Do you ever wonder why it takes the average family 47 years to make as much as a hedge fund honcho.. [View all]

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Do you ever wonder why it takes the average family 47 years to make as much as a hedge fund honcho makes in one hour?

The 6 Economic Facts of Life in America That Allow the Rich to Run off with Our Wealth

by Les Leopold at AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/economy/6-economic-facts-life-america-allow-rich-run-our-wealth?paging=off

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Why so many lies? Because financial elites like Peterson don't want to pay their fair share of taxes. They don't believe in funding a safety net for all Americans. They don't want to the government to help put Americans back to work. Instead, they want an economy by and for the elites.

4. We are under-taxed, not over-taxed. The super-rich want us to believe that taxes are too high and that those taxes are harming job creation and economic growth. It's a fabrication. First of all, taxes for most Americans have declined, according to a recent New York Times analysis:

..... most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Second, we have much lower tax rates that our chief European competitors. For example, Germany, an economic powerhouse, has an average tax rate of 40.6 percent while the U.S. rate is only 26.9 percent. Germany uses that money to rebuild its infrastructure, invest in education and find creative ways to nearly eliminate unemployment.



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