Okay, so one of the recent talking points that conservatives have been using lately has been to complain that 50% of Americans pay no income tax. The unspoken part of that complaint, of course, is that these are poor Americans who arent paying taxes, rather than millionaires or corporations, and as such are undeserving of receiving any government "largess" in return.
Well, John Stewart the other day made an interesting point, which you can watch, and then I'll add to it. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Now, even if you were to take everything that the bottom 50% of America possesses, it would only pay off a tenth of the deficit (the wealth of the bottom half of the nation amounts to somewhere around 1.5 trillion-ish*, split amongst 150 million people).
Next, imagine that we slash the budget on stuff like money spent on "job and family security", "education and job training", medicare and medicaid. Hey look, there's another 1.7 trillion!
By golly, maybe Republicans are right! Just nine years of giving nothing to the "poor" (you know, those folks "who dont pay taxes") and we'll have the debt paid off, all without any pain at all for corporations and millionaires.
Yay!
* That's just my estimate, and while my math may be wrong, it wont be off by enough of an amount to make my general point incorrect.
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