The Richest 1 Percent

Many people have been saying the richest 1 percent should pay for all of the new government spending. Well, if that happened we would probably still have the richest 1,000, but most of the 3 million richest 1 percent would be demoted to barely above the poverty line.

My data for this is completely unscientific, as the average annual income of the richest 1 percent is hard to come by in anything except a percentage compared to the lower 90 percent. I found the dollar value described by a GDEA article linked below as being "just above $1 million" in 2001. After an hour and a half of searching that was the ONLY figure I could find, and its rather ambiguous. However, relying on that and considering if the richest 1 percent paid for all of 2009's federal spending it would average out to be $1,166,666 per rich person if I round the total government spending down by 17 million dollars. So if the average top 1 percent is earning "just above $1 million" and the average cost to them would be over a hundred thousand above a million.

Place yourself in their situation. If you worked in a country and earned a good living but had to give it all back to the government to support 300 million other people would you stay in that country? How much like slavery does that sound? Now, will you ever again call for only the rich to pay for every public opportunity you benefit from?

http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/about_us/roach_cs_monitor_12_03.htm