By Rick Manning — The Occupy Movement which claims to represent the 99 percenters is apparently very bad at math, which might explain all the free time they have to hang out in public parks.
Perhaps they are unaware that right now in America, 49 percent of their countrymen pay 100 percent of the income taxes.
That’s right, it isn’t the 99 percenters who need protection or a voice, but the 49 percent of Americans who work, pay their taxes and don’t get officially sanctioned Earned Income Tax Credits which offset any dollars that they pay into the federal government in income taxes.
The Occupiers, who apparently don’t have anywhere else of much importance to be have settled on the incoherent message that capitalism is bad and they are mad that they graduated from college with no discernable skills while being saddled with massive government-encouraged debt.
In their Jerry Garcia-like carnival, they claim to represent those who aren’t the nation’s wealthiest people, yet wealthy leftists like Michael Moore, Rosie O’Donnell and Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren hail them as modern day anti-greed evangelists.
In fact, Warren who is running for the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate seat in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has even, according to the Huffington Post, had the chutzpah to claim the mantle of having “created the intellectual foundation for what they do.”
So, what do they do?
They demand that the 49 percent, many of whom never went to college, help them out with the costs of their student loans. Incredibly, by executive fiat, the President waved his magic pen, bypassed the U.S. Constitution and provided some of the taxpayer largesse that they threw a temper tantrum over.
They demand that the nation’s job creators, who are the one hope of economic recovery, have their taxes increased, and Obama and his Senate sidekick Harry Reid, are working in tandem to attempt to increase taxes in order to keep the big government machine in place.
They demand that public employee unions be protected from reasonable changes that eliminate the political negotiating power of the unions and would ensure the fiscal soundness of local and state governments. Once again, these so-called 99 percenters are more interested in keeping the politically connected awash in taxpayer cash, leaving the 49 percenters on the hook for the costs of both existing deals, and the $2.8 trillion outstanding in state and municipal bond debt that must be repaid.
At the end of the day, while the disgruntled, public park campers rail against the big banks and crony capitalism, their policy alternatives are suitable for spoiled brats who are disappointed that their lives are harder than they expected. And they want the 49 percent who pay taxes to be forced to keep them in the style that they feel they deserve.
So the next time you hear about the so-called 99 percent, remember who is going to pay for the government expansion that is the inevitable outcome of assuaging their demands.
The 49 percenters who go to work every day, pay their bills and scramble to get by in a tough economy. Not asking for a handout, just a government that doesn’t destroy their employment opportunities.
In America, it is the 49 percenters who matter. They pay the freight and will bear the burden of the massive government debt being incurred by our nation’s irresponsible leaders and those Occupiers who are egging them on.
Hopefully, the government that the 99 percenters embrace as the answer, will have many of its onerous job killing regulations and taxes stripped away because they punish the productive.
If the 49 percenters win, their percentage will grow and many who now occupy tents in our nation’s cities will be occupying a job, joining the 49 percenters who pay the bills.
If the 99 percenters win, America is likely to be unrecognizable in a mere generation.
The question is, what kind of U.S.A. will our nation decide to become?
Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Rick on Twitter at @RManning957.
