The 1% could have all the money they want, and then some more

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

imho, if they just were not so obsessed with depressing wages, busting unions, eliminating benefits, and sending jobs overseas.

I just don't understand why they, and the 53% (or whatever they are) think that life in America will be better with someone making $9 an hour vs. a union worker making $30 an hour.

What is this obsession with making workers poorer?

[Populist_Prole]

1. It's like it's not enough for them to be successful

They have to be contemptible sore winners to consummate their "success".

[Vincardog]

2. They believe that for them to be winners we all have to be losers IT is part an parcel of their

small minded self-entitled-ness

[rustydog]

3. They don't give a FUCK about us.Plain and simple

The issue is money. Plain and simple. Why pay you 9.00 an hour (6.00 an hour in perry's Texas)
when you can pay someone in asia 2.00 a fricking day?
it is about the money. There are two America's and they only care about their America. We can die taday and they would not give a shit (unless you paid them).

[Phlem]

4. I'm sorry

I haven't been following this. Where does the 53% meme come from?

The OWL are 99%'rs, I think, so where is this 53%'r coming from?

Just trying to clue in.

Thanks

-p

[alsame]

5. I think the 53% refers to the proportion of Americans who

'pay taxes'. The rightwing keeps saying that 47% of people don't pay any taxes.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

8. and they are fucking liars about that

they pay SS, Medicare, Sales and property taxes.

Lower income people get a break from federal taxes, and that is part of my point. Are they not ashamed that here in America almost half of the jobs are so low paying that there is an exemption from Federal Taxes. Doesn't that just make them hand their heads in shame. No, I guess not.

Another thing, this exemption from Federal Taxes was authored by Ronald Reagan, himself.

[meow2u3]

9. Just about everybody pays Federal excise taxes

Damn near everything is subject to Federal excise taxes: utilities (electricity, gas, heating oil, kerosene, propane, etc.), cable TV, internet, car tires, gasoline, alcohol, tobacco, and so on. Some of them are included in the total price and others tacked onto the utility bills we pay every month.

[alsame]

14. Of course they are - it keeps getting debunked and yet the

rightwing keeps repeating it because they know some of the sheeple will believe that 47% of Americans are paying nothing at all.

[eallen]

6. The 1% are as divided politically as the 99%

Both Warren Buffett and the Kock brothers are part of the 1%. Both extreme right-wing preachers stumping for Bachmann and many here are part of the 1%.

The connection between where one falls on the economic spectrum and how one views growing inequality is pretty tenuous. It's more important to make it less tenuous among the 99% -- who, after all, have the votes -- than among the 1%. That said, I suspect someone like Buffett correctly views it in his own interests to work for a better national future. Even if that negatively impacts his personal balance sheet. There's only so much you can buy with that last $100 million.

:hippie:

[CrispyQ]

11. For many years I was an exex admin for a very rich man.

A democrat. ~smile.

Prior to 2008, he was worth hundreds of millions. One year his accountant called. I said I would transfer him to the boss & the accountant said, "No, no. Don't bother him. You can relay the message." The message was, that even though my boss had been paying in quarterly through the year, he still owed $2.5 million in taxes! His accountant didn't want to tell him this.

Later that afternoon, I had time with the boss & relayed the accountant's message. My boss smiled, looked up from writing the check & asked, "Do you know how much I made last year, that my taxes are $2.5 million plus?" I had an idea & let me tell you, it was a lot!

One day, someone representing a republican candidate called & I took the message & when I relayed it to him later, he stated, "I'm a democrat. When republicans call, tell them that." My boss was truly a boot straps kind of guy. He came from meager beginnings. He gives generously in the community & he took very good care of his elderly mother. ~nice.

We exchange emails now & then & he's still a solid dem who does not resent paying taxes, who wants to help his community & he believes in 'paying it forward.'


They do exist.

[eallen]

17. Oops. That second 1% was meant to be 99%.

:hippie:

[Andy823]

7. One word says it all

"GREED"!

It's not enough for them to be rich, they need to be richer than the "other" rich people. It's an addiction to money and power, and that's all they are about.

[RagAss]

10. Simple..they want us off the planet....rotting underground.....wake up !

[HughBeaumont]

12. It's not enough that THEY succeed, but that

[Hotler]

13. Selfishness n/t

[CatholicEdHead]

15. It is actually generational payback

When you read up on the history of organized labor (I am on my second old library book on the topic), you can see the class struggle and how there was a constant struggle which turned in the New Deal and has slowly been pulled back ever since. You can take all the filler issues and dilute it down to nothing more than the age old struggle for money and power, capital vs labor and capital has had the upper hand since the last major turning point in 1948.

It is as much about money and power as it is to see themselves getting the upper class back to where it was before the 1910's and 1930's with the Progressive Movement and New Deal.

If you look close enough the Tea Party has been set up to be a anti-New Deal popularity movement by design.

[Hydra]

16. It's not about the money

If it was, they could be making billions more by paying us just a bit more.

No, it's about the power, and that's why they have to take everything we have.

When they own everything, and we own nothing, they'll have absolute power for all intents and purposes.

Think it can't happen? It already has.