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Senator Bernie Sanders: America Is Now A Banana Republic
Some emotional words from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders over the increasing social inequality in America, which he now defines as indicative of America's transition to a banana republic: "Many of the nation's billionaires are on the war path. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end, and apparently there is very little concern for our country or for the people of this country if it gets in the way of the accumulation of more and more wealth, and more and more power. Today as the middle class collapses, the top 1% earns 23.5% of all income, more than the bottom 50%. Today, if you can believe it, the top 1/10th of 1% earns about 12 cents of every dollar in America... It is very clear that the people on top are doing extraordinarily well as the poverty is decreasing... Today the crooks on Wall Street, the people whose illegal, reckless actions have resulted in the millions of Americans losing their jobs, their savings, after we bailed them out, the CEOs are making more money than before the bailout. The US now has by far the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth." Not surprisingly, Sanders is not too happy about the proposed tax cut for the richest.
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Here! Here! Totally agree! There are many rich people who earned their wealth honestly & then their is Lloyd B & the Wall Street crew - Bernacke should be impeached - Paulson should be forced to forfeit his wealth --> Consider the audacity - TRILLIONS of $$$$ to bail out banks & Uncle Hank fixated on his $600 million in Goldman Stock Options - Tim G --> send him to Elkhart Indiana & let him truly earn & honest living...after he is released from prison
Nice rant, but you forget incorporation prevents the jailing of ANYONE for ANY REASON.
Its just business, business with legal immunity to lie, cheat, and steal.
Paint with a pretty WIDE brush there, dont you?
So what do you suggest..."worker cooperatives?"
Yeah...that's what I thought...
"Painting the "rich" with the same tar paintbrush is posturing and its dishonest."
Like using a couple of anecdotal videos from Walmart to paint the "poor" with one brush.
I don't remember the message in those videos being pointed at the poor? I thought they were being pointed at those who have become enslaved by commercialism. IMO this is not limited to one class of people. How can one honestly infer from a video that all those people were poor? Because they shop at Walmart? I bet it Sacks of Fifth Ave. slashed their prices by 50-60% you would see much the same. Wouldn't that be a laugh?
However, your point is just because since the release, I have seen many here use it to prove such a point!
There certainly is a big difference between a small business owner and a Golman crony.
Good thing Sanders isn't talking about small business owners. Or did you miss that point?
He and I both agree that the system is broken, but something tells me the Bern-dog wouldn't much care for my opinion of what a properly functioning system would look like.
Umm, Mr. Sanders? A banana republic is always characterized by promises of unearned loot to be given to the poor. Just like your socialist policies.
They don't work in banana republics, because loot must be produced by someone before you can act "good" by taking it from its producer and giving it to "the poor" whom you make poorer and more dependent in the process. Not to mention destroying the producers. Which is why you can only produce bananas, or whatever else grows uncultivated in the jungle.
If you have no middle class, there is no spending and hence no GDP. All the GDP generated lately is mostly fake money stimulus. Sanders is correct-the super rich do not spend but they hoard(gold, stocks,property,railroads) and do no contribute to system unless they are capital lenders. And now, they hoard and do not lend money to capitalize smaller business.
That is inherently not bad to stop lending to a class of defaulters BUT money hoarded by the top 5% is bad policy.
The middle class of ANY successful country is saving and spending concurrently. The poor spend all they have but no reserves.
So, as these fucking bizzillionaire douchebag class of people hoard more, they add to deflation and suck money out of the supply. So, idiots like Bernanke have to print more to prevent wealth destruction and money supply in asset values. But then the rich take all the printed money and buy railroads, Criminal Orgs like Wells Fargo and go play the casinos on the markets.
Americans are usually loathe to tax the rich, BUT they have this stupid lottery mentality that they will hit it big even when the deck is stacked 99% against them. Worker bees, you have BEEN HAD
GDP doesn't come from spending silly, it is a measurement of production. Production occurs to meet the needs of consumers ultimately, be they rich, poor or middle class. Suggest you read this http://freedom-school.com/money/how-an-economy-grows.pdf
How funny.
Really funny,really funny.
I was about to write "and production? Where does it come from? You dont spend to achieve production?" and I checked the link, that is that idiotic comics depicting production(or more exactly extraction), a consumption activity as savings... I immediately knew where you did get your false ideas... Voiding the need to answer my question.
I have been looking for that idiotic comics for a while. Thank you. Bookmarked for good laughters.
Unemployment counts as GDP. Any velocity of money goes into GDP. Its a nonsense statistic- as anything is counted as production uncluding welfare and federal salaries and foodstamps. We would have no GDP at all if it was based on true production- because we do not make shit.
Economics is shit anyway- total hindsight science with no basis in reality or ability to predict the future.
The point was that the rich and middleclass are in an ecosystem- and the rich don't believe in the ecosystem and hoard
Cite one instance when taxing the rich actually benefitted the middle class by some kind of income redistribution. Fact is, it never happens. If you want to build a strong middle class you better reduce the size of their tax burden by reducing the size and regulatory costs of government. Get outta the way.
No, that isn't how banana republics are characterized. Never has been. I suggest you do a little studying.
If there was no law to hide behind, none of this would have happened.
Nice try Bernie. Your shtick is overplayed.
NO SOUP FOR YOU!
NEXT!!
Low Taxes + Gold Backed Dollar + Balanced Budgets + Tariffs
But... I think there is tremendous trouble down the road.
Bring back Smoot-Hawley.
Bernie Sanders would have us all enslaved to "solve" this problem. A socialist as the moral compass for this country??
Why is this junked? Why does ZH have so many damn socialists? Would it have anything to do with featuring people like Sanders/Grayson/etc or is the overall content of this website attractive to the ultra left? Very odd.
