AND WE WERE WORRIED ABOUT THE DEBT CRISIS

How did we get into this mess? Why are we sleeping in the streets, homeless?

The Real Costs Of The Bush Tax Cuts? Go To CostOfTaxCuts.Com.

By Mattea Kramer

You may be surprised that the cost for these obscene tax cuts is $1,034,401,772,556.

That’s the cost to the U.S. Treasury since 2001 from Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans—as of the moment I started writing this blog post.

National Priorities Project and Citizens for Tax Justice today released CostOfTaxCuts.com, a site that has a real-time ticker showing the cost of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Some eye-catching numbers:

• The average tax cut in 2011 for a household in the wealthiest one percent is $66,384. The average tax cut for a household in the poorest 20 percent is $107.

For richer or for poorer and death will us part

	Number of Households	Average Income per Household	Average Tax Cut per Household	Group’s share of all income in the U.S.*	Race
Richest 1%	1.4 million	$1,370,662	$66,384	19%	No Census Data
Richest 5%	7.1 million	$477,453	$19,855	33%	83% White, 4% Black, 8% Asian, 5% Latino
Next 75%	107 million	$60,213	$1,464	63%	76% White, 10% Black, 4% Asian, 10% Latino
Poorest 20%	28.4 million	$12,974	$107	4%	66% White, 18% Black, 3% Asian, 13% Latino

Source: Citizens for Tax Justice

"Households" refers to the number of tax returns submitted in each income group.

All numbers are for 2011, with the exception of race data, which is current as of 2009, the most recent year for which information is available.

Average tax cuts are calculated based on the extension of the Bush tax cuts signed into law in December 2010.

Income figures include wages as well as capital gains, dividends, and other types of income.

No race data are available for the top 1% of households because Census data combine all households making more than $250,000 into a single group.

* Totals add up to more than 100% because the richest 1% is part of the richest 5%.

• Some members of Congress propose making the tax cuts permanent. (Currently, they’re set to expire at the end of 2012.) If they were permanent, then the cost of tax cuts for the wealthiest 5 percent from 2012 to 2021 would exceed $2 trillion. The Super Committee, meanwhile, is charged with reducing deficits by $1.2 trillion over the same period.

There are a lot of other numbers there too. Check it out.

Since I’ve been writing this, the Bush tax cuts for the richest five percent cost the U.S. Treasury another $6 million.

Mattea Kramer is the senior research analyst for National Priorities Project.

Now, do you see why people are protesting around the country? I think it is better that they protest now and maybe there can be some significant changes that would prevent a total collapse of the government, the economy and the decimation of the middle class; the alternative is allowing the Republican-Teahadists to complete their agenda of taking over every aspect of our lives while giving the rich and the corporations even more perks and wealth…at the same time solidifying a theocratic state…if that was to happen then the protests would not only be protests…they will become riots and America will see armed conflict of brother against brother as we did in our civil war…only this time the boundaries are not well defined as was the Mason-Dixie line…it will be rich neighborhoods entrenched behind gated compounds and the rest of us, that 99% living in misery and unsafe conditions…that you must agree will be totally intolerable

If that is what you want…well keep giving tax cuts to the rich, loopholes and subsidies to big corporations; by all means, keep voting Republican and we shall meet in the near future in some barricaded street…don’t worry, I won’t kill you…I am against killing…but think that by then you too will have lost everything you have and it is likely that if you have sufficient intelligence you will realize who did this to you…then you will kick yourself, bang your head against the wall and ask to yourself: “why didn’t I join those protestors back then?”