Taxes and Politics (I'm sure no one will get upset!)

After seeing the cartoon on Facebook today, thought I'd spread out my issue a little better (good lord that is a cute kid, Merc).

The cartoon complains that half of Americans don't pay taxes. That's almost true, it's closer to 37%.

For those of you who are paying (Federal) taxes, that might piss you off a bit, and seem unfair. I hope that it won't so much after this.

That 37% is 52 million households out of 140 million in the U.S. About 13 million of those people earn $12,000 or less (that's less than minimum wage). As a head of household. Another 13 million earn between $12,000 and $20,000. The other half earn between $20,000 and $36,000.

My point being, these folks don't make sh*t for money. If you add up all the money they make, and all they own, they don't make up 1% of U.S. wealth.

The top 25% of tax filers in this country (about 35 million households), own $44 trillion. The rest of us (the other 100 million), just under $7 trillion.

All that is how I get to this conclusion: I don't care. Raise their taxes. Don't all them 'job creators,' stats show that jobs are being made, but they're getting richer. Largely because if they make their millions in the stock market, they pay 15% tax rate, the same as someone making $40,000 a year, and they rarely have to pay the estate tax anymore. Even Teddy Roosevelt (so bad#ss that he had asthma, but walked it off; was shot in the chest, but decided to stay and finish his 90 minute speech) was in favor of checks and balances to make sure the wealthiest in this country didn't create dynasties, and make the rich richer at the expense of the least of us. He helped institute the estate tax ('death tax').

OK. I'm done with my rant. I feel a little better.