This is one of those blog types that a lot of people don't like and don't read. Feel free to do either. You don't like rants, you don't have to read rants, you came here well warned that this is a rant. I digress. This is in answer to the following post by someone. There are lots like this, and this one sort of sums up (ignited) my anger over posts like these. I have very little problem with people saying "I don't support OWS, because I think it doesn't matter to me, and I think it's dangerous to break up the way things are". Okay, you have a logical, albeit selfish reason for not supporting the OWS, you want to be openly against OWS because of this, fine.
You don't agree with OWS because it's breaking some trespassing laws. Yup, totally valid and if your moral standards are that the letter of the law must be followed even if the protest is about other people breaking laws with wild abandon, okay, that's your standpoint, and I can see the logic too. Perhaps some other area can be assigned to protestors that's near Wall St. So the protest isn't shunted off into some corner (otherwise it's not a useful public protest). I put it to the government of a democratic society to provide an arena people can picket and tent publicly without trespassing, until then, they would have to expect protestors to use public avenues. Like roads. Since the police has been brought in to prevent that, government has already broken faith on the allowance of demonstrations in democracy.
Onto the post and the arguments that actually piss me off. Mainly this is because it's usually from those who belong to the 99% but are talking for the 1% by twisting what OWS is about, what the 99% is about, and deliberately misunderstanding some items, or twisting movement talk points into words that are nonsensical, or cherry-picking to the extreme, then summing it up with some illogical argument that would have failed a first year analytical thinking course by default.
******99 wrote:
some progressive lies:
-the rich don't pay their 'fair share' - fact: the rich pay 2x the effective tax rate on average as compared to the middle class. fact: the rich pay an all-time high share of taxes relative to income. Source: CBO
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/Appendix_w...
-corporations don't pay their 'fair share' - fact: US corporations pay a higher effective tax rate than corporations in most other nations. Source: nytimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/economy...
from the story: "United States companies pay about a quarter of their profits in federal income taxes, a few percentage points higher than the rate paid by companies in most other major industrial countries, according to a number of studies and tax experts."
now, progressives like to us the standard old exceptions based argument. let's address both the facts and the absurdity of it:
GE - every country in the world has tax loss carry forwards in its corporate tax system. GE lost billions in 2008 and did not get a refund from the government. it is entirely appropriate to carry forward the losses, otherwise their effective tax rate between 2008-2011 would be over 100% given their losses in '08
buffet - buffet's tax rate is low because all his income is from capital gains. in fact he doesn't take a salary. it would be interesting to know how many people out there would give up 100% of their salary and just have equity in investments. very few were. this country rewards people who actually take risk.
but more fundamentally, focusing on the exceptions is like saying smoking is good for you because you know an old smoker. what matters it the averages. nobody runs around proclaiming we need to make smoking more widely available because there exists a handful of 90 year olds who smoke. it is ludicrous. what matters is on average you die. and in taxes, what matters is on average the facts above are true.
Warning: Rant follows.
I notice that in your 'facts', you use a government source for the 'demanded' tax rate from everyone then use a New York times news article as your primary source for what the actual paid amount is. It seems a little disingenuous, and upon closer examination we'll find that most corporations in fact spend vast amounts of money into lobbying for tax cuts, deregulation, and foreign safe-havens and tax-evasion in the most inventive of manners. It's not worth the 'little people's' time to do it, and they don't have the clout for any of that anyway (money means clout these days).
All right, lets debunk your 'facts' by breaking them up. First, lets look into what the system of progressive taxing actually means. In your words, it seems the rich are disadvantaged by progressive taxing, as they are suddenly 'paying out so much by percentage'. Progressive taxes 101. Income Brackets.
The rich fall into the same bracket as the poor for anything they earn under the tax-free threshold. Raising the tax-free threshold does not benefit the rich as much as benefiting the poor for example, because by PERCENTAGE, the rich might gain a 0.01% increase in their tax break, while to someone working for a wage under the tax-free threshold when it's doubled, that's a 100% increase in their tax break.
Now given that. The rich are still taxed incrementally according to the bracketing system. That is, every step you earn (from one bracket to the next), the effective tax rate on that earning increases. So if we simplify that (the progressive bracket isn't this simple, but this is just an example to make it clear): Our example earns $500,000 per year. For argument sake, lets say there are three brackets, no tax under $10,000, $10,000 to $70,000 is 20%, 70,000+ is 40% (this sample is designed to make your argument look good and the taxes are higher than what reality is, so the simplification should be fair for a logical debate).
