Monday, November 15, 2010

"Hyper inequality"

Huh? Hyper-inequality?

I am talking about inequality in incomes. Did you know that the top 1% of income "Earners" in the US take 23% of the all the income? If that is not inequality then I don't know what is. 10 years ago the top 1% took 8% of all the income. Doing well aren't they? In a few more years they will be up to 50% - well on the way to their desired goal of the top 1% getting 99% of the total income of the US -and paying NO taxes. How about that for a goal?
You may well laugh. The income tax paid by the top 1% of "earners" in 2007 was 16%. Before that it was 30% and before that 40%.
It is beyond belief to me that the Republicans want to REDUCE taxes on the rich even more!! How can this be? Their share of the total income is skyrocketing and their tax rate is dropping. And yet people are crying out for it to happen!!

We need to reduce our deficit. At present we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. Is there ANYONE left who thinks this is sustainable?

By allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire the rich will pay 4% more tax! Yes that is all. This alone will keep Social Security and Medicare going indefinitely - for at least the next 75 years! BUT, the Republicans want instead to keep the tax cuts for the rich - which means we will have to borrow Billions to give to the rich. I could not be more disgusted. I cannot understand it, why are the Republicans so insistent? To the point that a majority of Americans agree with them! Their propaganda machine is awesome.

My answer to the problem would be to tax the rich much more heavily. By the time someone reaches an income of a million dollars a year they should be paying at least 90% of everything over 1 million. You can't make that much money honestly, in my opinion.

Everyone should pay their Social Security tax and Medicare on ALL of their income. It is after all a form of insurance, everyone pays in to the insurance and you only collect it if you need it. If you don't need it that is good, you should be happy about that, and you are helping the less fortunate. (The people that you collected all your money from anyway!)

Collect much more tax on alcohol too - this will bring in more money and at the same time keep people healthier, which will in turn reduce health costs. A triple whammy! Same for cigarettes, more taxes equal more money in the federal coffers and less sickness, less time off work, less health care expenses.
More tax on gasoline, same reasons, less gas use will keep the air and water cleaner leading to less illness and health care expenses. Also people will buy more efficient cars, which will reduce gas use even more, giving more of the benefits described. There would be a further BIG advantage - less money going out (We spend 1 Billion dollars a DAY on imported oil!) Cutting that back would help cut our deficit, cut the pollution of our air, water and land and cut off funds to the terrorists that hate us.

US Gas consumption

I went to do some errands today. As usual we try to combine several things into one trip. This trip included the Post Office, Bank, Supermarket and a couple more stops. At the Bank I went to the drive-thru and shut off my engine while I conducted the business - it usually takes about 5 minutes. My vehicle does about 26 miles per gallon which translates to about 4 ounces of gas per minute while idling. So I saved 4 oz times 5 minutes or 20 oz of gas. There are 3 lanes at my bank and the other two lanes had, you guessed it, two SUV's in them with the engines running. They use about 8 oz of gas per minute - so about 40 oz of gas each for the 5 minute wait. As there are undoubtedly millions of visits to banks per day, can you imagine the savings?
At the Supermarket a lady had driven her SUV to the front of the shop to load her groceries, and yes, you guessed it again, it sat there running while she loaded it. You are not supposed to leave a vehicle running when not in it, but why leave it running anyway? It just sends more dollars to our enemies in the Middle East. (None of the people so far looked even vaguely Middle Eastern).
Next stop the 7-11 to pick up a bag of ice, where of course, you guessed it, was a large Pick Up Truck, sitting there running, burning 8 Oz of gas per minute, while the owner picked up her cigarettes and coffee. (Again what is the point in leaving it running?) She was still in there talking, after I had conducted my business, paid and left.
On the way home I was behind a school bus. Mothers were waiting for their little ones with their cars, engines running, they were waiting outside of the cars (SUV's) as it was not cold. Several of them had driven up their driveways to get their kids!! None of those driveways were more than 100 yards long. So gas was wasted in driving up to the road, and in leaving them running while waiting for the bus. seems to me the walk would be good for the mother and the child.
The point here is that it would be no problem at all for the US to save 10% of the gas we use. And as we send one BILLION dollars per DAY abroad to pay for for our gas, much of it to terrorist countries that use it to attack us, we could help our balance of payments considerably. (That's more than a third of a TRILLION dollars a year!)

Just a thought.

The Deficit.

Forty cents of every Dollar that the US spends is borrowed!

Does that sound like a country that is overtaxed? I think the normal procedure is to spend a dollar for every dollar that you collect in taxes?

How long can we keep this up? To do this yourself for example - you earn $6 and then you borrow $4 and you then spend the $10. Or to put it another way, you earn $60,000 you then borrow $40,000 and spend the whole $100,000. Would you call this a responsible way to carry on? How long do you suppose you could keep this up?

And yet, the Republicans want to cut taxes to the RICH! This alone will cut tax revenue by $300 Billion a year (Or $1,000 for every man woman and child in the US!) We will have to borrow this money! In other words we will have to borrow $300 Billion dollars - from China? - TO GIVE TO THE RICH!! The rich are already rich beyond the wildest dreams of almost every American. The rich people are the 2% of Americans who make between $250,000 and $250,000,000 (And more!) So the 98% of Americans who make less than this will have to pay to borrow this money - that's 3 TRILLION dollars over the next ten years - to give to the rich, the already rich. Does this make sense to ANYONE? Even the rich? Even Warren Buffet the second richest man in the US says it is crazy!

Obama's Stimulus package already gave the biggest tax cut ever to the middle class tax payer (95% of Americans) Why don't the Democrats work with this? Tell us about their successes? The Republicans rant on about all the tax increases made by Obama - there have been none! And about taking away our guns - not one word has been said about that by the Democrats.

The Republicans are so much better at promoting themselves - with no worries at all about whether what they say is accurate or not, even outright lies are spouted repeatedly over and over until they take on a life of their own and are believed. Even obvious lies.

Obama's tax increases - wrong, he has CUT taxes to at least 95% of Americans since coming into office. Obama is going to take away our guns - wrong, not one word said about that. TARP was a waste of money - wrong, $700 billion loaned to banks, $660 billion paid back already. Obama should have let the car makers go under - wrong, GM is 60% owned by Americans now and made $2 Billion in profits in the last quarter! Chrysler is holding it's own and even making a slight profit, Ford never borrowed any money and made almost as much as GM last quarter.The bailout saved more than a million jobs. Obamacare will bankrupt us - wrong, it will extend Medicare for at least 12 years. And Illegal Aliens do not qualify for any benefits. (Other than treatment for life threatening injuries and illnesses at ER's, as anyone can, and should, get.)
Obama wants to set up Death Panels - wrong, more lies and scare tactics from Sarah Palin et al. And. if we allow the tax cut to the rich to expire in January, that alone will keep Medicare and Social Security solvent for at least another 75 years! Instead we (Republicans) want to borrow money to give to the 'already rich beyond our wildest dreams' Americans - and by doing so destroy Medicare and Social Security as well - all to give even more money to the ridiculously rich.

And the Wimpy Democrats say nothing about their accomplishments except "Sorry", keep quiet and hang their heads down. If the Republicans had accomplished half of what Obama has accomplished, they would be strutting around and hollering about it.