This has been a recent change, due to the increasing popularity of the site, I assume. Before it was mostly statist vs. non-statist. (And that was right-wing statist vs. libertarians of all flavours) I have no idea why a bunch of left-wingers are here as of late, if they think the focus of this site's content is somehow anti-capitalist they are sorely mistaken. They'd be better off over at MoveOn.
Now that the Glenn Beck watching idiots and the pussy liberal lap dogs have shown up to fight each other in threads like these, the quality of comments has taken a drastic nosedive. Tyler should change the math problems to something a bit more advanced than 3rd grade.
Sit back, laugh at these idiots, read the comments by long time posters who have their heads on right, and buy more silver with every paycheck.
Where is the "sheeple kool-aid"? I liked it better when I was unaware of how corrupt our system has become with big money manipulating our politicians like marionettes.
On top of that US taxpayers, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, gave foreign bankers billions of our money and now they are talking about a national VAT(Value Added Tax) to bring down the deficit!
When is American Idol on, I cannot take reality....I want to be a banana..
...and yet still the Democrats will cave in the Senate and give out the big tax cuts (and they wonder why they are seen as spineless).
The social democracies like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Canada, etc. without exception rank far higher than the USA on all measures of quality of life.
Access to medical care, poverty, contentment, life span, violent crime, chronic illness, educational attainment, etc.... on every one, the evil socialists rank higher then the wonderful corporate capitalism of the US of A.
Of course, they don't have MTV Cribs, so we do have that going for us.
Of the thousands of differences between the US and those socialist utopias that you have surely considered, such as differences in how statistics are measured, the definition of "quality", and many others... what makes you certain that the one you cite, that they take more from their productive class and give more (unearned) loot to their unproductive is what makes them better?
Google is your friend, look up the tax rates.
Yep, and Canada's system is so great, I guess thats why when folks need surgery to save a life, or to get a simple cat scan/pet scan,MRI, they come here.
Which won't last much longer, if its not over turned.
IOW's, Eat shit and Die.
Need a hip replacement?, get on the waiting list for 12-24 mos, and suffer.You have lots of money?, want to pay for it yourself, tough shit.
Got breast cancer at 20?, tough shit, go home and die.
Wonderful system.Wonderful.
And the UK's is worse.
Of course everything you just said about Canada's system is total bullshit.
Please be kind... this is like telling a six year old there's no Santa... have a heart!
As a citizen of the UK, I find your comment laughable. That's all I have to say.
As usual you are caught up in taxes instead of what you get for what you pay. In Denmark, Sweden etc. yes you have a higher tax rate. You also have a happier and more equitable society, no mountains of student loan debt when you graduate, no bankruptcy because of an unforeseen illness.
In the USA we pay lower taxes but what do we get? A mountain of student loan debt, a military empire, and when you're old (maybe) a SS check.
There is a reason the socialist countries are far less violent than the US. Inequality and fear and hunger breeds violence. A few less McMansions and a more equitable society would be better and safer for everyone.
The foreign countries mentioned also have smaller populations, so comparing the US to them without dividing by head count is kinda meaningless.
Hey, you like Denmark, or Sweden, or Norway, or Canada so much, why don't you go live there.
Leave socialism to the socialists, I say. The USA, on the other hand, was built on the cornerstones of Life, Liberty, and Property. It's why we're the greatest country on earth.
I wish I could go live in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, or Canada. Unfortunately its very hard to emigrate there.
And America being the greatest country is something you read about in history.
Those corner stones were built on the transfer of wealth of nations with houses still standing that are older than your entire nation. Wake up America, you are the teenagers of the world, lazy, fat, useless, america.
Don't blame the world for your ills, YOU are the problem.
How do you get 156 million from the IRS for not paying taxes???
Is there a form for that?
Dear Sen. Sanders, If I may connect the dots for you: You create a government...the government is then bought by the wealthy class....the government then writes laws that benefit the wealthy....the people are made poorer as the wealthy get richer....if the people become a problem, you kill them off (modern medicine, pollution, wars, oil spills etc.)...the government uses entitlements to buy off revolution (unless they become too great-then they must be downsized, also called a budget)...you then practice mass mind control through manipulated media.
In the end, you have a trained workforce, that are willing to transfer all their wealth in inflation and taxes while you sit upon your pile of gold and count your blessings. God bless America!
You hypocritical, sycophantic twit. Fuck you and the bloated bureacracy you have helped install to the detriment of all Americans.
Amen!
Junked for tinfoil hattedness. Sorry. Modern medicine is far from a cause of intentional deaths, go back to Rense you ninny.
Oh yeah baby, big Pharma wants you HEALTHY, fucking nitwit.
You are displaying your ignorance. The leading cause of death in this country is Iatrogenesis, which means, death by medicine.
Oddly, this fact is not publicized much by the AMA.
Links, sources, references to BACK UP such a BS statement of "fact" Bucky?
No, just as I thought; blowing smoke out your ass.
Let's add up a couple of ideas: one, what can modern medicine cure? (answer-broken bones, unless it's a back problem-they have no idea there whatsoever)- not treat, but cure.Two, how many medicines have no side effects? Three, how many side effects concern the liver? Four, how much money do we spend on essentially, a treat the symptom not the disease medical system? (23% of GDP)
Now, let's factor in Big Pharma, doctors as drug dealers, antibiotic abuse, skin eating diseases and super bugs that cannot be treated.More! The idea that diet alone can cure many of the modern world's problems, the relentless crusade against herbs-even though most medicines employ the same herbs in their production and the failure to promote exercise.
You believe what you are told at your own risk.
check out the documentary "food matters"
Sadly, he (or someone younger) will be there 10 years from now saying "the top 1% makes 35% of all income" and it still won't register with anyone.
