You can try this at home.
You need: 2 100-piece packets of paperclips [est cost $1.10 ea]
1 lot of free time
One packet represents percentages of the population [PKT 1] and the other represents percentages of wealth [PKT 2].
Find a way to distinguish PKT 1 from PKT 2. You can do this by obtaining different colours/sizes of paperclips or spritzing them with paint. Anything you like. I just kept it straight in my head.
Pick one paperclip from PKT 1 and string 45 paperclips from PKT 2 on it. This is the one percent. Representatives of the one percent include big banks, big corporations, Old Money [Rothschild, Hilton, etc] and the extremely rare individual who was actually able to climb the social ladder all the way to the top.
Now get nine more paperclips from PKT 1 and share out another 45 paperclips from PKT 2 between them. This averages out at 5% of the wealth each. This is the wealthy elite. The people who are very much comfortably well off. Representatives of the 9% include Trust Fund Babies, more corporations and banks, some Old Money, celebrities, senators, and more of the folks who made it on their own merits.
Now get together 53 paperclips. This is the 53% of Americans who pay their taxes. Many of these folks are holding down 3-4 jobs just to break even. Most believe the system they’re supporting will come through for the honest, hard-working etc. and their ship will come in any old day now. These are the “average Joe” to the “wage slave” to the “corporate drone”, depending on where you stand. In essence, these are Everyman.
Now take the remaining 37 paperclips and join them together. These are the people who don’t have enough money to pay taxes. LOTS of these folks are holding down 4-8 jobs, many part-time, just to keep their heads above water. These are the people on welfare, on social security, the pensioners, and the homeless. They are the poor, the weak, the tired and hungry, the huddled masses yearning to be free.
Hey, I think I remember that from somewhere… never mind.
Now take the leftover ten paperclips from PKT 2 and distribute them fairly across the 53% and the poor and desperate 37%.
…uhm…
Yeah, I had that problem, too.
There’s lots of folks from the 37% representing the 99%. They’re the stereotypical “unwashed hippies” the right wing loves to spout about. There’s a goodly portion of the 53% in those protests, too. They’re the ones who’ve realised that the system is rigged to benefit a few, and not the many. Lots have realised that a great proportion of the few who benefit are not, strictly speaking, actual people.
Lots of the 9%, especially celebrities who love a cause, support the 99% because they can actually see how the system is unfair and so forth.
But the 1% who own the media keep telling the 53% to blame the 37% for not getting jobs that aren’t there or they literally can’t do [Try telling a quadra paraplegic to flip burgers sometime. I’m sure it’s hilarious.] or who won’t hire them anyway because they’re too old, too broken, too female, too black, too mentally disabled, or already too busy to do. All the while convincing the 53% to support tax cuts or other laws that allow the 1% to grab even more of the dwindling, metaphorical pie.
Why keep blaming the people who can’t afford to solve the problem when it’s obvious who actually is the problem?