If you are like me, you are absolutely sick and disgusted with the “Occupy” movements here in the US and abroad. The people attending all of these events advocate the confiscation of wealth from “the greedy rich” and “the evil corporations”. Even worse than their ridiculous demands are the fact that the Political Left, including President Obama, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as a cabal of labor union leaders and Hollywood celebrities (and all of the other notable left-wing “celebrities”) are giving positive support to these idiots.
These people “occupying” business districts, government districts, public squares and shopping areas, and some school grounds are nothing more than petulant, greedy thugs who think they have a right to confiscate the rightful fruits of direct labor and investment. In the minds of the liberal left, including His Royal HighAss, our hopeful President-for-Life Obama, anyone making more than $250,000 in combined family or household income is “wealthy”. Of course, they overlook the fact that a good education at an upper-level college can cost more than $30,000 per year.
Bloomberg’s website gives the following data on the most recent academic year’s tuition rates nationwide:
You could spend a lot more for an Ivy League college, of course. Harvard University and Yale University charge $33,696 and $36,500 respectively for tuition alone for the 2009-2010 year. Add in room and board, as well as other expenses, and you’ve cracked $50,000 a year.
Compare that with a national state-university tuition average of $6,762 and you know how much of a deal Wyoming is at $3,621. At the high end are New Jersey, $10,874; New Hampshire, $10,522; Vermont, $10,500; and Illinois, $10,353.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2009-08-18/harvard-ivy-leagues-bust-tuition-cost-bubble-john-f-wasik.html
So, if you are a member of a “greedy rich” family with a +$250k income, and two kids heading off to college, sending them off to an Ivy League university could potentially cost you a total of $400k for tuition and board (2 x $50k per year x 4 years). Consider that if you actually ARE at the “magic threshhold” of $250k, you probably pay about the national average in taxes of 45%. This number would include all your federal, state and local taxes, income taxes, property taxes, school taxes, and sales taxes, as well as FICA and Medicare contributions. So, you wind up with 55% of your $250k salary after taxes, or about $137,500. So that is what your friendly neighborhood IRS Examiner would call “disposable income”. Except of course that your mortgage, homeowner’s insurance, car payment, car insurance, transportation expenses, utilities and other necessities will probably eat up about 25% of that remaining $137.5k, leaving you with about $100k. Well, that’s plenty of money left to live on, so you are still “rich”, right?
Well, what about health insurance? And retirement contributions. And savings for that “rainy day”? Long term investments for the future of your children? And household maintenance expenses like lawncare, snow removal, the occasional roof repair, pest control, etc? Oh, and I almost forgot to metion another “imperative”: food! That’s right, we all need to eat, don’t we? So figure in the cost to feed a typical family of four for a year. And since the typical $250k family has both parents working full time to generate that income, there’s almost no time to prepare meals, and so factor in another 15% on top of your food costs for fast food and restaurant meals. Well, by the time you pay all of those expenses, you may have $30k to $40k remaining. Plenty of money, right?
Oops…we also have those darned “incidental expenses” we never really plan for: clothing, footwear, insurance deductibles and co-pays, auto repairs, entertainment, vacations, furniture, cable TV, internet, and many, many more. So in reality, we have about $20k left over. Well, let’s divide all of that among the four people in the household, and that’s $5k per person, or less than $100.00 per week of spending money in your pocket for each member, from Monday to Sunday. At $6.00 for a latte’ or cappuccino, $12 for a bottle of decent wine, $7 for a fast food meal, and maybe $3 to $5 for downtown parking during the workday, that money is gone pretty quickly also, isn’t it?
So how do you pay for that Ivy League education? Most people would say Federal Student Aid; except that while it keeps expenses down in the long term, those bills have to be paid starting six months after college graduation. And if both of your wonderful children want to go on to Graduate School for a Masters degree or beyond, double down on the debt you will owe. Of course your education for a “profession” such as medicine, law or education will require anywhere from 7 to 10 years of schooling if you want that Doctoral degree, and who doesn’t want to give their children a chance at the “brass ring”? So figure that the $400k for college just went closer to $800k. Do you think that it might be a little difficult to pay for that on a household income of $250k? Are people who make that much, truly “rich”? Also consider that His Royal HighAss saw to it that all student loans are now administered by the goverment, and the interest rates have now skyrocketed in comparison to competitive bank rates.
