In case you weren't paying attention, the rich really ARE getting richer.
More importantly, our increasingly middle class is not.
It used to be that everyone had a fairly good shot at gaining a lot of money. Up until the first one to three milllion taxes weren't too bad. After that, you got the 90+ percent taxes the GOP tries to scare you with. Let's rehash that. After you made a few million dollars IN A YEAR you got most of the rest taxed.
That's how this country ran. That's how wealth is created and, yes, redistributed for the good of the nation.
Now? The rich have a MUCH lower tax rate. Obviously at some point you can't buy any more. So the rich invest. The riskier the investment, the more profit you make. Profit, mind you, that doesn't get taxed at more than 15%. That's the capital gains tax you might have heard of. Republicans say it is a double tax. It would be if the initial investment were taxed; which it isn't.
Let's put it this way. If a rich investor "wins" a million in the stock market, he only pays 15% on the million. If YOU win the lottery, you have to pay taxes on it like it's income. Why? Because the GOP only rigged the system for the investor, not you.
Same thing with the estate tax, also called the "death tax" by Republican marketing goons. They say this hurts family farms. It doesn't. At least, none but the absolute largest ones. No, this is BS to distract you from the fact that wealthy kids - let's say the Kardashians or Hiltons - can have it all by literally doing nothing useful with their lives.
Sorry, I'm venting but there's a really our economy is lagging. Rich folks with money burning a whole in their pocket are betting in commodities and the stock market. Those bets are destabilizing markets so you have to pay more for gas, food, your house. Because their bets wash out what normally would be taking place. Instead of blindly throwing darts, many of those markets used to be full of estimates made by folks who worry about the supply and demand of refineries, pigs, corn, beaver pelts, whatever. Now that educated approach is washed out by rich dullards just looking to make even more money.
For the rest of us? We've got assholes like Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin trying to make people mad at teachers for having worked for better job conditions and benefits than the rest of us. Can you believe that? They have been pensions, and it's THEIR fault? FAULT? We're supposed to hate folks who have NOT gotten screwed by business or conservatives in general? The worst part is that such a line of argument works!
It makes me sick to see what we've come to as a people. Our wages haven't gone up and they buy a lot less. Meanwhile, the folks who have more, keep getting more - at our expense - and we're supposed to hate the folks who work hard, go to school to know more, serve our society for less than what they could make in the private sector.
Really?
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