So this means the people earning $10k gets to keep ALL of their money (we're completely ignoring other levies everyone has to pay, or the poor is even worse off). Good on them, 100% of their salary of $10k, then the next bracket has to pay 20% of what they earn ABOVE $10k. See? They still get that first $10k in the tax free, it's not like they are losing their guaranteed money just because they are richer. So the example pays the full 20% on their $60k in the next bracket, which is $12k, leaving them $48k + $10k. Next bracket, from $70k to $500,000 they pay $40% ($172k of $439k) leaving them with: $500,000 - ($172k + $12k +$0k) = $316000.
As you can see, the more a person earns above the final tax bracket (where brackets stop and everything you earn after that is flat rate), the closer they will come to the percentage tax of the last bracket they were eligible for. This is the point of progressive taxation, it's to ENCOURAGE the extremely rich to reinvest their funds into the community/workplace instead of hoarding it. Businesses and peoples that support a capitalist system SHOULD spend extra wealth they earn, because the wealth was created not by them, but by workers (non-producers do not actually CREATE, they funnel and multiply).
Progressive taxing is not 'punishing' anyone for earning more money, it's saying that to earn such an excess to need (and most times even want), means you must be building wealth on something other than your own personal, immediate work (especially in the private-sector focused economy). Steve Jobs was a brilliant man, he invented and led the charge on many fronts, but it cannot be said that the millions he generated were all personally generated by him. There were workers who built the gadgets, people who marketed them, and below them, others who built parts, made shows and adverts, artists who drew the designs and pamphlets, so forth.
Since we can't force everyone to be paid the same for their hours (lets go into the deserving argument after this), taxation has to be formulated to spread the wealth that is generated towards the top to be given back in some realistic way to those who benefit less from the system.
If you're saying that someone living on $10k should pay the same percentage tax as someone earning $500k or (in the case of the aims of the protestors, over millions), then you are a bit deluded about what is needed to survive. And that rounds up the problem too, you're attacking a straw-man, because most people are not complaining about the 99% of earners, just the very top who earn irresponsibly.
Now you'll probably say something like: But if the people in the lower half wanted, they could ALL become the 1%. This is blatantly untrue. The 1% fight very hard and very competitively in the market with those who are say the top 5%, and the disparity in earnings is astounding even there, in the cream of the crop as you might say. With more power, the top can garner more resources and justify their position better by controlling government and media. That's what OWS is fighting, not the taxpayers (many of them are taxpayers, or were before they lost their jobs through no fault of their own).
If everyone in the world could choose to be in the top 1%, in today's economy, that's like saying everyone in the world could choose to inherit a major international corporation, or all choose to become CEOs. This is idiotic. Not everyone has the same opportunities in life, and those born in the lower end of the social spectrum has very little.
Even putting that aside, that argument means everyone in the world has to want to be a banker, hedge fund manager or some kind of money earning machine in order for you to consider them worthwhile and worthy to have a say. I do wonder where the bread will come from in a world full of CEOs who tell each other how to run their companies without any workers willing to fulfil their role because hey, why work to enrich the top when they repeatedly refuse to give anything back except higher and higher wage disparity? Sure, lets all be the 1%, we should all go into market speculation, because as you say, America rewards gamblers (because heaven forbid it should reward its teachers and police and firefighters to the same degree).
Then the world can freeze as everyone waits for the magical numbers to bounce and make them more money. No one has to pay taxes at all, no one should CHOOSE to go into production or manufacturing because hey, it's only worth it if you can be a money spinner. And of course in that perfect world, no one would CHOOSE to not be able to afford college, or CHOOSE to end up being an artist, scientist, philosopher or whatever, because who needs more artists? It's a ludicrous, illogical thing to suggest, and I'm amazed that it's still being trotted out like a well-oiled argument.
The 99% movement is not about the 1% suddenly supporting/feeding/clothing the 99%, it's about how the 99% should not exist only for the purpose of creating a 1% that lives basically on another planet while still being on Earth. To argue that everyone should aspire to be the 1% while demanding nothing of them and saying that people are being whiney or bums for wanting a fairer treatment for the wealth they generate is insanely bigoted and shows a certain disconnection from reality.
Also, another fact check, Americans don't have the highest progressive tax system, Australia has higher (though not by much). We also have free medicare (every single citizen), bulk billed medical appointments/checks, government guaranteed pensions, enforced superannuation, transport concessions, government welfare/housing, free education (government loans you the money at VERY low interest, and you don't pay it back until you're reporting a certain threshold of earnings on your tax). And we don't have a Socialist government (and here the right-wingers jump up and down). No, we're fairly centrist.
