Written By: Anton Sawyer
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Typically I'm not one that endorses New Year's Resolutions. I find that they are often predicated on fixing an immediate-need issue that usually requires a long-term commitment. Because of how rarely people see them throughout the entire year, it's hard to put much stock in them. However, given how horrific the year 2020 was to literally everyone, combined with the massive amount of damage control that's coming from our leaders in Washington, I can't imagine a better time for starting over. And to take a page out of the conservatives playbook, I am a pissed-off taxpayer that's hit my limit.
Please keep in mind that many of these statistics are pre-Covid-19. This means a lot of this data has yet to show the impact the pandemic has had. Sadly, a majority of the numbers below are from "the good times."
As a nation, we're going to have to wait until the February runoff election in Georgia to see exactly what control each party may or may not have.
The best-case scenario for the liberals would be to control the White House, the House of Representatives, and have the tie-breaking vote with Vice President Kamala Harris in the Senate.
At the absolute worst, they will only control the House and White House. This means they will have jurisdiction over a big portion of the budget and fiscal issues. Given this outcome, it is they who I am writing this for.
I am beyond sick and tired of having my taxes go to pay for basic necessities of people that their employers are too lazy to pay. Since the beginning of the George W. Bush presidency, THROUGH the Obama administration, to the current day, Americans have been footing the bill for public welfare recipients that work full-time jobs. If these people are working 40 hours (and in many cases much more) per week, then how does the burden fall on the taxpayers to make sure that there's actually going to be food on their table?
One astounding fact is that though millions have struggled to pay the bills this year, online shopping has kept these financials at the status quo.
For 2020, Walmart and McDonald’s are among the top employers of beneficiaries of federal aid programs like Medicaid and food stamps, according to a study by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. Other notable companies with a large number of employees on federal aid include Amazon, Kroger, Dollar General, and other foodservice and retail giants. About 70% of the 21 million federal aid beneficiaries worked full time, the report found.
You'd almost think that every one of those companies are headed straight into bankruptcy given those numbers. Yet, Walmart recently reported a net income of $5.14 billion for its most recent quarter, while McDonald’s reported a net income of $1.76 billion for the same period.
Looking back throughout the economics over the past decade, you see exactly where this status quo has come from.
In a 2013 study by Americans for Tax Fairness, it was found that Walmart's low-wage workers cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance including food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing, according to a report published to coincide with Tax Day, April 15. In the same year, though the full-year net income fell 5.7% in 2013, they still generated a net income profit of $16 billion.
Let's break this down into its most basic terms.
In 2013, Walmart employees cost American taxpayers $6.2 billion in public assistance, yet Walmart reported a NET INCOME PROFIT of $16 billion (almost three times the burden to US taxpayers).
Why?
Walmart could have raised wages across the board to stop the discrepancy, and still have $7-$8 billion in net profits. This all transpired during the Obama administration ...
The Democrats have said time and time again they work for the middle class, the common man, those who live in impoverished areas and need the most help from their fellow Americans. Yet they have done nothing of any serious consequences to alleviate the tax burden placed on the lower and middle classes when it comes to these matters.
The reality is that tens of millions of Americans with full-time jobs are working for low hourly wages and cannot afford to cover the monthly basics per poverty and minimum wage analysis at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington in 2016. It showed there were 41.2 million working people, or nearly 30% of the workforce, receiving public assistance such as food stamps, housing subsidies, and cash assistance to make ends meet. Nearly half of those workers—19.3 million people—had full-time jobs and most were earning less than $12.16 per hour in wages.
One of the most alarming statistics which shows the inability of upward mobility in the United States—one that illustrates this is a situation that doesn't fix itself or go away quickly—is a 2020 report by Lexington Law. This study shows that 43 percent of Americans signed up for welfare programs have been participating for over three years.
Not all hope is entirely lost.
In 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Amazon jobs a "scam" because more than 4,000 of its employees are on food stamps. She also called into question why Amazon paid zero in federal income taxes on more than $11 billion in profit. There have also been inklings of other House members, Senators, and governors who have called into question why we have so many full-time employees on so many public assistance programs.
For those who don't live from their stock market earnings (the Dow Jones has flirted with new records since the first Covid-19 vaccine was announced), the American economy is in shambles from sea to shining sea.
I know that "Hope" and "Change" have been the mantra of the liberals for the last 13 years or so. I know that they have tried in various legislative chunks to decrease the wealth gap, but it's clearly not working when the average citizen is footing the bill to feed someone else's family because certain employers can't be bothered to do so.
In most cases, change only comes through revolution or catastrophe. When the Great Depression was ravaging the country in the 1930s, it terraformed the entire economy and allowed the rebuilding of the nation into our most economically prosperous time for ALL social classes in the United States: the 1950s, 60s, and part of the 70s.
With every lower and middle class being decimated because of Covid-19, and a new regime taking over in 2021, things are lined to up enact a serious change.
Now, all we need is serious leadership ...
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