I’ve read that the wealth disparity in America is greater than that in Egypt, where the masses just recently rose up and took back their country. Conventional wisdom seems to be that it can’t happen here, though. Americans, it’s thought, are a complacent bunch, as long as they have decent football to watch, an ample supply of beer and the promise of the lottery. (Porn and reality television help too.) I’ve got to think there’s a breaking point, though. And, I can’t for the life of me understand why the rich in this country can’t see that it’s approaching. I get that it’s nice to be rich, and that it’s hard to hand over money that you feel that you feel as though you’ve earned (even though you likely inherited it), but I can’t see how it makes good business sense to sacrifice stability for another 5%. Personally, if I were in the Koch brothers’ shoes, I’d rather make a million dollars less a year and live in a country where someone wasn’t waiting around every other corner, looking for an opportunity to hit me in the head with a brick and steal my last crust of bread. I’d want people to have opportunities. I’d want people to have access to health care and a decent education. I’d want neighbors who really believed that, if they worked hard and applied themselves, their children could achieve more than they did. And I know that some folks at the top feel this way, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but I don’t get why there are so many who insist on fighting for their loopholes and those few extra percentage points. Stability, I would think, would have to be worth something. I can’t imagine that these people who comprise the top 1% would want to live in the America that they’re creating. But, I guess they feel insulated, as though they’ll be able to escape what’s coming somehow. I don’t see as how that’s going to be possible, though. And I have to think that some day they’ll regret allowing our schools to crumble, or social safety net to decay, and our public libraries to close.
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But jobs are being created.
I just read that McDonald’s is hiring 50,000 new people!
Welcome to the future of America.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2011/0419/McDonald-s-jobs-Hiring-50-000-workers-signals-larger-shift-in-economy
Leave it to “American” liberals to look to radical Islam as an example of behavior they want to emulate rather than seeing it as a force hell bent on destroying America.
Leave it to Bible hating “American” liberals to twist and distort the Bible whenever it suits their fancy and mock it when it doesn’t.
News flash! David was an uneducated shepherd who by faith and God’s power destroyed a foreign threat and displaced a Godless tyrant and led his nation back to the rule of the Word of God.
You are right that our nation has a David slaying Goliath. It’s called the Tea Party. Saul’s legacy who David overthrew? He was the king who brought a heavy handed centralized government to Israel. Maybe you should worry that the head he’s holding is that of the liberal elites, not hard working Americans. It’s your head in David’s hand. The caption should read, “I wish I hadn’t tried to oppress freedom by excessive taxation.”
I don’t remember so many trolls before. You must’ve gotten (even more) popular, Mark.
Leave it to liberals who have nothing to say but to call themselves “someone” and then someone else a “troll.” Is the new definition of “troll” someone who doesn’t agree with you? Guess what. Michigan, the House, and soon the Senate and White House have been taken over by trolls. Goliath called David as much before he lost his head.
I really don’t see the David and Goliath comparison at all.
The right has gotten most of what it has asked for for the past 40 years.
The breaking point in America will be the level of taxation that causes those who produce to abandon their efforts. Why continue to labor when the non-productive majority can seize most of the fruits of that labor? Without the efforts of the rational and productive, the economy will collapse and society will fall apart. Those who want to slay the corporate giants will eliminate their jobs and destroy the economy in the process.
EOS is right. Remember how awful is was for the wealthy in the 90s? I think if we raise the top marginal tax rates back to those levels, we will see societal upheaval comparable to what goes on in those backward Scandinavian countries.
I think Goliath got what he wanted for a long time too, Pete.
Then he got what he deserved.
EOS, you’re being duped.
EOS, you and Boy’o there are “now” equally “annoying”. You keep “talking” about “high” levels of “taxation”, but history says you’re an “idiot”. “God” hates liars (and fags, by the way). Or do you “think” that will just be overlooked when you have to answer for the sin of “ignorance”.
