hey hey folks, what's up? long time no blog, i know. well hopefully, im chatting with most of you on twitter, which has turned into my default method of rapping with everybody(aside from my usual shaking hands and kissing babies at shows. no, seriously, if you come to a show, most of the time ill be the last person to leave the merch table at the end of the night). but sometimes, 140 characters just doesnt do it, and today was one of those days. so, if i may, there's some stuff that i gotta get off my chest.....while this might require reading a few graphs, this shit is HUGELY important for any american to understand, and it means a lot to me, so please-grab some popcorn and pull up a chair.....

this morning i was having a friendly debate online with a good spirited chap about income disparity, and specifically the tax ramifications of the huge income disparity in the US. here's a few charts i'll link, but you can also just let google do the work for you as well; there's tons of data if you are curious:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/income-inequality-is-at-a_...

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.heritage.org/static/...

now here's a chart showing income tax rates over the last 100 years or so:

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

as you can see, the highest tax rate in the US peaked from around the 40's to the 70's (which happened to coincide with an apparent time of widely experienced prosperity). and we are living through one of the highest periods of INCOME disparity ever. before and after that, it drops off. specifically, after that. of course we have a progressive tax in america-i dont want to fall into a semantic argument about it, because the pro- and con- side to a progressive, or tiered, tax rate can sound very compelling, especially when we are talking about abstractions like percentages.

and this is why i felt compelled to write about this today: when you take these things OUT OF THE FRAMEWORK OF ABSTRACTIONS, they take on a completely different meaning. nobody goes into a car dealership and says "well, i'd like you to take 3.4% off of the list of the car". people say, "knock $3500 off and i'll take it". everything related to finance can be expressed in a % sign, or in a $ sign, but as soon as its expressed in a $ sign, it takes on a real-world bearing, or relativity. talking about raising or lowering your tuition, taxes, or grocery bills by 2.74% doesnt get you quite as worked up as say, making you pay $2740 more or less this year, does it? of course not.

good. now, lets apply this to the top 1% of our society. right now, the capital gains tax is 15%, and the highest tax bracket is 35%. in the middle of the 20th century, remember, it was (what sounds like a whopping) 70-94%. sounds high, right? well lets get it out of abstractions in two ways:

1-the cutoff amount NOW is around $370,000. so that means that someone who makes 375k will pay the same rate of someone who makes 1 BILLION DOLLARS in ONE YEAR. yes, there are people earning ONE BILLION DOLLARS FOR ONE YEARS' WORK in america. so, we have a tax system that is tiered as it goes down, but not as it goes up. by definition this is only partially "progressive taxation". it progresses up the ladder, and then it just.....stops.

2-here's the REAL kicker. lets play out what 35% tax vs. 70% tax looks like for a billionaire. who earns $1B a year. at 35%(which is really liberal, as the capital gains tax is 15% and most of these guys are hedge fund managers, so in actuality they are paying MUCH less than 35%, but im going along with 35% for posterity's sake), a FUCKING BILLIONAIRE WILL TAKE HOME 650 MILLION DOLLARS IN ONE FUCKING YEAR. at 70%, they take home 350 MILLION DOLLARS IN ONE FUCKING YEAR.

think about this.

if we were to revert back to not even the HIGHEST rate(94%), billionaire earners will take home 350 million dollars. in one year. now think about how hard-literally HARD-it would be to spend $958,000 EVERY DAY for an entire YEAR.

but not. that's just not good enough for the top 1% earners in america. instead, they pay somewhere between 150 million and 350 million, taking home 650-850 MILLION DOLLARS. IN A YEAR.

now think about what the difference between earning 350M and 650M is to you. seriously. right now. do it. its really not that much. you could literally buy yourself 50 bugatti's, wreck a million dollar car once a week, and still have 300M left over, EITHER WAY.  so why do we need to pad their income even more obscenely?

ok, lets get to the benefits of raising their taxes. the author robert reich has crunched the numbers in his recent book  "aftershock" and says that raising the top tier of our tax system to 70% would generate around 650 BILLION dollars in taxes a year. remember, that's the difference between the billionaire taking home 350M and 650M. our deficit right now is what, 1.3T or 1.4T? so we could get about halfway to balancing our budget JUST by this one action alone. if we reverted to the historical high of 94%, how much closer would that get us?

ok, im sorry you guys for taking up your time not talking about hot new bangers i've got coming up(which i do-THE INSANE WARRIOR, Feb. 1.2011!!!!) but really, the huge amount of income disparity in america has been something that's bothered me for a long time, but the more i read about it, the more i really think it could be one of(if not THE) biggest problem that us working class americans are facing in our time. i really do believe we are getting stroked. the shit is not cool.  as of this week, the bush tax cuts "for the rich" just got extended. the fed dumped another 600 billion dollars into the reserves of the big banks. if pumping the richest americans full of more money was really going to "trickle down", create jobs, create spending(a whole other convo for another time), why hasnt it happened? people around me are struggling.  this is not some academic shit to me; trust me, i've got a dog in this hunt.  we're all looking at possibly a very different future than what past generations saw on their horizon.

thanks for bearing with, and sharing some thoughts of mine. i've got some fun music stuff to send out soon, stay tuned!!!!!