Yes, we're introducing a Carbon policy, yes we have good social welfare and generally all right safety net. We also have a GST introduced by the right-wing government of the day, and the Carbon Tax policy has been so eroded that we're practically begging the big companies to take tenders so they can reduce pollution.
GE: Question. When someone loses billions of dollars in America, where tax is not automatically paid as it is earned (as wage tax is done here in Australia), why should the government refund their losses? They didn't give the government anything that year, what refund are you talking about?
I know that running a personal business, I can declare things I use/buy for business use during the year, sometimes without declaring it in receipts (there's a cap for this). So are you talking about that? That's not a 'refund' that's guaranteed either, that's just a deduction to my taxes when I calculate them (I calculate my taxes because they don't come out automatically). What 'refund' are you talking about? What tax that year did they pay exactly?
I'll stop with the rhetoric and actually say, what GE did is actually not illegal, it's available to all companies that wish to do it (and they do), and the effective tax rate for companies tends to be in the low teens (not in the high 40s in % as the income bracketing would assume). Some offsets can also be used in this way in following years for losses for individuals (though not as long term). It is hoped that this would create more certainty for investors, who would understand that a rough patch (losses) can be ridden out over the next twenty years or so. This does not take into account if a company earns much higher in succeeding years or makes back the loss faster, the tax system is still designed to help it recover beyond doubt.
Going back to the previous talking point about need vs want and the illusion of 'want' created to brand OWS as a demonstration of hippies now. Yes the system is available to everyone who wishes to take advantage of it. There is no law saying people must pay the treasury the correct amount, or try to increase its earnings (this was a judicial ruling), and there is no incentive for companies to pay the actual tax rate if there are ways to mitigate this (and as regulations relax more and more, these loopholes are taken with great pride).
Current lobbies by your friend GE (who by the way, pays more buck out to lobbying than other companies) want what SEEMS to be fairer tax, then you see what they want is in fact a flat-out, simple low tax that will make taxation more certain (to be low). It is a risky business to try to seem genuine while using money as clout to get more advantages in the tax code to businesses.
So since there is no incentive to act in a more moral or responsible way (it's not required by law to do so), you can expect that businesses will pay taxes in the low teens, especially as they get bigger and spread out all over the world (subsidiaries are not counted towards much of the earnings). And unlike me, sitting in my little flat typing away in the dark, the 90% the companies keep is beyond what I would see in the earnings of my whole life. That's all right, as long as they realise that means they can't cry poor about their 10% tax vs my 10% tax, because what's left over is incomparable.
On the other hand, we're talking about businesses, they have responsibilities, like workers and stuff (not taking into account again that these are offset in the tax system and not included for much of the calculation). So it's only reasonable that we instead look at the people. The question then remains, why did some of these same people that makes the important decisions in a company like GE or Koch Brothers get bonuses in the very same year that they cost many people their livelihoods, were discovered to have dumped chemical waste and released harmful substances to the atmosphere (by order of 90 something tonnes). Not only bonuses, bigger bonuses than preceding years.
And these people continue to make decisions that hurt those that work for them, those that buy their products, and the economy of the home country in order to earn an extra buck.
Now that we're talking about individual examples. Lets talk about people who gamble on the market. Now, most people that do this successfully and expansively are managers of other funds. Very few people get the capital to gamble on the market, and if you look at the ownership of stocks, you will find that the higher you go in the earning table, the more % stocks are owned by them. Using a person as an example of some American gambler's dream to prove that they should be rewarded is ludicrous.
Most people who play in stocks don't play their entire worth when they are playing with their own money. Hedge fund managers play with other people's money and skim off the top, so it's worthwhile for them to take the highest risk, make the quickest buck and earn the highest commissions. Morals, law and so forth tends to play very little in the world of gambling stocks, and if that's what Americans should aspire to so that they can be rewarded 'fairly' for the risks they take, then again, you're asking us all to become gamblers on Las Wall St.
And in actual fact, most Americans (most people in fact) already do gamble more than their 100% net worth. By taking out a mortgage on a house they intend to live in while they don't have money, they are gambling their entire worth, everything that they are. They have no money, no certainty they'd pay this loan off, but they gamble on the chance that they can, because it's a good chance. Then along comes irresponsible gamblers higher up in the chain, who gambled their chances away without them even being aware of it. And that, is what OWS is fighting.
