Flip It: No joke that the poor pay the MOST taxes

If you've been rich enough to be in the ownership class or if you've recently used the system's own money to join the ownership class even though you weren't actually rich enough to do so (people who are living in homes that they "bought" with no-doc loans, for example) then you live in a house subsidized with welfare money and you probably drive a car subsidized with taxpayer largesse to job that is probably funded by welfare-subsidized loans and cash infusions that you got because you educated yourself with welfare-subsidized secondary education.  And all of that means then you're definitely a direct beneficiary of all the incredible welfare-subsidized programs. By definition, see?

But what if you weren't rich enough or dishonest/stupid enough to join the "ownership" class? What if you were one of those hard-working blue- and/or white-collar people who shied away from borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to "own" a home because you KNEW that the real estate market, like all markets, has ups and downs and you didn't want to borrow money to overpay in an obvious bubble?

Well, SCREW YOU! At least, that's the only conclusion I can come to when I see the Republicans and Democrats in power constantly tell you that giving hundreds of billions of welfare dollars to the people who risked their own time and money being owners and lenders and employees of car companies and trillions of dollars to bank shareholders and lenders and speculators is good for you.

The cost of life for the average American is going through the roof. Education gets ever more expensive, at a rate of about 5-to-1 vs. the increase of income, over the last few decades since the Republicans and Democrats in power keep trying to "make education" more affordable...bread, milk, and Snickers bars have all MORE THAN DOUBLED in price as real estate has TRIPLED in price in NYC since I moved here 13 years ago.

Most of the people I know from 1996 when I lived on 101st Street and Amsterdam amidst the Frederick Douglas projects and whom I visited just earlier this week -- still make about the same amount of money they made in 1996. My old next door neighbors, a family of Haitian immigrants whom I'm sure are subsidized in some ways, still work as nurse assistants and computer technicians and take care of the eight people they have crammed in the one bedroom apartment they still live in with the same ol' VCR that we used to watch Eminem rap videos on. ("Will the real Slim Shady, please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?")

And somehow, I don't think they're really seeing much benefit from all these bailouts on overdrive that have been forced upon this Republic despite the overwhelming majority of Americans vocally telling the Republicans and Democrats in charge to stop with it already.

More to the point, it's anybody who's rented, saved and who has done the right thing by being patient and looking for real estate to truly become "more affordable" who are obviously having to pay for all the rest of you. Even if you make $20,000 a year and you didn't pay any outright income tax to the IRS last year, I guarantee you that you're paying more than your fair share in taxes right now -- that old saying about "inflation being the cruelest tax" is indeed ringing true and will ring ever more true as the government has decided that the value that you stored in your dollars by saving and renting isn't what's important to the economy -- the government apparently thinks putting trillions of dollars that have either no value (printed money) or trillions of dollars confiscated from the savers of this country who are the only people who have any money to be taxed...and the Republicans and Democrats in power seem to think that giving all that taxpayer largesse to the shareholders and lenders and employees of giant corporate America is what's important to the economy.

They're wrong. And it's really gonna suck for the renters and savers, especially those "poor" who don't pay income tax but are certainly paying taxes since those who do pay income taxes at these welfare-subsidized companies can only do so with the value stored in the money that they're taking from the working renter, saver and working poor.

This ain't a recipe for prosperity, and since the government has taken the concept of welfare and applied it to the rich and amped it up more than 10 times (we've given the crooks and idiots shareholders at Bank of America MORE more welfare-cash infusions behind closed doors, not including TARP and 0% interest rates and PPIP and TALF and so on more than TWICE the annual budget that we spend on food stamps in this country), we all need to be terrified.

Transferring trillions of dollars from savers and renters and the working poor to shareholders investors is indeed likely to continue to prop up those shareholders and investors for a little while. But it won't last.

Short this market on strength, because next year, when the renters and savers and working poor really start feeling the pain from these bailouts, it's gonna get ugly. Again. And it won't get better til we change the system. And that won't happen with these corrupt Republicans and Democrats in power. EVER.

Vote 'em all out and get us back to a bull market.