Paying Their "Fair Share."

 "Taxing ones self into prosperity is like a man standing in a barrel and trying to lift himself up by the handles."

                                            Benjamin Franklin, 1789

The Top 1% of our Taxpayers pays 40.4% of all Federal income taxes.*

To join this much despised group one would have to have an AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) of $663,510 annually.

The top AGI earners earned 22.1% of all income, but due to our highly progressive tax policies, paid $40.4% of all taxes.

For context, the bottom 50% of all income earners paid only 3% of all Federal taxes.  The top 50% paid more than 97% of all income taxes.

So now, as I recall the bleatings heard from the Socialist Wing of the Democrat Party demand the "rich" pay their "fair share."  What is their "fair share?"  Is it 50%?  80%?  100%?

The "Top 1%" are already paying nearly half of all taxes, how much more should they have to pay in order to be paying their "fair share?"  

Here's the Bottom Line, as they say.  We're in the midst of a "class warfare."  We're near another civil war because some of us are pissed because we don't have a helicopter.  Or a private plane.  Or can go out to dinner or on vacay anytime we wish.  Or that even though we have a degree in Medieval Lesbian Poetry, and a yuuuge student loan debt, we're working at MickyD's. 

But those 1% folks made life choices early on, and those choices paid off.  The folks asking, "Would you like fries with that?," obviously didn't.  Must those who are now able to carry our Federal Gubmint on their backs apologize for their wealth to those who didn't?

I wish I was among them.  I'm not.  I tried, but whiffed at the plate.  I had a shot at the "brass ring," but missed.  I did okay, just not rarified air.  But I harbor no jealousy.  I learned early on that such negative feelings don't feed the bulldog.  I offer up some advice to those who are being led by their emotions.  Stop.  Get an education any way you can.  Get a job and work your way up.  Whether Black or Brown or Red or Yellow or White, capitalism rewards those who perform.  It did for me.  It would for you, too...    

*   That's the cash the Feds use to pay for such things as National Defense, B-2 bombers, statewide construction projects, healthcare insurance subsidies, MediCaid and the Federal prison system.  One doesn't pay for these things unless one pays Federal income taxes.  97% of you...don't.