The unemployed are being held hostage by Republicans in order to make sure that the top 2.018% of households (based on income in 2009) get a tax break. I understand that this is due to the Senate, but I think we need to look at how income of the population is represented in a hypothetical sense. In other words, why are the interests of 15 million unemployed citizens being bargained in order to give a marginal tax cut to some 2.3 million households? How is it that 296 Million people are being told your taxes go up if those 6 million over there don't get their tax cut? I look at it another way, graphically, below:
According to the US Census numbers from 2009, there were 2372000 households with an income of least $250000 per year. This is 2.018% of the US population (302 million people). The mean income of this group is $425226. For simplicity, assume that every household has the same number of people, using the mean household size of 2.57 people per household (I hope that you aren’t the .57!). This assumption is probably not the best, but it will work for now. This gives a population of about 302 million people. Now let’s say all the households in that top 2.018% of households lived in together in one geographic region. Why? So that we can see how many people in the US House would represent them, of course!
There are 435 representatives (hopefully we all knew that). Since the US House is divided more or less equally based on population, the number of people each House district represents is roughly the same. So, divide the population by 435 and you get 694419 people per US Representative. Based on this, how many people would represent this hypothetical grouping of all the top incomes? That is the fraction of the 435 Representatives that represent the 2.018% of the population. Doing the math results in 8.78 Representatives. Let’s give these folks a bonus and round that up to 9. This means that an income-based House would have 9 out of 435 members representing the top 2.018% of the household incomes in the US. Let’s look at this graphically:
The nine seats in red represent the top 2.018%. Now, think about a vote. "Who thinks the tax cuts should also extend to those making more than $250000 per year?" The final count: 9 For and 426 Against. Even if you tossed in those who are aspiring to be in the $250K+ per year club (those making $200K-$249K per year), that would only add another 8 votes For.
Obviously politics involves more than voting based on income (or does it?), but it seems clear that some group has much more sway in government than others.
Why would that be? What po$$ibly could cau$e the elected official$ to $eem to put the be$t intere$t of their con$tituent$ after tho$e of a couple of percent of the population?