Paramount Theatre
Unenlightened Self-Interest
RECEIVED Wed., April 15, 2009
Dear Editor,
Fact: Of a strictly volunteer group of 1 million of you marching in a "tea party," 995,000 are earning less than $250,000 a year. Your taxes are going up zero. The other 5,000 (not a single one of whom will be marching since they've duped you into marching for them) who make $250,000-plus a year will have their taxes raised 3% – or about $30,000 in taxes per every million dollars they make.
So for the 995,000 of you who've been duped into marching for the rich (they'll be in the clubhouse or on a yacht watching you on TV, howling), the real panic these people are feeling is not the paltry 3% extra they'll be paying but that the stimulus bill will greatly enhance education, finally raising you from a level of idiots to thinkers.
Meanwhile, just in case you wonder how you got to be so stupid, research of any block of 10 years of the minimum wage laws will explain, but I especially like the one from 1997 to 2007, when we earned $5.15 an hour, and CEOs earned 25 times that. Finally, in 2007, when it was raised to a magnanimous $7.25 an hour, those same CEOs' earnings had rocketed by 400 times as much (about $2,900 an hour). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand where your raises went. Support the stimulus, get educated, or keep being subservient.
Fact: Of a strictly volunteer group of 1 million of you marching in a "tea party," 995,000 are earning less than $250,000 a year. Your taxes are going up zero. The other 5,000 (not a single one of whom will be marching since they've duped you into marching for them) who make $250,000-plus a year will have their taxes raised 3% – or about $30,000 in taxes per every million dollars they make.
So for the 995,000 of you who've been duped into marching for the rich (they'll be in the clubhouse or on a yacht watching you on TV, howling), the real panic these people are feeling is not the paltry 3% extra they'll be paying but that the stimulus bill will greatly enhance education, finally raising you from a level of idiots to thinkers.
Meanwhile, just in case you wonder how you got to be so stupid, research of any block of 10 years of the minimum wage laws will explain, but I especially like the one from 1997 to 2007, when we earned $5.15 an hour, and CEOs earned 25 times that. Finally, in 2007, when it was raised to a magnanimous $7.25 an hour, those same CEOs' earnings had rocketed by 400 times as much (about $2,900 an hour). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand where your raises went. Support the stimulus, get educated, or keep being subservient.
Jim Lacey