Here is a few facts:

$3 trillion of the U.S. budget deficit was caused by tax cuts to the rich under the Bush administration. 

THE RICHEST 1 (ONE) PERCENT OF AMERICANS POSSESS MORE WEAKTH THAN
THE COMBINED WEALTH OF THE BOTTOM 90 (NINETY) PERCENT!

Do you realize what the above statement means? The bottom 90% is comprised of:
1) Every member of the middle class
2) Every member of the lower class
3) Half the members of the wealthy upper class

That means the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand, possesses more wealth then all these people COMBINED!

In the late 70's, the richest 1% owned less 9% of income!
 
How did we get to this point in our history? I will discuss this in greater detail in my next article "The War Against Middle Class".

Until then, here's something that may exasperate you: Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do--that is, if they pay taxes at all. 

According to Forbes, General Electric, last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.  Avoiding taxes is nothing new for General Electric. In 2008 its effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%. 

Hewlett-Packard earned pretax income of $9.4 billion, but managed to keep their tax rate the same as someone earning less than $33,950 a year. How did they do it? Book profits at lower-tax foreign subsidiaries.

Verizon has a lovely 10.5% tax rate (don't you wish you had the same). That’s better than a long term capital gain. Although Verizon earned $11.6 billion in pretax income, they have diverted much of their income through foreign wireless partner Vodafone

Chevron paid $8 billion in taxes on $18.5 billion in pretax income. So why did they make the list? Chevron only sent Uncle Sam a check for $200 million. The rest was paid abroad in lower-tax countries. I think they should change their logo colors from red, white and blue to something more representative of the Caymans

We all know Ford and other car makers have been skidding since the recession began. The struggling car maker still managed to earn $3 billion in pretax income. The beauty? Ford only plunked down $69 million in taxes — a 2.3% tax rate. Not bad considering all the other subsidies, bailouts, and cash for clunkers we’ve already given as gifts to one of the oldest car manufacturers in the world.

ExxonMobile did pay $17.6 billion in taxes on $37.3 billion in pretax income. However, unlike Chevron, none of Exxon’s taxes were paid in the US. That’s funny … I think they sell a fair amount of profitable gasoline here.

Bank of America earned pretax income of $4.4 billion in 2009, yet the financial services super market tallied up a $1.9 billion tax benefit. How could such a travesty occur? Bank of America scoured the tax code for deductions like $860 million in tax-exempt income, $670 million in low-income housing credits, and a $600 million loss on shares of foreign subsidiaries. Making matters worse for the US Treasury, Bank of America has a provision for credit losses of $49 billion which will carry over for a long, long time

Molson Coors paid no taxes in 2009, and was actually paid $14.7 million by the government. The company used its UK and
Canadian based businesses to house gains, paying lower taxes in those countries. Coors also deferred taxes to future years.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Cliché, sure, but it's also truer than at any time since the Gilded Age.The poor are getting poorer, wages are falling behind inflation, and social mobility is at an all-time low. 
 
If you're in that top 1%, life is grand, but the rest?

Here is a few facts about the rest:
(Source - Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2010 - Highlights)

 • The official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent — up from 14.3 percent in 2009. This was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points, from 12.5 percent to 15.1
percent.

• In 2010, 46.2 million people were in poverty, up from 43.6 million in 2009—the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty.

• Between 2009 and 2010, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic Whites (from 9.4 percent to 9.9 percent), for Blacks (from 25.8 percent to 27.4 percent), and for Hispanics (from 25.3 percent to 26.6 percent). For Asians, the 2010 poverty rate (12.1 percent) was not statistically different from the 2009 poverty rate.1

• The poverty rate in 2010 (15.1 percent) was the highest poverty rate since 1993 but was 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available.

• The number of people in poverty in 2010 (46.2 million) is the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.

• Between 2009 and 2010, the poverty rate increased for children under age 18 (from 20.7 percent to 22.0 percent) and people aged 18 to 64 (from 12.9 percent to 13.7 percent), but was not statistically different for people aged 65 and older (9.0 percent).
 
America is getting poorer.   As you can see from the above report, 46.2 million Americans are now living in poverty. The number of those living in poverty in America has grown by 2.6 million in just the last 12 months, and that is the largest increase that we have ever seen since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959. Not only that, median household income has also fallen once again -that makes three years in a row!  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States dropped 2.3% in 2010 after accounting for inflation. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.  
 
Should we be excited that our incomes are going down and that a record number of Americans slipped into poverty last year? Should we be thrilled that the economic pie is shrinking and that our debt levels are exploding? All of those that claimed that the U.S. economy was recovering and that everything is going to be just fine have some explaining to do.
 
The Republicans dare to call a tax increase on the rich "class warfare"?
 
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) made the comment in floor remarks in which he welcomed President Obama's plan to raise taxes on thewealthy to help reduce the deficit."More than anyone else, these millionaires and billionaires benefited from Bush tax cuts and contributed $3 trillion to our deficit, to help plunge this nation into a financial hole," Reid said on the Senate floor. "A balanced approach to reduce our deficit means those who have benefited the most from policies that created our deficit should also help solve our deficit."

Greed has always existed and it always will, but when it's unchecked by government, which has been happening since the 1970s, it festers on itself. It becomes outsized and it badly distorts the economy. 
 
When self-interest of politicians and corporations rises to a level of greed that overwhelms the economic state, people start using the power of corruption and business to undermine the way politics and markets should work.

What happened in the Bush era (and present day) was that people worked in their self-interest and in the interest of greed. They didn't just take more risk.They were not deluded. They knew what they were doing and knew what the outcome would be.
 
Since the late 70's, tax rates on the very rich have plummeted. Between the end of World War II and 1980, the top tax bracket remained over 70 percent — and even after deductions and credits was well over 50 percent. Now it’s 36 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the capital gains rate was 35 percent. Now it’s 15 percent. 

Not only are rates lower now, but loopholes are bigger. 18,000 households earning more than a half-million dollars last year paid no income taxes at all. In recent years, according to the IRS, the richest 400 Americans have paid only 18 percent of their total incomes in federal income taxes. Billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity managers are allowed to treat much of their incomes as capital gains (again, at 15 percent).

The great irony is if America’s super rich paid taxes like they use to the long-term budget deficit would be far lower. This is why a tax increase on the super rich must be part of any budget agreement. Otherwise the super rich will make the income and wealth gap far wider. 

Worse yet, average working Americans who can least afford it will either lose the services they depend on, or end up with a tax burden they cannot bear. 
 
Greed has really drove this decade: money and self-interest in the extreme drove very bad decision-making by politicians and on Wall Street, which in turn, it's important to emphasize, deeply harmed the American economy.

The corporate world is plagued by an insatiable desire for wealth and power. And Republicans are no better than those financial whores who helped get us into this mess. They put personal gain over the people they are elected to serve.

Question: what if wealth is acquired unjustly at the expense of another’s liberty? Do they just sit back and allow it to happen? Do they eventually rise up and seek justice?

I have a feeling time is running out.