A Message To The Tea Party

This message is for the Tea Party and anti- big government people. I hope you will put it in perspective for your friends by forwarding this information to them. What does a billion seconds have to do with a billion dollars? Nothing. Instead, let's compare the billion dollars to the number of stars. One billion stars would be only about 0.00000000000001% of the estimated total 100 sextillion stars in the Universe. Makes $1 billion look pretty insignificant, doesn't it?

 In fact, both comparisons are bogus. Neither minutes nor stars are a fair comparison for money. Let's get down to money, which is what is really what they're talking about. $1 billion is only about 1.5% of the wealth of the richest man in the world according to Forbes.

 In fact, Forbes says there are 1,153 people in the world who have more than $1 billion. Three of the people trying to buy the election for the Republicans, Charles and David Koch and Sheldon Adelson, are nos. 12-14 and worth collectively about $75 billion. Three Waltons are not far behind, with a combined $70 billion.

 Shall we look at corporations?. Those entities which the Supreme Court considers people, entitled to spend as much as they want influencing our elections? The most profitable corporation in 2011, according to Fortune, was Exxon Mobil, making more than $41 billion a year on total revenues of about $453 billion. That's just one company. Wal-Mart made more than $15 billion on revenues of $447 billion.

See,those guys are relatively small. Consider Bank of America, which didn't make as much money (only about $1.4 billion,but who's counting?) but has total assets of $2.1 Trillion. Yes, that's spelled with a "TR." That's 8 times the relatively modest $250 billion which people complained that Senator Landrieu wanted to rebuild the whole City of New Orleans!


 Don't you think it's worth a mere 1/8th the assets of one bank to rebuild the entire City of New Orleans, which is a major asset for all of the United States, even the world? And that isn't even our largest bank -- J.P. Morgan Chase had lower revenues than BOA but had profits of about $19 billion and total assets of more than $2.2 Trillion.

  Now, let's consider what these Tea Party people have to say about taxes. The country's most prosperous peacetime  was the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950s.(I was born at the end of it!)  , At the time, The United States of America was "the most prosperous nation in the world," and "had the largest middle class in the world."

 At that time, the Federal Income Tax rate for rich people -- the top marginal rate -- was . . . 91%! The top Federal Estate Tax rate was 77%. In other words, the country enjoyed its greatest prosperity, and the middle class was booming while rich people were paying 91% of their income in Federal Income Tax, and then the Federal Government received 77% of their estates.

Don't let anyone tell you that we have to reduce taxes on rich people in order to bring about prosperity. In fact, there are studies that show that the general economy gets worse when the rich get richer.

Digest that for a minute....And for the rest of us sane people...Don't Boo...Vote in November!