In 20 years, they'll be saying "the top 1% makes 50% of all income". Blank stares from around our duly elected legislature.
As cynical as I am, I am still a bit shocked to watch the GOP openly filibuster tax cuts for 98% of the population unless the top 2% get theirs. Ensuring tax cuts for millionairs is their #1 priority in Congress and they aren't even trying to hide it.
As useless and misguided as the Dems are, at least they don't go on Fox News to offer public blowjobs to the plutocracy like the GOP does.
It's true. But the GOP are certainly entertaining. Like Punch and Judy, you have to enjoy their mindless violence.
They will end, in time. They will burn themselves into cinders for the history books to natter about, like the Whig party that preceded them and with perhaps the very same outcome; war. But not before they damage us all beyond redemption. Not before then. They will burn to steaming, oily cinders taking the soul of America with them.
Chet, which is worse, doing it publically, or illegally?.
The PTB NOW, have made the Banksta's filthy rich, and continue to do so,after they imploded the system.
Meanwhile, we are left to pound sand.
Bravo Bravo Bravo
OK....Fine
Bernie - how 'bout we vote to reduce health and penison benefits for all us senators first ? Since you're so vocal - why don't you set the example and start ?
Silence......................Hmmmm.
We've been a banana republic since Reaganomics. This isn't just a 5 year project.... been growing since 1982. Deregulating banks unleashed the monster.
Now the only way we can all go back to some normalcy is to accept spending and entitlement cuts. Again, bankers fuck us all.
I find his rant disingenuous. "Wallstreet" and "Billionaires" are not people making a million a year. What I don't understand is why the highest tax bracket must be $373K. Here are the tiers:
Tax Bracket Single Married Filing Jointly
10% Bracket $0 – $8,375 $0 – $16,750
15% Bracket $8,375 – $34,000 $16,750 – $68,000
25% Bracket $34,000 – $82,400 $68,000 – $137,300
28% Bracket $82,400 – $171,850 $137,300 – $209,250
33% Bracket $171,850 – $373,650 $209,250 – $373,650
35% Bracket $373,650+ $373,650+
If these liberals want to increase taxes on bank CEOs and billionaires or even mega millionaires, why don't they F'ING add a few tax brackets for the top-top earners:
40% $10,000,000 - $15,000,000
45% $15,000,0001 - $25,000,000
50% $25,000,0001 - $35,000,000
55% ....
You make too much sense they will never listen to you.
+1 and +1 for your reply.
I'm guessing someone junked you because it makes too much sense?
Agreed. $373,650 includes small business owners and the investments they have made in their S-corps.
I no longer aspire to create or own a small business after watching the devastation amongst my friends these past few years, as they are considered to be "high earners" with it's 35% bracket, and 3.8% health care tax.
because that would anger their Hollywood base, AL Gore along with the many HF libs such as Soros, Bill Gross, etc.
one thing is for certain ... without middle class working class democracy is not possible. With labor union now completely busted what this country sorely needs is a third party to represent the labor.
Bullshit. The last fucking thing this country needs is anybody to represent "labor". What this country needs is citizen participation in governance, to demand and expect the rule of law to be upheld, to demand and expect moral and ethical behavior (this is NOT a religious statement), and most importantly, stop expecting any government to provide for you.
Next thing ya know, you'll be demanding responsibility and accountability (and discipline!). Have you no shame sir/madam? </sarc>
prag,
Dude, you on crack?,does SEIU, ACORN, UAW ring any bells for ya?.( ever heard of Obamas besest buddie, Andy Stern?.
Head of SEIU(before retiring), and the most frequent visitor to the White House to see Daddy?.
ALL the big Unions are exempted from Obamacare, along with numerous(over 100 other groups).
Where did you read the Labor Unions were busted?.
Link pls.
that is the problem ... labor union no longer represent the interest of working class. The union pursues interest of itself and not the interest of working class USA. The union is dead and has been some time.
Labor unions are only 7% of the working population.
That's lower than some 3rd world nations. That counts as busted.
The cultural values are fairly consistent vertically. It's the asymmetry in the wealth distribution that is a brewing effin hurricane.
Any of those zombies show up at my front door, they're gonna get dropped like a sack of moldy potatoes.
It is very important for the sake of appearance that it appear we have 2 parties who are 'against' one another....
Meanwhile behind closed doors they share the sons and daughters of their constituents, who whorely give them their children in the Congressional page program.
Does anyone still believe we have a 'democracy', let alone a 'working democracy'?
If you do, I suggest you go buy some NFLX
yeahhh for Bernie from Vermont.
i first visited Vermont a couple of years ago. i really liked it. swam in Lake Champlain, and rode bike above mountains in middlebury. i bet there no NO black Friday events in that state. i stayed at a golf resort (cabins) that didn't even have TV's in the room or WiFi. now that is laid back. not much cell service either up in northern Vermont. i heard something about the mortgage taking out protocol, so not so much foreclosure in the state either.
Take it from an Ex-Vermonter: Bernie is a sell out - he panders to the faux-socialist wealthy in Burlington and nothing more. He talks a good talk but fails to vote for the things that matter, e.g. Audit the Fed, et al...I used to admire him, despite his socialist leanings, but he is quickly becoming a tired old wind bag. He's retiring after this term, IIRC, anyway. ( The good thing about VT is I've had the occasion to tell him this to his face before. )
The reason why there isn't much foreclosure in VT is because A) Nobody can afford the absurdly high real estate costs. B) Nobody over the age of 30, unless either very wealthy or very poor lives there. C) Country Vermonters live on family land. In other words - nobody's buying. There is no effective working middle class in Vermont once all the fake hippy UVM brats go back to their trust funds.
For a state with no jobs and a very high cost of living, it's amazing the amount of Volvos and Audis on the road...