So the lie is that those considered to be “wealthy” typically are not wealthy at all. It is an illusory ruse concocted by the leftists to perpetuate their war against capitalism.
So now, I give you the other side of this story….what about the truly rich? Those who can afford to be philanthropic? You know, the “greedy” rich and the “evil” corporations? Well, let’s take a look at charitable giving in the USA. The Center on Philanthropy, a respected think-tank at Indiana University shows that for the charitable year of 2010, the following statistics:
CHICAGO, Ill. (June 20, 2011) – Giving USA Foundation™ and its research partner, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, today announced that total charitable contributions from American individuals, corporations and foundations were an estimated $290.89 billion in 2010, up from a revised estimate of $280.30 billion for 2009. The 2010 estimate represents growth of 3.8 percent in current dollars and 2.1 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Source: http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/news/2011/06/pr-GUSA.aspx
So let’s be generous and round that number down a bit, to an even $290 BILLION dollars. Let’s understand something about this number:
First; the money comes from people who can afford it. Very few of the “poor” make any kind of substantive charitable contributions; they likely receive them.
Second; that dollar amount equals 290,000 ONE MILLION DOLLAR donations, just to put it in perspective, since many people can’t imagine a billion of anything.
Third; divide that by $13k, the maximum non-taxable annual gift according to IRS rules, and that would equate to more than 22,300,000 individual donors.
I respectfully submit that the “greedy” rich are truly not “greedy”, and that corporations are anything but “evil”. Let’s put those charitable donations into perspective;
American Red Cross national operating budget for FY 2007-2008: $5.502 Billon dollars
Source: userwww.sfsu.edu/~lertel/Documents/AMERICAN_RED_CROSS.doc
United Way 2005 expenses (last year they gave non-worldwide tax data) was a paltry $58 Million dollars
Source: http://unway.3cdn.net/01115fdb0069e36a03_ugm6bn41y.pdf
The Salvation Army reports about $2 Billion Dollars of revenue against $1.6 Billion Dollars in expenses
Source: http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/salvarmy.html
The American Cancer Society posted $848 Million Dollars in donations in 2005
Source: http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/cancer.html
So look, America’s Top 4 charities probably collect less than $10 Billion in donations today, based on historic contributions and current data. Well, that still leaves another $280 Billion in contributions among the other charities. So how many other charities are funded with the left over money? How about nearly ALL of them?
WHAT’S MY POINT????
If the “Blame Wall Street” crowd could have what it wanted, total confiscation and redistribution of personal wealth for everyone over $250k per year (which is actually what they DO advocate!), then there would be NO charitable contributions in the United States, which means the disappearance of these charitable agencies, now and forever:
AARP Foundation
Accion International
Accuracy in Media
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
ACLU Foundation
ActionAid International USA
Action Against Hunger – USA
Action on Smoking and Health
Adoptaplatoon
Africa-America Institute
African Wildlife Foundation
Africare
AFS-USA
AIDS Research Alliance
Air Force Aid Society
Alaska Conservation Foundation
Alley Cat Allies
Alliance for Retired Americans
ALM International / American Leprosy Missions
ALS Association – National Office
ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Alzheimer’s Association / Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Disorders Association
Alzheimer’s Disease Research, a program of the American Health Assistance Foundation
Alzheimer’s Foundation of America
American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults / American Brotherhood for the Blind
American Association of the Deaf-Blind
American Association of Police Officers
American Association of State Troopers
American Association of State Troopers Scholarship Foundation
American Bird Conservancy
American Brain Tumor Association
American Breast Cancer Foundation
American Brotherhood for the Blind / American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
American Cancer Society
American Civil Rights Union
American Council of the Blind – National Office
American Diabetes Association
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
American Farmland Trust
American Federation of Police & Concerned Citizens
American Forests
American Foundation for the Blind
American Foundation for Disabled Children
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
American Friends Service Committee
American Health Assistance Foundation
American Heart Association / American Stroke Association
American Humane Association
American Indian College Fund
American Indian Education Foundation / American Indian Relief Council / Council of Indian Nations / Native American AID / National Relief Charities / Navajo Relief Fund / Sioux Nation Relief Fund / Southwest Indian Relief Council
American Indian Youth Running Strong / Christian Relief Services Charities
American Institute for Cancer Research
American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Congress
American Jewish World Service
American Kidney Fund
American Legion National Headquarters
American Leprosy Missions / ALM International
American Life League
American Liver Foundation
American Lung Association / Christmas Seals – National Office
American Near East Refugee Aid
American Parkinson Disease Association
American Police and Sheriffs Association / Disabled Police and Sheriffs Foundation / Police Officers Safety Association
American Printing House for the Blind
American Red Cross
American Refugee Committee
American Rivers
American Social Health Association
American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA)
American Stroke Association / American Heart Association
American Studies Center / Radio America
American Veterans Center, a program of American Studies Center
Americans Feeding Americans / Feed the Children
Americans for UNFPA (formerly U.S. Committee for U.N. Population Fund)
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
AmeriCares
Amnesty International of the U.S.A.
