Which Income Group Are You In

[pal_of_poor]

People should focus on how much they make, and whether the supply-side corporate policies of Republicans, and conservative Democrats have helped them economically, more than their hatred of gays, loathing of abortion, or love of God, like he's got stock in any party?!?

Right, because money is, after all, the most important thing....

This is the kind of thing only people with money seem to say. If you've got plenty of it, then you can afford it, I guess.

The truth is, if you don't have a job that at least pays enough to survive, then it is the most important thing, if you can't afford the rent, utilities, a car payment, some basic insurance (totally optional, since this is the first to go), some food, clothes to wear, and all the products to maintain the things mentioned, and to pay all the sales, gas, property, FICA, toll-roads, and utility taxes, then yea, it is the most important things.

If you've got plenty of it, then you can begin to focus on all those other things.

Another favorite that idiots say--"If you've got your health, you've got everything." Sorry, try being homeless, and you'll find your health deteriorates very quickly. I'm not sure what kind of candy-coated world some of you folks live in, to not be able to understand that at least a basic level of income is necessary for survival. Or does it just make you feel bad to understand how hard it is to exist for some, so you just don't think about it, or perhaps you convince yourselves that it's all about skill, and the right decision, and that luck has never played into your success, or anyone else' failure?

 

[pal_of_poor]

your whole "hate the rich" thing is sooo fucking four decades ago. i think youre just an envious little bitch

It has nothing to do with "hating" the rich, it is just good economic sense.

We've got a spending problem, because income has been maldistributed to the top, and entirely too many people think they are in the top brackets. The "average" income for the lower 90 percent in 2000 was $27,000 a year, and they've been stagnant. The top two percent, however, have profited wildly, without properly taxing them. And they get the interest income too, on all that money we're borrowing from them, paid from what--your tax dollars.

Basically, in the last four to five decades, taxes have not been reduced, but shifted. They've been shifted to the poor and middle class, from the rich. The argument has been, they are going to produce good jobs for you. But what has happened is, 19 percent unofficial unemployment, ten percent official unemployment rates, and most of the good jobs have been sent away. IF they can figure out a way to reduce your wages too, they will, because just like insurance companies, finding ways to screw you, make their corporate bottom-lines better.

Like it or not, the media has done a great job of "reverse-brainwashing" on people, to hate the poor, and by suck-up sycophants to the rich.

Once again, do you want to take on more taxes at sixty grand a year, or do you want the poor old gilded class to pay more? Because with 9 Trillion and growing, and no way to cut taxes, because you guys love your perpetual wars, and huge defense budgets, and Liberals (not democrats so much anymore, disgustingly) actually like to improve the lives of actual Americans. Let reality seep in, and understand, we're going to have to raise taxes. The question is, do you want eviscerate that brainwashing that makes you Luuuuvvv the rich, or do you want to take on that extra burden at the lower 90 percent?

bullshit, its all about hating the rich. maldistributed? wtf is that? you morons love to make shit up. do you think there is some guy in washington who is passing out money...oh, wait...your hero obama is doing just that...and none of it is going to the people it was soaked from, its all going to his pay offs to special intrest.

if obama wanted to stimulate the economy he should have cut peoples fucking taxes and not come up with new ways to tax them, and waste their money on bullshit schemes. every dime you fuckers take from a worker is another dime less somone has to do without all the while they watch their paycheck shrink, and its all YOUR FUCKING FAULT!

every time you vote for a liberal tax and spender you suck money from the wallet of yourself and your neighbor, you are in the habit of fucking yourself in the ass and calling it making love.

Maldistribution is a system in which money is distributed in such a top-heavy way, by politicians paid by the same rich people, that the economy begins to fail.

Cutting taxes, when there are two republican inspired wars, due to a failure of the "Defense" department to defend us on 9/11, and we've got nearly a ten trillion dollar deficit isn't just wrong, it's stupid. You guys want tax cuts, and spending cuts, but you never want to stop your wars, you never want to bring jobs home that once paid taxes here, and now pay them in China, or Mexico. Figure out what you want to cut, and it has to be something we agree with. But first, let's pay off the debt, because it is extracting an ever larger amount paid in interest, to the richest people in our lands,that we can't spend on anything productive at all in our society.

It is the workers fault in a way. I hear people making 60 grand (median around 55 grand), average workers, and people making even 80 grand, who are obviously voting for Republicans, who don't do a thing for them, and cut taxes on those making hundreds of millions, put us further into debt, and then cost us more in that interest we are paying the same tax cuts to.