If you could kick all the idiot hippies out of VT (who are mostly transplants, btw) and get Dennis Steele elected Gov. then I'd move back in a heart beat. The rest of the state is very libertarian/small gov/local-minded, but the "city" and UVM ruin it for the rest of us. I do miss drinking Switchback and carrying my 1911 without need of a permit, though.
They have "Black Friday" in Burlington, I assure you. Don't let the facade fool you - those yuppies are as materialistic as the rest of the country - just in a different way.
Maybe more people should have listened to Bernie Sanders 8 YEARS AGO! Bernie Sanders is one of the only politicians that saw this collapse coming and has been fighting the FED before most people knew what the FED was. Just imagine if he had been taken seriously when he schooled Alan Greenspan in this speech back in 2003! Thank You Bernie for actually caring for the people you represent, unlike 95% of the rest of the politicians in Washington!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPh-qGcYruw
Unfortunately, Bernie is an avowed socialist, which badly undermines his credibility, which is why nobody bothers to listen to him.
But, even a blind pig occasionally stumbles on an acorn.
Wonderful vid. Okay, so I gotta give Bernie some brownie points for this. He seems sincere enough, maybe he'll eventually grow his philosophy vis s vis socialism. The kid in back of him is priceless, can't keep the shit eating grin off his face, probably helped to write that diatribe. Looks like R. Paul was up next...damn, wish it hadn't cut off. TY for link, hadn't seen that one before.
When Hank Paulsen left 'the squid' to be Bush's Treasury Secretary he had $300 million in 'squid stock'. The IRS rule is if you have to sell stock to avoid a conflict of interest after taking a Government job you pay zero taxes. Hank sold the 'squid stock' and it is estimated he saved $60 million in taxes by taking that job. It's not the tax rates that matter, it's the loop holes.
The question that has to be asked is - are these 1% getting 27% of income because they are so damned smart, or is it just because they own most of the US assets.
I believe the latter. These guys own most of the US real estate, stock and bonds. They collect the rent, dividends and coupons from those assets and because they are taxed so little they use the income to invest in yet more real estate, stocks and bonds. They get yet more income, and the middle class slowly loses their assets and disappears.
The system is out of balance. The massive wealth that the US generates needs to be more fairly or the rich will gradually acquire all US assets. They will own everything and everyone else will be their serfs.
Sort of like the tail end of a Monopoly game.
Bingo. It's called Monopoly for a reason.
They finance sovereign States and that's why they own 3/4th of the planet !
Dear Senator Sanders,
Shut up and show me.
Take away the giant govt mammary gland rewarding failure through bailouts of outright fraud, systemic corruption and top to bottom pillaging by corrupt, insolvent corporations or close even just one tax loophole.
I'm not holding my breath, you won't. All show, no go.
Citizen
You said it much better than I did.
It's the spend side that drives the revenue side. Shut down the spending and kill the fascist state. WTF are we waiting for? To be gunned down in the back of some 24HR convenience store?
If not now, when?
If not us, who?
Hey Tyler, why do we need a socialist telling us this? Why do we care what he thinks exactly? There are plenty of smart free market oriented people who can point out the same facts of life - why must you highlight scum like Sanders who would secretly prefer to have everyone be poor as a solution for solving inequality.
Don't get this place sometimes.
I assume the so-called "free market" oriented people you refer to are too busy buying the system than to speak in defense of what you think it should be.
They've had at it for 30 yrs.
This is the result.
Maybe because he is a member of congress and he is saying this on the floor of the Senate. Someone in our government acknowledges this massive problem and is trying to force the rest of the leadership to tackle it. Irregardless of Sander's beliefs, he is making a very important point based on the reality of the depressing situation in America. His comments demonstrate that he is more in tune with reality than the vast majority of his colleagues (even the supposedly "free market oriented people" in Congress). He should be commended for bringing this to Congress and I appreciate that Tyler posts more videos like this even if Bernie Sanders is saying this. Get a life arkady.
Seriously, guys. This class-warfare stuff is utter bullshit.
You dont understand that the way wealth is distributed in the US is indicative of people being able to move up and down economically. Wealth distributed equally is called Marxism.
You've all allowed yourself to be led by the hand by Sanders. It's not about tax rates and redistribution of income. It's about the entitlements that are fed by taxes. If you cut the entitlements, the defense budget, contributions to the IMF, etc,. Lower these expenditures in a significant way and you then lower regulatory expenses, which then lower taxes which all help to boost employment, entrepreneurship, t-h-e E-C-O-N-O-M-Y.....
Cass, I know you've been posting up and down this page....STFU!
And props to Wikileaks. Yeah, Wikileaks.
You are wrong. entrepreneurship includes competition and someone else failing. TPTF is Class Warfare.
I'm against bankster bailouts. Not sure how I'm wrong.
Shut them down
Buttcathead = Cass Sunstein
Let's start cutting those entitlements by ending welfare to the wealthy.
http://www.corporations.org/welfare/
Even before the meltdown it was in the 100s of Billions.
Oh....BS!
I say let everyone get as rich as they want, but not to exceed 5 million dollars. That'll be enough money to have one helluva party for your lifetime, and maybe greed will not get in the way of intellectual evolution of our planetary race.
Capitalism is just about greed and racking up excessive levels of wealth and power.
Fuck the CEO if 5 million ain't enough for him. Find someone else who wants to do the job. If I had to, i could find replacements for every position in the government and qualified CEOs for banks.
I could care less about the rich fucks who want more and more at the expense of others.
I suppose next we'll hear you say that bankers deserve their multi-million $$ bonuses every year.
"Ask not what your country can do for you..
...but what your country can do to you with shysters in control."
