Mass Exit to the Cayman Islands

 What follows is a guest blog from a long-time friend who's just getting into this blogging thing.  Her pen name is OCBananaGirl and you can see another post of hers on BoSox Tavern.  Below she offers what I think is a very unique and accurate perspective regarding what the 1% value about America versus what the rest of us value about America.

"All day I have been wondering, what if 99% of us only paid a 13% tax rate, would the 1% still want to live in this country? If half of the taxes that pay for roads, bridges, prisons, security, judges, police officers, fire departments, zoos, parks, snow plows, beach replenishment, catastrophe help, flood insurance, social security, medicare, insurance backing our banks, FDA, EPA, medical research, space programs, education, medical research, and wars -- I am sure I have missed so much as I am accustomed to my regular life -- but what if we as US citizens had to live without nearly 1/2 the funding and many of the programs that make us love our country were not available, would we still be so in love with our country?

My thought is, yes, 99% of us would still love our county and the 99% would somehow come together to make the country better, the 99% would find the ingenuity and the get-down-dirty effort to bring this country back. But the real question lies with the 1%.  Would they be able to live with decrepit roads, pot holes, no snow plows, no trash pickup, long lines at hospitals, no flood insurance for the beach front homes, no beaches, no parks to visit on family vacations, no police to protect their property?  And when I wondered about this, I realized that the 1% need the 99% more than the 99% need the 1%. Maybe it is time to realize that the 1% should act on their threats and move their assets to the Cayman Islands because they already have and 99% of us still continue to struggle and yet are proud to call ourselves Americans."

Apparently we're just a country full of lazy whiners

If this were being used to applaud someone who's overcoming a rigged system, that would be one thing; but it's being used to tell people who are speaking up against a rigged and unfair system that they're just a bunch of lazy whiners. The fact that any child in this country (the country that was established for and by the people) has to go to these extremes just to break even is not something IMHO to be applauded. It serves to continue to enable those who take our money in tax breaks, bailouts, etc, and reward us with crappy, low-paying jobs
If we, the 99%, had that attitude about things, then the Wall Street banks would not have gotten their bailouts and the system would've crashed. Then anybody who was hurt from that crash through no fault of their own , it would've been their fault because they're just lazy losers? There are good elements in that piece but overall it's basically calling everybody who complains about unfairness is a lazy whiner. Bullshit.
What about the people who worked hard, saved their money, invested wisely, didn't go into debt but yet lost their retirements in the crash?  That was their fault too?  
So the young mother of two who decides to leave her abusive husband, she should stop her whining and stay?  If she leaves and can't find a job that will pay enough for her to put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, that's her fault because she's just lazy and looking for a freebie?  It has nothing to do with the fact that the median income in this country has hardly risen in 30 years while the cost of everything necessary to survive has gone up at a much higher rate?  It has nothing to do with the fact that the biggest corporations in this country are paying less taxes than ever before, are making much larger profits than ever before and yet not creating new jobs with the tax breaks we're giving them?  It has nothing to do with the fact that Wall Street owns the Government of the United States, the government that's supposed to be "by and for the people."
Did you know that now corporations can spend money on elections just as if they were people?  But if you're a corporation, you can hide behind your corporate status and not be held libel for the decisions made by the people who make up that corporation.
As William Buster says in this interview with Charlie Rose, (sorry, there's no embed but I highly recommend you watch) "Occupy Wall Street has been depicted as anti-business.  We're not.  We're not anti-business, we're not anti-banks, we're not anti-government...we're anti-corruption and we're anti-systemic corruption."
I always get a kick out of the right always using personal attacks on the messenger without even trying to understand the message...whatever garbage Fox News puts in front of them, they swallow.  They use things like the note above to try and divide us.  If you want to know what class warfare is, that's as good an example as I can imagine.
This quote from the Vanity Fair article on Elizabeth Warren (that I'll do a post on shortly)  may sum it all up as well as any, “There’s been such a sense that there’s one set of rules for trillion-dollar financial institutions and a different set for all the rest of us. It’s so pervasive that it’s not even hidden.”

Walking away when you're under water

So let me make sure I understand this.  It's morally okay for a home owner to "walk away" from a mortgage they can afford to pay simply because the home is now worth considerably less than its value at the time of purchase?  That's just a smart business decision and nothing more? 
Whatever happened to the concept of "a deal's a deal?"  You're saying your word and your commitment is only as good as the day-to-day economic viability of the deal?  So if you sell me your vintage '60's muscle car on time and six months later the bottom falls out of the vintage car market, making my purchase a bad investment, you have no problem with me just bringing it back to you and no longer making the payments?  Why, that's mighty nice of you.  In fact, if you don't mind, I'm going to drive it for a few months for free while you go through the legal process of repossession, since you're in such a charitable mood.
Let's take this a step or two further because I really want to understand what's motivating your thoughts.  If five years after your purchase the value of the home has doubled, are you going to insist that the bank redo the mortgage and you'll gladly pay it?  No?  But the bank should renegotiate the mortgage if the value drops?
So can I fairly assume that since practically every home in this country is worth less now than it was two years ago, you have no problem with all of us walking away leaving the bank high and dry?  One last consideration:  What are you going to tell your neighbors when your local credit union, the one holding your life's savings and theirs, goes under when we all renig on the mortages they hold?