Tuesday, September 25, 2012
when you talk about $250K
I guess that when some work folks make a bit more money than others, it causes envy. But when it comes to super rich, people admire them.
When people talk about top 1%, they also include people who make over 250K. Those, not everyone, who make a bit above that borderline, are nothing to do with superrich. Those are working citizens usually dual earners or living in high cost living area. In order to make that much money, those people also have to be hard working...unlike spoiled brats whose parents can phone call to get temporary jobs in prestigious firms for the heck of experiences for instance. By the way, those spoiled brat taken jobs directly kill the opportunities of serious and talented students from no connection family.
Those spoiled brats usually work under direct supervision of middle managers like other entry positions. But usually those managers are pressured to give a good grade on their performance. I have seen it.
While those spoiled brats' parents go to public and speak for middle class and raising tax for top 1%. That hit those folks who have to work for the entire life to pay their bills. Super rich are not working to live. The majority of income comes from other than earned income. One is investment. Even if we increase the investment income tax, they will get around by establishing non-taxable entity or some kind of expense account they create. It will hit again those working folks who finally started putting aside some of their income for their own retirement other than tax protected retirement fund. Those folks without pension have to put aside the significant amount of money for their own retirement after tax.
You cannot do that seriously. Those people are not even driving luxury cars you see on street. By the way, those luxury cars are owned by many under $250K, too.
When you focus so much on the top% wage earners, you are killing those people's seoul. Many folks are coming from modest income. They worked hard without family connection.
You got to look at those superrich whether what you are trying to do really taxing really rich, those who do not have to work for life. Those people don't need another marble bath in their castle. Those yacht should pay for basic medical care of citizens who cannot afford. Without taking those obviously unnecessary items of life, you cannot tax those folks who are just making $250K.
By the way, there are many people who make less than the cut but living mortgage free because their parents can afford to do so. OR those folks whose parents are lucky enough to pay for college have better life with less hours of work.
tax super-rich not ordinary rich
Inequality: Mostly Among the 1%
The super-rich are outstripping the merely wealthy -- but the rest of us are a lot more equal than you might think.
By John Maggs, Senior Economics Editor, The Kiplinger Letter
After a brief pause for the Great Recession, income inequality is rising again, with the highest-earning 1% getting the lion's share of added income and the other 99% dividing the remainder.
But the picture of inequality that this paints is a little misleading. It turns out that there is a lot less inequality among the vast majority of Americans than there might seem, and it's not getting worse.
The most common measure of inequality is the share of income earned by the top 1% -- the highest-earning 1.5 million individuals and couples. This was about 18% of all income in 2011, twice as much as when Ronald Reagan was reelected president in 1984. Because one-percenters get a large portion of their income from investments, their share of all income fell to 17% after the stock market plunged in 2008.
Since then, the stock market's robust recovery and meager growth in the wages and salaries that the lower 99% rely on has meant that an overwhelming share of total income growth has gone to the wealthiest citizens. In 2010, $9 of every additional $10 earned went to the top 1%, and data due in a few months will show that the same happened in 2011. With stocks up better than 10% already this year and high unemployment holding down wages and salaries, that trend will continue in 2012.
But probe a bit deeper and another picture emerges. The gap between most one-percenters and most of the 99% isn't that wide because the most extreme inequality is at the very top of the income scale. The chasm between the super-rich -- the highest-earning 15,000 tax filers -- and others in the top 1% is so large that it skews the overall result. Factor it out, and even inequality between the poor and the well-off is far less than 10-to-1. Though that's still too much inequality in the view of some people, it's not the extreme inequality that often makes the headlines.
Consider how much inequality there is within the 1% richest. The average yearly income for this group is $418,000. The average income for the top 1% of them -- the 15,000 in "the 0.01%" -- is $23 million, or more than 50 times as much.
Contrast that with the ratio between the $418,000 average income of the 1% and the average for all tax filers -- $68,000 in 2010. Even after accounting for the fact that this $68,000 is inflated a bit by the big earnings at the very top, the average top earner receives less than six times as much income as the average taxpayer.
There's much less distance between the average American and the average rich person than there is between the merely rich and the super-rich.
Sliced another way, there is a similar difference between the bottom of the 99% and the top of it. According to one study, when government subsidies and employer-funded health insurance are included, the ratio of well-off taxpayers at the 90th percentile of income and the poor at the 10th percentile is also about 6-to-1. And this measure of inequality isn't getting wider. That 6-to-1 ratio is unchanged since 1990s, and the ratio was roughly 5-to-1 in the 1980s.
