[Jill61]

Originally Posted by hnsq

That's funny. I thought we wanted the 40%+ of people who pay no taxes to pay their fair share, and I thought we wanted the wealthy to be able to enjoy the money they busted their a**es for, instead of spending it to prop up people who are too lazy to make anything for their own lives.

I'm going to ignore the "pay no taxes" lie and skip right to the part where you falsely assume that millionaires and billionaires bust their "a**ses" and poor people don't. Many, many, many, many, many wealthy people don't work at all. thousands of them inherited their wealth and do nothing but sit on their lazy asses floating around on yachts or jetting off to Paris.

Oh, and collecting unemployment from the government.

Yup, you read that right. Just ask your deeply conservative Republican Senator Tom Coburn. He'll tell you all about how:

The government safety net has been cast far and wide, with almost half of all American households now receiving some form of government assistance. But most taxpayers will be asking why when they learn who is receiving what.

From tax write-offs for gambling losses, vacation homes, and luxury yachts to subsidies for their ranches and estates, the government is subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Multimillionaires are even receiving government checks for not working. This welfare for the well-off – costing billions of dollars a year – is being paid for with the taxes of the less fortunate, many who are working two jobs just to make ends meet, and IOUs to be paid off by future generations.

This is not an accidental loophole in the law. To the contrary, this reverse Robin Hood style of wealth redistribution is an intentional effort to get all Americans bought into a system where everyone appears to benefit. ...

The government’s social safety net, which has long existed to catch those who are down and help them get back up, is now being used as a hammock by some millionaires, some who are paying less taxes than average middle class families.

What are we subsidizing exactly, and at what cost?

• $74 million in unemployment checks.
• $21 billion in gambling losses.
• $9 billion in Social Security Retirement Benefits.
• $316 million in farm subsidies.
• $89 million for preservation of ranches and estates.
• $75.6 million in residential energy tax credits.
• $18.15 million in child care tax credits.
• $16 million in government backed education loans to attend college.
• $7.5 million to compensate for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured.

On average, each year, this report found that millionaires enjoy benefits from tax giveaways and federal grant programs totaling $30 billion.

So may I ask when you're going to start pitching a fit and wailing about the lazy millionaires and not just the supposedly lazy poor? (Mind you, I won't hold my breath.)

Originally Posted by waterboy7375

It dosnt become a problem untill people become obsessed with it instead of trying to find ways to increase their own income. Them it becomes a serious mental problem for them.

HA HA - I love it. The poor and middle class should "find ways to increase their own income" in a country where the government has conspired for decades with the wealthiest Americans to rid them of their tax burden on passive activity income (read: capital gains) and shift it to the working class who pays more than twice the percentage on income generated by actual work. In a country were the hourly wages of the average laborer in 1965 was $19.61 and in 2007 that same laborer's wages were a whopping $19.71 an hour. But where the average earnings a CEO made in an hour in 1965 was $490.31, but in 2007 was $5419.97.

Would you care to see what a visual of that disparity looks like? Well I'll show you anyway:



So why don't you tell me how the average laborer can "find ways to increase their own income" when the CEOs are taking 100% of the additional profits generated by the workers and pocketing it all for themselves? This is what we mean when we talk about "sharing the wealth." We don't mean, "give poor people what rich people earned." We mean, "give working people a share of the profits they helped the company make! Share the damn wealth of the corporation among all its workers and not just those at the very, very top of it."

So how about we say this; The 99% have "found a way to increase their own income": they demand a 50% pay raise for their work, hmm? I'd say over the past 46 years, they've earned it.

Originally Posted by Interlude

The real income of the working class hasn't increased since the 70s. We've "balanced" that over the years via things like dual-income households and taking on consumer debt, as well as via several bubbles over the years, but people are maxed out. I'd welcome a new option to balance things but really the culprits are a combination of globalization, the gutting of domestic spending by government, and steadiy lowered taxes on the wealthy coupled with tax avoidance by the wealthy and large corporations.

+1 for this. Wish it could be more.

Originally Posted by waterboy7375

So when it comes to supporting all the federal gvmt programs, they get a free ride.

See above for who's really getting a free ride. To the tune of $30 BILLION A YEAR from the sweat of our labor.

Originally Posted by hnsq

You are right, which is why we need to limit benefits in terms of social welfare. The top income earners in this country work 70-90 hour weeks to get where they are, while the lower income earners protest against 40 hour work weeks!

Hard work and ambition gets a person to the top, and social welfare programs incentivize a person to not be ambitious.

HA HA HA! The top income earners hardly do diddly. They don't have to. They've gamed the system now so they can literally earn twice as much by doing absolutely nothing while letting their money make money for them, seeing as how they only have to pay half as much in taxes on income generated that way than if they lifted a finger to actually do an honest day's work!

70 - 90 hours a week. HA HA HA HA HA.

Originally Posted by the_windwalker

Just a thought...
Suppose the single parents who work at Wal-Mart or McDonald's were actually paid a wage that would allow them to support themselves and their children. It would take them off of government assistance, wouldn't it? That would mean that the government would not have to put out the money to help support them. That would also mean that our taxes could be reduced because it would be money the government would not have to spend....

When we as a society allow the billionaire heirs of the Walmart fortune to pocket billions and billions and billions of dollars in personal profit while getting away with paying their employees below an actual living wage, what we are in essence doing is providing welfare to Walmart. We're saying, "You don't have to pay your workers enough to live on, because if you don't, don't worry about it, the 99% will pick up the balance and cover the difference when we use their tax dollars to provide food your employees can't afford to buy for themselves. Great Deal For You, Walmart! Woo Hoo!"

That's who's getting the government handouts here - the Walmarts of this country. We need to Stop Subsidizing Walmart (and Starbucks and McDonald's and everyplace else in this country that is trying to turn us into Third World Labor).

Enough is enough. There's not a damn thing "free market" about these practices when there's a government standing there ready with the handout to supplement what corporations refuse to pay their own workers. And the wealthy CEOs know this and take full advantage of it. Hell, why shouldn't they? If they don't have to pay enough to survive on because the rest of us will make up the slack, why would they?

But the right wing defends these despicable practices that are literally destroying this country from the inside. Twenty-five percent of all children on this country are currently receiving government assistance to eat. And it is estimated that in 10 years, 50 percent of all children in the United States of America - the supposed richest country in the world - will have been on food stamps at one time in their life before they turn 18.

But it's their fault their fathers and mothers have gotten an average of .05 cents (that's half a cent) raise per year for the past 45 years while their corporate overlords have literally stolen the fruits of their labor from them.

That's ridiculous.