Originally Posted By: Mithus
My comment has nothing to do with 1 paying 50%, that to me seems a lie, because your middle class is strong, here in brazil the middle class is only 20% of population but pays for 70% of total taxes.
It is not a lie (except for Wolfgang's rounding errors). It is a demonstrable fact that the top 25% (anything over about $62,000 per year)of wage earners in the U.S.A pay over 85% of the total taxes, and the top 1% pay nearly 40% of total income tax. So the top 1% pays 40% and the next 24% pay 45% leaving just 15% to be paid by the other 75% of the wage earners, most of whom pay $0 in income tax each year. Something like 47% of folks in this country receive some sort of government assistance. If you're on the government dole you're either paying very little in income tax or nothing at all.

To address your question directed at me Mithus, we do not live in a democracy. We live in a representative republic. A democracy is mob rule, which is what the asshats at OWS are advocating and what the morons is Egypt want. It will only lead to more and more increased chaos and eventually some leader will "have to step in and take over, benevolently of course, to get things settled down." Ask the folks living in Cuba how that's worked out for them.

Democracy, left to its own devices, very quickly devolves into rule by the largest mob with the most charismatic leader. Our founders recognized that and that is a large part of how we ended up with the system we have. A system, by the way, that has lead to the most progress and most opportunity for individual upward mobility the earth has ever known.

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