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jt, rick sathre,

I'm all for personal responsibility too which I see in abundance from most average folks who never get to a 6 figure income. They work hard, help their kids through school, live within their means, etc, etc. Most took a hit in their retirement accounts when the economy melted down and decided to delay retiring, stay in their jobs if they still had them so they had health insurance coverage until they are eligible for SS/Medicare which is social insurance we pay into all of our working lives.They are not moochers.

There was no personal responsibility used by banks/wall street when they bundled up home loans and deliberately and knowingly sold toxic, ready to blow up products to make themselves fabulously wealthy causing the home mortgage crash. We, the taxpayers, paid for this. Then we paid for the bank bailouts to the tune of about $4 trillion. Not only has none of them responsible for cheating us gone to jail, instead they got gigantic, mind boggling bonuses.

Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist who founded an internet media company acquired by Microsoft, was the first investor in Amazon and invested in dozens of companies has written a couple of very interesting op-eds in Bloomberg and Atlantic plus he did a Ted talk. He is one very, very wealthy person who thinks we've had it backwards for 30 years saying, "Rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs. Middle-class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses grow and profit. That's why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich".

That reminds me of a wealthy German businessman who was interviewed on Bloomberg TV a couple of years ago, iirc, and the interviewer kept asking him about the high taxes in Germany. He finally said, "I just don't care about the taxes I pay". When the astonished interviewer asked why, he thought for a few seconds and said, "Because I don't want to be a rich man living in a poor country".

Even though we are the richest country in the world, we are becoming a much poorer country, at least 99% of us are. Statistics from the Federal Reserve, in 1978, the top 1% took in under 9% of the nation's income leaving 91% for the rest of us. In 2007, the year BEFORE the crash, the 1% took in 23.5% leaving 76.5% the rest of us. In 2010, it was 1% got 93%, we got 7%.

It should be obvious that this extreme income inequality is very unhealthy in every way for this country, no matter if you are rich, middle class or poor. There is no doubt there is at least a few trillion that the very wealthy/corps owe the U.S. I'm not so sure there is much more blood that can be squeezed out of us turnips.