What you recommend is economic suicide, and the knife is already in, and you just want to twist it. We should collect more than we spend, until we pay off this onerous debt republicans have built up. Then, and only then, can we consider cutting taxes. It'll be easier then too, as we'll have those hundreds of billions in interest back, where we can actually use it for such things, as tax cuts, legitimate ones, not cuts borrowed from Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and China.

 

[ba1614]

It has nothing to do with "hating" the rich, it is just good economic sense.

We've got a spending problem, because income has been maldistributed to the top, and entirely too many people think they are in the top brackets. The "average" income for the lower 90 percent in 2000 was $27,000 a year, and they've been stagnant. The top two percent, however, have profited wildly, without properly taxing them. And they get the interest income too, on all that money we're borrowing from them, paid from what--your tax dollars.

Basically, in the last four to five decades, taxes have not been reduced, but shifted. They've been shifted to the poor and middle class, from the rich. The argument has been, they are going to produce good jobs for you. But what has happened is, 19 percent unofficial unemployment, ten percent official unemployment rates, and most of the good jobs have been sent away. IF they can figure out a way to reduce your wages too, they will, because just like insurance companies, finding ways to screw you, make their corporate bottom-lines better.

Like it or not, the media has done a great job of "reverse-brainwashing" on people, to hate the poor, and by suck-up sycophants to the rich.

Once again, do you want to take on more taxes at sixty grand a year, or do you want the poor old gilded class to pay more? Because with 9 Trillion and growing, and no way to cut taxes, because you guys love your perpetual wars, and huge defense budgets, and Liberals (not democrats so much anymore, disgustingly) actually like to improve the lives of actual Americans. Let reality seep in, and understand, we're going to have to raise taxes. The question is, do you want eviscerate that brainwashing that makes you Luuuuvvv the rich, or do you want to take on that extra burden at the lower 90 percent?

bullshit, its all about hating the rich. maldistributed? wtf is that? you morons love to make shit up. do you think there is some guy in washington who is passing out money...oh, wait...your hero obama is doing just that...and none of it is going to the people it was soaked from, its all going to his pay offs to special intrest.

if obama wanted to stimulate the economy he should have cut peoples fucking taxes and not come up with new ways to tax them, and waste their money on bullshit schemes. every dime you fuckers take from a worker is another dime less somone has to do without all the while they watch their paycheck shrink, and its all YOUR FUCKING FAULT!

every time you vote for a liberal tax and spender you suck money from the wallet of yourself and your neighbor, you are in the habit of fucking yourself in the ass and calling it making love.

Maldistribution is a system in which money is distributed in such a top-heavy way, by politicians paid by the same rich people, that the economy begins to fail.

Cutting taxes, when there are two republican inspired wars, due to a failure of the "Defense" department to defend us on 9/11, and we've got nearly a ten trillion dollar deficit isn't just wrong, it's stupid. You guys want tax cuts, and spending cuts, but you never want to stop your wars, you never want to bring jobs home that once paid taxes here, and now pay them in China, or Mexico. Figure out what you want to cut, and it has to be something we agree with. But first, let's pay off the debt, because it is extracting an ever larger amount paid in interest, to the richest people in our lands,that we can't spend on anything productive at all in our society.

It is the workers fault in a way. I hear people making 60 grand (median around 55 grand), average workers, and people making even 80 grand, who are obviously voting for Republicans, who don't do a thing for them, and cut taxes on those making hundreds of millions, put us further into debt, and then cost us more in that interest we are paying the same tax cuts to.

What you recommend is economic suicide, and the knife is already in, and you just want to twist it. We should collect more than we spend, until we pay off this onerous debt republicans have built up. Then, and only then, can we consider cutting taxes. It'll be easier then too, as we'll have those hundreds of billions in interest back, where we can actually use it for such things, as tax cuts, legitimate ones, not cuts borrowed from Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and China.

How do you propose to accomplish this while still spending like crazy?
Bush spent like crazy, even his most ardent supporters acknowledge that, but this administration is just as bad, or worse depending on who you believe. To not see that is extremely dishonest, blind partisanship, or just plain stupid.

 

[Chris]

People should focus on how much they make, and whether the supply-side corporate policies of Republicans, and conservative Democrats have helped them economically, more than their hatred of gays, loathing of abortion, or love of God, like he's got stock in any party?!?