He is exactly correct, but that's the way it goes. You dumb asses should of never bailed out the banksters and stuck by the rules of the game. Now everyone will lose.
stupid me, i should have been intentionally trampled, sue the store, buy gold!
Sanders speech is populist C-SPAN bullshit. How did Sanders vote on the Financial Reform bill? How much in the way of campaign contributions does he take from the rich people he blasts in this speech. Does Sanders have a nice house? Does he take nice vacations? What is his personal net worth, and if it's large why doesn't he put his money where his mouth is and give his money away to the poor? This tirade reminds me of Bill Gates Sr. wanting to raise income taxes on the "rich" of Washington State.
Before you write rhetorical questions, why don't you do a little homework on the subject matter. Bernie is different.........
Okay, I did. Sanders is one of the poorest members of the Senate with a net worth of about $500K (still probably in the top 2% of this country). He raised over $6M in the last election cycle. His largest contributors were unions, lawyers, teachers, and realtors. When he introduces legislation to eliminate Congressional pensions and healthcare packages and have them use SS and Medicare like the rest of us, I'll start paying attention.
If you had actually listened to the speech you would already have some of the answers to your own questions.
I make it a point to never listen to "impassioned" speeches from our politicians
Rush Limbaugh at (1:22 pm) get's it and explains what is going on to his 20M+ audience.
Rush Limbaugh and his audience... the angry old white men's rant... stupid and proud of it.
Really? For those of us who have to work, what does he get, and what is going on?
You have a tiny minority who are slowly acquiring all US assets and the income that comes from them. Soon everyone else will be paying them rent in one form or another. How are you going to solve that problem?
Please read about the Iron law of oligarchy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
I disagree that raising taxes is the answer to what ails us.
However, all of you screaming about free market capitalism (which is a beautiful thing unmolested by politicians and shysters, rendering it crony capitalism) should admit that the welfare flowing to Wall Street and Banking Industry is a sin beyond redemption.
Bernanke and Geithner, with enabling acts by the President and Congress, truly are socializing losses of losers and privatizing gains of the chosen ones.
Amerika is no longer a place where a person easily succeeds based on what they know and how hard they work at their craft.
It's a place where a person easily succeeds based on who they know and how hard they work their connections.
The top 1% may earn about 23% of income but to be fair they pay 40-45% of all taxes. Not trying to justify income inequality nor do I think that they should pay less, but Mr Sanders should tell the whole story.
You're exactly right, you have to examine both sides of the equation.
A better metric would be to use a ratio.
Hi facilitator dickwad. Enabler of lies of stupidity.
Actually it's not a lie that the metric would be better as a ratio.
But to your point, this all rests on the assumption that those percentages for the upper class paying their taxes are ACCURATE, which I will concede is definitely not the case.
That's a bold face fucking lie. When do they pay all these taxes. When their corporations dump it off in a fucking shit hole country. The fact that you can meme that shit without doing DUE dilligence makes me laugh. You just made the perfect liar. You lied out your ass without knowing you were doing it. You did it with pefect sincerity. You're a shit hole for the illuminati. You're their perfect fucking idiot. Keeping lie after lie after lie a perfectly sincere truth.
What an idiot you are.
You wanna back that up with some facts? Because you are completely wrong. Virtually the entire federal income tax burden is carried by the top 20% of earners-- that's a fact.
God how can you be THIS stupid. Taxes don't matter. Taxes are a mind fuck. A continual reminder of who is in charge. If the top 20 percent of the earners who are worth billions carry the entire federal income tax burden then why are we 13 fucking trillion in debt? And How long will it take those top 20 percent to pay that off. Never. Is when. Nothing is EVER paid at the federal and corporate level of the game. It's all done through devaluation. All the good times do is build a monster debt to devaluation pyramid scheme. Until you actually go in and debase the shit out of the currency you haven't made one thin fucking dime.
You are watching a score card that means nothing stating it as fact when it's complete bullshit. You also believe that the rich make a meaningful impact on the poor. They don't. They throw around huge numbers and it doesn't mean dick. USA pledged billions to haiti but they are still shitting in a hole in the ground and drinking filthy fucking water and living outside 2 years later. The rich get thier tax money from directly stealing it from the poor. They don't PAY the taxes. They steal it and take fucking credit for it. All they do is print up permission slips to do something and they don't give those permission slips to people who will actually get the job done. I can give you 5 billion dollars right here right now and it doesn't mean shit because I can't build all the stuff you would buy with it. So you don't owe me and I haven't GiVEN you anything. The people who do the actual fucking work did it. All we've done is centralize credit for good things and decentralized responsibility and the actual fucking labor involved.
And it works exactly as I said it works. First they fuck up your logic system because you are in the damn dark with your ass being lied to 24/7. Then they throw you something that appears to be a bright piece of logic. Get you to meme it from your position of complete idiocy and become part of something supposedly "wise". You're being illuminated by the same people who darken.
I'll give you a fact you can't get around. Bill Gates is a skinny, emotionally fucked up nerd. He can't provide a fucking government service to 3 fucking people without shitting his liver out on the goddamn ground. Warren Buffet is a old fucking man. He can't work his goddamn phone much less actually provide a government fucking service. That fucker can't build 10 feet of goddamn road without keeling over from a goddamn heart attack.
This is why you're such an idiot. You can't differentiate enabling and doing which is why you keep enabling lies, distortions and half fucking truths. You're logically incompenetent and perfectly fit to serve larger distortions of fact. Which is why you get stuffed by a dick every night with some shitty piece of crap fucktard who comes through the veil and gives you stupid bullshit dreams and works your energy and tunes your chakras to these larger bullshit frequencies. Until you take complete control over what kind of energy and what sort of thought and understanding you generate and communicate you'll always be an idiot always keeping this stupidity alive.
