I will make more money this year than I did last year. Both years are significantly more productive, earnings-wise, than the pay cut year of 2009.
I tell you this not to brag. My annual income is fairly meager.I tell you this to illustrate a point.
Just because I make more money this year does not mean anyone else made LESS money. The few thousand dollars in bonuses I earned this year for busting my ass and doing a good job in no way diminished the earnings or lowered the lifestyle or prevented one single person from getting a job.
My wages did not have any effect at all on one single person occupying Wall Street or Cleveland, or Washington or Boston, except that I will pay more in total taxes.
Unless you believe wealth is finite, I see no correlation between Bill Gates and his $30 billion, the athlete who earns $30 million and my neighbor who pulls down $30 thousand. The gap between the richest and poorest of us is getting larger. So what?
In the time of Robin Hood the richest were getting richer on the backs of the poorest, taxing the poor into starvation. The "occupiers" cannot make that claim today. The lowest 47% of earners not only pay NO taxes, they sometimes get a "refund" on taxes they did not pay! The millionaires and billionaires so criticized by The Downgrader-in-chief pay nearly 30% of all taxes collected by the IRS, despite being less than1% of the population.
I understand class warfare as a political gimmick. In real-life economics is just does not stand up to scrutiny or reason.
9 comments:
Hey, maybe those OWS kids are on to something, considering this year I'll make less than I have since 1998. Since you made more this year, I think it's only fair that you give to ME the extra money you made.
Come on Joe, spread your wealth around.
My parents never taught me that life was fair, they just taught me to be responsible.
I think we've given this generation the wrong label. It should be Generation E, for Entitled.
I'm willing to bet that most of the OWS kids have either never paid a dime of taxes in their own right in their lives, and that many of them probably get Earned Income Credits to boot.
When I was in school I always got all my withholding back. Never qualified for EIC but I didn't make enough money to pay taxes on in those years.
Tell me it isn't exactly the same for most of these brats.
Get off my lawn, ya dirty hippies.
(Strike "either" in my first sentence. I didn't proofread very well.)
The gap between the richest and poorest of us is getting larger. So what?
Dear Middle Class: You might want to take this guy off your Christmas card list.
Erin,
Did you read the rest of the post? Educate me. How does Bill Gates, or The Koch Brothers, or George Soros getting richer make ANYONE poorer? A friend of mine lost his job. Micro-economically speaking, it has no bearing on my earnings.
How does my income effect anyone (outside of the economic commerce it may generate)? My income has no effect on yours. The Goat's earnings has no bearing on my wife's wages.
If the wage gap is increasing -- why? What is your solution? Do we force companies to pay a greater wage? Should there be a sliding Government scale to determine the pay of writers, salespeople or engineers? Who determines fair market value -- some bureaucrat?
That $20 per hour minimum wage espoused by the OWS crowd will make your next trip to McDonald's cost about $50 to feed a family of three. That sure will not make the income gap better.
Bottom line: A capitalist economy is not a zero-sum game. If it were, we'd still be playing with the original x millions of dollars of capitalization that existed when the US was born, and there never would have been any money added to that capitalization. It would be kind of like playing Monopoly with only the cash you have in the game box (because Monopoly is designed to create fat cat landlords, not wealth). It's clear that's not how our economy works, and it's also clear from the evidence that even many of our poorest families are significantly richer today -- well, OK, they were before the Democrats took charge in 2006 -- than they have ever been before. Too many of them drive relatively late-model cars, have computers and big-screen TVs, eat relatively well for "poor" people, and generally are not dressed in hand-me-down rags to be truly described as poverty-stricken. (Yes, there are poor people in this country who unfortunately fit the "poverty-stricken" paradigm. "The poor will always be with you." Sucks to be them, but their problems run deeper than "the rich have all the money".)
The rich cannot possibly suck up all the money that exists, because in the process of said suckage, they create more wealth for everybody who participates in the economy. (E.g., this is why so many middle-class types are in the mutual-funds market. Every time some rich bastard invests in a fund that I own a piece of, I benefit.) Which means more money in circulation among the people who have to work for a living. This is what Wall Street does for us. It creates wealth, and wealth creates jobs, which in turn creates more pocket money for everybody.
When the government steps in and imposes punitive taxes on the rich, the rich find ways to protect their wealth, which in the process limits the amount of money available to create new wealth. Which means less money in circulation among the people who have to work for a living, because gee, there are fewer jobs available and more have been lost because in order to pay the punitive taxes, business had to decide between paying x number of employees, or paying the government.
If you don't or won't understand that, then you have no business participating in any discussion about our capitalist economy.
And if you are one of these uninformed "Occupy" people, you need to be demonstrating outside of the White House and Congress. Those are the bastards who are keeping you down, not the folks on Wall Street.
Yes, I read the post. If you really want my suggestions, here they are:
1. Single-payer healthcare.
2. Expansion of public schools to include college.
Healthcare and college costs are the two biggest problems for middle class Americans. They set kids out at the beginning of their lives already mired in debt and bankrupt anyone who gets sick without healthcare.
I have plenty of ideas for regulating banks and financial institutions, but that's another post. Oh, and we need some serious tax reform.
It's not just about pointing at a rich guy, Joe. It's about changing the little (and legal) goddamn con games like letting credit card holders quietly exceed their limit, then tacking on a fee.
It's about lending agencies taking responsibility for their transactions and NOT selling them in some ridiculous "bundle"
It's about CEO's NOT walking away with tens of millions of dollars when their company fails.
It's about getting the goddamn lobbyists out of Washington, because those are the bastards that have torn apart the regulations that allowed 2008 to happen.
And lest we forget, the banks played out all their shell games until the bubble was about to burst, then turned to the lobbyist-run GOV and said:
help
with doe-blinking eyes.
So you and me did, Joe. And don't think for a minute that we won't again.
whew! That's enough of my gassing on ...
We can agree on some of those things. But the issues you present are far different than complaining about rich vs poor.
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