People are losing out while playing by the system, gambling everything they are worth on an education, a job they love or hate to get promotions in, a house they can't immediately afford, their trust in government. They aren't seeing the returns for that investment in the system while the returns from gambling with their lives on Wall St. keep stacking up. They are saying that it's not fair to be silent cogs in the machine while what the machine produces doesn't go back to oiling the hinges anymore.
OWS is not a demand that the rich stop making money or stop being rich, it's a demand that the rich stop skewing the rules more in their favour because really, they don't need the money. And they shouldn't screw everyone else's chance at a fair go of earning a house, stable food sources, and an education so they can snort a bit more at their bonus party.
But no, everyone should just kick back and earn equity from their investments. No one's doing that? Then you all must be lazy hobbos unwilling to put your balls on the table and take the bull by the horns. No, you lazy nurses, manufacturers, teachers, you should've all just put your salary into investments and spent your entire day sitting in front of a computer turning numbers into more numbers. None of this taking care of the sick, the elderly or educating children or fighting fires, everyone just needs to withdraw all of their net worth as soon as they turn 18 and invest.
Doesn't matter if you haven't got enough money to earn any money either, just invest and if you're lucky with the numbers (or can absorb losses), you will live in the equity. No one has to produce anything in this world, the financial system will prop itself up on brave Americans who are willing to take risks and gamble their salaries. Because risking your sanity, your house, your livelihood, your children, your marriage on a mortgage you can't afford isn't gambling or risk taking or investing in something, that's just what 'normal' (read: non-rich) people should have to do to have a roof over their heads.
Fundamentally, saying smoking is good for you because you know an old smoker is idiotic, yup. Totally agree. Saying that you listed three possible facts, and saying that on average facts are what matters, therefore the facts above are true, is completely stupid. As a meta-for-something, this was awfully shit.
Breaking it down. You just said that on average, people die (yup, but lets be kind and take it for granted you said: people who smoke have a higher risk of associated disease and death, because people dying is a certainty, not an average). Therefore, what matters with regards to tax, is the average… average what? Average facts? What the hell is an average facts? And how can facts be true on average? Facts are true or false, they can't be an average unless it's a collection of facts, are you saying that out of four 'facts' you listed (capital gains should receive low tax is an opinion, not a fact, but I included), the average is true? So 2/4 ain't bad? Ironic that the average is about right too.
So two out of four (half) your facts being right entitles your argument to the same indisputable credibility to decades of smoking and cancer research? Great, not only can we all stop paying taxes by stop being anything but fund managers and stock-market players, we can also eliminate the need of scientists and studies. We can just study averages, and if on average people pay more tax when they earn more, then it's all right (in your view it would be fairer if everyone paid the same, the reason we can't being said above). We shouldn't look into any other factor at all, like whether they can afford to pay the tax if they are poor, or how big an impact it has on people's quality of life and access to education and healthcare at the tax rate they are paying.
No, impacts don't matter, the percentages do. So a 10% flat tax rate would be equally beneficial to people who earn $6000 a year to people who earn $500,000. Yup. That's fair, someone gets to live on $5400 a year, while someone else lives on $450,000 a year. The flat tax matters a lot more to people of little means compared to people of a lot. And since the current system means those who produce something are valued less than those who then play with the production in a virtual system, the only way to keep people from all flooding into economics (and they do if they can afford it) is to make sure they can't afford it.
If there was a flat tax rate on everyone, high inequality of wages, high costs of living and free education, you can bet that more of the world's intelligent people (I'm not going to pretend there aren't people who are not intelligent) would aim for roles in a non-manufacturing sector. Already, the world is seeing the effects of this, as more people abandon rural areas for urban living, especially in areas where the disparity of wealth between rural and city societies is large.
In Asia especially, where the private sector has blossomed pretty much unchecked, and with it, cities have expanded that demand for services and manufacture jobs from overseas nations seeking cheaper workforces more and more. Children of farmers and herders are migrating en masse to the cities in search of a better wage. Food production will become harder in the ensuing years as fewer farmers have to feed a growing, non-farming community, with their profits eaten into by all tiers of business above them, their prices set by the stock market, more artificially than a free-market ideal wold suggest (insider trading and price fixing and monopolies are rampant, but I digress).
The facts are everywhere, and I'm not usually in the business of doing someone else's legwork for them, especially since after years of this kind of conversation, I have only managed to persuade very few people to view their easy-going lives as anything but what they deserve.
