I have been reading a number of the 53% responses and I believe that many of them are obviously manufactured propaganda, The rest are ill-informed and all of them are completely missing the point.
They all say the exact same thing. It goes like this:
"I grew up somewhere between crushing poverty and comfortable middle class. I have worked since I was somewhere between 11 and 17 years old. I have worked between 40 and 70 hours a week. I took out loans and have paid them or I refused to take out loans and somehow managed to pay tuition, room and board at a college and still take and pass all my classes while working 40+ hours at a low paying unpleasant job. I now have a job and live better than the way I grew up. I am a generally good person who pays my taxes and does or does not donate to charity."
Almost every one ends by saying that they don't want to pay for anybody who doesn't want to work.
I notice there are no 53% letters that go like this
"I was born into a very wealthy family. My grandfather left me a trust worth about $750,000. I didn't work too hard in school, but that's ok, I didn't really need to since my dad and and grandfather went to an ivy league school and have a few connections through the fraternity. After college I got an internship with big firm and my dad pulled a few strings. My broker is a genius and he's doubled my money in the last 4 years. Since the rates have gone down on capital gains tax, I've saved enough to buy a vacation house on the coast. Hopefully they will get rid of capital gains tax altogether soon so I pump some more into the market. I've hired some good people and those decisions have made me rich."
On the rare occasions when the 53% people bring up the ultra-rich, they always give examples of those who have the true entrepreneur story. It is always Bill Gates or somebody else who has built a company from the ground up. These people do exist. There are those who have taken what little extra they can pull together and have entered a market with a product or service that people want. Those plans have made them rich and a good portion of these people make donations to worthy causes and a few have made huge contributions to society.
These people exist. So do the lazy, welfare collecting deadbeats that the 53% percent always seem to address in their letters. I have seen a person use food stamps to buy 4 twelve packs of Mountain Dew and then pull out cash to buy a carton of cigarettes THEN leave in very new looking, full sized pickup truck. There are many people in this country who demand handouts and exploit them. They don't work and still manage to be somewhat comfortable on our dime.
In 2006 and 2007 a Hedge Fund called Magnetar began buying up bundles of subprime mortgages in the form of collateralize debt obligations or CDO's. Magnetar worked with banks to create financial products backed by these risky mortgages. Magnetar at the same time was betting against these same products using a credit default swap.
Listen to NPR's Planet Money explain it very clearly with interviews with those involved.
Many people made tens of millions of dollars.Those who managed Magnetar made hundreds of billions of dollars because they found a way to create a product that would obviously fail, get people to buy it by hiding the riskiest parts of the product from investors, and then profit when it did the inevitable. Bankers made a percentage every time one of these billion dollar products was created, so they actively began to look for more risky mortgages to bundle into these products, prompting lenders to give a house to anybody who could sign their name. They made enough to buy mansions by creating a product that they knew would probably fail and then made more money selling it to unsuspecting investors who leveraged people retirements. These people didn't work hard to get their yachts and cars and huge houses. They found a weakness and used other people's money to create more money for themselves based on a dangerous lie. Then, as they lived in luxury, the banks where they work(ed) received 100,000's of billions of our tax money- the money the 53% of us pay in. To top it off, many of these banks took tax money and gave bonuses to many of the people who either ignored or helped create the disaster. They pay a lower tax rate than most of us do and many can live for the rest of their lives in luxury off the dividends from their present investments. No work. No sacrifice. No long hours. No risk.
These are the people that Occupy Wall Street oppose.
There is a group of people who do no work and take your tax dollars. Some are lazy scumbags, some are hardworking people with heartbreaking stories of horrible misfortune and loss. Most are in between. They have very little in most cases.
The 53% writers believe that the poor and lower-middle class should not be asking for any more than they already have.
There is a group of people who do no work and have cost tax dollars. Some are vultures with no morals simply looking for ways to exploit a system, some are hardworking entrepreneurs who have made their money and now can relax and enjoy it. Most are in between. They control 42% of the wealth in the United States.
The 53% writers believe that the ultra-rich earned their money, low tax rates, tax breaks and political influence and should not be asked to contribute any more than they already do.
I think that it is easier for some to place blame on a problem they can easily define. It is simple to assert your work ethic. It is simple to conceptualize a deadbeat and it is simple to place everyone who takes government assistance into that category and place yourself in a position of moral superiority for not doing so.
It is difficult to confront an economic and political system that favors the wealthy. It is difficult to determine when making a profit begins overtake morality. It is difficult to understand tax codes and dividends and investments and loopholes and monetary policy. It is a difficult to conceptualize one hundred billion dollars.
The questions posed by Occupy Wall Street are not easy to answer.
This does not mean that they should not be asked.
Please Stop Being a Jerk