AMVETS National Headquarters
AMVETS National Service Foundation
Angel Planes / Miracle Flights for Kids
Animal Legal Defense Fund
Animal Welfare Institute
Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith & Foundation
Arc of the United States – National Office
Armed Forces Aid Campaign / US Armed Forces Iraq Casualty Appeal / TREA Memorial Foundation
Armed Services YMCA of the USA
Army Emergency Relief
Arthritis Foundation
Asia Foundation
Asia Society
Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund
Asian Relief / World Villages for Children
Associated Humane Societies
Association for Firefighters & Paramedics
Association on American Indian Affairs
Autism Speaks
Avon Foundation/Avon Walk for Breast Cancer
And these are just the ones that start with the letter “A”!!!
I would like to tell you that confiscating wealth from the “rich” and the “corporations” as these idiots advocate, and as the leadership in the Democrat Party supports, would kill the social safety net in America for all time to come. It would require the formation of true “cradle to grave” federal funding for every human activity in every field of human endeavor for every family, everywhere in America. Imagine how much new debt the federal goverment would incur. Is THIS the utopia these morons are demanding?
WAKE THE HELL UP, AMERICA!
Chuck Ruggiero, Chairman
Jefferson TEA Party
Watertown, NY
NNY912 on Facebook
The ” Greedy Rich “
If you are like me, you are absolutely sick and disgusted with the “Occupy” movements here in the US and abroad. The people attending all of these events advocate the confiscation of wealth from “the greedy rich” and “the evil corporations”. Even worse than their ridiculous demands are the fact that the Political Left, including President Obama, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as a cabal of labor union leaders and Hollywood celebrities (and all of the other notable left-wing “celebrities”) are giving positive support to these idiots.
These people “occupying” business districts, government districts, public squares and shopping areas, and some school grounds are nothing more than petulant, greedy thugs who think they have a right to confiscate the rightful fruits of direct labor and investment. In the minds of the liberal left, including His Royal HighAss, our hopeful President-for-Life Obama, anyone making more than $250,000 in combined family or household income is “wealthy”. Of course, they overlook the fact that a good education at an upper-level college can cost more than $30,000 per year.
Bloomberg’s website gives the following data on the most recent academic year’s tuition rates nationwide:
You could spend a lot more for an Ivy League college, of course. Harvard University and Yale University charge $33,696 and $36,500 respectively for tuition alone for the 2009-2010 year. Add in room and board, as well as other expenses, and you’ve cracked $50,000 a year.
Compare that with a national state-university tuition average of $6,762 and you know how much of a deal Wyoming is at $3,621. At the high end are New Jersey, $10,874; New Hampshire, $10,522; Vermont, $10,500; and Illinois, $10,353.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2009-08-18/harvard-ivy-leagues-bust-tuition-cost-bubble-john-f-wasik.html
So, if you are a member of a “greedy rich” family with a +$250k income, and two kids heading off to college, sending them off to an Ivy League university could potentially cost you a total of $400k for tuition and board (2 x $50k per year x 4 years). Consider that if you actually ARE at the “magic threshhold” of $250k, you probably pay about the national average in taxes of 45%. This number would include all your federal, state and local taxes, income taxes, property taxes, school taxes, and sales taxes, as well as FICA and Medicare contributions. So, you wind up with 55% of your $250k salary after taxes, or about $137,500. So that is what your friendly neighborhood IRS Examiner would call “disposable income”. Except of course that your mortgage, homeowner’s insurance, car payment, car insurance, transportation expenses, utilities and other necessities will probably eat up about 25% of that remaining $137.5k, leaving you with about $100k. Well, that’s plenty of money left to live on, so you are still “rich”, right?