The facts are that people have lost their homes, their jobs, their livelihoods and any respect it seems from people like Spence through no fault of their own. They worked hard in the system, and chose instead of being bankers, to be teachers, police, artists, philosophers, musicians, soldiers etc. They left their money and their stability in the hands of those that should have been responsible - the government. Instead, what they saw was corporate money funnelling into campaign and lobby funds, making the politics of the nation twist its rules to benefit the rich.
As mentioned before, capital gains is earned by very few people. Most people don't have the capital to earn the gains. As you have more capital, you have more gains, so it's no surprise that most of the capital gains is earned by people near the top 1%. So one of those facts is not in fact a progressive lie, it's a truth, and one that people are increasingly uncomfortable with?
Shouldn't there be tax cuts aimed at something the lower percentage does? Yes, the higher 1% pays a good % of the taxes, but they also earn a large chunk of the income. If tax is meant to be dollar for dollar, a recovering of the wealth the nation generates as a whole, then increasing tax cuts for the rich just means that the people who earn the larger chunk gets to pay a smaller and smaller chunk of taxes. It's like saying someone who ate 6/10 slices of the pie shouldn't have to pay 6/10th of the cost, because there were 10 people and everyone should pay for one slice, even people who ate no pie.
Yet we don't see the Republicans (or even the Democrats often) trying to give the poor more of the pie, or reducing the burden of paying for the pie on the people who only got one slice. More and more, the people who are eating more of the pie are paying for less of the cost (and not cleaning up after themselves, making everyone else foot the bill for their jam squirts in the face). So why are you on their side? Are you a slice of pie eater who's happy with his one slice because the six-slicers are telling you the people with no slices want your slice?
We want a bite of one of the five slices the top 1% doesn't need. If you think the top 1% did more work to earn that pie, you can stop right there too. The average (since you like averages so much) data plotted onto a curve with hours of work/education level calculated does indeed look like a wiggly curve to the top. Then it stagnates. The top 1% (that is, the very very very rich), do not in fact show an increase of 'work input', that is, their income in correlation to the amount of work (hours per week) they do and the education they achieve is not reflective of the trend shown by the rest of us.
In other words. They do less work on average and get less educated than the rest of the top 5%, but earn oh so much more (yes, there is a big disparity between the top 1% and even the top 5%). The figures of education also doesn't take into account the marks earned or the school they went to, it just counts the awarded piece of paper. Being familiar with the marking process, what matters more about university/college education is the ability to afford it than the ability to think or learn. There's a bell curve, and you can't fail half the class because it won't fit into the marks bell curve. That's the short and simple of it.
Getting a college/university degree doesn't immediately make you more hard-working or smart. Plenty of university/college students use this era of their lives to party, trust me. It's hard to get a HD or sometimes even a D, but impost people also don't go into Honours (I won't even talk about higher education degrees that you have to pay for, because they are just case in point, you have to afford them). Not sure how it's more hard-working to have a college fund compared to someone who didn't have one so went off and became an apprentice mechanic.
Very insulting and overused rhetoric to brand those who choose not to enter or can't afford a higher education in the broken American system as bums, when many of them would have instead entered the work force as a low-paid worker to survive. Perhaps if they were paid more than $5 an hour for their time, the others wouldn't have to foot the bill for food stamps. Just a thought. Maybe lowering people's wages by telling them their sweat and hard work cooking your sausage isn't worth as much as your air-conditioned number crunching or copy-pasting isn't such a good idea. Especially if you want to complain about them being bums and mocking them for thinking they deserve better.
Why do people who can afford an education deserve anymore than people who couldn't? Why should people deserve better treatment, access to healthcare (not even better healthcare which is fair, but just healthcare at all), for choosing not to be a burger flipper? What are we looking at here? Burger flippers: The new blacks? We want segregation so much that poor people should be barred from rich kids in universities or something? Poor people shouldn't have a voice because they obviously lost their jobs because they didn't work hard enough, and not because say, their bosses were irresponsible and now don't want to absorb the loss into the company but would rather sack people who worked for them in the past?
Which planet do you live on, and can all the rest of us join you? If you worked for someone (I'm self-employed, so on that basis, I won't say you have a boss just automatically), and they sacked you because of 'an economic downturn', would you then say "It's all my fault, blame me, I should have worked harder, if I put in another hour, the economy would've been okay!"?
I doubt it, but it's nice to know that you think a burger flipper could become a millionaire by the simple expedience of working harder. 10 hour shifts standing in front of a hot grill isn't working hard enough. They should go catch up on some financial review and go buy some stocks with their left over negative salary after paying rent instead. Then they can eat pie. Oh wait, I forgot. There's no pie left.
