<There is the opportunity to make millions in the US. And people have done it. That is usually used to illustrate the system is working well. That's a myth.

It's a horrible way to try to demonstrate how well an economic system is working. In ANY economy, socialist, capitalist, communist, there will be people who wind up either owning or controlling large amounts of the resources. ANY economy, in every country.



In the United States, millionaires are mostly made without guns, by free and voluntary trade. This is not true in communist or socialist nations, where those who have wealth have stripped it from others by force. If I have to explain this to you yet again, I am apparently a very lousy writer who is incapable of getting even the simplest concept across.

You are correct that a thriving middle class is a sign of a healthy economy, but there is no such thing as an economy containing only a middle class, without wealthy people or, for that matter, poor people. "Surplus" wealth drives economic growth, and rich people are a major source of the new capital that creates businesses.

Now, as for your struggling middle class, maybe this could be part of the problem:

In 1950, the average American family making the median income with two children sent $1 out of every $50 to Washington, DC.



Today, the average American family sends $1 out of every $4.

In real terms, the value of the dependent child tax exemption has declined by two-thirds since 1948.

Single people face about the same tax rates as they did in 1960, as do married couples without children (except for the marriage tax penalty). For the average couple with two children, though, taxes have risen 43 percent.

For a family with four children, the tax bill has tripled.

In short, we have the most anti-family, anti-child government in history. Not too unsurprisingly, many families are crumbling under the burdens imposed by the Federal Government.

- From the Gramm Amendment in the 103rd Congress



Tea was hurled into the harbor because of a tax rate of two pence to the pound. The average American is paying tax rates that would have caused our early American ancestors to burn Washington to the ground and plow the ashes under. The typical English serf paid 25 percent of his produce to his feudal lord. My tax rate this year was over 30 percent for Federal taxes alone. That this monstrous shellacking of our citizens goes almost unnoticed, never mind sparking a revolution, is a miracle of brainwashing that must have historical tyrants standing slackmouthed with admiration from their vantage points in hell.

No doubt the quiet, feather-gentle looting of paychecks before they reach you has a lot to do with this. The joy some poor slob displays when he gets a tiny percentage back as a "refund" each year is pathetic to watch. I think the world would be a much different place if everyone had to sit down and write checks full of zeros to the IRS each quarter.