I listen to Republican (or right wing, conservative, however you want to look at it) radio. I watch Democrat (left wing, liberal, again whatever the fuck you want to call it) television. It's amazing to me how much the 'us vs them' mentality seeps through on both sides. Something I continuously hear being aped on the conservative side is that government should leave those poor downtrodden
Alright, I'll show you exactly what the conservative side wants you to see. Look at this graph and think about it for just a few minutes.
Looks pretty damning. They get so little of the overall income, but have to pay such a huge portion of the tax burden overall. But wait, there's a little trick in here. What trick? "Income".
Income is what you get from work. That oft abused paycheck I have kept having you drag out to hit you over the head with when I'm making a point about the difference between you and these rich people job creators. If you've got enough money in the bank that you could live of the interest alone and be happy, your income is going to effectively be zero, unless you want to work. Further, the graph doesn't tell you that interest is taxed at the same rate as income (as long as we're not counting deductibles, credits and other tax reducing methods), which inflates the percentage of federal taxes they pay comparatively. By working, they're effectively doubling the taxes that they are paying. Interest does not count as earned income, however, for the purposes of taxation. Keep this in mind, please.
One method of reducing the taxes paid is via investment. You aren't taxed on those until you earn something from the investment itself. This tax is called capital gains tax. I know, I know, taxes are dry, boring and likely headache inducing if not outright head exploding but stick with me. I'm going somewhere with this. Like everything else in our tax system, capital gains taxes are not straight forward. I really have to wonder what sort of brain dead monkey slammed keys with his bright red ass to make our tax code. Seriously. Even the research for this article was painful. So capital gains are taxed depending on how long you hold on to the investment for. Under a year, you've got a higher tax rate and a lower income (generally), and it's considered a short term investment. Over a year, you've graduated to the long term investment area and a lower tax rate. How much, you ask? Well it depends on your income tax bracket. Now, given what we know from before that interest does not equal earned income, assume that you are a wealthy ne'er do well with a nice opulent living condition and that Google stock you bought just tripled. You decide to sell and are taxed on the sales at....Well currently, it would be 0%.
That's right. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not a fucking cent.
With zero earned income you qualify for the 10% income tax bracket which in turn means you get a lovely bonus to your investments. Granted, this all changes come next year but, not the point.
I bring all of this up for one specific reason and I want you to hold this in mind while I elaborate on another point. The wealthy are not over-taxed. Plain and simple.
Let's talk for a minute about the distribution of wealth. If you work a minimum wage job (in Oklahoma, it varies by a few cents per state, to do your own math look here) you earn $15,080 a year before taxes. This places you firmly within the bottom 40% of all income earners in the US. You actually have to break above $25,000 per year to get out of this bracket. Now, there are lots of minimum wage jobs available, right? Well I mean under normal circumstances surely. There has to be quite a few. The bottom 40% is made up of about 120 million Americans. So how much of the overall privately held wealth do you think they own? For these purposes, wealth is economic wealth. That means liquid assets like real estate, stocks, bonds and so on. I don't think any of them will be parting with their cars unless the circumstances are dire. So how much do they have? Got a number? Now, how much do you think would be fair? Be honest with yourself. Of all the national privately held wealth, how much should go to those fast food workers, janitors, cooks, and the like?
The answer is, the bottom 40% currently hold 0.3% of all wealth. That's right, not even half of a percent. In fact, the bottom 80% (for those of you keeping count, well over 240 million Americans out of a population of roughly 311 million) don't even come close to 25% combined. The top 20%, that's a little over 60 million Americans, holds roughly 85% of all the privately held wealth in the nation. The top 1%, in fact (3 million, for you head counters out there), hasn't dipped below 20% of the nations wealth since 1976, and currently hold above 35% on their own.
Wait. What's that I hear? "Rawr class warfare blargl rhetoric garble socialist!" No no no...Okay fuck it. Yes, god damn it. It is class warfare but you know what? I didn't start it. I have literally watched both my pay checks getting smaller, and the amount of stuff I can buy (purchasing power) diminish over the years. War was declared on me before I even got out of high school.
