Let me be quite clear again about one fact that gets lost: we have plenty of money in the country. There is no debt or deficit "crisis" even if people across the political spectrum, including former labor leaders, are regurgitating complete nonsense about the "crisis". This is simple: it's class warfare and the rich don't want to pay their fair share. Indeed, here's some more evidence of what they are doing: stashing it away in secret foreign bank accounts.
From a variety of outlets, this from the Wall Street Journal:
A federal grand jury in Virginia indicted four Swiss bankers who worked for Zurich-based Credit Suisse, as U.S. authorities widened their campaign against foreign banks that help U.S. customers evade taxes.
The four are accused of engaging in "illegal cross-border banking that was designed to assist U.S. customers evade their income taxes by operating and maintaining secret bank accounts at the bank and other Swiss banks," according to the indictment announced by the U.S. Department of Justice Wednesday
.
And...
As of the fall of 2008, the Department of Justice alleged the unnamed international bank maintained "thousands of secret accounts" for customers in the U.S. with as much as $3 billion in total assets under management in those accounts. The conspiracy dates back to 1953, the Department of Justice said, and involved two generations of U.S. tax evaders including U.S. customers who inherited secret accounts at the bank.
The Credit Suisse scandal follows on the scandal involving thousands of accounts stashed with cash at UBS, which cut a deal with the U.S. government to release names on the accounts.
Now, in the scheme of things--an economy of trillions of dollars--a few billion is chump change. But, there's a pattern here:
Evade taxes by stashing money in foreign accounts.
Refuse to pay a fair share in taxes--thereby forcing states and the federal government, led by people with no spine who do not want to go after their large campaign contributors, to cut services and declare a "crisis" needing cuts in pay and benefits for regular people.
Engage in a long-term robbery of the people, using the so-called "free market" as a rhetorical disguise, that shifts an enormous amount of wealth into the hands of a few.
The best encapsulation of this came some months ago from the mouth of none-other-than Bill Gates Sr. In an interview with "60 Minutes", Gates was asked about his ardent support for imposing a state income tax in Washington on individuals earning more than $200,000 annually or households earning more than $400,000 annually:
"Businesses are saying they'll leave," Stahl pointed out.
"Yes. But the real truth of the matter is that the people that own businesses are the people who will be paying the tax. And my analysis is they don't want to pay the tax," Gates said. "The rich guys don't want to pay the tax."
"Are you saying you just think they're greedy?" Stahl asked.
"No," he replied. "They're defensive. I guess you could call it greed, I suppose. Wanting to not write another check, sure," Gates said.
"Steve Ballmer?" Stahl asked. "He's worth $14 billion. You don't think he..."
"He's a very fine guy, too. The fact of the matter is there are 43 states in this country that have a state income tax. And in those states, the Microsofts or the ABCs, whatever, have not fled the state. I mean, it's just a gross exaggeration," Gates said.
The rich guys don't want to pay the tax.
Bumper-sticker please!