Get extra visitors!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Hrm, how should I say this?



Well it seems Americans are just as ignorant about their own condition then ever. A new study shows that most American have no idea of the scale of economic inequality in this country.  They thought the richest 20 percent of our society controlled about 59 percent of the wealth, while the real number is closer to 84 percent. The top 5% control well over 50% of the country's wealth in case you were wondering.


Which makes it even stranger that these elites are constantly complaining about all the horrible taxes they have to pay. These poor people in the top 5% really need those tax cuts to survive, honest! It is true they pay taxes out of proportion of their total income but wealth is much more important than income. The percentage of private income tax paid by the top 5% is in line with the percentage of wealth they own. It should also be noted that the bottom 20% effectively has zero or even negative wealth since it takes debt into account. 


The good news is that most people polled favored some sort of more equitable distribution of wealth so maybe we'll some more support for letting the tax cuts for the expire.

15 comments:

  1. More information for my brain, just what I needed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think I'll learn something from reading this someday!

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's not about not having enough money to survive. Taxation is theft, pure and simple, and what you're essentially doing is supporting this coercive process of theft. If you bothered to understand how the capitalist process works and why rich people are very important to your well-being and the process of society you'd probably be just as against taxation as they are.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's a sad situation indeed, and I don't think it's going to get any better

    ReplyDelete
  5. the poor get poorer the rich get richer
    e-z mode

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jahru I agree with your general sentiment, that the market can attribute fair desert. But the interference of government has corrupted that ideal outcome as all wealthy people and companies reach a threshold where it becomes cheaper to lobby the government in their favour than to continue to appease the consumer.

    I agree they shouldn't be taxed to shit. I don't fault them for having taken enormous advantage of a retarded system, but most of them certainly didn't earn it all fair and square. That would have required the complete relinquishment of all government power and regulation a long time ago.

    ReplyDelete
  7. You have the best taste in games with the XCom logo.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Its a shame this is the way things are. The rich truly do only want to get richer.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It truly is a sad state of fairs, pun intended.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Tax is theft, damn all that medical research and roads and fire service and army and police and water the Government gives us, we should get it all for free!

    Lol @ Libertarians, The Free Market will never work because businesses work in unison to drive up prices.
    The Free Market works just as perfectly as full communism.. which means it doesn't at all.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Yea kiron i agree who needs any of that.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I've seen this article posted so many times lately, I still find it hard to believe people don't already know or have intuited that money distribution is incredibly uneven.

    ReplyDelete