Well, what about health insurance? And retirement contributions. And savings for that “rainy day”? Long term investments for the future of your children? And household maintenance expenses like lawncare, snow removal, the occasional roof repair, pest control, etc? Oh, and I almost forgot to metion another “imperative”: food! That’s right, we all need to eat, don’t we? So figure in the cost to feed a typical family of four for a year. And since the typical $250k family has both parents working full time to generate that income, there’s almost no time to prepare meals, and so factor in another 15% on top of your food costs for fast food and restaurant meals. Well, by the time you pay all of those expenses, you may have $30k to $40k remaining. Plenty of money, right?
Oops…we also have those darned “incidental expenses” we never really plan for: clothing, footwear, insurance deductibles and co-pays, auto repairs, entertainment, vacations, furniture, cable TV, internet, and many, many more. So in reality, we have about $20k left over. Well, let’s divide all of that among the four people in the household, and that’s $5k per person, or less than $100.00 per week of spending money in your pocket for each member, from Monday to Sunday. At $6.00 for a latte’ or cappuccino, $12 for a bottle of decent wine, $7 for a fast food meal, and maybe $3 to $5 for downtown parking during the workday, that money is gone pretty quickly also, isn’t it?
So how do you pay for that Ivy League education? Most people would say Federal Student Aid; except that while it keeps expenses down in the long term, those bills have to be paid starting six months after college graduation. And if both of your wonderful children want to go on to Graduate School for a Masters degree or beyond, double down on the debt you will owe. Of course your education for a “profession” such as medicine, law or education will require anywhere from 7 to 10 years of schooling if you want that Doctoral degree, and who doesn’t want to give their children a chance at the “brass ring”? So figure that the $400k for college just went closer to $800k. Do you think that it might be a little difficult to pay for that on a household income of $250k? Are people who make that much, truly “rich”? Also consider that His Royal HighAss saw to it that all student loans are now administered by the goverment, and the interest rates have now skyrocketed in comparison to competitive bank rates.
So the lie is that those considered to be “wealthy” typically are not wealthy at all. It is an illusory ruse concocted by the leftists to perpetuate their war against capitalism.
So now, I give you the other side of this story….what about the truly rich? Those who can afford to be philanthropic? You know, the “greedy” rich and the “evil” corporations? Well, let’s take a look at charitable giving in the USA. The Center on Philanthropy, a respected think-tank at Indiana University shows that for the charitable year of 2010, the following statistics:
CHICAGO, Ill. (June 20, 2011) – Giving USA Foundation™ and its research partner, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, today announced that total charitable contributions from American individuals, corporations and foundations were an estimated $290.89 billion in 2010, up from a revised estimate of $280.30 billion for 2009. The 2010 estimate represents growth of 3.8 percent in current dollars and 2.1 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Source: http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/news/2011/06/pr-GUSA.aspx
So let’s be generous and round that number down a bit, to an even $290 BILLION dollars. Let’s understand something about this number:
First; the money comes from people who can afford it. Very few of the “poor” make any kind of substantive charitable contributions; they likely receive them.
Second; that dollar amount equals 290,000 ONE MILLION DOLLAR donations, just to put it in perspective, since many people can’t imagine a billion of anything.
Third; divide that by $13k, the maximum non-taxable annual gift according to IRS rules, and that would equate to more than 22,300,000 individual donors.
I respectfully submit that the “greedy” rich are truly not “greedy”, and that corporations are anything but “evil”. Let’s put those charitable donations into perspective;
American Red Cross national operating budget for FY 2007-2008: $5.502 Billon dollars
Source: userwww.sfsu.edu/~lertel/Documents/AMERICAN_RED_CROSS.doc
United Way 2005 expenses (last year they gave non-worldwide tax data) was a paltry $58 Million dollars
Source: http://unway.3cdn.net/01115fdb0069e36a03_ugm6bn41y.pdf
The Salvation Army reports about $2 Billion Dollars of revenue against $1.6 Billion Dollars in expenses
Source: http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/salvarmy.html
The American Cancer Society posted $848 Million Dollars in donations in 2005
Source: http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/cancer.html
So look, America’s Top 4 charities probably collect less than $10 Billion in donations today, based on historic contributions and current data. Well, that still leaves another $280 Billion in contributions among the other charities. So how many other charities are funded with the left over money? How about nearly ALL of them?
