Have you seen the percentage of income that goes toward housing? In large cities, it approaches 50% for people with low paying jobs. They are not living a life of “want” by any stretch of the imagination. And they make up over 50% of the population.

Perhaps your logic applies to people living on farms or survivalist who have completely disconnected from society.

But the are the simple facts of our post-industrial urban economy since 1960:

1. Worker productivity has double since 1973, but wages have been stagnant.
2. Taxes have continuously decreased since the 1960's.
3. Corporate share of federal tax revenues has decreased from 28% in the 50’s, and 21% in the 60’s to less than 10% since the 1980's.
4. CEO salaries have skyrocketed.
5. Wall Street has crashed the economy multiple times (S&L Crisis, Hedge Fun crisis, 2008 melt down) but continually gets bailed out with tax dollars.
6. Tax loopholes and illegal avoidance tacitcs (off shore bank accounts, fake corporate HQ’s in Swiss PO Boxes, moving jobs off shore, etc.) have vastly increasing the wealth of the top 1%.

If we look at the overall economic pie, there has been a massive increase in wealth since the 1960’s, but the distribution of that wealth has not grown proportionally for each group.

Your arguments blaming the average joe for wastefulness in a system that is bought and sold by 33,000 Washington lobbyists employed by the rich don’t hold much water.