The Top 1%

[orogenicman]

Not sure where you're getting your numbers but the total private U.S. net worth is about $75T (from here) and that's not including the wealth owned by state, local, and federal governments. Like, private real estate alone is worth $21T (from here) and government owned land is around half that (from here). Other publically owned assets are priceless.Ah, let's not confuse net worth (wealth) with income (revenue or earnings). Total private income is about $12T and that's after paying $6T in taxes to the federal, state, and local governments (from here). The richest 1% pays about half those taxes and most Americans pay little or nothing.

The richest 1% can afford to pay a lot more. A whole lot more.

Do I need to remind people of what happened in France 200 years ago when the 1% owned nearly everything?

You are a complete and utter moron.

Comparing someone who owns a few McDonald's restaurants with a corrupt and decadent monarchy is intellectually bankrupt.

SRSLY

Since I made no such comparison, I have to question your conclusion of my intelligence. Perhaps you need to stop looking in your mirror when you post.

 

[rdean]

Like Mitt Romney said, take a chance, start a business by borrowing 20,000 from your father.

 

[orogenicman]

An Investment Manager's View - Business Insider

 

[Spiderman]

Like Mitt Romney said, take a chance, start a business by borrowing 20,000 from your father.

Or you could save the 20K yourself.

 

[gipper]

The total economic value of the U.S. is 54 trillion dollars. The U.S. government FY2012 tax revenues equals $2.45 trillion. The rest is privately held. The 1% holds over 40% of the remaining 51.65 trillion dollars. You can cut the U.S. government's budget to 0 and it wouldn't do a damn thing to solve the economic disparity. But then, the country would collapse, and we'd all be friggin poor.

Your response is meaningless and fails to dispute my previous post.

Yes it does.

What you fail to realize is that big government is responsible for nearly everything that is occurring in our nation today. They cause it, control it, and get rich from it.

Wow, I haven't come across someone this paranoid since a college buddy of mine developed schizophrenia. They have meds for that now. You should check into it.

You want to believe that unlimited government is good.

Gee, you seem to know exactly what I am thinking. Let's test that, shall we? What am I thinking right now???

Anyone who KNOWS big government is the cause of our nation's problems is paranoid. Yeah right...how can you be so blind?

The corruption and crony capitalism that we see throughout our society is the fault of big government. The rich get richer because of big unlimited government.

43% of the top 1% live in the Beltway. Do you fail to understand this?

Big Business, Big Finance, Big Labor, Big Law, and Big GOVERNMENT are ONE!!!

But you and many Americans, sadly, are naively stuck in Ds good Rs bad.

 

[editec]

Gipper's got it exactly right.

And the good cop[ bad cop game is to convince us that we need to decide which are the bad guys...SOME ASPECTS OF government or SOME SPECIFIC corporations.

Of course its BOTH working together.

So when people try to play the bad capitalism or bad socialism card they are either TOOLS or FOOLS.

The villans in our society are not IDEOLOGIES.. the villians have names and they have positions of power.

Thyese people are not ideologes, they are criminals hiding behind ideologies.

They're NOT socialist, they're not capitalists, they are CRIMINALS

 

[expat_panama]

...The richest 1% can afford to pay a lot more. A whole lot more. Do I need to remind people of what happened in France 200 years ago when the 1% owned nearly everything?...

The French class war of the late 1700's caused enormous hardship, suffering, and bloodshed that didn't stop until well into the next century when rich and poor settled back to work and let Karl Marx do the starving. It began with "let them eat cake"...

"Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", supposedly spoken by "a great princess" upon learning that the peasants had no bread. Since brioche was made from dough enriched with butter and eggs, and those ingredients were even more scarce and more costly than dough, making brioche even more out of the reach of the peasants than bread, the quote ... ... attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette,[1] there is no record of this phrase ever having been uttered by her.

... a law was put in place that required bakeries to sell other goods at the lower standard bread price if, in fact, they ran out of the less expensive staple. This law was reasoned to guarantee lower income people access to bread (or a caloric approximate) by creating a disincentive against the underproduction or underoffering of bread for sale.

The stupid idea that the rich bakers "could afford" to sell cheap was put into law, and it ended up starving thousands of the poor.

Right now 67 million people aged 15-64 are out of work. That's the highest it's been since last year. It's a number that hasn't grown gradually with population but one that suddenly soared by 10 million human beings right when the class war and misguided anti-rich policies began during the '08 election.

Most hiring is done by the extremely hard working 1%, and making war on them is what's forced them to layoff ten million. The rich want to be allowed to rehire them and stop this needless suffering.

 

[Spiderman]

Your response is meaningless and fails to dispute my previous post.

Yes it does.



