Imagine one hundred people and one hundred dollars. Every year one of those people gets 27 dollars to spend. The other 99 people must divide 73 dollars among them to live on. That is roughly the picture of the overall distribution of income in 2007 as shown in the report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. I suspect the divide has grown even wider in the past 3 years. This concentration of wealth and power in a few families presents the greatest danger that our democracy has faced since the great depression.
That one percent, or more realistically, the one tenth of a percent who have seen their wealth grow at an astronomical rate in the past decade, are the real government of our country. We never elected them, we never see what they are doing, but they are controlling our lives behind the scenes. Thomas Paine told us that wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty.
It's time to redistribute that wealth. There is nothing wrong with taxing the people who have benefited the most from living in America.
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