OCCUPY: Aiming at wrong target

So Occupy Coeur d'Alene is being planned for this Saturday. They will come to target the nation's wealthiest 1 percent of income earners. They will trot out the old leftist mantra of "The rich don't pay their fair share."

They will demand that all income be redistributed from the successful to the galactically complacent. It's not fair that while they play Xbox and take those final few credits in whatever Yahoo filler university degree they are pursuing that Bill Gates and the Koch brothers are raking in millions.

"We vote Democrat and we want what's coming to us," they will moan. They will also demand that Keith Olbermann be returned to their fake news channel MSNBC because they can't afford a cable package that gets Current.

If these kids would put down their Big Gulps and get off their skate boards long enough to digest some raw data it might help. The top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent pay 60 percent of the federal income taxes. The top 50 percent pay nearly all of the federal income taxes. The bottom 47 percent of households earning income pay no federal income taxes. Zilch, nada, nothing. These will make up the majority of people protesting. Their real slogan should be, "Don't ask me to pay a dime just tax the other guy more."

Here is an idea. How about you go create your own wealth and not worry about your neighbor's?

JASON MATOUS

Coeur d'Alene