50 Ways To Slice the 99

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Within the 99% there are important differences - who goes to work, who goes to college, who goes to jail, what happens to veterans and black women and Latino kids....

folk political satire

Dave Lippman

Songs to afflict those who make everyone else uncomfortable.

Dave Lippman travels the world taking the air out of the windbags of the week, de-distorting history, and rewriting the classics with parody and thrust. He also presents the world's only known singing CEO, the Bard of the Bankers, Wild Bill Bailout, who employs anti-folk songs and interventionary anthems to explain (and enforce) that the business of America is none of your business, that those too big to fail are also too big for jail, and that the jobless and foreclosed must bail out their own boats.

Song Info

Genre

Podcasts • Parody

Charts

Peak #54

Peak in subgenre #10

Uploaded

November 15, 2012

Track Files

MP3

MP3 6.5 MB • 160 kbps • 5:38

Story behind the song

It's true about 1% vs. the 99%, but we've got to learn about the 1/10th of 1% too, and the 47% (Thanks Mitt) and the 12%, 63%, etc. etc. - my first song composed almost entirely of statistics. Fun? Hmm....

Lyrics

Mic check!
We are the 99%
Many of us can’t afford our rent
Some have a house and some have a tent
The wealth of the nation has been misspent
Differences among us 
we must not 
circumvent
64% 
of statistics 
are made up 
on the spot
Even so:

(50 Ways…)
You know it’s really not my habit to intrude
All right it is, I know statistics can be misconstrued
But I’ll just do the math
About how we’re all being screwed
There must be things it pays to discover
It could take 50 days to uncover

Cuz the capital gains tax
Is lower than mine that’s the facts
The more money you make, Jake
The less FICA you pay

	(99 bottles….)   
	90% at the bottom make one
	35th of the top 1%
	Take the dough down and pass it around
	Oops that’s class war never mind

	90% at the bottom owns twenty-
	Five percent of all wealth
	Top 1% has 40%
	And also they have their health

	(When I was 17)
	When I made 17
	hundred times average pay
	It was a very good gig
	For a top CEO with bonuses bright
	I’d hide from the lights and the TV screen
	While my salary careened

(50 ways…)
Net worth of a family
for blacks is 20% of whites approximately
Latinos 27, give or take point three
I give you that one free

Net debt of a family
As a percentage of net worth, let’s see
It’s 3 times as high for Blacks you see
And Latinos similarly

In the latest economic torment
white wealth declined 16%
African Americans 53
Latinos 66, whoo-ee

	(76 Trombones)  
	76 percent is what women make
	To the 100 that men take home every day 
	They are followed by Blacks and Latinos at   per
	cent of whites, that’s quite a rate of pay

        1 little, 2 little, 3 little benefits
	Taken away as society retrofits
	Union membership down to 12%
	Pension & health care destroyed 

 (50 Ways…)
6 people at Walmart own
Same as the bottom 30% who’ve been thrown
Down to where they owe more than they’ve every known
They can’t get themselves free

(When I was 17)
When I was unemployed
It was a very good year
A very good year for blue-blooded crooks
Of extravagant means
They’d ride in limousines
We had nothing to drive
10% barely alive

	(76 Trombones) 
	76% of our college costs
	Were once taken care of by our Pell grants
	Now it’s fallen to 33 and for folks like you and me
	We’ll be living in the basement at our aunt’s

	
There are whites who go to college and Latinos too
Though not quite as likely, by percent it’s 42
Blacks are found to be 3/5ths
As likely to be studying with
The rest of the upward mobile crew

	(1 little…..) 
	Half of the country’s leading figures have degrees 
	From the same 13 universities 
	1 of 12 students there come from the bottom half
	So much for upward mobility
	and rhymes.
	
        Blacks and Latinos are 65%
	Of those in prison while 13.2%
	Of black men can’t vote because of this predicament
	And guess who gets stopped and frisked.

	Warren Buffet pays 17%
	His secretary can maybe pay the rent
	Top 1% saved 150,000 in the
	Unkindest tax cuts of all

(Somewhere, My Love):
25% of blacks live in poverty
Women and kids stuck there especially
trillion dollar wars, paid for by me and you
20% of the budget before we’re through
Who fights? Lots from the middle of the bottom
And a bit lower for those who get killed or maimed
 
	(1 little,….)
        13% of the homeless are veterans
	42% are African American
	1 out of 4 are mentally ill in the
	Richest country on earth

Mic check!
This is the hour of our discontent
Society we’re going to re-invent
We occupy to represent
To inequality we won’t consent
Revolution is a permanent event
The top 1/10th of 1 percent 
Is 100% 
Guilty!

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