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Guns Guns Guns
Guest
Most people view the Occupy Wall Street movement as the ideological opposite of the Tea Party, yet they share a remarkably similar motivating principle: a concern that our economic system has become fundamentally unfair.
Consider my own situation as a member of the top 1%. For 2010, my wife and I paid $115,310 in federal income tax on adjusted gross income of $723,984, an effective tax rate of 15.9%.
Why so low? Mostly because the vast majority of our income comes from investments—stock dividends and capital gains—which are taxed at a maximum rate of 15%.
If we had made the exact same income purely from the sweat of our brows, we would have paid approximately $155,000, or over a third more, in federal income tax.
To put it another way, in order for a working couple to have the same after-tax income as us, they would need to earn over $64,000 more than we did(and this isn’t even taking into account Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are paid on labor but not on investment income).
No wonder the gap between the richest 1% and the rest keeps growing.
The government is subsidizing the wealthiest Americans, making it easier for them to stay rich and harder for working Americans to join their ranks.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesl...s-than-someone-who-earns-it-all-by-hard-work/
Consider my own situation as a member of the top 1%. For 2010, my wife and I paid $115,310 in federal income tax on adjusted gross income of $723,984, an effective tax rate of 15.9%.
Why so low? Mostly because the vast majority of our income comes from investments—stock dividends and capital gains—which are taxed at a maximum rate of 15%.
If we had made the exact same income purely from the sweat of our brows, we would have paid approximately $155,000, or over a third more, in federal income tax.
To put it another way, in order for a working couple to have the same after-tax income as us, they would need to earn over $64,000 more than we did(and this isn’t even taking into account Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are paid on labor but not on investment income).
No wonder the gap between the richest 1% and the rest keeps growing.
The government is subsidizing the wealthiest Americans, making it easier for them to stay rich and harder for working Americans to join their ranks.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesl...s-than-someone-who-earns-it-all-by-hard-work/
