The top 1%

[zenekar]

With 1% of Americans controlling 40% of the country's wealth, we examine the gap between the rich and the rest.

Video:
https://english.aljazeera.net/progra...338194522.html

The richest one per cent of Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40 per cent of its wealth.

Inequality in the US is more extreme than it has been in almost a century - and the gap between the super-rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US' $14.3 trillion debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above nine per cent, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programmes that are the backbone of the US' social safety net, and whether to raise taxes - or to cut them further.

The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the US has never seemed so divided - both politically and economically.

How did the gap grow so wide, and so quickly? And how are the convictions, campaign contributions and charitable donations of the top one per cent impacting the other 99 per cent of Americans? Fault Lines investigates the gap between the rich and the rest.

[Speak2Truth]

The top 1 percent of all households got 18 percent of all personal income and paid nearly 38 percent of income taxes. The top 1 percent now pay a significantly larger share of taxes than before President Bush’s tax cuts, and also have a larger share of income. Tax breaks increased overall income and tax revenues.

Think about that. The Bush tax cuts increased Federal revenues from $1.7 billion in 2003 to $2.5 billion in 2008. Even the housing market crash did not reduce that by much.

If you are not a member of the top 1% and want an opportunity to do your part in paying 38% of the income tax burden, get educated, form your own corporation based on sound business principles (NOT government hand-outs!), employ people, produce goods that bring income to our nation by selling them abroad, create prosperity and employment for others - then give your 38%. You are free to give more if you thinkg "the rich" are not taxed "fairly", while 50% of the nation pays no income tax at all.

Try not to notice the 50% who pay nothing. Try not to notice all those people screaming that you get too much yet who rebel at the idea of making the effort to join you as a top earner and taxpayer.

Top 1%: What they Make and Pay (2010)
https://www.financialsamurai.com/201...-make-percent/

Federal Tax Receipts
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxf....cfm?Docid=200

[Iolchan]

More Errant Non-sense :

If you are not a member of the top 1% and want an opportunity to do your part in paying 38% of the income tax burden, get educated, form your own corporation based on sound business principles (NOT government hand-outs!), employ people, produce goods that bring income to our nation by selling them abroad, create prosperity and employment for others - then give your 38%. You are free to give more if you thinkg "the rich" are not taxed "fairly", while 50% of the nation pays no income tax at all.

There is absolutely no way that the rest of us are somehow going to squirrel our way up into the top 1% of the pile these days by being plucky, Entrepreneurial Horatio Algers types, Speak2Truth - and if you really believe that is so, I pity you. If you expect the rest of us to swallow that one - you've got another thing coming.

The Fact is that the top one per cent of the population All benefit by the accident of being born into Certain Families - America's Sixty Families - {& their 240 attendant ancillary Families} - Families who inherit and pass down Certain Stock - Stock in the Prime, Money-market Banks of Wall Street. The National Debt is the Property of these certain, privileged Few. It is held in the form of tax-exempt U.S. Treasury Securities in the Vaults of said Prime Banks. The Stockholders of the CLASS A = { the preferred } Stock of these banks receive Quarterly dividends from that part of the portfolio of these Banks that is held in said Securities. It is that simple - and also that ugly.

These are the folks, on behalf of Whom, Ben Bernacke was cracking the whip over Congress, to produce and to produce Quickly!! ~ They had not gotten their Quarterly checks by July 1, and they were Pissed!

Sincerely,
Mark Walter Evans

[podfish]

The top 1 percent of all households got 18 percent of all personal income and paid nearly 38 percent of income taxes. .... Try not to notice the 50% who pay nothing

sure I'll stoop to a cheap insult. Come on, that's the logic of a wage-slave who can't read the fine print on his paycheck. Hmmm-- if you do that, you may notice a big difference between what you get and minimum wage times hours worked. That accounts for a big chunk of the 50%- but another big chunk of the 50% are living on non-taxable income and spending their days yachting about if they don't feel like working to expand their holdings. Take salary? How declasse - it's much better to have your "earnings" received in other ways.
So that top 1% of the households don't contribute remotely at the level of their share of the economy. Which is, oddly enough, accrued in ways that are harder to measure and tax than salary.

