Who are these evil, filthy millionaires and billionaires that Barack Obama is using as a prop in his re-election campaign? According to Obama, these people do not pay their fair share in taxes, while the middle class bears the burden. These people are tooling around in corporate jets, while you can barely afford to put gas in your car. These people are gaining their wealth through illegitimate means, while you work an honest 9AM-5PM work day. This is the kind of class warfare that Obama is throwing at the American people day after day. So the New York Post did some great reporting and came up with some facts on "the real 1%."
•Roughly 80 percent of millionaires in America are the first generation of their family to be rich. They didn't inherit their wealth; they earned it.
•According to a recent survey of the top 1 percent of American earners, slightly less than 14 percent were involved in banking or finance.
•Roughly a third of millionaires were entrepreneurs or managers of nonfinancial businesses.
•Nearly 16 percent of millionaires were doctors or other medical professionals.
•Lawyers made up slightly more than 8 percent of millionaires, and engineers, scientists and computer professionals another 6.6 percent.
•Sports and entertainment figures composed almost 2 percent of millionaires.
•NYU sociologist Dalton Conley says that "higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do."
•Overall, the rich pay an effective tax rate (after all deductions and exemptions) of roughly 24 percent. For all taxpayers as a group, the average effective tax rate is about 11 percent.
•Households with more than $1 million in income donated more than $150 billion to charity last year, roughly half of all US charitable donations.
We've also learned that the majority of the people who will be hit with Obama's class warfare tax on the rich are small business owners – the very people we rely on for private sector job growth.
Pretty evil gathering of folks, wouldn't you say? Now, a CBO report recently came out and the liberals have laminated it and bring it to every press conference, speaking event or television appearance. It is this report about income inequality in America. I've told you about it before – but we need to point out again that this is a report on income, not on wealth. Wealth is the total sum of your resources compared to income which reflects your resources over a given time period. It turns out that the evil 1% are less wealthy than they were a century ago; the top earner's share of wealth at the beginning of the 21st century is lower than it was in the early 1900s.
And while we are on the topic of the evil 1%, let's talk about greedy Wall Street. These Occutards like to protest "Big Oil" and large corporations that are supposedly destroying our environment and our economy. But let's take a look at who really owns these big oil companies. According to CNSNews:
Less than three percent of shares in 173 publicly-traded, U.S.-based oil and natural gas companies are owned by corporate management, contrary to the perception that a very small number of wealthy people are the major beneficiaries.
An analysis released last month by the economic advisory firm Sonecon found that corporate management owns 2.8 percent of shares in those companies, while almost half – 48.9 percent – are owned by individuals, either through pension funds (31.2 percent) or Individual Retirement Accounts (17.7 percent)…
"In 2010, the oil and natural gas industry directly contributed over $470 billion to the U.S. economy in spending, wages and dividends," said API vice president for regulatory and economic policy Kyle Isakower. "The dividends alone totaled about $35 billion and went to stockholders of these publicly-traded companies."
