We Are the 99 Percent

31st October 2011

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I am the 99%.

I pay income taxes. I paid more in 2010 than GE.  They got a $3.2 B citizen-funded tax refund on $14.2 B profits.
 
I don’t hate corporations, but I don’t think corporations are people.  Show me one that has had a child, moved back in with their parents, gone hungry, or watched a loved one die.  They’re a convenient, useful concept for our society, but they’re not people.  We’re managing them badly.

I am the 99% because the financial system in this country - banks, taxes, brokerages, and more - is broken and wrong.  It needs to be fixed.
I want my elected representatives to live by the same rules I have to.  When they talk about individual responsibility and personal accountability I want them to include leaders like CEO’s, corporations, and themselves, at every level of government. 

I don’t like living in a society where a company makes over $2B profit, the CEO makes over $1M per year, about 300 times the average employee, and then lays off 30,000 people.  That’s part of what’s wrong.

It shouldn’t take a life of constant heroic acts to have a family, raise children, and be secure in retirement.  That’s not the American Dream.

I think the wealth gap between the rich and everyone else threatens “big-D” Democracy in this country. It makes me think the USA is falling apart.

I think there are some things we do better together as a group than as individuals, such as roads, police & fire departments, healthcare, schools, the environment, and more. 
That doesn’t make me a “socialist”.  It does mean I think that we – 100% of us - are part of a community that is connected.   We should act like it.