Okay, CNN today just outed the "1 percent" whom we have to overthrow, because they're sucking us dry.
Extra, read all about it! It's right here:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/20/news/economy/occupy_wall_street_income/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2
I'll bet all those guys in the black, stove-pipe hats twirling their mustaches now, having cackled with glee for years over our misery, are having serious second thoughts. Maybe some are even going to imitate Muamar Gaddafi and grab a golden pistol and hide in a manhole under Zucotti Park until someone finds him and shoots him.
Probably not.
Turns out, according to CNN's stats, you only have to earn about $322,000 in gross salary, royalties, bonuses, occasional income, etc. to be statistically the 1 percent we supposedly all who want a revolution are not.
Note that this amount doesn't cover net worth (e.g., the market value of a house one owns, automobile, savings and retirement accounts, etc.), which isn't taxed directly, only when you draw income on it. If that were the case the 1 percent would be more like 20 percent, and it would be larger if you counted only those over 50. I know an elderly lady who told me she lives on about $20,000 a year for the rest of her life on liquid assets worth about $250,000.
Given her location in New York State, where she has to pay a lot of taxes on that meager $20,000, she technically lives way below the poverty level. And she'll never be able to work again. If the stock market tanks, she'll be even more impoverished. Seems Ben Bernanke, who with the good intentions out of which the road to hell is proverbially paid, kind of screwed her and others like her with QE2 by printing money and pushing interest rates toward almost zero in order to "turn the economy around."
So we're not talking about little old ladies like her, who don't live in Pasadena anymore because it's too expensive. Then about WHO are we talking?
Let's start with my good friend Morris (actually, the only "Morris" I know is the erstwhile cat cartoon character, but I like the name, which is not his real name, though Morris as a human being is most likely real).
Morris is about 56 years, and has two kids in college, for which he's paying a lot for them to go to my very expensive private university, which pays me as a professor around or a little below the national average for my annual salary in a special field that is routinely below the average of all fields, because it's in something they call "the humanities," in which nobody wants to major because you can't graduate with an entry-level, high paying job having specialized in applied, global, Deleuzian semiotics. But at least with their major in applied, global, Deleuzian semiotics they can understand better than that self-important finance major why the world is unjust and needs to be transformed.
Morris, as a member of the 1 percent, makes an annual salary of $325,000 from his business as self-employed CEO of Great Expectations, Inc., an interactive software company targeting English majors with specialties in Victorian literature, which he founded. But his kids, even if they're very bright, can only get a little scholarship, because they - or at least when checking Morris' income - don't qualify for the kind of aid you can get if you parents make $50,000 a year. So Morris shells out at least $50,000 out of pocket annually so his kids, who are both majoring in applied, global Deleuzian semiotics, can get a bachelor's degree from a good university.
BTW Morris also gives about $32,000 a year to churches, Christian causes, and even the United Way because as a Christian he believes in tithing. So after all of the above comes off the top, and he pays the mortgage and high real estate taxes (he lives in California) on a house that is now half its original value, his actual salary is reduced to less than $200,000.
Wait, I forgot, he's self-employed, and his family health insurance premium is about $1500 a month, so there goes another 18K. And since he's a self-employed, small business owner, most of his business expenses pass through the company itself, which is an LLC. So when all is said and done after federal, state, and local taxes as well - and his take of course varies enormously from month to month, depending on whether anyone wants to buy his software - he has about $1000 a month in money he can now spend on the life of luxury.
Let's string Morris up! Maybe we'll have to liquidate his kids too.
Now I don't want to mention any names, but I know a lot of college administrators (even deans) who at more prestigious schools are easily in the 1 percent bracket. And if you total up the very high salaries of a lot of well-known "academic superstars", even in my field, many of whom are out there calling for "communism" while urging on the Zucotti Park protesters and getting national attention, which helps to boost their already very high regular spkeaking fees, consulting fees, book publishing contracts, etc., you may even have outed part of the 0.1 percent.
The only difference is that they don't wear black, stove-pipe hats.
After all this tedious analysis, I can proudly tell you that I am NOT part of the 1 percent, even before taxes. But I have subsidized group health insurance, don't have student loans anymore or kids to put through college, and a mortgage that is getting closer to being paid for.
There IS one stat, however, the article points out. The percentage differential between the top 1 percent and the bottom 10 percent has been growing significantly in the US over the past quarter century. That does need to be addressed. Economists have known for a long time that widening income disparities were the number one cause of the 1929 stock market crash and the great depression. Of course a lot of this disparity has to do with the aging of the population. But to address that problem, many who think they don't have to give a little will indeed have to give a little - more than the 1 percent.
Back in the 1960s our generation was one quarter of the population. The young now, who ARE getting the raw end of the deal economically, are a much smaller minority, primarily because our generation decided that for a variety of reasons they wanted to have far less children.
Developing world nations are the other way around, which is a big part of the problem with global economic imbalances.
I'll now make my statement. We're all going to have to figure out how to get along with less, and learn to graciously share better and be far more productive, even if we're old fs, with what we do have. That takes wisdom, grace, determination, and a willingness to step back from the blame-gaming and finger-pointing. It also takes a deep, spiritual engagement with divine possibilities we haven't encountered perhaps before.
There's a lot we can do in our own immediate spheres of influence. And we need to do it with a vision of the future, like the months of the early dark ages who realized before anyone else that their world was dying. They saved one civilization so it could blossom as another.
I'll start exploring those themes when the time is right.
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