Wow, I haven't come across someone this paranoid since a college buddy of mine developed schizophrenia. They have meds for that now. You should check into it.

You want to believe that unlimited government is good.

Gee, you seem to know exactly what I am thinking. Let's test that, shall we? What am I thinking right now???

Anyone who KNOWS big government is the cause of our nation's problems is paranoid. Yeah right...how can you be so blind?

The corruption and crony capitalism that we see throughout our society is the fault of big government. The rich get richer because of big unlimited government.

43% of the top 1% live in the Beltway. Do you fail to understand this?

Big Business, Big Finance, Big Labor, Big Law, and Big GOVERNMENT are ONE!!!

But you and many Americans, sadly, are naively stuck in Ds good Rs bad.

All of that is true but how are those people stopping you from improving your position?

 

[gipper]

Yes it does.



Wow, I haven't come across someone this paranoid since a college buddy of mine developed schizophrenia. They have meds for that now. You should check into it.



Gee, you seem to know exactly what I am thinking. Let's test that, shall we? What am I thinking right now???

Anyone who KNOWS big government is the cause of our nation's problems is paranoid. Yeah right...how can you be so blind?

The corruption and crony capitalism that we see throughout our society is the fault of big government. The rich get richer because of big unlimited government.

43% of the top 1% live in the Beltway. Do you fail to understand this?

Big Business, Big Finance, Big Labor, Big Law, and Big GOVERNMENT are ONE!!!

But you and many Americans, sadly, are naively stuck in Ds good Rs bad.

All of that is true but how are those people stopping you from improving your position?

Crony capitalism distorts everything and it harms all Americans except the pols and the elites. It enriches those with connections to big government, not those who work hard and do the right thing. It causes terrible harm to small business, the middle class, employment, etc.....it leads to malinvestment and waste...and HUGE government deficits. Along with Fed cheapening our money, those like me who have saved, get little to no return on our savings, thanks to ridiculously low interest rates pushed by the frauds at the central bank...forcing us to gamble on the stock market to get any return on our money to keep up with inflation.

The harm is enormous.

 

[alan1]

If you want more wealth then get off your ass and get it. No one is stopping you.

Are you in the 1%?

No, why not, what's stopping you?

I know you weren't asking me, but globally, I am within the top 1% for income (by a long way) and in the top 10% for wealth (significantly). You can find out where you are at this website
You just might find out you are a 1%'er when it comes to income on a global scale.

 

[Spiderman]

Anyone who KNOWS big government is the cause of our nation's problems is paranoid. Yeah right...how can you be so blind?

The corruption and crony capitalism that we see throughout our society is the fault of big government. The rich get richer because of big unlimited government.

43% of the top 1% live in the Beltway. Do you fail to understand this?

Big Business, Big Finance, Big Labor, Big Law, and Big GOVERNMENT are ONE!!!

But you and many Americans, sadly, are naively stuck in Ds good Rs bad.

All of that is true but how are those people stopping you from improving your position?

Crony capitalism distorts everything and it harms all Americans except the pols and the elites. It enriches those with connections to big government, not those who work hard and do the right thing. It causes terrible harm to small business, the middle class, employment, etc.....it leads to malinvestment and waste...and HUGE government deficits. Along with Fed cheapening our money, those like me who have saved, get little to no return on our savings, thanks to ridiculously low interest rates pushed by the frauds at the central bank...forcing us to gamble on the stock market to get any return on our money to keep up with inflation.

The harm is enormous.

So you're saying it is impossible to improve your financial position because of what these people do?

The deficit, back room deals, legalized insider trading in congress, etc have not stopped me from increasing my net worth how is it stopping you?

 

[gipper]

All of that is true but how are those people stopping you from improving your position?

Crony capitalism distorts everything and it harms all Americans except the pols and the elites. It enriches those with connections to big government, not those who work hard and do the right thing. It causes terrible harm to small business, the middle class, employment, etc.....it leads to malinvestment and waste...and HUGE government deficits. Along with Fed cheapening our money, those like me who have saved, get little to no return on our savings, thanks to ridiculously low interest rates pushed by the frauds at the central bank...forcing us to gamble on the stock market to get any return on our money to keep up with inflation.

The harm is enormous.

So you're saying it is impossible to improve your financial position because of what these people do?

The deficit, back room deals, legalized insider trading in congress, etc have not stopped me from increasing my net worth how is it stopping you?

No I am not saying that and how could you conclude that, when I stated nothing even resembling that?

All Americans should want a fair and just economic system. To be satisfied with this corrupt and fraudulent system, perpetrated by the government and the elites, because your personal situation is good, is terribly short sighted and foolish.