By contrast, inequality within the top 1% soared over that same period. In 1984, the super-rich 0.01% earned $1 out of every $9 pulled in by all of the richest 1%. By 2010, the super-rich were hauling in $1 of every $5 earned by one-percenters.
In fact, the concentration of income among the super-rich is about as high as it has ever been, and much higher than it was for most of the 20th century. They collected about 3.3% of all income in 2011, a little below the record 3.5% in 2007 and triple the level in 1984. Between World Wars I and II, the average for the super-rich was 2% of income, and from 1946 to 1991, it was 1% of income. Then it started rising.
Meanwhile, inequality among the vast majority of people isn't so wide, and it isn't getting wider. Even after a brutal recession that lowered living standards for most people, the average American isn't losing ground compared with most others, even if the gulf between average and very wealthy is growing broader. Cornell University economist Robert Frank, an expert on public attitudes about wealth, argues that perceptions about living standards are based as much on one's relative position compared with neighbors and coworkers than on actual dollars and cents.
If, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's words, the very rich "are different from you and me," the super-rich are so different that their wealth prompts more curiosity than outrage. The wealth of Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg is beyond the aspirations or care of most people in today's challenging economy. What's another billion or two?
Read more: http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/practical-economics/archives/inequality-growing-among-rich.html#ixzz27VgUCoYi
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Read more at http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/practical-economics/archives/inequality-growing-among-rich.html#5fymBBBWuG8FxEZM.99
Crony Capitalism: $737 Million Green Jobs Loan Given to Nancy Pelosi's Brother-In-Law
Crony Capitalism: $737 Million Green Jobs Loan Given to Nancy Pelosi's Brother-In-Law
Despite the growing Solyndra scandal, yesterday the Department of Energy approved $1 billion in new loans to green energy companies -- including a $737 million loan guarantee to a company known as SolarReserve:
SolarReserve LLC, a closely held renewable energy developer, received a $737 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee to build a solar-thermal project in Nevada.
The 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project, near Tonopah, Nevada, will use the sun’s heat to create steam that drives a turbine, the agency said today in a e-mailed statement. SolarReserve is based in Santa Monica, California.
On SolarReserve's website is a list of "investment partners," including the "PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC." As blogger American Glob quickly discovered, PCG's number two is none other than "Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who happens to be the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives."
But wait... there's more! One of SolarReserve's other investment partners is Argonaut Private Equity:
Steve Mitchell and Argonaut Private Equity might have a chance to recoup some of their losses in the Solyndra debacle now that the Department of Energy has given a $737 million dollar loan guarantee to a company backed by Argonaut that also lists Mitchell among its board of directors.
Mitchell served on the Solyndra LLC Board of Directors. He also serves as Managing Director for Argonaut Private Equity, a company that invested in Solyndra through the LLCs parent company. After Solyndra declared bankruptcy, two Democratic members of the U.S. House asked that Mitchell testify about Solyndra. Though he has not appeared before Congress, he has "been asked to provide documents to Congress" pertaining to Solyndra.
And for good measure, it's also noteworthy that Obama is about to hold a big money fundraiser at the home of Tom Carnahan in St. Louis:
Carnahan, a member of the prominent Missouri Democratic family, has been tapped by the Obama campaign as its chief Missouri fundraiser. He is chairman of the board of Wind Capital Group, a wind energy company that makes it corporate headquarters in St. Louis. He formerly was president and CEO of the company.
Last year, Wind Capital's Lost Creek Farm facility in northwest Missouri received a $107 million tax credit from the Treasury Department, among many such wind operations receiving support from from stimulus funds.
Tom Carnahan is the son of former Missouri governor Mel Carnahan and former U.S. senator Jean Carnahan. He's also the brother of current Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan.
It's increasingly hard to tell the government's green jobs subsidies apart from the Democrats' friends and family rewards program.
when democrats win
Nancy Pelosi's brother-in-law is given $737m of taxpayers' money to build giant solar power plant in middle of the desert
Obama administration approved $1bn in green energy loans days after failed Solyndra project due to be completed
$737m handed to Crescent Dunes project in Tonopah, Nevada, for 110-megawatt desert solar power plant
Investors include firm Minority leader's brother-in-law and major Solyndra stakeholder
Republicans warn Ene
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2043282/Nancy-Pelosis-brother-law-given-loan-bigger-Solyndra-solar-plant.html#ixzz27UTdFu87
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