May 20, 2012
From The Federation of Connecticut
Taxpayer Organizations, Inc.
Contact Susan Kniep, President
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032
Voters are telling their elected officials and those seeking
political office in November that they want to hear how they intend to IMPROVE
THE ECONOMY, CONTROL COSTS, STIMULATE JOBS, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, KEEP THEM
FROM LOSING THEIR HOMES AND SAVINGS! We
received the following article from several of our readers and want to pass it
on to you to generate your thoughts. Do
you Agree or Disagree with the writer. Email fctopresident@aol.com, let’s us know your
thoughts, and we will post them!
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By The American Dream
- Waking People Up And Getting Them To Realize That
The American Dream Is Quickly Becoming The American Nightmare
The middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in
the United States
today. America is a nation with a very tiny elite that is rapidly becoming increasingly
wealthy while everyone else is becoming poorer. So why is this
happening? Well, it is actually very simple. Our institutions are
designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a very limited number of
people. Throughout human history, almost all societies that have had a
big centralized government have also had a very high concentration of wealth in
the hands of the elite. Throughout human history, almost all societies
that have allowed big business or big corporations to dominate the economy have
also had a very high concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite.
Well, the United States
has allowed both big government and big corporations to grow wildly out of
control. Those were huge mistakes. Our founding fathers attempted
to establish a nation where the federal government would be greatly limited and
where corporations would be greatly restricted. Unfortunately, we have
turned our backs on those principles and now we are paying the price.
When you
have great concentrations of wealth and power, the economic rewards of a
society tend to go to just a few.
In the United States
today, big businesses and wealthy individuals fund the campaigns of our
politicians, and in turn our politicians pass laws which rig the game in their
favor. It is a symbiotic relationship which is very bad for America.
Sadly, most
conservatives tend to cheer on the big corporations, but this is not
how our founding fathers envisioned our capitalist system working. Our
founding fathers envisioned large numbers of similar companies competing
against one another for customers. They did not envision a very small
number of giant corporations buying up all of their competitors or smashing
them into oblivion with their giant piles of money.
True
conservatives should want to see more competition instead of less
competition. Competition helped make America great, and we need to get
back to that.
Instead of
an economic landscape dominated by monolithic predator corporations, we need an
economic environment where millions of small businesses can thrive and compete
directly with one another.
Our founding
fathers never intended for us to have the kind of system that we have
today. As I have discussed in previous articles,
our founding fathers greatly restricted the size and scope of corporations in
early America.
The following is how author Stephen D. Foster Jr. described the attitude toward
corporations in the
early years of the United States....
The East
India Company was the largest corporation of its day and its dominance of trade
angered the colonists so much, that they dumped the tea products it had on a
ship into Boston Harbor
which today is universally known as the Boston
Tea Party. At the time, in Britain,
large corporations funded elections generously and its stock was owned by
nearly everyone in parliament. The founding fathers did not think much of these
corporations that had great wealth and great influence in government. And that
is precisely why they put restrictions upon them after the government was
organized under the Constitution.
After
the nation’s founding, corporations were granted charters by the state as they
are today. Unlike today, however, corporations were only permitted to exist 20
or 30 years and could only deal in one commodity, could not hold stock in other
companies, and their property holdings were limited to what they needed to
accomplish their business goals. And perhaps the most important facet of all
this is that most states in the early days of the nation had laws on the books
that made any political contribution by corporations a criminal offense.
A giant
central government that spends more than 20 percent of our GDP is a
collectivist institution.
Enormous
predator corporations that are constantly sucking up even more money and power
are collectivist institutions.
Our founding
fathers did not intend for our society to be dominated by collectivist
institutions.
Very large
institutions tend to reward the people that own and run them at the expense of
everyone else.
And you know
what?
A lot of
these giant corporations have figured out that they don't even need American
workers anymore.
Instead,
many of them are shipping our jobs to the other side of the world where it it legal to pay slave labor wages. That means bigger
profits for them but less jobs for the rest of us.
In America
today, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer,
and big government and big corporations are the mechanisms by which this is
happening.
Posted below
are 45 signs that America
will soon be a nation with a very tiny elite and the rest of us will be
poor....
#1 Increasingly, gains
in income are becoming very highly concentrated at the top of the food chain in
America.
The following is how income gains in the United States were distributed during 2010....
-37 percent
of all income gains went to the top 0.01 percent of all income earners
-56 percent
of all income gains went to the rest of the top 1 percent
-7 percent
of all income gains went to the bottom 99 percent
#2 Back in the 70s, the
top 1 percent earned about 8
percent of all income. Today, they earn about 21 percent
of all income.
#3 The wealthiest 1
percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.
#4 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest
Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million
Americans combined.
#5 The poorest 50
percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5%
of all the wealth in the United
States.
#6 Median household income
in the United States
is down 7.8 percent
since December 2007 after adjusting for inflation.
#7 The top 0.01% of all
Americans make an average of $27,342,212. The bottom
90% make an average of $31,244.
#8 According to the Economic Policy Institute,
between 1979 and 2007 income growth for the top 1 percent of all U.S. income
earners was an astounding 390 percent.
For the bottom 90 percent, income growth was only 5 percent
over that same time period.
#9 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009
the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent
after you account for inflation.
#10 In 2010, 2.6 million
more Americans descended
into poverty. That was the largest
increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping
statistics on this back in 1959.
