@Noblekin: The Tea Party IS middle class. Where have you been?

What America have you been living in the past decade?

The Great Recession began in 2007 (under Bush) and was a perfect storm of horror for the economy and our financial system…and the structural issues largely remain to this day. The only reason the economy has remained afloat has been stimulus spending…and when that goes away?…

This is in spite of record low taxes.

Taxation in America is the price we pay for our civilization. We’ve seen a huge drop in federal taxes over the past decade to the lowest level since before WWII and the corporate tax rate is the the same as it has been since 1986 when it was passed by Reagan and Co.

Yet in this decade we’ve had two wars, an expansion of government…TSA & ICE, etc. Medicare Part D and non-war military spending and you talk about income envy versus responsible revenue generation?

Please take the time to review the tax history from WWII forward for some perspective on where we are today. We have never been asked to pay less for our Democracy…and by the looks of it, we will see our civilization continue to decline…crumbling bridges, roads, cities, education, healthcare, retirement age financial stability…

People who make more have more to protect. If we go the way of many third world countries without a middle class, so too will go the security of those who fail to see why America’s brand of social welfare has proven successful in supporting the health of our democracy.

Without a middle class, America will cease to exist as we know it today…

Support the Tea Party/Neo-con-artist version of America, and this is exactly what you will get.

Instead we have another decade of college graduates who are good for nothing but marketing and sales. Who will invent and manufacture the products for them to market and sell? (And what do you expect to happen when you allow Wall Street to grow until it represents 25% of the S&P500 profits? Wall Street produces **NOTHING**.)

The answer is the same, but the problem (and thus the pain) is twice as bad today as it was a decade ago. Tough luck — that is usually what happens when you ignore serious problems.

We’ve been building to this disaster for many years. Reagan/Bush/Clinton gave us 20 straight years of economic boom, but they did so by feeding Wall Street on a steady diet of debt, lower taxes, lower interest rates, and reduced regulation.

Eventually booms end in crashes — but when we STARTED to have a crash in 2000/2001, Bush II redoubled efforts to keep the Wall Street engine chugging. After all, those tools had produced 20 years of boom, so why not see if we can’t keep it going a while longer?

The crash we are seeing now is twice as bad as it needed to be — and we haven’t yet hit the bottom.

May I remind you Bush’s 8 years were some of your country’s worst and the GOP filibuster’s have made records. Although Obama’s Presidency has been a disappointment, you need to read more about what he actually accomplished and watch less FOX news…

You confuse my concern for others and the economy as individual concern or envy. I am not angry at all. I just refuse to allow you to label me as such. What you have to come to terms with is the class struggles you speak of will be a huge problem if not dealt with… as people lose their homes, jobs and have lass purchase power. Whether you presently have 28 people employed or not… the jobless rate still should be your concern.

Envy will be your enemy if you are part of the problem and not the solution. If one segment of the population is suppressed while the other flourishes, that is the fodder for revolution.

You want tax rates to be voluntary and elective? That is much like the banks wishing to police themselves… and do look where that brought your country. I live in a country where everyone is taxed because everyone benefits.

Greed has already changed your country into a plutocracy. You would do well to read this well written article if you are concerned about class struggles and envy…

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/prin t/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-eli te/8343/

“…or the elections sweep the rest of the deadwood out of Washington, we don’t have a future out here in the real world.”
But when has that ever happened? The election tide just washes up a different batch of deadwood.

I’m a mom. For the last three years I’ve been watching our best and brightest high school grads look for jobs, go off to some of the best Universities in the country, come back looking for jobs; and for more than a year now, donate their time to non-profits and businesses. Having done the same myself as a new grad, it is painfully obvious, though I’m not discouraging them, that there are no jobs now, or in the future for the majority of people graduating in this generation. The most successful grads have gone overseas to teach English and been asked to stay by their host country.

They’re coming home, but to what? Japan’s lost generation is happening right now, right here. There has never been a recovery, we’re in what I call “Obama’s Great Depression.”

Initiative? They have it now, but they are going to get discouraged, and beaten down when they’re still working for nothing in five years, or ten years. Some of them are taking on graduate school debt, but the reality is there are not going to be jobs for them either. Obama is looking forward to these outcomes, and anticipating a grateful, low-paid government bureaucrat, union-intimidated workforce whose dues sustain a one-party government.

I despise what has been done to this nation by government greed, banking greed, and personal greed. I see the only solution to this mess to be massive cuts in government spending and tax cuts for those who create private sector jobs.

This is the ‘correction’ that we’ve known would eventually happen; the reduction in wages so our manufacturing can once again be competitive internationally, so that companies can afford to local here. Whose responsible for a culture of ratcheting up wages, benefits, and retirement? For sixty years, the unions have raised the bar destructively for all employees, demanding more, and more until the public and private sector burden for retirement and healthcare are unsustainable. It’s not ‘something has got to give’; it’s everything is giving ‘way, crumbling under the weight of it.

Go ahead Congress, create a national tax on the internet, and people will stop spending their money there, too. Raise local and state taxes, and people will move or shop across state lines. Until Obama abandons his ideology (which will be when hell freezes over), or the elections sweep the rest of the deadwood out of Washington, we don’t have a future out here in the real world.

Everyone in America needs a national strike to get their attention. Then we need to flood Congress with demands for drastic spending cuts, a flat tax, sweep the job-killing regulations out the door, the elimination of government banking and loans, and banning derivatives. Then we as a nation can start crawling and clawing our way out of Obama’s Great Depression, and sixty years of failed policy, federal taxation and legislation, and greed. We can start small businesses without burdensome government regulations. We can buy our neighbors goods and services. We can see a time when our kids will move out of the house, and have a life, liberty, and acquire a few of their dreams.