Stubborn Failure

Okay, so the Super Committee charged with figuring out how to balance the US budget didn't manage to figure out a darned thing. How many of us did NOT see that coming?

One side thinks that raising the taxes on the ultra rich people and corporations would not raise nearly enough money to do the budget any good. And then on top of that, they want to cut Social Security and Medicare/aid, which amounts to stripping away even more money from everybody, but especially the poor. The other side – having already negotiated away many of their 'wants' in the spirit of 'cooperation' – has now developed their own stubborn streak and want to increase the taxes on wealthy people and corporations to make a start on cutting the deficit. Increasing the load on the middle and lower classes is pretty unthinkable to them.

My first thought is, let's do the math. So let's take a family that makes $50,000 a year. That's not a lot of money, but according to my research, that's about the median amount for a household, so let's use that amount. Let's raise their taxes 1% per year, which would be an extra $500 for the government. And if there's 9 people in this category for every person in the next category, then that comes to $4,500 per year. A mere drop in the bucket compared to our debt, but apparently, it's a big enough drop to satisfy some members of Congress.

Now let's look at a family that makes $100,000 a year. To me, that's a lot of money, and my family could live very comfortably, but the top '1%' make much more than that. Still, let's look at raising the taxes on that amount that same 1% per year. That comes to $1,000 for the government. Comparing this $1,000 per household to the $4,500 per 9 households does not seem like it would provide much debt relief, does it?

However, based on what's been said recently, the one side that wants to raise taxes on the rich are talking about the 'upper 1%', not the upper 10%. Roughly, that means those making $1,000,000 OR MORE per year. 1% of $1,000,000 is $10,000, which is approximately 2 drops in the bucket of our debt. And $1,000,000 is the MINIMUM income of those who would see their taxes rise. No, it won't solve the debt problem all by itself. But if the middle and lower classes are expected to solve that problem all by themselves, it would be a giant step away from democracy ... towards slavery. And some of us already feel we're a slave to our job, particularly when the economy is bad.

I don't really expect it to happen, but I sure wish certain members of Congress would grow up and do what they were elected to do. And I don't mean 'toe the party line'. They're supposed to be logical beings, capable of thinking about the Greater Good, not What's Good for a Few.