Ok, it's enough. After reading this article:
Occupying Wall Street, demanding accountability I have a few points to make. First off, the article's protagonist, Vincent, can simply be defined by this excerpt.
Vincent, 21 and unemployed, has suddenly become one of several unofficial spokesmen for Occupy Wall Street, a leaderless protest movement made largely of twenty-somethings upset with the state of the economy, the state of the war in Afghanistan, the state of the environment, and the state of America and the world in general.
My first thought that came to mind, how is Vincent a spokesman for anything, and who is he speaking for? My second thought, why don't these people do something actually productive to society and try to obtain a tax paying job rather than protest worthlessly. In the end, this protest won't get them anywhere, and they will have stayed unemployed, getting tax breaks themselves when that is their main arguing point. Don't get me wrong, in no way am I defending the bail out of the big banks, I'm mostly just perturbed by worthless hipsters 'fighting' for a cause that I guarantee they don't know diddly squat about. On a side note, if you can't tell, my opinion on hipsters isn't very high. I actually do believe hipsters are worthless (like goths), but I don't believe my possibly skewed opinion will interfere with my argument below.
So, one of the arguments are about the big tax breaks the rich get and how disadvantaged the bottom half of America is. I'm sorry, but that is just flat out wrong. The percent of individual income with tax returns of zero or negative tax liability is at an all time high of around 50%. That's correct, about 50% of Americans do not pay any taxes whatsoever, and actually a percentage of that 50% are beneficiaries from government programs. The non tax payer's percentage hovered around the 20's from 1950 to 2000, and only recently has it made a parabolic move. Both Bush and Obama are to blame for this spike.
So, who really pays for the bulk of taxes in the US? I"ll break it down. The top 1% of income earners pay roughly 40% of all federal income taxes and the top 5% pay approximately 70%. The bottom 47% pay no federal income tax at all. According to the Tax Policy Center, the bottom 20 percent pay -3.8% of the nation's taxes. What is interesting is that the next 20% are even better off at -4.3%. So cumulatively, the bottom 40% are net takers of Washington's money. If we were to compare, the top 0.1% of all income earners pay the equivalent of the bottom 80%. How is that not paying your fair share?
I'm going to group the rest of the hipsters into the same demographic as Vincent. They are part of a majority of America that pays nothing to Washington yet expects more. Doesn't it seem a bit ironical that they are complaining about handouts? Last I heard, we were not socialist Europe. (Although it seems like were headed that way) These hipsters certainly sound a lot like the hipsters of Greece that started rioting over the decrease in Government austerity programs after the country went BROKE.
Yep, all that austerity really put Greece, and soon to be Spain and Ireland in a solid situation. Just ask Germany about that!
* Disclosure note: All facts and figures that I've stated above can be looked up freely at the
IRS.
