Have you seen the percentage of income that goes toward housing? In large cities, it approaches 50% for people with low paying jobs. They are not living a life of “want” by any stretch of the imagination. And they make up over 50% of the population.
Perhaps your logic applies to people living on farms or survivalist who have completely disconnected from society.
But the are the simple facts of our post-industrial urban economy since 1960:
- Worker productivity has double since 1973, but wages have been stagnant.
- Taxes have continuously decreased since the 1960's.
- Corporate share of federal tax revenues has decreased from 28% in the 50’s, and 21% in the 60’s to less than 10% since the 1980's.
- CEO salaries have skyrocketed.
- Wall Street has crashed the economy multiple times (S&L Crisis, Hedge Fun crisis, 2008 melt down) but continually gets bailed out with tax dollars.
- Tax loopholes and illegal avoidance tacitcs (off shore bank accounts, fake corporate HQ’s in Swiss PO Boxes, moving jobs off shore, etc.) have vastly increasing the wealth of the top 1%.
If we look at the overall economic pie, there has been a massive increase in wealth since the 1960’s, but the distribution of that wealth has not grown proportionally for each group.
Your arguments blaming the average joe for wastefulness in a system that is bought and sold by 33,000 Washington lobbyists employed by the rich don’t hold much water.