I demand that you answer for America’s own history. I demand that you comment on the fact that you pine away for past glory that was only achieved under high tax rates for the wealthy.
I don’t think we should have to employ the threat of violence in order to get the wealthy to realize that there’s a benefit to contributing via taxation to the support the commons. With that said, though, I don’t think that things will ever change until the first CEO is dragged out of a limo and eaten on live television.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktmWeynsd-Y&feature
The truly rich will always be fine, Mark– If social upheavels are coming they will just retreat to the walled and gated communities that they are in fact, already starting to build. Then provided that the social climate deems it necessary, they will hunker in the bunker– Surrounded by a private security staff of a dozen or more, rather like the wealthy in Venezuela already do…
I think we should worry more for the relatively well off– Like the “Quarter Millionaires” instead. They have been doing fairly well riding the coat tails of the truly wealthy, garnering nicer homes and automobiles and other trappings of wealth than they probably would have seen thirty years ago– But if the shit truly hits the fan, they’ll soon realize that they lack the necessary “buy in” to weather the storm, unlike those wealthy idols they looked up to– The same ones that won’t open the gates of the compound, because of the shit storm outside the walls. Those are the ones that get led to the mob’s scaffold wondering such: “How did I get here? And why are all these brown skinned people pissed at me?
There is another aspect here. We live in a society that affords us opportunities. We like to think that we believe in an American dream. If you are wealthy there is a reason you landed in that class. Maybe that was hard work, maybe that was inheritance, maybe you hit the lotto. Any path that got you to a better place in life, though comes with a generally unacknowledged debt to a society that enabled you to get there.
I’ve traversed 2 social classes already, and am on my way to more. I’m grateful for that. I’m also grateful for the food stamps that kept me fed when I was 5. Did my family pay taxes for that? Probably not, we were dirt poor. ‘Dirt’ meaning 50% of our food came from the garden we kept. So, now that I am making $100,000+ do I mind paying taxes? Hell no.
The wealthy who are fighting for these loopholes are forgetting the quiet benefit they have received to get them there. Any notion that you aren’t standing on the shoulders of American benefits, that you should pay for, are deluded.
Barack Obama hammers home the “Re-distribution-of-Wealth” system he so admires in his request to bring his socialist ideology to America. ”
This is a sick, unsustainable system, which President Obama is doing everything he can to make even worse.”
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/04/21/spread-the-wealth-obama-take-more-from-the-job-producers-and-give-more-to-the-free-riders/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newsrealblogfb+%28NewsReal+Blog%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
Which budjet would you prefer to cut? http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=44118
I wish I could be as optimistic as you Mark, and I hope that this shit isn’t getting to you too much.
Sam be glad your family didn’t get the other 50 percent the liberals would have wanted to give you as a big gov handout. Then you would have had no incentive to learn the value of hard work and providing for yourself. Imagine what you would have learned if your family had to work to provide 100 percent of your needs.
Fifty percent hand outs equals fifty percent incentive to laziness. Thankfully yours is a partial success story. Too bad your taxes won’t pay back the people who financed you but will just be used to teach other people that they don’t have to work to eat.
You truly have no idea what you’re talking about.
Do you get out of your basement much?
Just so you know, I received welfare and food stamps as a child and as an adult. I’ve received Medicaid, Pell grants and subsidized loans becomes I was dirt poor. In addition, I’ve received money from the NIH and various of federal sources of research money.
I know countless people who have also risen from nothing through federal assistance. The system is certainly troubled, and pathetic by international standards, but I don’t think the claim can be made that it induces laziness.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I know a lot of people who wouldn’t be where they are now without it and they are all incredibly hardworking people.
Perhaps you’d like to meet them?
Peter aren’t you the guy who said you pay no federal taxes? Great return on our investment. So you’re a taker which explains your politics. But you’re missing the point. It doesn’t even matter if these programs work or how much money they waste. They are fundamentally immoral. The government forcibly removes/steals money from its citizens then throws it to others. Why? You think it’s because big government cares? It’s to buy your vote.
