Marc Fitten, New York Times Op-Ed Contributor, wrote an excellent article for the Sunday edition titled Life Underwater In the article he writes about being a good boy, following the rules, living conservatively, never living on credit, and hoping to send his kids to college one day. Over the last few years he has seen the value of his home drop $70k, wiping out all of his equity. He classifies himself as part of the new suburban poor.
That was on page 10; on page 4 the Prime Number is 345 Follow the link because you will find a cornucopia of interesting data in this little paragraph. The basic premise is this:
•$345 million is the average earned by the 400 highest earning households
•The number is up from $263 million
•The average tax rate these households paid was 16.6% the lowest since the IRS started keeping track
•The top 400 households earned $138 billion in 2007, that's a 76% increase over the previous year.
So middle class homeowners are completely underwater and the top earning households are making more money than ever and paying the lowest taxes ever.
I think the only way for this Nation to survive this recession together and whole, is if the wealthy put some of the wealth back into circulation. But, the wealthy need to have something that they think is worth spending on.
ReplyDeleteWhat could that be?
Raise capital gains taxes.
ReplyDeletego back to the 90% marginal tax rate!
ReplyDelete