While I Think Many of the OWS People are Trendy Ninnies

…I don’t think the sense that something is deeply wrong with our society is wrong. As Caelum et Terra points out:

The top one per cent of Americans own forty-two per cent of all wealth, while the richest twenty per cent hold eighty-seven per cent of the country’s wealth. Furthermore, the richest 11,000 American households have more income than the bottom 25 million households (over 75 million Americans.)

According to Forbes magazine, during eight years of the Bush administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion.
In 1955, IRS records indicated that the 400 richest people in the country were each worth an average $12.6 million, adjusted for inflation. Today, the 400 richest increased their average wealth to $3.45 billion, an increase of 274 fold.

In 1955, the richest tier paid an average 51.2 per cent of their income in taxes that included loopholes. Today the richest Americans pay less than 17.2 per cent of their income in taxes, almost the same rate as declared by billionaire-investor Warren Buffet.

In 1955, the proportion of federal income from corporate taxes was 33 per cent. Today it decreased to about 7.4 per cent. In 2009, GE generated $10.3 billion in pre-tax income but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, reported in 2009 a record $45.2 billion profit, but paid none of it to the IRS.

Meanwhile, fifty million Americans have no health insurance while 46.2 million (one in six, and twenty-two per cent of all American children) live in poverty, the most in fifty-two years.

According to the latest labor statistics over 14 million Americans are jobless, while over 30 million are underemployed. Five million people have already given up looking for work after one year.

That agitprop from guys like Limbaugh that everything is just fine and bleats of protest about our dysfunctional economy are due *entirely* to bored trust fund babies looking to be gangstas is getting pretty threadbare.