those numbers suggest that the Occupy Wall Street protesters can make a compelling case when they complain that the economic scales are unfairly tilted toward the wealthy. The megarich hold more of the nation’s wealth and collect more of the overall income today than at any time since right before the Great Depression.
You remember the Great Depression, right? A time of massive famine in the land, of 25% unemployment, people selling moldy apples to try to make a buck to feed a family of four for a week (they needed to sell 20.)
Back then, it was massive dust storms that sent people packing from their homes, the Great Foreclosure by Mother Nature as her home was raped and pillaged by farmers who only knew how to grow, but not conserve. Today, it's foreclosures by banks, who only know how to lose money, not nurture family fortunes.
You say that you pay the taxes that the 47% do not, and to a degree, you have a point. Most of those people earn so little that they are exempt from income taxes, but not Social Security, Medicare, and other payroll taxes. Nor are they exempt from sales taxes, gas taxes (because, you know, they have to get to their shithole jobs that barely keep them afloat,) or any number of myriad ways that governments reach into our pockets without us even thinking twice.
Many of those people earn enough to pay income taxes, but get to take advantage of deductions and credits that society as a whole deem appropriate: dependent care credits, tuition credits, mortgage interest deductions, and so they don't get taxed twice on the same money, state and local income tax deductions.
So it's really disingenuous for you to imply that you resent "paying" their freight when millions of people are struggling with a kid in college and a mortgage and making money in a state that is deprived of a fair return on the money it fronts to the Federal government just so some mega-rich corn farming conglomerate in Kansas-- you know? The 1%?-- can get subsidies for growing what amounts to an almost nutritionally useless junk food.
Yet you defend that corporation, its board and managers, for taking even more out of the nation than the corn subsidy. You want them to be wealthier, and that's a noble cause, to be sure, IF they're going to give back to the community.
Give back not in the form of a cancer wing to the local hospital that amazingly treats precisely the kind of cancer they've just been diagnosed with, but in jobs and infrastructure improvements that can benefit everyone who works the shithole jobs that allow that corporation to make money hand over fist AND THEN grab enough subisidies and credits to offset ALL their tax liabilities.
It's funny how you'll whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine about the 47%ers who take advantage of the "small beer" tax credits and deductions to reduce a four of five figure tax bill, but you won't raise an alarm about the seven-, eight-, and nine-figure tax bills that are *poof* gone with a blow on the magician's hands.
You want to understand what Occupy is about? Get your head out of your ass. It ain't that hard to get.
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