You are a one-slicer, talking for the six-slicer. If you want any respect at all from this quarter, then at least stop using six-slicer rhetoric. Talk about your own real reasons for not liking the OWS at least. They are too leftist, you're worried if they succeed they will dissolve government, you fear the socialists, you don't agree with some of what the protestors want (instead of using singled out signs to portray the entire movement). You might think they will risk the stability of your one-slice life as the 'lower masses' crawl up towards the six-slicers with you in the cross-fire.
Just remember the slogan, they are not talking about 99% of people who matter, they are not saying they themselves (the thousands) represent 99%. They are saying that we are all (including you, though you don't want to be included) are 99%, and we're being screwed over. It matters more to some of them (those who already don't have much) and matters less to some of us (those who are living comfortably), but it doesn't change the fact that there are those who are getting more of the slices and not paying for enough of the pie.
The demands have not been unreasonable. And I very much doubt the OWS protestors would have signs you've worded so ridiculously. Federal spending is at WW2 levels possibly because America hasn't stopped being in wars. Just saying 'spending' is a not very subtle way of including war funds and bill outs in the welfare and education spending for example. I would very much like to see photos of the signs and those holding them, I wonder if you can harness a group of counter protestors to hold up those signs you say are held up by the OWS.
Europe doesn't have a flat tax. Europe is also not a country. If you're going to make up signs and twist the wording so they sound like idiot's satire, you could at least make an effort. Australia is part of the Commonwealth, we also have one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. Booya. And we do have all the benefits, thank you. Please don't tarnish our system with your idiot brush (the Liberal party - Republicans of Australia) are already trying.
After that much ranting, I think I've finally let off enough steam. Stop using stupid arguments. Stop talking for the 1% (they talk enough for themselves via the media), just lay out your own fears and gripes with the movement in a way that matters to you. Make it logical, make it sound, why are you not the 99%? You believe the world is fair because you're getting your 1 slice, fair enough. Say it. Don't hide behind rubbish logic and disingenuous 'factoids' .
You don't care that poor people are getting a bum deal, you don't care that people are starving and losing their homes and being told that taxes they previously paid (when they had jobs and homes and respect) are going to pay for mistakes rich people made. You don't care that the rich continue to live their affluent lives, continue to be bound by different laws (corporate offences should have seen many people jailed over the years, none are, they are just fined, usually less than the damage caused, much less). You don't care that people are so genuinely frustrated by the system of the rich paying for government that they are marching on the streets. You don't care that the rich pay for government, because the system has worked for you to remain comfortable, not stinking rich, but comfortable, and you're fearful your comfort will be ruined.
Fair enough.
Just don't lie about what you think the OWS is about, or why you think it's stupid based on straw-man attacks when you no doubt should be intelligent enough to know what it actually is about, and at least construct an argument debating anything from their methods and rowdiness to what your own concerns are about their demands and how it could negatively impact you, a presumably middle class 99%er. Talk about that, and you won't get such a rant. I can accept people are going to be selfish and want to protect the status quo because it worked for them. There are people who got their fair slice (by browbeating others or by waiting their turn or whatever, fair or not in how they got it) and want to keep it that way.
If you fear that you may have got your slice unfairly and now want to defame the people who want to make sure that people who got the most pie pay at least most of the cost, then say so. "I am an investment banker, and I lost a lot of people's money but made a lot of money in return, but I'm not that rich." Okay, so you're a banker, and someone else might be a career car salesman. That's still not what the OWS is fighting. They are fighting for your right to be a banker who's not that rich to keep being that banker who pays their taxes, keep being part of the higher end of 99%, they just want those above you, the 1% to stop screwing around with everything that's important to the 99% (like public infrastructure and social safety nets).
If you lose out in the economy or lose your job, you'd want some of that social safety net. And of course the amount paid into benefits has to grow year by year. There's an ageing population, more people losing their jobs, more people losing their mortgages and livelihoods, and just more people over all every year. And those people who remain stable at the top, earning more and more money by cutting their losses (workers) whenever there's a bit of a dent in their growth (not just earnings, growth), will have to foot more of the bill for laying off those people. They can pay people for their wage (higher amount of money), or pay people minimum welfare to exist (when they cut them lose).
Paying nothing and being irresponsible and causing foreclosures and unemployment shouldn't earn them an ever bigger portion of pie. That's all. They can't suck on the public teat then refuse to take any responsibility for everyone having no milk. Fact.
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