These figures are pre-2000, and include the Carter, and a right-of-center Clinton, that was always misrepresented as a "liberal" on FAUX, and generally in the media. And by the way, these losses/gains are even larger now, after Bush's tax cuts, the poor have continued the trend of getting poorer, and the gilded are just laying in more gold on their ceilings.


Income Growth Exponential at Top, figures from 1970 - 2000
Lower 90% incomes dropped 0.1% from $27,060 to $27,035
From 90-95%, incomes grew 29.6%, from $80,148 to $103,860
From 95-99%, incomes grew 54.2%, from $115,472 to $178,067
From 99 to 99.5%, incomes grew 89.5% from $202,792 to $384,192
From 99.5% to 99.9% incomes grew 144.8% from $317,582 to $777,450
From 99.9 to 99.99% incomes grew 322% from $722,480 to $3,049,226
The top 13,400 (.01%) incomes grew 558.3%, from $3,641,285 to $23,969,767.


Perfectly Legal, The Covert Campaign to Rig our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich, and Cheat Everyone Else, by David Cay Johnston p. 38 (chart)


So, 90% of us have lost ground, while the top ten percent have profited. The very top percent have profited tremendously over the last 30 years, and those at the very top have gained fabulous degrees of wealth.

Clearly, we can see why these people got the biggest tax cut, since , hey wait, why did they get the tax cut since they are earning so incredibly much more than the rest of us. Oh, that's right, Bush only cares about the top one or two percent, that's the way fascism works, master race and all that.

This is their big trick, focus all on tax-cuts, which are eaten up in the middle class, non-existent in the lower-classes, and only received by the very incredibly richest. This takes your focus off the fact that incomes are rigged in this country, and that the huge majority of us are just getting poorer, while a few of the richest families are propped up at the expense of the rest of us.

Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, said this was the plan all along.

He said the tax cuts were a "trojan horse" to reduced the tax rates for the rich.

 

[Chris]

bullshit, its all about hating the rich. maldistributed? wtf is that? you morons love to make shit up. do you think there is some guy in washington who is passing out money...oh, wait...your hero obama is doing just that...and none of it is going to the people it was soaked from, its all going to his pay offs to special intrest.

if obama wanted to stimulate the economy he should have cut peoples fucking taxes and not come up with new ways to tax them, and waste their money on bullshit schemes. every dime you fuckers take from a worker is another dime less somone has to do without all the while they watch their paycheck shrink, and its all YOUR FUCKING FAULT!

every time you vote for a liberal tax and spender you suck money from the wallet of yourself and your neighbor, you are in the habit of fucking yourself in the ass and calling it making love.

Maldistribution is a system in which money is distributed in such a top-heavy way, by politicians paid by the same rich people, that the economy begins to fail.

Cutting taxes, when there are two republican inspired wars, due to a failure of the "Defense" department to defend us on 9/11, and we've got nearly a ten trillion dollar deficit isn't just wrong, it's stupid. You guys want tax cuts, and spending cuts, but you never want to stop your wars, you never want to bring jobs home that once paid taxes here, and now pay them in China, or Mexico. Figure out what you want to cut, and it has to be something we agree with. But first, let's pay off the debt, because it is extracting an ever larger amount paid in interest, to the richest people in our lands,that we can't spend on anything productive at all in our society.

It is the workers fault in a way. I hear people making 60 grand (median around 55 grand), average workers, and people making even 80 grand, who are obviously voting for Republicans, who don't do a thing for them, and cut taxes on those making hundreds of millions, put us further into debt, and then cost us more in that interest we are paying the same tax cuts to.

What you recommend is economic suicide, and the knife is already in, and you just want to twist it. We should collect more than we spend, until we pay off this onerous debt republicans have built up. Then, and only then, can we consider cutting taxes. It'll be easier then too, as we'll have those hundreds of billions in interest back, where we can actually use it for such things, as tax cuts, legitimate ones, not cuts borrowed from Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and China.

How do you propose to accomplish this while still spending like crazy?
Bush spent like crazy, even his most ardent supporters acknowledge that, but this administration is just as bad, or worse depending on who you believe. To not see that is extremely dishonest, blind partisanship, or just plain stupid.

No, wasting $700 billion on a hole in the desert named Iraq is one thing.

Spending $700 billion on America is something else.

Big difference.

 

[Richard-H]

Why don't we all just agree to electing a socialist government for a 4 years term, then a free liberatarian governement for the next four years. We can alternate back and forth forever. What one group screws up the other can fix and visa versa.

Is that a plan or what?