Wealth

Editor: Despite all the spin surrounding Mitt Romney's recent comment about the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes, there is an undeniable, sobering truth that lies in that number. And that's not the only number. While tax-and-spend politicians love to talk about the wealthy needing to "pay their fair share" of taxes, they seldom mention that approximately 70 percent of all federal income taxes are already paid by the wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers. That's right, one out of 10 Americans must bear more than two-thirds of the nation's income tax bill while approximately half of Americans (the aforementioned 47 percent)

It was a clear sign the campaign has gone on too long when I had a dream about Mitt Romney a couple of nights ago. Other than the fact that the Romney summoned from my unconscious was sitting at a breakfast table with me and was willingly answering questions, the dream was pretty realistic. The candidate was dressed in his ubiquitous Brooks Brothers checked shirt and relaxed-fit jeans. He seemed relaxed, too. But when I asked him a softball question about the personal strains of campaigning, he answered with a generic policy statement.

If a politician rose in the well of Congress to urge his colleagues to take action to repel the recent Martian attack, he'd be laughed out of office and strongly encouraged to get his head examined. Pondering solutions to imaginary problems is public policy insanity. So I ask: Given that the threat of socialism swallowing America is as imaginary as a Martian invasion, why aren't politicians and television pundits who warn that something must be done to reverse redistributive welfare in the United States also treated with dismissive ridicule?

In his recent column ("'Occupy movement got America wrong," Sept. 23), Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. illustrates the denial of economic reality in America that is continually propagated by the 1 percent. At the heart of his argument is the idea that the American Dream is alive and well, the happy meritocracy is humming along nicely, and that Occupy Wall Street is a group of slackers who devote their energies to trying to derail this bedrock concept upon which he and the 1 percent perch. Either he wasn't paying attention and completely missed what Occupy is about, or simply will not admit that he does know.

Some pundits are bemoaning the unremarkable one-year anniversary of the "Occupy" movement's entry into American politics. Indeed, it was not so long ago that daily street protests were the object of intense media coverage. For many progressives, hopes were high. Some viewed the angst-ridden movement as a convenient adjunct for the president's re-election campaign. The timing seemed perfect. Here was another opportunity to attack capitalism and all those wealthy folks who never seem to pay their "fair share.

Mitt Romney says that those who advocate redistribution of wealth are un-American, so I guess the following historical extract is un-American, too: "It should seem then that it must be because of the enormous wealth, which places them above attention to the increase of their revenues, that I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but [that] the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.

After listening to the Democrats at their convention, I can't help but wonder, when did it become un-American to have large amounts of money ("O'Malley sharply criticizes the GOP," Sept. 5)? The revered Kennedy family has had enormous wealth (much of it generated by bootlegging), and former community organizer Barack Obama is worth at least $12 million. Building personal wealth is as American as apple pie. The Democrats would have us believe Mitt Romney paid less in taxes then the average citizens.

One of the few things Americans on both sides of the partisan divide can agree on is that this election is shaping up to be vexingly petty. The hunt for gaffes -- some real, many imagined -- has taken over. Mitt Romney's recent overseas tour, we are told, produced three: an impolitic, if defensible, statement about Britain's preparations for the Olympics; a statement about the importance of culture in economic development; and an incident in which an aide to Mr. Romney dressed down a reporter with an inflated sense of entitlement.

Who's buying our democracy? Wall Street financiers, the Koch brothers, and casino magnates Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn, among others. And they're doing much of it in secret. It's a perfect storm -- the combination of three waves that are about to drown government as we know it. The first is the greatest concentration of wealth in America in more than a century. The 400 richest Americans are richer than the bottom 150 million Americans put together. The trend started 30 years ago, and it's related to globalization and technological changes that have stymied wage growth for most people.

The gulf between the American left and right continues to widen against a backdrop of high unemployment, weak growth and high octane cultural battles. I got to thinking about this growing divide in the aftermath of the Colorado movie theater shooting spree that left 12 dead, 58 injured, and a nation in shock. Once the gravity of the story began to sink in, my mind turned to an inconvenient (for some) thought: How many lives would have been saved if someone in that theater had access to a firearm of their own?