Do you consider yourself "rich"?

[EJ]

Did you know...

If your HOUSEHOLD income is $55,000 per year or more, you are in the top 25% in the country.

If your HOUSEHOLD income is $92,000 per year or more, you are in the top 5% in the country.

If your HOUSEHOLD income is $128,000 per year or more, you are in the top 3% in the country.

If your HOUSEHOLD income is $230,000 per year or more, you are in the top 1% in the country.

If your HOUSEHOLD income is $790,000 per year or more, you are in the top 0.1% in the country.

If your HOUSEHOLD income is $3,600,000 per year or more, you are in the top 0.01% in the country.


Now who is complaing about the tax cuts going to some top % of the country? Seems like those are the people paying all the taxes...

[turbodawg]

One ploy often used to play down growing inequality is to rely on rather coarse statistical breakdowns -- dividing the population into five ''quintiles,'' each containing 20 percent of families, or at most 10 ''deciles.'' Indeed, Greenspan's speech at Jackson Hole relied mainly on decile data. From there it's a short step to denying that we're really talking about the rich at all. For example, a conservative commentator might concede, grudgingly, that there has been some increase in the share of national income going to the top 10 percent of taxpayers, but then point out that anyone with an income over $81,000 is in that top 10 percent. So we're just talking about shifts within the middle class, right?

Wrong: the top 10 percent contains a lot of people whom we would still consider middle class, but they weren't the big winners. Most of the gains in the share of the top 10 percent of taxpayers over the past 30 years were actually gains to the top 1 percent, rather than the next 9 percent. In 1998 the top 1 percent started at $230,000. In turn, 60 percent of the gains of that top 1 percent went to the top 0.1 percent, those with incomes of more than $790,000. And almost half of those gains went to a mere 13,000 taxpayers, the top 0.01 percent, who had an income of at least $3.6 million and an average income of $17 million.

...from a really good essay by a guy named Paul Krugman. He believes that it's possible that the Middle Class is an economic abberation -- a blip -- of post-WWII era America and could eventually just go away...

A pretty good read whether you necessarily 'believe' it or not.


http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/ForRicher.html

[EJ]

A household income of $230,000 in a place like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Los Angeles goes pretty quickly. That is why I like Houston... big city pay, small town housing costs.

The middle class is somewhere between the "haves" and "have nots" and he is probably correct about the distance between the two increasing and even disappearing...

[EJ]

It is not that I don't think we should have taxes; I just think that taxes are too high.

If the government would be more efficient and practical with our tax money and pass legislation that would provide practical measures for housing, health care, insurance, education, transportation, etc. then I wouldn't complain as much. I just think they waste a lot of money as it "filters" through the bureacracies and when they send it around the world.

The problem is that personal politics, greed, and power get in the way of making progress towards practical solutions.

[DCDAWG]

Wow. You're the first person I seen here that thought taxes may actually be necessary -- even to those who don't think they need government. Republican Theodore Roosevelt once said "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of valuable property can sleep a single night in security."

[markay714]

Wow. You're the first person I seen here that thought taxes may actually be necessary -- even to those who don't think they need government. Republican Theodore Roosevelt once said "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of valuable property can sleep a single night in security."

I don't mind taxes, but I thnk they are way too high - and used in less than the most cost-effective ways. Taxes should be used for doing stuff that we cannot do for ourselves - defense, infrastructure, etc. We've broadened the role of government far beyond the founders' intentions and I don't like it.