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Maybe it would be helpful to recognize 99% of the People are 'too big to fail' rather than 'too big to exist'.
Yep-our Governmernment and Banking system have shown time and time again that they care more about protecting and saving institutions and corporations rather than people.
We have been protecting the same banks for over 100 years-generation after generation of slaves. A consumer bailout would have been infinitely better for our economy and country instead of bailing out the corrupt corporations and banks around the World that helped to cause the crash in the first place.
Yep-our Governmernment and Banking system have shown time and time again that they care more about protecting and saving institutions and corporations rather than people.
We have been protecting the same banks for over 100 years-generation after generation of slaves. A consumer bailout would have been infinitely better for our economy and country instead of bailing out the corrupt corporations and banks around the World that helped to cause the crash in the first place.
Ahh yes, I think we share some similarities in outlook. I especially liked how that article ended with a quote from Mr. Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (aka Pearls Before Swine):
Quote:
“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
From the same book:
Quote:
“The what?”
The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts’ content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.
“Slurping lessons?”
From lawyers! From tax consultants! We’re born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes’ screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping.
“It’s still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own.”
Sure—provided somebody tells him when he’s young enough that there is a Money River, that there’s nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. ‘Go where the rich and powerful are,’ I’d tell him, ‘and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You’ll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear.’
God bless Mr. Vonnegut. Seriously. An excellent writer & an excellent realist. He might've like this notion:
Quote:
“Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person.”
– David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, former Professor of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business
'scuse what might be seen as a literary diversion? Apparently it's a personal coping mechanism.
I guess you missed the part about 80 people having more wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion?
I really don't think it's fair to group people making $34k/year and people who can barely afford the cost of living in with multi-billionaires... and what's more is I'm pretty sure that you know this.
It is so fair, if 'fair' is a real word. guess what, check out the 1% under socialist regimes, plenty of examples. Even in give away societies people are scrambling for toilet paper while the leaders and their cronies who have the countries best interest in their heart live lavish lives. Ah, government control in the name of saefty and equality for all*. Better read that *footnote for details.
Unless these 80 people bury their money in the backyard in mason jars, their investments are driving the economy.
Told my kids never ever use the word "fair'. That is the 4 letter F word! used to conjur a pathetic excuse for lack of creaivity, intelligence and despair.
Ask obama where the shovel ready job money went, for that matter ask where he got the idea there were shovel ready jobs. All that money was slated for infrastructure. Wait, oops, we now need to raise ttaxes to fix the failing infrastructure.
Ask obama about that 500 mill 'invested' in Solyndra and pother failed solar fiascos. I wouldn't accept the excuse they were 'investments'. More like money laundering to cronies.
Ask obama why he hired a tax cheat to head the treasury.
Obamacare has depleted taxpayer pockets.
Feel good about the legislators having life long benefits far beyond what a 34K a year family could afford?
Feel good about legal insider trading bestowed upon legislators?
Ever read TomCoburn;s series of books on government waste. You know, the cash that go into the watse pile. that would be a trickle down economic policy the feds believe in and are good at maintaining. That money is going somewhere, certainly not to the 80 richest people.
Would you be satisfied with the institutional waste and inefficiency built into federal programs that consciously deprive the neediest of financial aid?
Tax no one until the current waste, inefficiency, legal and illegal diversion of taxpayer cash is resolved.
This entire thread is a defense of zero sum game economics, so I am assuming the "99%ers" are of the belief that the pie needs to be "resliced" and those super wealthy people need to have their wealth "redistributed" to the masses.
OK, so far I've heard dismantle the Fed. Well, the robber baron/Gilded Age horrors that so many class warriors love to trot out as the dire example of what economics without Leviathan's tyranny looks like took place before the Fed was ever created, during the National Banking Era of free banking. 1863-1913 was the last time our banking was that decentralized, and if I am not mistaken, Morgan, Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller all did really, really well in that era.
We've tried the 91% top marginal rate, and we still had rich people. We have a few bazillion anti-trust, anti-monopoly laws, and still we have corporate giants. We've had a permanent estate tax that for roughly half the 20th century took 70% of inherited wealth, in order to prevent families from becoming rich, and still families got rich.
So what, pray tell, are the new proposals to deal with these evil rich people, so that we can make them poor and ensure the we close the wealth gap? We've tried a bunch of stuff, and none it stopped the current crop of 1%ers from getting wealthy, so what can we do to ensure we end wealth creation in this country!!
Can someone please explain how the poor is stealing from the rich? Im at a loss? Someone educate me because common since and logic says if thats true we wouldn't have such a huge wealth/income gap as we do today? Correct?
Well, I think you can argue that the system allows them to 'steal' from other tax payers. Sure, it's legal, but I look at it as legal theft.
Now. Run the calculation for a family making $15,000 with three children who have paid $0 in taxes out of their paycheck. See how much they owe. What you will find, due to EIC (Earned Income Credit), that family will end up with a REFUND of between $7,493 and $7942.
So you tell me, if someone paid nothing in taxes and ends up receiving a check for $7,493 or $7942 (depending upon calculator), what would you call it?
Can someone please explain how the poor is stealing from the rich? Im at a loss? Someone educate me because common since and logic says if thats true we wouldn't have such a huge wealth/income gap as we do today? Correct?
The poor don't steal from the rich. The government steals from both the poor and the rich.
Why do people constantly whine about the 1%? If they want more money they need to get off their tails and earn it like the rest of us did.
The last thing you need to do is punish those who have done better than you. Face it, life has winners and losers.
It would be a disaster to raise taxes on the wealthy or try to limit what we can contribute to politics. Stay fired up, people.
Jealousy.
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Then it's time The Federal Reserve and their "too big to fail" banks are reigned in and our Federal Government is held accountable for treason.