WHAT’S MY POINT????
If the “Blame Wall Street” crowd could have what it wanted, total confiscation and redistribution of personal wealth for everyone over $250k per year (which is actually what they DO advocate!), then there would be NO charitable contributions in the United States, which means the disappearance of these charitable agencies, now and forever:
AARP Foundation
Accion International
Accuracy in Media
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
ACLU Foundation
ActionAid International USA
Action Against Hunger – USA
Action on Smoking and Health
Adoptaplatoon
Africa-America Institute
African Wildlife Foundation
Africare
AFS-USA
AIDS Research Alliance
Air Force Aid Society
Alaska Conservation Foundation
Alley Cat Allies
Alliance for Retired Americans
ALM International / American Leprosy Missions
ALS Association – National Office
ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Alzheimer’s Association / Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Disorders Association
Alzheimer’s Disease Research, a program of the American Health Assistance Foundation
Alzheimer’s Foundation of America
American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults / American Brotherhood for the Blind
American Association of the Deaf-Blind
American Association of Police Officers
American Association of State Troopers
American Association of State Troopers Scholarship Foundation
American Bird Conservancy
American Brain Tumor Association
American Breast Cancer Foundation
American Brotherhood for the Blind / American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
American Cancer Society
American Civil Rights Union
American Council of the Blind – National Office
American Diabetes Association
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
American Farmland Trust
American Federation of Police & Concerned Citizens
American Forests
American Foundation for the Blind
American Foundation for Disabled Children
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
American Friends Service Committee
American Health Assistance Foundation
American Heart Association / American Stroke Association
American Humane Association
American Indian College Fund
American Indian Education Foundation / American Indian Relief Council / Council of Indian Nations / Native American AID / National Relief Charities / Navajo Relief Fund / Sioux Nation Relief Fund / Southwest Indian Relief Council
American Indian Youth Running Strong / Christian Relief Services Charities
American Institute for Cancer Research
American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Congress
American Jewish World Service
American Kidney Fund
American Legion National Headquarters
American Leprosy Missions / ALM International
American Life League
American Liver Foundation
American Lung Association / Christmas Seals – National Office
American Near East Refugee Aid
American Parkinson Disease Association
American Police and Sheriffs Association / Disabled Police and Sheriffs Foundation / Police Officers Safety Association
American Printing House for the Blind
American Red Cross
American Refugee Committee
American Rivers
American Social Health Association
American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA)
American Stroke Association / American Heart Association
American Studies Center / Radio America
American Veterans Center, a program of American Studies Center
Americans Feeding Americans / Feed the Children
Americans for UNFPA (formerly U.S. Committee for U.N. Population Fund)
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
AmeriCares
Amnesty International of the U.S.A.
AMVETS National Headquarters
AMVETS National Service Foundation
Angel Planes / Miracle Flights for Kids
Animal Legal Defense Fund
Animal Welfare Institute
Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith & Foundation
Arc of the United States – National Office
Armed Forces Aid Campaign / US Armed Forces Iraq Casualty Appeal / TREA Memorial Foundation
Armed Services YMCA of the USA
Army Emergency Relief
Arthritis Foundation
Asia Foundation
Asia Society
Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund
Asian Relief / World Villages for Children
Associated Humane Societies
Association for Firefighters & Paramedics
Association on American Indian Affairs
Autism Speaks
Avon Foundation/Avon Walk for Breast Cancer
And these are just the ones that start with the letter “A”!!!
I would like to tell you that confiscating wealth from the “rich” and the “corporations” as these idiots advocate, and as the leadership in the Democrat Party supports, would kill the social safety net in America for all time to come. It would require the formation of true “cradle to grave” federal funding for every human activity in every field of human endeavor for every family, everywhere in America. Imagine how much new debt the federal goverment would incur. Is THIS the utopia these morons are demanding?
WAKE THE HELL UP, AMERICA!
Chuck Ruggiero, Chairman
Jefferson TEA Party
Watertown, NY