If you are one to listen to commercial Talk Radio, watch Fox,  or have a friend who does, you will no doubt hear the sound bite that 47% Of Americans Pay No Taxes This is followed by a long list of demands, insinuations, and outright insults.  Why should they be allowed to vote?  Why do the hard working 53% have to support these lazy people?  Why don't they stop spending money foolishly and save it for important things?

 I am here today to reply to the above in my role as the unofficial spokesman of the 47%.  I was not elected to this position and I have no credentials, but if Glenn Beck can be the defacto leader of the Tea Party, I can be the leader of the 47%.  

First, let me say that the 47% want to make it clear that while we may not pay any federal income tax, we pay Medicare tax and social security tax and anyone with a lukewarm knowledge of the federal tax accounting knows that all the taxes go into the same bucket.  There is no lock box.  Further, most of us pay state tax, property tax, school taxes, tolls, sales tax, and a host of other taxes.  So say we pay no taxes is disingenuous, but I agree, it makes for good propaganda with the right crowd.  Secondly, please stop spreading the myth that the 47% spends money foolishly.  Fact is that we are actually spending less on many of the things that we purchased in years past.

If you need proof of this, please watch this video from Elizabeth Warren explaining the real conditions of the middle class in America. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

Two areas, however, that have really affected our budgets are the soaring costs of health care and education.  We are in the process of trying to lower these costs, if only some of you would get out of the way. 

I want all of you in the 53% who pay taxes to know that we agree with you 100%.  We want to pay taxes too, we really do.  There is, however, one slight problem.  Since the Reagan Revolution, our incomes have not risen one bit and many of us have experienced a loss in actual inflation adjusted dollars. We were told by The Great Commnunicator that if we allowed people with great sums of wealth to keep that weatlh, these people would invest in America and build factories, communities, commerce centers and a shower of wealth that would eventually trickle down to us.  The only problem is that the wealthy did all these things overseas where labor was cheap.  They used their increased capital to shut down the plant in Naugatuck and open one up in DongGuan.  And what money they did spend here seems to have been in the form of credit default swaps, hedge funds, and other weird things that brought them fortunes and left us responsible for a bailout. 

Many of us were once part of the great middle class but with the onslaught of several government programs including but not limited to immigration policy, trade policy, labor policy and tax policy, we have seen our wage potential decimated as these policies have transferred our wealth potential to the wealthy.  Yes, you heard that right. Government policy, since Reagan, transferred wealth.  Of course the talk radio guys did not say much about this transfer, because it was going from many of us in the bottom to their employers, the guys in the top 5% who sign their paychecks.  Now that the 47% want the same government to do the same thing but only in the other direction, suddenly that's evil socialism.  To channel Glenn Beck, "People, can you not see the injustice, the tyranny, a world that our founders never imagined?  I weep as I watch this evil socialism"...and wipe my tears in a hankerchief of imported linen...

All we want is a return to the days when many of us paid more in taxes.  Yes, that will require allowing us to earn more money and that will take a reversal of a few things, but given the outrage of the 53% who pay taxes, I am sure they will understand.

So give us back our right to form worker's unions.  End trade agreements that make us compete with slave labor.  Stop the free flow of illegal immigration to work in your factories, tend to your gardens, and clean your houses.  Stop the predatory bank and investment policies.  Do all this, and more, and you will get what you are demanding.  We, the 47% will be able to earn what is rightfully ours and with that wealth, we will be able to pay or taxes.