 

[expat_panama]

... find out where you are at this website. You just might find out you are a 1%'er ...

Whoa ---NEAT!!!!!

 

[expat_panama]

...Americans should want a fair and just economic system. To be satisfied with this corrupt and fraudulent system, perpetrated by the government and the elites, because your personal situation is good...

Somehow the extreme left got the goofy idea that a person's worse off when their neighbor gets rich. Fortunately normal people know better --look at how foreigners in starving nations all want to move to the U.S. So if the American loopy left really thinks they'd be better off being the richest kid on the block then maybe we could all chip in and ship 'em off to say, Malawi.

 

[AquaAthena]

...Americans should want a fair and just economic system. To be satisfied with this corrupt and fraudulent system, perpetrated by the government and the elites, because your personal situation is good...

Somehow the extreme left got the goofy idea that a person's worse off when their neighbor gets rich. Fortunately normal people know better --look at how foreigners in starving nations all want to move to the U.S. So if the American loopy left really thinks they'd be better off being the richest kid on the block then maybe we could all chip in and ship 'em off to say, Malawi.

It's about jealousy and envy, which is an inherent internment in the entitlement minded. One who has more than they, are to be demonized, as they make the envious feel even more inferior than they already do and they are willing to steal from them, to get even. It is called, politically, redistribution of wealth or socialism, or communism and we have a president who is also among that class of people with low self-esteem who would kill the economy....not to help those in need, rather to create more dependency for those that want others riches, and for his power and control and votes for the Progressive Party, started by President Woodrow Wilson many years ago.

What the people with less, don't understand or care about, if they do, is the rich have their problems and pain, too, and no amount of money can help that, and it can be the causative factor. Often, those with less....those who must struggle in life, are really the ones with the most treasures. Humanity is one tribe.

 

[expat_panama]

...It's about jealousy and envy, which is an inherent internment in the entitlement minded...

There's an old Russian tradition about the farmer who found out that his neighbor had a cow and he didn't, so he prayed for his neighbor's cow to die. Contrast that to the American tradition which is to buy the neighbor's first calf so we'd then have two farmers with cows.

Unfortunately America's been forgetting that envy is morally wrong (Thou shalt not covet...). Too many people are voting for taxes for the sake of vengeance, even though they know full well they reduce revenue, and they're telling Joe the Plumber that if h starts up a business then all the wealth he creates will be confiscated and 'spread around'. After all, 'he didn't build that'...

 

[AquaAthena]

...It's about jealousy and envy, which is an inherent internment in the entitlement minded...

There's an old Russian tradition about the farmer who found out that his neighbor had a cow and he didn't, so he prayed for his neighbor's cow to die. Contrast that to the American tradition which is to buy the neighbor's first calf so we'd then have two farmers with cows.

Unfortunately America's been forgetting that envy is morally wrong (Thou shalt not covet...). Too many people are voting for taxes for the sake of vengeance, even though they know full well they reduce revenue, and they're telling Joe the Plumber that if h starts up a business then all the wealth he creates will be confiscated and 'spread around'. After all, 'he didn't build that'...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgP2LcSwjQk]Obama Says "I Do Think At A Certain Point You've Made Enough Money" - YouTube[/ame]

 

[orogenicman]

...It's about jealousy and envy, which is an inherent internment in the entitlement minded...

There's an old Russian tradition about the farmer who found out that his neighbor had a cow and he didn't, so he prayed for his neighbor's cow to die. Contrast that to the American tradition which is to buy the neighbor's first calf so we'd then have two farmers with cows.

Unfortunately America's been forgetting that envy is morally wrong (Thou shalt not covet...). Too many people are voting for taxes for the sake of vengeance, even though they know full well they reduce revenue, and they're telling Joe the Plumber that if h starts up a business then all the wealth he creates will be confiscated and 'spread around'. After all, 'he didn't build that'...

No, sorry, expecting a "fair and balanced" economic system is not about 'coveting'. What is about coveting is when 1% of the population owns/steals 40% of the wealth, leaving the rest of the population to subsist off the crumbs. THAT is coveting.

 

[hangover]

No amount of lies, excuses or deceit will ever justify the greed of the cons. Just like the devil, cons are not allowed to see the consequences of their evil, though they know it's evil. "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." And eternity is forever. 40 or 50 years of greed for an eternity of poverty. They see this, but it doesn't register in their pinheads. Greed makes you stupid.

 

[mudwhistle]

How many times is this video going to be recycled here?

As long as people keep ignoring the ramifications of the inequality in our country.

There will always be inequality.

My suggestion is force your leaders to give up their power and their money and spread it among the masses before you try to go after everyone else.

See how much they pay attention to you when you make such an attempt.