So what does any of this have to do with the wording I used several times at the beginning of the article? Very simple. Those "job creators" that are being so ardently protected by every means available to our government? They aren't creating fucking jobs.
No. People are not looking for 'hand outs'. No matter what you may hear on the radio or see on TV. No one feels good about getting something for nothing, the feeling of owing another person. People in general understand the "You work, you get paid" dynamic. It's culturally ingrained into us. So why the increase in the number of people going on welfare? Are they just naturally lazy? Let me tell you, $500 a month is not what it sounds like. It's piss poor. And yet, it's half again what one earns in a month on minimum wage. And that $500 isn't all cash. That's $200 for food stamps and $300 cash if you're lucky and are able to put up with the bureaucratic bullshit. Oh, but you can't get it if you have a job.
Not a problem there because as I've detailed previously, there aren't any jobs. None are being created. Why not? Well, I've been over that before but, we're going to do it again. Time to play pretend.
You're now a CEO. I don't care of what company, it doesn't matter for demonstrative purposes. Banks have royally fucked the economy and it's going down faster than the latest high class whore you hired. You're under pressure to show earnings greater than last year because if you don't, people are going to stop investing in your company. That's how we judge companies, by them earning more each year (a flawed system in itself, I'll explain more later). Oh and if you don't make it enough, then your company is going to fail too. How are you going to do this? Well you've got to cut business costs. You could invest in making things run more efficiently, but that might cut in to your personal profits. The board might not give you that raise you want. You're certainly not going to starve if you don't get it, but you won't be able to buy up more land, stocks or whatever else you want. So what do you do? Cut loose workers. Get rid of those who've clung on to the company, trying to improve their own situations, and instead hire fewer workers back for even less money. Your sales may have flatlined but you've got a greater disparity between operating costs and profit, thus showing the marked improvement over last year. You're a fucking hero.
What about the losers who's jobs got cut? Well, they can just go on welfare if they haven't saved anything, or they can find another job. But with every company doing the same as yours, there aren't any other jobs. And the argument becomes circular from there.
So what can be done?
Well, loathe as I am to admit it, I've dwelled on this post for the better part of a month now without an answer. See, despite what some people may believe, I haven't even touched on the political aspects of this yet. That lower 80% don't have the financial resources to create any sort of lasting impact politically. They just don't. As I've said before, money is politics. The two are so inextricably linked that trying to separate them is an exercise in futility.
Our politicians are wealthy. It's just a fact. These are people who's average worth exceeds a million dollars and some of them reach up in to the tens and hundreds of millions. Given this fact, can we expect them to institute measures that would impact them? Of course not. Besides which, we all know what the government does with money. They piss it away on bullshit that could be done cheaper and more efficiently by private industry. Yes, the same private industry that I am railing against. For all the flaws in the business model, businesses do get shit done, at the very least. Can't say the same for the government.
None of that really goes to answer the question though. I'm honestly not sure what can be done. Social pressure might be applicable but really, what does that do against...well fuck, anything? Perhaps, just maybe, if you pay close attention to companies, see which ones are agile enough to not need to lose employees, that are forward looking enough to prepare for hard times without burdening the janitors and the lowly wage slaves by putting them out, if you boycott those that put too much emphasis on money and forget about humanity, there is a chance that will have an affect.
The only other thing I can consider is tearing down the economy as a whole and starting over. But that would not work. It would require dismantling it on a global scale, else the problem will simply migrate, like a particularly contagious yawn. I'll grant you that doing so would cost a lot, not necessarily just monetarily but in loss of life for those incapable of self sustenance. I honestly don't have an answer to this yet though.
I do believe that knowing and understanding the problem is a key to solving it. The problem here is the power and money are concentrated too greatly among too few who are doing nothing beneficial with either.
Job creators my ass.
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." - John F. Kennedy
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