If you walk up to an old lady on the street, steal her purse, and give it to a homeless dude, you go to jail. That is what liberal government is doing. It’s theft, plain and simple. ARMED ROBBERY IS NOT DEMOCRACY!
Most Americans want wealth distribution similar to Sweden:
http://www.alternet.org/rss/1/569425/study%3A_most_americans_want_wealth_distribution_similar_to_sweden?akid=6881.108790.ysFGm-&rd=1&t=29
The phrase “most American’s want” is exactly why the Founding Fathers had the foresight to limit voting rights to those who had a vested interest and personal property to protect. They understood that unearned voting rights would quickly turn into a tyranny of the majority and outright robbery through immoral public policy. They understood that if bums had the same vote as bankers we would become a society of bums.
If you don’t own property or at a minimum pay taxes on your income you should not have a right to tell others how and where their dollars should be spent. The people who should decide how taxes are spent should be those who pay taxes. Plain and simple.
Why don’t you just come out with it and get rid of the voting rights of women, minorities and everyone who doesn’t have the plastic mold Aryan Barbie traits? You should end your comments with Sieg Heil to be less cryptic.
More insults with no substance is no surprise. I assume your thinly veiled accusations are that I suggest we go back to only allowing white males to vote. At the time the Constitution was written, only white males held property or had measurable income. I’ll be less “cryptic.”
The spiritual intent of the Founders was that people who paid taxes, those who invested in government, had a vote in government.
People who do not invest anything in government should not have a voice in how government distributes what they have not invested. By human nature, people who don’t contribute will take if given the opportunity. This is proven throughout U.S. history.
As for me, I would rather have a hard working and ambitious woman or minority who is employed and pays taxes vote than a white male bum. I believe that is what the Founders were getting at. You do not get to vote on how to spend it if you don’t contribute to it. Plain and simple.
Is that less cryptic?
Barack Obama’s man made gasoline price predicament :
Open ANWAR for drilling and to produce our own oil instead of buying it from foreign countries at inflated costs while keeping the speculators at bay and to keep our money right here in America
Add up items #1 thru #8, putting the most emphasis on #8 and you will have the cost of America’s gasoline costs:
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlfmvwxxgHM
2. http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=44337
3. The President of the U.S. is now giving $2.84 Billion taxpayers dollars to Columbia to build an oil refinery. I thought we needed jobs here in the U.S.? This President is a complete loser and it now shows he hates America.
U.S. Gov’t Agency Plans $2.84 Billion Loan for Oil RefineryIn Colombia
4. http://wizbangblog.com/content/2011/03/11/enough-oil-to-completely-replace-all-imports.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wizbang+%28Wizbang%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
5. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/35840
6. As Your Gas Climbs To $5 a Gallon Obama’s EPA Blocks Access To 27 Billion Barrels Of American Oil – http://www.americans-working-together.com/together_we_can/id36.html
7. Is Saudi Arabia mad at Barack Obama for allowing Egypt to fall? http://grendelreport.posterous.com/saudi-slashes-oil-output-pres-obama-launches
8. The problem that contributes the MOST to high gas prices is Quantitative Easing (QE2) by the Obama administration and here is why: http://www.futuresmag.com/News/2010/11/Pages/Oil-after-QE2.aspx
Printing more money tends to push down the value of the dollar. While that would tend to help U.S. exports, it also risks pushing up the price of oil and other commodities, threatening an inflation surge that could be difficult to stop if the economy picks up.
9. After reading and watching all of the above information provided, there is still one question that needs to be asked and hopefully YOU have the right answer for the 2012 election. How is this “Hope & Change” thing working out for Americans of all parties now? http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2011/04/hope-change-2.html
You should sell this image as a poster.
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