The first thing you have to do is get in someones face who looks like a dickwad from the 8th dimension and tell them that there's no goddamn way you are going to call me completely wrong and get away with it. I'll melt your fucking brain with understandings that you can't get around.
Dude, absolutely stellar fooking rant. I am in awe.
+99.999%
Nice Hep.
End corporate personhood.
+100
What is more shocking is that 49% of the people pay virtually no income taxes whatsoever.
Obviously when that number reaches 50.1%, the wheels come off the democratic system.
Is it any surprise that the system is breaking down right before our eyes? We have created an underclass that can vote itself the spoils of government.
Why don't you bitch about how much corporations are not paying?
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_welfare/real_tax_rates_plummet...
And how much they are sucking out of those of us who do pay.
Is it any suprise that the system is breaking down because we've given corporations subsidies and tax breaks which they've used to create an uber-class and institute corporate statism?
You really should be joking when you trot out that statistic.
49% of the people don't pay any income taxes because they've got shit for income. You cannot pay taxes on something you don't have. They government can assess whatever taxes they like, but even if there were a flat rate for all earned income, a large chunk of the population would pay ZERO. (Any number or percentage times zero equals zero.)
If the labor participation rate is roughly 50%, how would you propose to avoid a large number of citizens who don't pay income taxes? Revoke citizenship from the poor or something?
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
Apparently the underclass is pretty piss poor at voting itself much of anything given the wealth gap... I'm thinking there is more to this equation...
LOL
What is the most shocking is you can't get an audit of the fucking fed with 80 percent of the voters in the goddamn united states demanding it. You can't call the fucking fed and ask for the tax records of the top 20 percent of the wage earners. Yet you sit here on this forum and parrot a bullshit complete lie statement pulled from the ass of a complete fucking lying institution who won't let ANYONE check up on them or do due dilligence on them. And you state without any reservations or hesitation the complete fucking lie that you or nobody on this planet can check up on.
You are the perfect mix of confidence and stupidity.
Well said.
And the silly thing is, when you raise taxes on the "rich" (people who tend to own business, landlords, etc), they tend to pass on the losses to their customers in the form of higher prices. Let's see... what will happen after the new 3.8% passive income rule goes into effect? Do you suppose a landlord might raise the rent to make up the difference? Nah, of course not.
Giddy-yup
We don't even rate as a banana republic anymore. We're somewhere between guava and pawpaw.
My vote is for Durian.
Yeh, but smelling far worse
I've heard that this guy is first cousin to Nigel Farange. :D
He just needs to scream and rip people a bit more.
and all the while, us assholes argue over how much of our labor government allows us to keep through their illegal progressive tax code
5/6/10 bernie pussied out of his S604 push. i used to have some respect for him but after that he is nothing more than a bankster cum dumpster
-Some fact to interrupt the emotion.
As of 2008, the top 5% of all INCOME earners in the U.S. paid 58.72 percent of all taxes.
The Top 50% paid 97.3% of all taxes.
The Bottom 50% paid 2.7% of all taxes.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
Like I said, Sanders is wrong to suggest raising taxes as the answer to what ails us. We don't have a tax problem; we have a spending problem.
And we also have a massive problem with the fucking criminal enterprise that is the Federal Reserve bailing out assholes on Wall Street (with money appropriated for it by the President and CONgress) who should have fucking blown up, but came up with a ruse that the economy would go into a depression if they were forced to deal with their losses.
I'm sure that it's merely a coincidence that Hank Paulson, who had hundreds of millions in stock options at Goldman Sachs, as he was the former CEO, is the one who went to Congress and delivered the message about an 'imminent depression' if the TARP bullshit wasn't passed on the day the BSDs were scaring Americans by tanking the Dow 770 points...just a coincidence.
Remember all of that? Sure you all do.
This is what happens when the Supreme Court says a corporation can give unlimited funds to political campaigns, because giving money is "free speech," and when the Congress and government at large and their families are all beneficiaries of Crony Capitalism, and when the 'Financial Services Industry' spends more on lobbying and and owns more of Congress, as a result, than any other entity.
Expect more of the same.
The only thing that could end the bullshit is a true refusal to play the serf game anymore by the middle class. After one month of not playing, the system would collapse.
The finance industry shouldn't account for such a large percentage of GDP as it did in the late 90's early 2000's, the market did function correctly when it imploded, it was attempting to SHOW us that fact. It also TRIED to show us that the assumptions (specifically default-related assumptions) that MBS were based on were WRONG and that possibly the whole paradigm of modern finance based on dubious models (Modern Portfolio Theory, Black-Schoeles, Gaussian distribution of asset prices as an assumption) is WRONG. The market will work if it is allowed to work. The excesses have to be liquidated.
Unfortunately the government thought otherwise and decided to resurrect what is clearly a faulty paradigm. We will all suffer the consequences, those who did take the risks and got bailed will suffer less - that's a problem.
In nature, many times forest fires INCREASE biodiversity afterwards and causes the ecosystem to become more resilient to future shocks. The forest fire in nature is synonymous with creative destruction in the economy.
You can't protect what you can't define. And you don't define what you won't protect.
I would love to see a closed book test given to each and every congressman.
The questions would include:
1. please tell us the low end salary range for middle class
(a) single male/female
(b) single male/female with 1 child
(c) single male/female with 2 children
(d) married couple with no children
(e) married couple with 1 child
(f) married couple with 2 children
2. Please tell us the high end middle class salary for
(answer for each a-f in question 1.)
3. Please tell the monthly amount for health care
(answer for each a-f in question 1.)
4. Please tell us the monthly food budget
(answer for each a-f in question 1.)
I could go on, but, I suspect what you would find (if such a test could actually be administered) is that you'd probably have 535 different answers/definitions. Therein lies the problem. There is no legal/working definition for "middle class". To each and every congressman/woman it means something else which renders the term "middle class" a tautological statement.
