Reply #38: American Dream [View All]

[solinvictus]

"Guess I don't then. Guess I am not a liberal after all. I am not for reducing the wealth disparity; I am for everyone reaching their dreams in America by working hard. (Think I said before, but I am not from this country and believe in the American dream and stuff"

If you're not a native, I'm willing to excuse your Horatio Alger perception of the current economy. Here's the basic rundown: the rich have been fighting a particularly dirty form of class warfare for the past decade. At each turn, any program, no matter how meager, designed to assist common people is immediately decried as socialism. They, through mass media, resort to syllogisms that would have you believe that a free school lunch is neo-Stalinism incarnate. Because they control the tone of the debate, these same corporate executives and owners request bailouts at taxpayer expense for their own benefit. Now, where do their taxes go? By and large, nowhere, because the taxes are never collected. Because of corporate tax loopholes that would land you or I in federal prison, THEY are allowed to open an overseas mailbox and claim a foreign headquarters thus exempting themselves from federal taxes. Take airlines after September 11,2001; the executives go to Congress saying," we must have federal assistance or we'll have to lay workers off". What happened? Congress approved the bailout, the CEO's issued layoff orders, they gave themselves raises, their stock went up because Wall Street loves layoffs, and then the executives receive bonuses. How, by any stretch of the imagination, did that bailout save jobs or benefit the taxpayers?