I can't understand why this trope gets the repeated play it does. It is insulting to anyone who doesn't think of money as the kind of stuff you find behind the cushions on the couch.

[Speak2Truth]

I did you guys the courtesy of showing source information. Please provide some to support your claims. In fact, we're talking about the top 1% of "earners" here. Those include the folks "yachting around".

Podfish, can you find government statistics on what portion of the 50% who pay no taxes are in that top 1% of "earners"? Or are you just making things up?

The Fact is that the top one per cent of the population All benefit by the accident of being born into Certain Families

All? You're saying people don't work their way up, like Oprah or Bill Gates or...

You may never work your way up with an attitude like that. So be it. However, I suggest you repeat two mantras and live by them to avoid the unconscionable error of WRONGING someone else:

"Your stuff is not mine".

"These are the things I have done today to improve myself and my earning ability." (Then write a list. Every day.)

I'll drop a hint. I remember getting CARE packages as a kid and at Christmas that was most welcome. My deepest memory of my mother's love for me was that she went out of her way to get me an item I had seen at an antique store that, though not useful, was something I truly, truly desired. And she really couldn't afford it. I still have it as a reminder.

I lived by those mantras.

I'm doing much, much better now.

You can too, if you have the integrity to stop figuring out ways to seize other people's stuff and develop ways to honestly earn your own.

It's time to kick Karl Marx in the ass and start to respect the Rights of your fellow man.

[seanpfister]

Try not to notice the 50% who pay nothing.

What about payroll taxes, state and local income tax, and sales tax? If you want to discuss the tax burden, by income level, then it's necessary to review the total taxes paid by each income group, not just income taxes.

The social security payroll tax is 15+% of income, for example--and it's more than a third of all federal revenues, paid for by working people mostly. That part of the tax burden isn't in the tables you reference so you're painting a rather incomplete picture.

[Iolchan]

Alright - So You Want References ?

Speak2Truth wrote:
I did you guys the courtesy of showing source information. Please provide some to support your claims.
In fact, we're talking about the top 1% of "earners" here. Those include the folks "yachting around".

Podfish, can you find government statistics on what portion of the 50% who pay no taxes are in that top 1%
of "earners"? Or are you just making things up?

Iolchan wrote:
The Fact is that the top one per cent of the population All benefit by the accident of being born into Certain Families...

All? You're saying people don't work their way up, like Oprah or Bill Gates or...

I'm glad you brought that up - the oft-repeated refrain about Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates. In the first place, their cases are different; very different. Oprah is an example of a talented, articulate, Black Actress who got her start in the Movies. The movie, "THE COLOR PURPLE" was a very engaging, well-made film, and it showed her as a major talent. She is a very bright woman, and we all love her. But she is certainly not a member of the owning Class, Mr. Vik Man, Speak2Truth, and I am very certain that however wealthy her television show may have made her, she does not possess, in her portfolio, any of the CLASS A stock of any of the Prime Banks of Wall Street. And for the simple reason that the general public can not purchase any of that stock. It has been hermetically sealed from the Public.

Thus, Oprah Winfrey is not among the top 1% of the population of the population. She is not one of the beneficiaries of the Interest on the National Debt. She is, instead, an example of the kind of tokenism & selective elevation to the status of Ethnic Idol that the establishment loves to engage in - and in this, Hollywood is the most favored Venue. Oprah and Whoopie, both of them articulate, beautiful, bright, and wildly talented, are presented to us as tokens - Black Woman Who Made It. For the Chicanos and Chicanas, Hollywood & the Corporate Media also have token "Success Stories" and heroes and heroines: Antonio Banderas, and Jennifer Lopez.

