The Grand Canyon

I've been cheering for the WI unions for the past week hoping that their moronic gov will cave to popular sentiment. But a clip of the Daily Show got me thinking about the hypocrisy of cheering for one group of folks protesting the government (unions) while ridiculing another (teabaggers).

Focusing on just the financial aspect of these groups, at the core I believe they're both protesting in order to protect their incomes. It's their method for protecting that income that's different. The teabaggers want to pay less in taxes so that they get to keep more of their income. While the unions bargain collectively as a group to secure the best wages and benefits for their members.

I previously wrote how I don't believe trying to avoid paying your taxes, or less of your taxes, is fair at a societal level if you're still using the services the taxes go to. You may be trying to hang on to more of your income but I believe it's a greedy, self-centered, and short-sighted way to do so. Another interesting argument I recently read is how public workers bargaining with the government is essentially the government arguing with itself to pay itself more, at the expense of all the taxpayers. But behind these groups there's a really huge elephant that I don't think anybody is bringing up and that's what makes these groups so angry and passionate.

There is a massive income disparity in the United States and none of us are winning.

276 million Americans (the bottom 90%) have a yearly average family income of $31,000. While about 30,000 people (the top 0.01%) have a yearly average family income of $27,300,000. Average executive pay is now 185 times that of the average employee.

The distribution of wealth has become so unfair over the past 30 years that we are just fighting over crumbs, not even table scraps, of the rich. And the people we think of as rich aren't close either. They're just the butlers to the actual upper class of the country that has the real money.

Why are 0.01% of the ultra-rich getting huge tax breaks when unemployment is at a record high and people are losing their homes? How can a population be convinced that free healthcare would be terrible thing that they don't want? Why aren't we more angry that our yearly incomes are flat and what we do earn is worth less each year. Why are we losing services and being asked to pay more for what little is left?

The glaring realization is that our parents right now aren't better off financially then their parents were. And we won't be better off than our parents or grandparents at their age either if this pattern continues.