Quote from: evoorhees on July 01, 2011, 11:51:45 AM

Quote from: niemivh on July 01, 2011, 01:55:45 AM

Everyone who hates Medicare must really love their parents and grandparents. After all without Medicare and Social Security 90%+ of you can expect to be bunking up with said elders once they have trip and fall or otherwise have a health problem that they can't afford or their insurance won't cover. I wonder once you have to take care of (without any help cause that would be socialism) your dying parents and as they bankrupt you (and themselves) and drain your life-force (since you won't have the money for any professional help) if it'll give you a different take on what the role of government can be. It doesn't matter if "Group A" is a bunch of multi-billionaire trust fund babies who actively buy politicians and despise the middle and lower classes and play them off against each other brilliantly and do everything they can to stifle social mobility and "Group B" is the working people who didn't inherit billions and would only like an opportunity to rise in society if given a fair chance. Apparently that is irrelevant.

So what you're saying is: If you don't want to take responsibility for your own grandparents, it's perfectly okay to take money from your neighbors by force in order to help yourself pay for medical costs? Basically, because you and your family haven't saved money to take care of each other, and you don't want the trouble of asking for voluntary charity, you have the right to steal that money from other people? And then you dismiss any moral objections to your theft by saying you're only stealing it from "multi-billionaire trust fund babies?" And then you want to claim that you're the benevolent one?

Do you even know what percentage of taxpayers are "multi-billionaire trust fund babies?". Billionaires alone would be less than 0.000001%, and then maybe 5% of those could be considered "multi-billionaire trust fund babies".

So what the hell do you think you're doing by advocating the theft of property from the other 99.999999% of people?

You're a disgusting human being, because you steal from others to satisfy your own wants. Shame on you.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAH!! I guess ignorace really is bliss. When people control the vasty majority of the wealth, that means they reap the vast majority of benefits from the system, therefore its their obligation to pay the vast majority of the taxes.

Time for a reality check using FACTS and NUMBERS, not opinion pulled out of your ass...

This would be a good read for you, an actual acedemic paper, not a youtube clip or someone's blog: http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/Wealth_in_America.pdf

Couple of quick quotes from the research paper:

Quote

Those households in the next three quartiles of the wealth distribution experienced quite
positive growth in their net worth position, with the relative increases in their net worth varying
strongly with their position in the wealth position (Chart 2). Households in the second lowest
quartile experienced a 25 percent increase in their mean net worth versus a 51 percent gain for
those in the third quartile, and a 77 percent increase for those households in the top quartile.
Those households in the top decile matched the growth rate of those in the top quartile, with a
76% increase. The top decile of wealth earners increased their share of total household wealth
over the decade from 67.7% in 1995 to 69.5% in 2004. By the latter year, the top decile of
wealth holders captured just under 70% of all of the net wealth in the U.S.

Quote

To illustrate the extraordinary degree of inequality in the wealth distribution of the nation
in 2004, we identified the net worth of U.S. households at each 10th percentile of the distribution
and the 95th percentile (Table 3). The values of the net worth of households ranged from a low of
$200 at the 10th percentile to only $6,450 at the 20th percentile to $93,100 at the 50th (median)
percentile and to highs of $831,000 at the 90th percentile and slightly more than $1,430,000 at the
95th percentile. The household at the 90th percentile had 4,157 times as much wealth as the
household at the 10th percentile, 129 times as much wealth as a household at the 20th percentile,
and 9 times as much wealth as the median household. The wealth distribution in the U.S. was
extraordinarily concentrated at the very top in 2004, far more concentrated than the annual
income or earnings distribution.

Quote

Households in the second highest quartile accounted for 10.3 percent of the nations
wealth, a wealth share well below their 25% share of all households. In substantial contrast, the
top quartile capture 87% of all of the nations wealth while nearly 70% was obtained the top
11
decile; i.e., the top ten percent.14 It should be noted that in drawing its sample of wealthy
households for inclusion in the Survey of Consumer Finance the Federal Reserve Board will
exclude all households that appear in the Forbes list of Americas billionaires. 15 These 400
billionaires in August 2008 had a combined net worth of just under $1.6 trillion or between 3 and
4 percent of the combined wealth of all 112 million American households in 2004. The exclusion
of Americas 400 wealthiest households from the Survey of Consumer Finance, thus,
underestimates the share of wealth captured at the top of the distribution.

Yes, that's right, the FED EXCLUDES the wealthest of the wealthy from the data, otherwise what is already a horrendous disparity would be absolutely unbearable.

Quote

Between 1948 and 1979, the richest 10 percent of families in the US claimed 33 percent of average income growth. Between 2000 and 2007, the richest 10 percent claimed a full 100 percent of average income growth in the US, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Business taxes were cut from 46 to 34 percent 25 years ago, according to ProPublica. But today, 115 of the big 500 companies listed on Standard and Poor's stock index paid federal and other taxes of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to David Leonhardt of The New York Times.

General Electric's tax rate for last year was seven percent, according to ProPublica.

The top five percent of US households claim 63 percent of the entire country's wealth. The bottom 80 percent hold just 13 percent of the growth, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Last year, John Paulson, a hedge fund manager "earned" $4.9 billion, according to The New York Times. Ten years ago, it took 25 such managers to collectively earn that much. Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers pocketed (a much better word) a total of $22 billion. It would take over 440,000 people each earning $50,000 a year to match that amount.

A federal development program intended to help poor communities, the New Market Tax Credit, instead funnels up to ten billion taxpayer dollars to big corporations like JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs and Prudential to build luxury hotels, office buildings and a car museum. Bloomberg Markets Magazine pointed to the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, which was renovated for $116 million. Prudential got $15.6 million in tax credit from the US Treasury for helping fund the project because the hotel was in a census zone that included two colleges that housed a lot of lower income students.

According to the Financial Times, there are now more people living in poverty in the US than at any time in the last 50 years. Foreclosure filings were nearly four million in 2010, up 23 percent since 2008, according to RealtyTrac.

http://www.truthout.org/robin-hood-reverse-us-seven-examples