Bill Gates, on the other hand, was born into the Class who inherit the CLASS A stock in the Prime Banks; the Class who are the beneficiaries of the Interest on the National Debt. Quite obviously, Bill is also a very successful pioneer in the Software field, to say the least. Bill Gates did not come out of Nowhere; and, if you will take the time to download this book "America's Sixty Families," by the late Scholar and Professor at N.Y.U., Ferdinand Lundberg, you will find on page 383, a reference to Thomas S. Gates, connecting him with J.P Morgan & Co., which, of course, in today's world, interlocks with IBM.

https://www.archive.org/details/americas60famili035216mbp

On page 129 of this tome is a reference to John W. Gates - linked with, and in the company of: John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Chauncy M. Depew, W. Seligman & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Charles M. Schwab, Eliot Gould, Jacob H. Schiff, etc. Now this man, John W. Gates, is just a little ways up the family tree of our boy Bill Gates - who is always wheeled out and paraded before us as an example of what pluck and ingenuity can do. Although the Gates family did not rate, in 1937 (when the book was published,) as ranking members among the top 60 Families; they were among the 240 ancillary families just below them. In other words, the Gates Family were among the top 300 Families in America in 1937.

Here, you do the homework; Go figure the Gates Family Tree : https://www.google.com/advanced_sear...lr=&prmd=ivnso

Now, I am not denying the native ability, genius, perseverance, cleverness, etc. of Bill Gates - but I am suggesting that his Family connections helped, let's just say, "more than a little" when it came to the juicy plum that the myth-makers suggest he wangled from IBM, when they weren't paying attention. IBM doesn't just give away juicy plums like the franchise for the Software of the Operating System for the future PC market to any bum off the street. The power elite also enjoy, occasionally, to create Mythic figures, such as Bill Gates, in order to keep the myth of Horatio Alger alive.

Speak2Truth wrote:
I'm doing much, much better now.

You can too, if you have the integrity to stop figuring out ways to seize other people's stuff and develop ways to honestly earn your own.

It's time to kick Karl Marx in the ass and start to respect the Rights of your fellow man.

I am not at all about, nor do I believe in, nor have I ever advocated "seizing other people's stuff" Speak2Truth. And I really resent the implications of that statement. It is a Slur - and a low, dishonest {or perhaps merely a careless} Lie. Let the bloody Gentry keep their bloomin' mansions on Fishers Isle, for all I care. I simply think - and Know - that the National Debt is not a Legitimate Entity. It is a product of Fraud, and I never signed on to Pay it.

And I State, for the Record, that this one, that is I, myself, Mark Walter Evans, do not Owe on any part of the National Debt - either upon the Principal nor upon the Interest of the damned thing... I rebuke and reject the National Debt as illegitimate - as I have stated elsewhere on WaccoBB. I would like to see more people take that pledge, by the way.

The Bond-holding Class = who are the Owners of the preferred stock in the Wall Street Money Market Banks, do not have any legitimate Right to receive Quarterly dividends on the Interest on the National Debt while the Masses in America - and growing numbers of the Middle Class - suffer. That is no sort of legitimate "Right." It is based in Fraud.

Furthermore, I am not a Marxist - I am a Paleo-Progressive; there is a difference. Another Slur. I will readily admit that I find some elements of Marx's species of so-called "Scientific Socialism" still relevant and valid. I do think - although I am not a Marxist-Leninist - that everyone should read Lenin's little book, published in 1916, "Imperialism - the Highest Stage of Capitalism." Lenin was right about some things {in spite of becoming a bloody dictator, once he achieved state power. And that book was prophetic; it describes a lot of what has subsequently happened, in recent history.

Thanks for the Mantras - I'll try them out for a month - someday. They may actually work. But, I suggest, such mantras are abundant in pop-psychology books written by folks who were weaned on Ayn Rand's "Virtue of Selfishness." - Which is not a philosophy I adhere to.

Sincerely,

Mark Walter Evans

[Speak2Truth]

I simply think - and Know - that the National Debt is not a Legitimate Entity. It is a product of Fraud, and I never signed on to Pay it.

You and I are in complete agreement here.

I was merely responding to the initial post that started this thread. Digressions into power players and the Fed are another matter.

