The premise of the entire story is a joke to begin with. They basically start off talking about how it's someone else fault that poor people are poor, and that it has nothing to do with their own poor choices in life while saying later on in the story that a majority of top income earners are first generation. Sounds a little contradictory to me.

I found the quote at 10:21 particularly indicative of the current situation here: "when polled, most Americans say they want higher taxes for the wealthiest, cuts in defense spending and believe that keeping the benefits of gov't funded health and retirement programs is more important than cutting budget deficits." While I do agree that defense spending does need to be reigned in through cutting some redundant programs and getting rid of no-bid contracts, it's very telling to me that people feel that gov't handouts are more important than controlling our debt.

Also love the quote that "Ryans' plan emboldened republicans to create a crisis." What crisis did the republicans create? Demanding that the fed gov't reign in its' massive spending spree before allowing them to raise the debt ceiling so that they could continue to spend? I'd hardly call that creating a crisis, seeing as how the ridiculous levels of spending through the last 2 administrations have been leading up to this for some time now. No one wanted to acknowledge that it was coming until we were on the verge of a "default", and don't get me wrong the republicans are no shining beacon of fiscal responsibility, they've had a large hand in massive spending and gov't expansion too.

I also find the whole "patriotic millionaires for fiscal strength" to be a joke. Firstly, many of the people that fall into that category don't pay income taxes, as previously mentioned, they pay capital gains taxes. This whole "tax the rich" rhetoric won't affect them because it taxes income, not capital gains. Secondly, if these "fiscally responsible" millionaires want to help reduce the national debt by giving up more of their money they can simply write a check and give as much money as they'd like to help reduce the national debt.