WTF Wednesday - The Super Rich vs. The Rest of Us
There has been a trend in the articles that I’ve been reading (and that my friends have been posting) lately that points out the enormous class inequality here in the United States. Some of this has probably been triggered by the shenanigans going on in Wisconsin, but I think part of it is people just being fed up with the Super Rich.
I’ve always thought that once your income goes over a certain amount a year (and I’m talking millionaires here), why do you need extra money? I mean, once you cover the basics, food, clothing, housing, expenses, what the heck do you do with the rest? Expecting the super rich to be altruistic doesn’t seem to be working. Looks like we’ll have to be at least slightly socialistic if we want to correct the insane distribution of wealth that’s happened over the past couple of decades. And keep the government running.
Everyone from Mother Jones to Michael Moore is pointing out how unequally the wealth is distributed in this country. According to Michael Moore (and backed up by this recent post), the top 400 richest Americans have a combined wealth that is equal to half of all the remaining Americans combined. That is just mind boggling, that 400 people can be as wealthy as 155 million other people.
In Colorado, the super rich get their mansions declared to be agricultural land so that they get a tax break. For example, just because he lets a few sheep graze on his lawn Tom Cruise pays a mere $400 in taxes on 240+ acres. Seriously, I think he can afford to pay the regular tax rate, don’t you?
And over at The Guardian, they’re writing about how over the last half century, the richest Americans have shifted the burden of the federal individual income tax off themselves and onto everybody else. Check out those tax charts!
Michael Moore explains how he got to Madison, Wisconsin to give the speech where he declared that “America is Not Broke. The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!”
I think the article that made me the angriest recently was this infographic that shows how getting rid of tax breaks for the rich would save programs that benefit the poor. Am I the only one who thinks that our government should be helping those who need help the most, not those who can afford to make the biggest campaign contributions and hire the most lobbyists?
I’ve always thought that once your income goes over a certain amount a year (and I’m talking millionaires here), why do you need extra money? I mean, once you cover the basics, food, clothing, housing, expenses, what the heck do you do with the rest? Expecting the super rich to be altruistic doesn’t seem to be working. Looks like we’ll have to be at least slightly socialistic if we want to correct the insane distribution of wealth that’s happened over the past couple of decades. And keep the government running.
Everyone from Mother Jones to Michael Moore is pointing out how unequally the wealth is distributed in this country. According to Michael Moore (and backed up by this recent post), the top 400 richest Americans have a combined wealth that is equal to half of all the remaining Americans combined. That is just mind boggling, that 400 people can be as wealthy as 155 million other people.
In Colorado, the super rich get their mansions declared to be agricultural land so that they get a tax break. For example, just because he lets a few sheep graze on his lawn Tom Cruise pays a mere $400 in taxes on 240+ acres. Seriously, I think he can afford to pay the regular tax rate, don’t you?
And over at The Guardian, they’re writing about how over the last half century, the richest Americans have shifted the burden of the federal individual income tax off themselves and onto everybody else. Check out those tax charts!
Michael Moore explains how he got to Madison, Wisconsin to give the speech where he declared that “America is Not Broke. The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!”
I think the article that made me the angriest recently was this infographic that shows how getting rid of tax breaks for the rich would save programs that benefit the poor. Am I the only one who thinks that our government should be helping those who need help the most, not those who can afford to make the biggest campaign contributions and hire the most lobbyists?