Until the term middle class has a commonly understood and legally accepted definition our congressmen/women will run around to Sunday morning talk shows, town hall meetings and give speeches at fund raisers, house and senate floors talking about protecting the middle class but behaving much differently.
It's like saying I love the Chicago Bears. How can one prove or disprove it? How does one love them more than someone else? Does a facepainter love the Bears more than non-facepainter who merely wears Bears boxer shorts? Does a Bears season ticket holder love the Bears more than the guy who watches the games in a bar or the guy who watches the game at home with his kids? Again I could on and on but unless a definition existed for "loving the Bears" each and every fan would be right in their assertion that they love the bears and, more importantly, no one could prove or disprove the assertion.
Define the middle class with a single definition and let's see where our congressmen/woman really stand on protecting the middle class' interests.
You have to index vs. cost of living by region, and that's where a huge normalization problem comes in.
Mr. Sanders was a key individual who was responsible for redefining the meaning of the word AUDIT. He was the one who said that the so-called "audit" of the Fed was acceptable due to the fact that "the White House would fight to the death" to protect the privacy of the Fed. He was the key architect of the compromise.
Senator Sander’s proclaimed from his own website and his editorial on what the new law provides. He called it “the Fed transparency ammendment.” He says it does two things. Interestingly, there seems to be some difference between describing something as “transparent” and “more transparent.” I guess “more transparent” is like a “partial audit” whereas “transparent” would be the equivalent of “audit” according to Webster’s dictionary.
Wall Street was simply being as greedy as the law allows and the Fed "audit" required a change to the meaning of the word. To echo Senator Grayson's proclamation on HuffPo of "We did it!" You did it alright. You attempted to convince America that "glossing" over was the equivalent of audit and the end result was your own "shellacking."
To see a link to the facts that show this speech for what it is, political grandstanding, click here: http://tradewithdave.com/?s=sanders
Dave Harrison
www.tradewithdave.com
I say Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders in 2012. This is what this country needs right now to take the country back from the grips of Wall St. This way you have one from each side with many of the same views economically, yet some good indifferences socially. Bring down the two headed political beast and replace it with a new. This country will be bankrupt soon if we don't make some drastic change it's going down. This would be a very productive start because the FED and all its CRONY whores would go running for cover and America could start the rebuilding process we so desperately need.
Whether Sanders is well intentioned or not - and I believe he is - if I'm to choose between a "tax cut for the rich", or the government taking more taxes to spend on fat pencil pushers, DMV workers, and alphabet soup agencies busy making my life miserable... which do you really think I'm going to choose?
The piece states: "The 'US now has by far the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth.' Not surprisingly, Sanders is not too happy about the proposed tax cut for the richest."
(1) With respect to the unequal distribution of income, I say, "So what?" If this were a zero-sum game, I would have a different answer. But it is not. I don't care how wealthy other people may get. They could make trillions and I would not begrudge them that. PROVIDED they earned it honestly, without recourse to Wall Stree-Government collusion. But let's take a great entrepreneur--someone who builds his business from scratch and makes billions without bilking others--good on him. Sure, it is unfortunate that others don't have as much, but our current tax dollars (for 70+ years) are more than enough to help the less fortunate sustain themselves and make a go of it (with a view toward climbing our rich entrepreneur's mountain of wealth). Indeed, when those who don't work and live off of welfare have air conditioning, cable television, free medical care, and food stamps sufficient to buy anything they want, they are not so poor. Some Americans certainly fall through the cracks of the welfare floor, but they are few. The bottom line here is that wealth is NOT a zero-sum game--it can be created and built and expanded by almost anyone.
(2) The proposed "tax cut" is, I believe, what is called "The Bush tax cuts"--in other words, the current system. What THIS Congress wants to do is RAISE taxes by not extending the current system. If they do this, you should expect to see still further slumping in the economy. Why? BECAUSE THE WEALTHY DRIVE GROWTH THROUGH INVESTMENT AND SPENDING. If you want to maximize employment and make the American Dream real again, then CUT TAXES in half, especially corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, and dividend taxes, AND DRASTICALLY REDUCE REGULATION on business, AND GET STRICT CONTROLS ON TRIAL LAWYERS and their manipulation of the law to harm business to line their own pockets.
So, if old, "Independent" Bernie wants to do something good for all the people he wants to feel sorry for, then HE SHOULD TAKE SOME FREAKING RESPONSIBILITY AND GET THIS DAMNED GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE WAY OF THE PEOPLE.
//The bottom line here is that wealth is NOT a zero-sum game--it can be created and built and expanded by almost anyone. //
I think you're wrong.
Read the following article.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/wealth_of_nations/
If all externalities were internalized AND were reflected in what I will call the "true price" (which would include externalities), then you're you supposition that wealth is not a zero-sum game would be more correct.
Wealth is energy, apply the laws of thermodynamics to it. Nature always wins.
I always find amusing the argument that a $1 in the hands of a wealthy individual is somehow more magical than the dollar in the hands of the middle class. Please produce this magical evidence that a dollar in a wealthy man's hands creates more jobs more middle class wealth than a dollar in the hands of the middle class.
A $1 is a $1. An incremental dollar sloshes through the economy whether in the hands of middle class individual or in the hands of a wealthy individual. I can argue every bit as persuasively, though no more or less accurately, that $1 in the hands of a middle class individual is more valuable than a $1 in the hands of wealthy individual.
The wealthy, acting selfishly as one should, certainly benefit greatly from the perpetuation of that fantasy. "Cut our taxes by x* and it will come back to the middle class by y" which is somehow greater than if you cut the middle class' taxes by x.
