I have been...and they'll better convince me of their sincerity when they're not wearing clothes I only dream about buying while stating that my husband needs taxed to death.quycksylver wrote:Has anyone been following the Occupy Wallstreet
Let me start with the fact that I know abject poverty: I grew up in a one parent home at a time when there were few job opportunities for a single mother and no training or schooling opportunities available at all. She received a very, very small check from the government because my father had died in the line of duty (he was in the army). Most of the time we had no electricity or water; we couldn't afford it. I took my baths before school in the neighbor's hose. A lot of the time we couldn't afford food and in small towns single women don't typically qualify for help from the churches. Our government check made us ineligible for any kind of food stamps or WIC or other government hand-outs. I spent a lot of time digging through restaurant trash trying to find something edible for myself and my sister. My clothes had holes in them; they were meant for someone 40-50 years older than I was (literally).
I scratched my way up to where I am now, my husband and I both. I worked fast food jobs, sometimes three at a time, while going to school. I took whatever work I could get. I've worked in factories, stringing burlap bags together by hand. I've picked crops for those meager wages. I've been a farmer and raised cattle and crops only to lose a portion of the farm and end up owing even more.
But eventually we made it. We're not what I would consider rich but we're still part of the economic class these people seem to think need to pay MORE taxes. The government already takes 1/3 of my husband's wages and four people have to live on that.
The point is, taking money away from other people and giving it to folk who didn't do anything to earn it is wrong and it won't fix the situation. The people in this protest seem to have forgotten that corporations are run by people. If you increase taxes on the corporations and those they deem rich, the corporations have to let more workers go to pay those taxes. They can hire less people and those people will be less qualified for the job because the corporations have less money with which to hire people. If you increase the taxes on the rich, they won't be rich any more. You cut off a good source of philanthropy to the surrounding communities. Look up the works of Bill Gates sometime. Look into a place called Celebration which is funded by Disney. Both of those corporations and individuals pour millions of dollars into their communities and their states. Tax them so much they can't do that any more and everyone suffers.
They also aren't taking into account the fact that even if we do tax the rich and corporations harder, that money still is not going to reach the people. It will disappear into the bureaucracy and appropriations committees, assuming our government can even decide what needs done with it. Most likely it would be applied to our national debt and that means that the very same people these protesters claim they're trying to help will NEVER see that money.
You might wish to look up the projects of the Depression and in particular research the works of the AAA. That was a program designed to help the struggling small farmers. What actually happened was that the money was given over to local government officials to distribute...and it went right back into government coffers.
Socialism and Marxism don't work. This won't work. I fail to see why my family should have to give up the hard earned money for which they worked because some people want their lives handed to them on a plate.
