Lottery Economy or Class War?

[georgephillip]

"Does limited government mean allowing one man to take $4 billion from the economy in one year? Hedge fund manager David Tepper did this in 2009, making enough money to pay the salaries of every police officer, firefighter, and public school teacher in Chicago."

"To anyone who cries socialism at the first hint of taxes, do you want to accept a system that says a person making a clever bet on the market is 50,000 times more valuable than the person who comes rushing to your house in an emergency?"

Paul Buchheit, a faculty member in the School for New Learning at DePaul University, appeals to libertarians, tea partiers, and anti-government free market advocates:

"MOST OF US ARE ON THE SAME SIDE. Most of us should not pay any new taxes.

"Our hard earned money has flowed to a small percentage of Americans who love to hear the old socialist argument."

 

[uscitizen]

He got a great tax cut too.

 

[georgephillip]

As I recall hedge fund honchos pay 15% on their "earnings."

Buchheit makes the claim in his article, Lottery Economy, that "(t)wenty five years of shrewd financial strategies, government deregulation and tax cuts have allowed the richest 1% to TRIPLE their incomes AFTER TAXES while the bottom 90% has seen their share drop over 20%. (emphasis in original)

"According to IRS figures, the richest 1% took in about 6.5% of America's total income in 1980.

"In 2006 it was about 19.5%.

"That's a TRILLION dollars a year, about one-seventh of America's total income."
(emphasis in original)