[Kennypor]

<font color="#222222">Not only does he evidently believe the shit he types, he seems extremely passionate about the shit he types. To be honest, I was just thinking out loud as I typed my suggestion. I know it's not perfect, and because I wasn't totally clear about what I was saying, Joe made some erroneous assumptions which are partially my fault. I wasn't implying that kids should starve and that Marines should go unarmed, I was thinking more along the lines of mothballing some art galleries or something. Again, just thinking out loud.

Our economic mess is multi-faceted (deficit, taxes, gov't spending, consumer spending, jobs, etc etc etc) and I was addressing primarily the consumer spending part of it. Why? Well, I'm just a consumer I guess. Looking at astronomically huge and expansive problems from an intimately personal perspective isn't the only way I look at things, it's just one way. Anyhow, I'll switch gears.

Making the rich pay more may make people like Joe feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but even if we taxed them at say, 35%, it would do precisely jackshit towards stomping out our deficit. The Buffett Tax isn't a financial tool to help fix the problem; Obama may wholeheartedly believe it is (or not, I don't know what he's thinking), but it reeks of class warfare and it strikes me as merely an empty gesture of political will, nothing more and nothing less. Hell even if we taxed the rich at 100% (purely hypothetical, but bear with me here), it would make nary a dent in the deficit.

"Whatchoo talkin' bout, Mista D?" Well let's crunch some numbers, and see wtf I'm talking about.

Wage Statistics for 2009

Add up the total personal income of everyone earning $1 million and more and that comes out to almost $184 billion. Tax it 100% like I said earlier, take every last penny that millionaires and billionaires earn, and what would you have? As for the nations current financial position, consider the following:

US Tax Revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal Budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New National Debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National Debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent Budget Cuts: $38,500,000,000

But that's hard to relate to the average American, there's too many zeros. To make it easier, let's remove 8 zeros and pretend it's our family budget:

Annual Family Income: $21,700
Money the Family Spent: $38,200
New Debt on the Credit Cards: $16,500
Outstanding Balance on the Credit Cards: $142,710
Total Budget Cuts: $385 (Golly gee willikers, they worked really hard to cut those expenses!)

But now let's add $184 billion and see how much it really helps when we take off 8 zeros for the family budget. That gives us an additional $1,840 in annual income. How does that extra money change our family budget sheet?

Annual Family Income: $23,540
Money the Family Spent: $38,200
New Debt on the Credit Cards: $14,660
Outstanding Balance on the Credit Cards: $140,870
Total Budget Cuts: $385

$184 billion? With a $3.82 trillion budget that's enough money to keep the federal government going for 18 whole days, but that is only if you take ALL OF IT! Yeah, that really helped a heck of a lot, we finally got the rich to pay up at 100% tax rates and everyone can see our problems will finally be solved! Uh huh. Like I said before: Class warfare, plain and straight up. This will appeal to the