Forum Post: One of the Many articles of the DAY
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 5, 2011, 11:55 p.m. EST by Doc4the99
(591)
from Washington, DC
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Even now with the pay roll tax extension for the American worker about to expire, the Republicans would rather see that happen than impose a 3.25% surtax on an annual incomes exceeding $1 million. Not to extend the payroll tax holiday would mean a family with an income of $50,000 a year would have a tax hike and would pay $1,000 more in taxes.
Whining Millionaires
So while the millionaires in Congress whine about being unduly taxed even as their own incomes rise like yeast bread, the average millionaire actually only pays 32.4% in taxes, according to the Tax Foundation. Yet under President Ronald Reagan, that same millionaire owed 47.7% in taxes. Looking further back in our history to the end of the World War II when all Americans paid their fair share to support the war effort, the tax rate on millionaires was 66.4%.
When were taxes on the rich as low as they are today? You would have to go back to 1929 when the tax rate in 1929 was 13.4%, but during the Great Depression it was raised to 68%, according to the website Patriotic Millionaires.
No wonder the Middle Class will be joining Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Congress. What is happening to the average American in this country cannot continue.
I for one am glad to see OWS move its protest to the seat of power and change in Washington. If Americans cannot move Congress to pass a jobs bill, rebuild this country, and strengthen our schools, we will soon become a second rate country. Our equality disparity already places us low on the Gini Coefficient that is used by the CIA to track incomes and living standards around the world. Our numbers make us comparable to Cameroon, Madagascar, Rwanda, Uganda, and Ecuador. While countries like Canada, most of Europe, Australia, Japan, and Russia do not have the income gap we have.
So it is not some vague, mushy feeling that Americans have that tells them that something is seriously wrong with their country and their leaders. There is.
If you want to do something about it, come to Washington, DC. The larger the numbers in the protest, the more impressive the demand for change is, and not the kind of change that is a slogan but action. Make your Congress members feel your anger, your frustration, your outrage. You can’t march in Washington? Then call their offices or go to one of their town hall meetings when they’re home.
True, one person’s voice can be drowned out but not when 100,000 or more start to act. It happened with Dr. Martin Luther King when he moved the Civil Rights protest to Washington, when the Vietnam protestors thronged the Mall, and when the Women Rights Movement marched down Constitution Avenue just as the Suffragettes did before them.
It can happen again.
16 Trillion to the banks. Too bad it was not invested in something good for the people.
Low taxes on the rich aren't bad, as long as the stress of paying for government isn't put on poor people.
tax the poor until they're serfs. what difference does it make as long as my millions are safe. get rich or die trying, the motto of America...the beautiful...
WTF are you talking about? That was no where nearly relevant to my post.
i'm being ironic or sarcastic or cynical...I agree with you
Ok, my bad.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-06/cuomo-joins-brown-in-seizing-on-occupy-movement-s-tax-the-rich-sentiment.html
so are the politicians actually starting to listen?
California Governor Jerry Brown and New York’s Andrew Cuomo are seizing on a core sentiment of the Occupy Wall Street movement in seeking higher taxes on the wealthy to offset cuts in education and government programs.
The governors of the first- and third-biggest states by population took aim at the affluent in proposals yesterday. Brown said he’d ask voters to raise income taxes on individuals making more than $250,000 a year and boost the sales levy. Cuomo said he wants an income-tax overhaul that would place a higher burden on top earners.
“The occupiers’ message is much more popular than the movement itself,’’ said Dan Schnur, director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. “For Brown or Cuomo to take the least-strident aspects of the occupiers’ agenda -- separated from the occupiers themselves -- presents them with a political opportunity that might not have been there a year or two ago.”
U.S. states slashed payrolls to close $91 billion in cumulative gaps in fiscal 2012 budgets, after tax revenue was slammed by the longest recession since the Great Depression, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California, the most populous, may face a $13 billion deficit, while New York, the third-largest, projects a $3.5 billion gap.
Demonstrations that started as Occupy Wall Street in New York on Sept. 17 have spread to cities on four continents. Protesters refer to themselves as “the 99 percent,” a reference to economist Joseph Stiglitz’s study showing the richest 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the wealth.
OCCUPY everything. Don't stop until congress ends the hypocrisy. which will be never