Embrace the 100 percent

The Tea Party is a joke. Occupy Wall Street is a joke. Americans are a joke.

Does anyone really think that small-minded political movements are going to get us out of the financial crisis we are currently in? Things like taxing 1 percent of the population or lowering personal taxes but raising corporate taxes are great ways to accomplish a whole lot of nothing. America has blasted right through $14.8 trillion in national debt, and increasing taxes on 1 percent of the population (Occupy Wall Street's master plan) will go about as far in fixing the economy as instituting Paris Hilton as chairman of the Fed would.

Americans are great at advocating for change -— as long as that change comes at someone else's expense. America was founded on this self-preserving principle. Remember the Stamp Act? It really wasn't that big of a deal due to the fact that it was only imposed to cover the costs of running the colonies. But of course, our founding fathers were having none of it. We can't fault them too much, though. We sure do enjoy living in the country they set up for us.

Here's where they differ from us today: They had a far easier target to blame for their problems than we do currently. Jefferson and friends put all the blame on the British — their soldiers, their government, their king, etc., but we seemingly don't know which individuals or groups to blame anymore.

It appears as if we've run out of foreign countries to throw our troubles on. We used up Germany in the first half of the 20th century after leaving it more desiccated than a dried up raisin following not one, but two global beatdowns. The rest of the European Union is so close to going under that putting our blame on them would be like robbing people at a food bank.

Everyone loves blaming China, but it's hard to get too mad at the country that is almost single-handedly funding our wastefulness. Not to mention, the chance of them getting the majority of their investment back is smaller than the chance of us getting jobs at the New York Times.

Blame Canada? That's so 1990s.

Now that we have run out of foreign countries to shoulder our responsibilities, it seems that the blame has shifted to those who have been most successful domestically. The battle cry for the recent movement Occupy Wall Street is: "we are the 99 percent." These jokers have been taking to the streets all over the country with signs, spreading their fiscal plan for America's continued success as a country. Not surprisingly, this "99 percent" only feels the need to increase taxes on the other 1 percent. The Tea Party also has a plan to fix our debt. Strangely enough, these backward folks plan to solve our debt crisis by lowering taxes. Genius! What better way to pay off debt than decrease government revenue?

It seems as if everyone has some brilliant idea that will fix our broken economy and national liquidity issues. In order to make any real positive changes, we all need to work together, and in order to work together we need to find a common thread in these various movements. The only common thread apparent as of right now is that we all want to place the blame on everyone else. The only common thread that will bring us closer to a solution is realizing all socioeconomic groups deserve a fair share of the blame. Yep, I know it hurts to hear, but we all have to make some sacrifices and stop blaming other people.

For example, the "we are the 99 percent" group needs to realize that the top 1 percent of the country cannot possibly be to blame for the entire $14.8 trillion in national debt and the collapsed economy. We are pretty sure that a significant amount of the "bottom 99 percent" of the country bought way too much house (or way too many houses), racked up a massive amount of credit card debt (averaging around $11,000 per household in the U.S. with a credit card — generally the super wealthy don't wallow in credit card debt) and elected presidents that they knew would spend in excess of income (Ron Paul for President in 2012!). This is not to say that the top 1 percent of the country is blameless, but all 100 percent of this fine nation needs to work as a whole to fix what we all have broken.

John F. Kennedy once said: "Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future." As the national debt clock not-so-slowly ticks to our ultimate demise, let's throw on our Wranglers and get to work. America has fences to mend, cattle to drive and financial instruments to manipulate. This isn't going to happen while America stands in a circle pointing greedy little fingers at one another. So get your checkbooks ready and your dominant hand warmed up because EVERY tax bracket has some debt reducing to do.

The blame game is out, the accountability game is in. Get with the times, Zags.