Nobody gets rich all by themselves. They ally themselves with like-minded people who all do their parts to build success and create wealth. Oprah and Bill Gates both formed various business agreements, invested wisely, had some foresight to market something that other people wanted and achieved what any American can. Unlike the Socialist nations, America does not punish the individual for finding ways to create wealth and prosperity.

Woops, that is no longer true.

Anyway, the mantras are something I believe should be taught to every child in Elementary School for the simple reason that they are the core of doing Justice to others as well as building success for oneself. Whosoever practices those simple preachings can have a clean conscience and become prosperous.

And, as "Scarface" the gangster put it, "Do sumptin', do it good and keep on doin' it!" (I paraphrase the original 1930s character)

[Speak2Truth]

What about payroll taxes, state and local income tax, and sales tax? If you want to discuss the tax burden, by income level, then it's necessary to review the total taxes paid by each income group, not just income taxes.

The social security payroll tax is 15+% of income, for example--and it's more than a third of all federal revenues, paid for by working people mostly. That part of the tax burden isn't in the tables you reference so you're painting a rather incomplete picture.

I admit, that's a rather incomplete picture. It addresses taxation of income - yet as you say we are burdened by so many other taxes at all levels of activity and all the politicians can think to do is find excuses to levy even more on us. It's horrific. It's unnecessary. It drives up the cost of living to make more and more people dependent on government largesse while draining the assets of those who strive to achieve to thwart aspirants to success. I've watched several small businesses in Santa Rosa die the death of a thousand taxes.

"The way to crush the middle class is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." – Vladimir Lenin

"There is only one way to kill capitalism—by taxes, taxes, and more taxes." - Karl Marx

These guys knew how to achieve their goals. It works.

As lolchan points out, the purveyors of this inentional scheme to destroy individual prosperity and subjugate all under the thumb of government were "correct" about some of their observations. However, that does not make their methods or objectives just. Even Adolph Hitler was "correct" about plenty of things - including the solution to runaway national debt and inflation. He followed the example of Abraham Lincoln and it worked. Yet, we still correctly view that Socialist Party dictator as a monster because of his goals and methods. Lenin, Marx and Stalin are probably at the poker table in Hell with him right now.

[Iolchan]

Now, Concerning that Top 1 %...

I am very fortunate, in my life, to have known, and to have worked closely with the late Nat Bingham, of Mendocino. I worked for him for six months back in 1979, as a Puller on his Salmon boat, the Ellot M, fishing out of Noyo. Nat taught me many things; I count him as one of my mentors. As a member of the Bingham family, who were once very prominent among America's Sixty Families, he had grown up in a privileged environment. His grandfather, Hiram Bingham, was the "discoverer"of Machu Pichu - first in a Baroque era Spanish manuscript in the Yale Library; and then later, since he was a Bingham, he had the clout to get the Grosvenors to mount a National Geographic Expedition down to Peru, to discover Machu Pichu & write it up in a big theatrical production. That was in 1911.

Nat Bingham, after graduating from Yale in 1959, went west and became a beatnik, of sorts, living in Canyon, in the Oakland hills, and, since he loved Jack London, working a fishing boat, out of the Oakland Estuary, until he moved up to Mendocino in '65. He was a black sheep among his clan. Nat Bingham knew many things. One thing he told me, while we were fishing, in the Summer of '79, off the coast of Point Delgada, I will never forget: He said that, since he periodically would return back home to Connecticut for Family Re-unions, he kept in touch with the opinions of the power elite, and he knew what their Plans and Long-range goals were. He told me bluntly:

"The Power Elite want there to be just two Classes in America: Alphas & Deltas { that is, Drones.} You will see; it will happen in your lifetime. They plan to break the Middle Class, until it no longer exists."

-- Words to that effect... That is pretty much a direct Quote, of the late Nat Bingham, Salmon Preservationist, Environmentalist, Fisherman, & founder of the Salmon Trollers Association. Those words certainly do describe what is happening Now, and has been happening for some time. The Federal Reserve Bank is the main instrument of this "breaking". Fact.

I say we try to break it.



Mark Walter Evans