Quote:
Originally posted by geep
Usually at the sacrifice of other children, whose parents could do a better job of providing for them, if they were left with more of their paycheck. "Safety nets" sometimes become a substitute for responsiblity.
Again the paycheck plays a role with taxation becoming not redistribution of wealth, but redistribution of poverty.
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I have to disagree - this is the biggest lie the American people have ever swallowed. The amount of economic inequality in the United States is unconscionable. I'm not talking about taxing people who make $100,000 a year, or even $1,000,000 a year, so that people who only make $20,000 a year can send their kids to head start. I'm talking about the astronomically wealthy top 5% who have managed to squirrel and hoard away enough wealth to effectively make a mockery of the capitalist democracy. There is more commonality between the $20K family that can't make ends meet and the $100K family who is comfortable but probably still has to struggle to get ahead, than between the $100K family and the top 5%. Did you know that something like 20% of Americans believe themselves to be in the top 1% economically, and another 20% think they'll be in the top 1% eventually? So when we talk about taxing the wealthy, most people think we mean THEM, therefore they don't support it. And the system is becoming more and more skewed toward the astronomically wealthy, and people don't seem to care because they can't stomach the idea that they probably wont' get there! They'd rather trade a more egalitarian society for a fairy tale.
Mods don't smack me for getting off track. I was provoked
My sources:
http://www.lcurve.org//
http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2...523_b_main.asp http://www.impactpress.com/articles/...vide80901.html
Sorry, I couldn't find a link to the poll about public perceptions of wealth and income, but it was a New York Times poll some time in the past year.