One of the Great American Thieves
For many Americans these have been tough economic times. Millions have lost their homes and millions have lost their jobs and are likely to stay unemployed for some time. This sharp economic downturn is attributable largely to uncontrolled greed by many in the banking and financial industry and the failure of the government to properly regulate those institutions that have the power to destroy our economy.
But there is something to be happy about in all of this mess. Something that we can all point to with pride. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has pointed out that, while many of us are just scraping by the incomes of the very-very rich have grown considerably!
Incomes of the 400 with highest reported income
Yes! According to statistics released by the IRS, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes continued to rake in more money! What more could we want in this hour of need than to realize that the filthy rich among us are doing better than ever! This is truly cause to celebrate as we pay our credit card bills and try to figure out how to pay our growing utility bills.
But wait! There’s more!!
Tax Rates For The Rich Go Down
Thanks to their clever manipulation of our elected representatives, the tax rate for the very wealthy have actually gone down considerably! Yes, cuts in capital gains taxes and cuts in top marginal tax rates during the Bush administration have thankfully reduced the amount of taxes the filthy rich pay. Their effective tax rate in 2007 fell to 16.6 % and it looks like it will get lower. The average taxpayer (median 20%) paid taxes at a rate of 12.5% (including social security which is negligible for the filthy rich) in 2007. So you can see that any idea that the government is soaking the super rich is nonsense.
All this, of course, comes at a time when there is a call in Congress and elsewhere to cut back social programs which benefit the general population because they’re bankrupting the government. But the opposite is true. The very rich are the ones bankrupting the government and the country.
Income inequality has grown dramatically over the past several years. Two-thirds of the total income increase from 2002 to 2007 went to the top 1% of the population. In 2007 the top 1% of the population got a higher share of the national income than any time since 1928.
Do we really think that the founders of this country envisioned it being run for the benefit of a few super-rich? I don’t think so; in general they believed that government and the country should be for the benefit of the common man or, as it says in the preamble to The Constitution: “…promote the general welfare…”. It would be nice if we could get back to that.
[Source data can be found here. The photo is of a painting of John D. Rockefeller who created the Standard Oil Trust. He drove other oil companies out of business by vandalism and intimidation, espionage, threats and deceit. The Trust was broken up by the Supreme Court in 1911]
Well said. I’m from the UK but we have the same ever-yawning chasm between rich and poor, with little appetite from any political party to do anything about it (redistribution? taxation? these are all taboo). I liked the Spirit Level book for pointing out that it’s even in the filthy rich’s collective self interest to do something about it. Any ideas what’s to be done to change things?