*where x equals a total dollar value of the tax reduction, not a % income reduction
I love how the anti-trickle down economics crowd would like me too believe that raising taxes on people making 250K+, 3%, will somehow trickle down to me. Sit down, Grandpa. :-/
You need not worry; the government will grab 50% of anything over 1.7 million that grandpa has saved after he dies.
This is on money and assets GRANDPA has already been taxed on, often at multiple layers and intervals.
Some call it "an estate tax," but to some of us, it's a tax for dying.
You guys are putting way too much emphasis on Black Friday. Sure there were lots of people standing in lines but the vast majority of people stayed home. If you went to say Target or Best Buy at 9 or 10am you would have seen half empty stores. The people in those lines were buying the hype that the media had been shoveling at them for the prior weeks about Black Friday and how great and exciting it was going to be. News outlets were really laying it on thick too. Understandably some people took the bait. Plus, some people just think it's fun to get up early and shop.
I truly resent people constantly pointing to the behavior of the middle and working classes when attempting assign blame for what's happened to our economy. I'm sorry, but short of taking to the streets and civil unrest there is very little the average person can do to either stop what is going on or try to make things better. The fault is 90% with that 1/10th of 1% the Senator is talking about. The rest of might have went along for the ride but we certainly weren't driving!!
This is the same guy who wants a fully socialist, single-payer health care system. He's crazy: he wants our health care centralized but opposes the centralization of credit via a central bank?
He thinks this country is a banana republic because there isn't enough socialism. Please don't give this guy much credit. This country is a banana republic for reasons completely different than what Bernie Sanders is saying.
+1000 Bernie should spend a lunch time with Murray Rothbard or at least read the Road to Serfdom.
Bernie gets 10 points for his side of the S.604 bill for a ONE TIME Fed audit , but gets deducted -100 for selling out at the 11th hour on S.604 for a continuous FED audit.
Through many avenues, the mechanism of wealth transfer is destroying the tax base. Both at the federal and state level. Political corruption enabled this transfer, and today supports the system that created it. The battle is over, the war is over, the theft is nearly complete, the debt incurred, and the middle class (tax payer) is the loser.
The overriding question should be, given the levels of debt, who will pay? Who can pay?
The only viable way to reconcile the debt is for the FED to monetize. It must not only monetize in amounts needed to fund government, it must also control rates, and by extension, manipulate the bond market through control of the buy.
----------
The danger for the political class is not to recognize that there is no effective way to rebuild, or perhaps more importantly, expand the tax base, in such a way as to produce positive growth relative to debt.
http://www.paywizard.org/main/VIPPaycheck/VIPPAYcheckcorporatecelebs
It is somewhat curious that some of these very wealthy peeps have zero income. Hmmm, whats up with that. Plus fucking Oprah makes 1.2 mill per day? Some really is deeply fucking wrong...lol
Dividend income bitches
Through many avenues, the mechanism of wealth transfer is destroying the tax base. Both at the federal and state level. Political corruption enabled this transfer, and today supports the system that created it. The battle is over, the war is over, the theft is nearly complete, the debt incurred, and the middle class (tax payer) is the loser.
The overriding question should be, given the levels of debt, who will pay? Who can pay?
The only viable way to reconcile the debt is for the FED to monetize. It must not only monetize in amounts needed to fund government, it must also control rates, and by extension, manipulate the bond market through control of the buy.
Growth is now an effect created by the FED. Can the FED ever backout (tighten)?
----------
The danger for the political class is not to recognize that there is no effective way to rebuild, or perhaps more importantly, expand the tax base, in such a way as to produce positive growth relative to debt.
----------
Whats interesting is to get together with other Finance people and talk about what if, in terms of being one of those very rich wall street executives. So say your one of those high net worth people. What actions are you taking now to protect your gains? perhaps better stated as protecting real worth given exposure to currency debasement.
The observation is that one must decouple assets relative to dollars. Either through transfer or through gains relative to currency debasement. But, the question always arises, what are the critical exit points? and how do you postion yourself given anticipated timelines?
----------
Perhaps we will witness the fundamental structual flaw in separating fiscal and monetary policy. Ben B. will be asked, at some point in the near future by congress, why are you monetizing the debt? and he will answer back, why are you not balancing the budget and paying down debt? Ultimately congress is responsible, but the power over the currency is controlled by the FED. An unworkable situation for effective maintenance of the currency and clear abandonment of sound money.
Mark Beck
We have spending problem, not a revenue problem.
or, we have a debt = wealth conceptual problem. ?
"Sacred Property rights?" You mean like the ones this country ignored when they showed up and stole it from the people who were already here? It's only "sacred" when it's yours. There's nothing "sacred" about money. Or personal greed.
go, Bernie!
Here is why we are a Banana Republic. The people who are like Sanders aren't against bailouts or freebies, they are against freebies for the 'rich'. The people who are not like Sanders are against Freebies who have taken a sabbatical from working.
Look at roadlust in the very last post, who mocks property rights in describing Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion, describing it as theft. Fine.
What does that have to do with today, as many citizens, including me and my family, who started with jackshit and literally worked around the clock in order to have wealth, asked for nothing and want noting in return except some basic freedoms....not having their wealth jack by maniacs like Sanders, who want to rob people, not for rich, but for perpetual socialism.
Seriously, when someone says, no bailouts for anyone, no more debt, no more printing, no more horseshit, then come back and talk to me about Bernie Sanders.
PS - If he thinks 250K is 'rich', he is an asshole
you do realize that a federal reserve note is a debt,
is printed, and represents in itself perpetual debt
and requires further issuance of debt with concomitant
printing. forever. it also embodies slavery and death
when controlled by those with no vision and integrity, which
i suppose is inevitable given the nature of the instrument. ?
exactly. http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/plot-enslave-you