A Trillion Dollars a Year to the Richest 1%...7 times more than all state deficits combined

[Hannah Bell]

If you make less than $114,000 a year (90% of us), you've been financially damaged by the flow of income to the richest 1% of Americans over the past 30 years. Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, if middle- and upper-middle class families had maintained the same share of American productivity that they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more per year...

U.S. GDP has quintupled since 1980, and we all contributed to that success. It's not unreasonable to say that upper-middle class families should have maintained the same size of their slice of pie.

But if earnings since 1980 were based on this measure of productiveness, the richest 1% of Americans would be making $1 trillion less per year.

A trillion dollars a year. That's more than we spend on the entire military.

A trillion dollars a year. That's seven times more than the budget deficits of all 50 states combined.

A trillion dollars a year. Yet Congress just voted to continue the Bush tax cuts...

Taxing them is not "soaking the rich." The greatest redistribution of income in history has taken place over the last 30 years, and the victims are beginning to make a fuss about it.

http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2011/01/23/obsence-wealth-us-elite

[Electric Monk]

1. Remember GHWB's "A thousand points of light" ? That means the rest in darkness.

It's not neo-conservatism, it's neo-feudalism.

[aquart]

4. No man should be so rich he has nothing left to buy but his government.

[ThomCat]

2. The rich will always insist that they deserve some portion of our money

as a payment, as fee, a tax, a gift, just because it will add to their wealth. They don't care what the justification is. They don't even think their needs to be one. Just so long as they keep getting another sliver of wealth from each and every one of us. Those slivers add up.

They know that all those slivers of wealth redirected from us to them amount to class warfare, and that they have always been winning. They know that they have always been nickeling and dimeing us to death for their own benefit, and that is how they stay wealthy.

Add another regressive tax that takes from us and gives to them. And another. Then find ways to make us pay for the privilege of being poor. Add more fees. Add surcharges. Add taxes to those fees and surcharges. Let their companies collect all that money and give it to to them. In hundreds of ways the money moves upwards from them to us, and it isn't just in unequal salaries, because that is just one of the ways.

[aquart]

3. These people are insufficiently taxed.

[ThomCat]

5. Yes, I agree.

I think everyone here definitely agrees.

If their wealth is based on parasitically sucking our society's wealth upward (and it definitely is) then the solution must be to use society's basic legitimate means of equitable wealth redistribution. Progressive Taxation.

Add a robust variety of safety nets to that for those in need, paid for with all that tax money, and we would have a much better and healthier society.

[machI]

7. The tax code should address the lop sidedness of income

The wealthiest should be given a choice with the tax code:

Invest a substantial portion of income to help prosper the economy for all citizens

OR

The Government will tax away a portion of income and invest in the economy

The choice would be clear, invest and keep or face higher taxes.

[StarsInHerHair]

6. yes this is a huge problem

nt

[Hannah Bell]

8. it's THE problem that causes all the others. concentrated wealth = concentrated power.

[blindpig]

9. The more they push, the more....

that water balloon is gonna bulge out the other way, push too much and it's gonna pop. Soon.

[madrchsod]

10. and they pay nothing for the wars that creates their wealth

[mmonk]

11. On military spending when you add in veteran's benefits,

research and development, the VA, etc., I think it comes to a little over $1.3 trillion.

[lonestarnot]

13. Don't knock the VA. It's backdoor stimulus. Veteran's spend their money!

[lonestarnot]

12. We cannot sustain 2 more years of this shit. Someone is trying to kid someone else. It's not

working. We are done.

[Starry Messenger]

14. recommend.