Spaced wrote on Jul 20, 2012, 15:57:
The 'blame the wealthy' is a misdirection tactic being used by a political idealogy (used by both R's and D's historically) in order to keep and gain more power. They want you to blame your rich neighbors and direct you to vote for them and their policies so they can achieve their ultimate objectives. The reality for hiking taxes on the rich is: there aren't enough 'rich' people to make any significant changes to the course of the country. And that's exactly what they don't want you to know while they attempt to distract you and play on your envy and jealousy so you'll enthusiastically support them and what they're doing. Even if they get what they want, it won't solve even a small fraction of the problem.

For example, say they get everything they want. Lets start with the pending tax hikes on the 'rich'. Yeah, problem solved, right? They got the hike they wanted and all will be well. No, the revenue generated (about $75-80 billion) will cover about 8 days of government spending. It's a complete farse. So lets really get those 'rich' people and take everything away from them. We'll just leave them with a few dollars to eek out an existance like the rest of the 99% of us. That'll solve it, right? Nope, even if they confiscate all of it, it'll only cover spending for a few months. The math is that the top 10% pay around 70% of the entire tax bill already, even though they earn around 43% of the total income. Sliding the scale further won't make a dent in the course of the current spending path, simply because there aren't enough of them to take enough money from.

So what are they (the ones promoting the hikes) doing? That's the real question and you'll need to read history to learn what the idealogy is based on, why they are taking the steps they are, and what it -will- eventually lead to. I'm starting to doubt it will be reversible at this point, no one (not even the 'rich' Republicans) are stepping up to make the necessary changes to turn away from the approaching cliff.

Throughout history, it often starts at the top, but always works its way down through the middle class, the poor, and everyone's property/wealth until collapse. Steps like increasing taxes, Roman empire style 'debasement' (quantitative easing in modern terms), confiscation, and reclamation are merely attempts to delay the inevitable. But at most, they may gain a few months or years of survival at best.

Give it some time (probably down to within a decade or so now) and you won't have to 'worry' about those few 'rich' people any more, you'll have a whole new array of things to worry about.