#11 According to the New
York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are
either living in poverty or in "the fretful zone just above it".
#12 According to Heidi Shierholz,
an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, about 53 percent
of all income went to the middle class back in the 1970s, but today only about 46 percent
of all income does.
#13 When you look at the
ratio of employee compensation to GDP, it is now the lowest that is has been in about 50
years.
#14 In 1970, 65 percent
of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods". By
2007, only 44 percent
of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".
#15 Back in the year
2000, 11.3% of all
Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all
Americans are living in poverty.
#16 The poverty rate for
children living in the United
States increased to 22% in 2010.
#17 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 6.7% of all
Americans are living in "extreme poverty",
and that is the highest level that has ever been recorded before.
#18 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage
of "very poor" rose in 300 out
of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.
#19 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent
of all men in the United
States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent
of all men in the United
States have jobs.
#20 The average duration
of unemployment in the United
States is nearly three times
as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#21 In the United States
today, there are 240 million working age people. Only about 140 million of them are
actually working.
#22 Back in 2001, the
ratio of wages to GDP was sitting at approximately 49 percent.
Today, it has fallen all the way down to about 44 percent.
#23 Half of all American
workers now earn $505 or less
per week.
#24 Back in 1980, less than 30%
of all jobs in the United
States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40%
of all jobs in the United
States are low income jobs.
#25 In 2010, 19.7% of all U.S.
working adults had jobs that would not have been enough to push a family of
four over the poverty line even if they had worked full-time hours for the
entire year.
#26 Electricity bills in the United States
have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for
five years in a row.
#27 The average American
household spent a staggering $4,155 on
gasoline during 2011.
#28 If inflation was
measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of
inflation in the United
States would be well over
10 percent.
#29 According to a recent report produced by
Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three
Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income
ladder.
#30 Total student loan debt
in America
has now passed the
1 trillion dollar mark, and about 270
billion dollars of those loans are at least 30 days
delinquent. These debts are absolutely crushing young middle class
families.
#31 Today, approximately
25 million
American adults are living with their parents.
#32 According to the Census Bureau, 49 percent
of all Americans live in a home that gets direct
monetary benefits from the federal government. Back in 1983, less than a
third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary
benefits from the federal government.
#33 Between 1991 and
2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for
bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.
#34 One out of every six
elderly Americans now lives below
the federal poverty line.
#35 The number of
children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent
since 2007.
#36 According to the National Center for Children
in Poverty, 36.4% of all
children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that
live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that
live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that
live in Detroit are living in poverty.
#37 In November 2008, 30.8 million Americans were
on food stamps. Today, more than 46 million
Americans are on food stamps.
#38 Right now, one out of every four
American children is on food stamps.
#39 It is being
projected that approximately
50 percent of all U.S.
children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach
the age of 18.
#40 In 2010, 42 percent
of all single mothers in the United
States were on food stamps.
#41 Back in 1965, only
one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of
every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a
whole lot worse. It is being projected that Obamacare
will add 16
million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
#42 Medicare spending
increased by 138 percent
between 1999 and 2010.
#43 One out of every six
Americans is now enrolled in at least
one government anti-poverty program.
#44 Federal housing
assistance increased by a whopping 42 percent
between 2006 and 2010.
#45 The amount of money
that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent
since Barack Obama entered
the White House.
As the
middle class is systematically destroyed, families are looking for ways to
survive any way that they can.
Why do you
think that dollar stores
are absolutely thriving these days?
It is
because that is the only place many families can afford to shop.
So what is
the solution?
Well, many
liberals claim that the solution is to tax the wealthy and redistribute their
money to the poor.
But that is
definitely not the answer.
That would
give the wealthy more of an incentive to take their wealth and their businesses
out of the United States,
and it would give the poor more of an incentive to sit around and not work.
When I was
younger, if I could have gotten the government to pay my bills I probably never
would have worked at all. I was quite lazy and I probably would have been
more than happy to sit at home and collect government checks.
It is only
human nature not to work hard when you have someone else willing to take care
of you. For example, Vice-President Joe Biden
recently revealed that he stayed in the U.S. Senate for so long because he
didn't want "a real job".
There is a part of all of us that would like to avoid hard work.
So
redistributing wealth is not going to be good for society as a whole. It
penalizes being productive and it rewards being lazy.
And our tax
system is already way too oppressive for those that honestly pay their taxes.
Did you know
that the average American must work 107 days
just to make enough money to pay their taxes?
That is
before a single penny is earned for anything else.
That is
absolutely obscene!
This year,
the average American will spend approximately 29 percent
of what they make on federal, state and local taxes.
No, the
truth is that our current tax system is horrific and it needs to be thrown out.
But that is
a topic for another article.
Getting back
to the dying middle class, the real answer is to break up big government and to
break up the big corporations and promote competition in our economy once
again.
We need
wealth and power to be spread out into millions and millions of hands.
We need a
system that tremendously encourages small businesses instead of absolutely
crushing them.
We need
dozens of competitors in most industries instead of just a handful.
We need to
empower average Americans to be their own bosses instead of being dependent on
big government and big corporations.
We need a
system that gives "the little guy" a fighting chance.
It could be
done if the American people were willing to reign in big government and the big
corporations.
If you
believe in the U.S.
Constitution, you should believe in limiting the power of the federal
government and limiting the power of the big corporations.
Those are
principles that our founding fathers believed in, and those are principles that
we need to return to.
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