Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 502-503

People on benefits are almost universally portrayed as helpless and useless. Lacking either opportunity or enterprise, their lives, we are told, are a miserable round of waiting and wasting. Some recipients do live like this, and many are desperate for work, but hundreds of thousands use their benefit payments as a very low wage for the most socially useful employment of all. Among them are those who devote their lives to bringing up children or caring for the elderly. Voluntary organizations rely on people who would rather do something useful for next to nothing than something destructive for many times more. It's arguable that no one has made a greater contribution to the economy than the activists using their dole to highlight injustice and ineptitude: protesters saved Britain £19 billion when they helped force the last government to cut its demented road-building programme. Our £80 a week is trifling when compared to the extraordinary sacrifices many of our dole bludgers make for us: they subsidise the social fabric with their lives.
from
Give them a carrot
The stick doesn't work. It's time for a U-turn on unemployment
By George Monbiot
Thursday October 22, 1998
The Guardian


AA
Here are some of the ways the rich get richer unfairly. You can click through the links to read more on each of these.

Corporate Welfare - Redistribution From Poor To Rich - At least 100 billion dollars is taken from all of us taxpayers and handed over to corporations in this country [USA] every year. Much of that is then handed out in bonuses to wealthy managers of these companies.

How The Rich Get Richer - This post on the New Ideas Blog is about a scam that Warren Buffet pointed out at least seven years ago (and nothing has been done about it). It's a legal way for corporations to raid the pension funds of employees and put the money in the pockets of their wealthiest mangers.

Spread The Wealth? - While calling Obama a "redistributionist," John McCain suddenly announces during a debate that he wants to spend $300 billion to buy bad mortgages and reduce the principle. Those of us who responsibly bought homes we can afford (ours was $65,000) get to have our money redistributed to those with $300,000 homes?

A Bailout For The Rich - The "bailout" begins. $10 billion to Morgan Stanley - they hand out $6.44 billion in bonuses. Goldman Sachs gets $10 billion and pays out $6.85 billion in bonuses. I'm not making this up. That $700 billion constitutes a huge transfer of taxpayer money to some of the wealthiest Americans.

Tax Loopholes For The Rich - There was a time when I argued that loopholes only allowed the wealthy to keep more of what is their's to begin with. But what if they paid nothing (or too little) while benefiting from government services paid for by others? Isn't that an upward redistribution?

Millionaire Welfare Farmers - Why should minimum wage workers have their money taken to give more money to millionaire farmers? They shouldn't, but that's what is going on. The poor that get hurt the worst don't live in this country though.

Some Corporate Welfare Examples - I hate to focus on the negative, but it's difficult to understand the magnitude of the transfer of wealth from poor and middle class to the wealthy if we don't look at a few examples of it. You'll find five more examples here.

Corporate Welfare - A Definition - My definition and a few examples of indirect subsidies.

The Working Poor Do Pay Taxes - Contrary to the claims of some conservatives that 40% of Americans pay no taxes, most pay far more than is realized. A guy flipping burgers may even be paying a higher percentage of income in taxes than Warren Buffet, as you will see.

Social Security Rip Off - Recent studies showed that some retirees need social security to avoid poverty - 12% of them. The other 88% simply get to improve their lifestyle at the expense of working folk who support this Ponzei scheme. In fact, about $100 billion annually goes to retirees who make more than the average household income - a huge transfer of wealth from young to old and sometimes from the poor to the wealthy.

The Poor Side Of Town - Living in a mobile home for years, I watched as the process unfolded. The poor are regulated out of town - another way the poor are taken advantage to make people wealthier.

Preying On Poor Countries - Imagine a scheme to make rich bankers richer while making some of the poorest people of the world poorer, and all at U.S. taxpayer expense. You don't have to imagine it - it has been around for a while.

Property Tax Rates Are Higher For The Poor - Unknown to the average person, it is renters who actually pay the property taxes on the homes they rent. And these properties are taxed much more heavily than others.

Federal Reserve Fraud - How do you take billions from the people without them knowing? Print money to loan to their government at interest. This is one of the biggest rip-offs you'll ever read about.

Get Rid Of Corporate Taxes - See who really pays these taxes, and what should be done instead.

The Rich Get Richer With Government Help - This page tallies up the damage done - far more goes to the rich than the total of all welfare aimed at the poor.
The Redistribution Of Wealth To The Wealthy
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