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Below is a table of income tax distribution from 2005, and the floor of the income for each income level. Top Top Top Top Top Bottom Item Tax Year 1 percent 5 percent 10 percent 25 percent 50 percent 50 Percent Pct of All Income Taxes Paid 2005 39.38 59.67 70.30 85.99 96.93 3.07 Income floor for bracket 2006 392,643 153,866 109,441 65,084 32,261 < 32,261 My rhetorical question for Democrats; What is the end goal for who pays what percent of the nations income taxes? Is the Democrat talking point of "tax breaks for the rich" a real issue...

The thought has occurred to me, as I'm sure it has to many of you, that the critics of our politics, our lifestyles (as imagined by them), and our values tend to be miserable creatures. It never fails that conservative Republicans are parodied as white suburban idiots, the two kid, two car, evangelical churchgoing families who are closet racists, prudes, and simpletons. Of course, I know plenty of conservatives who defy this description. What I've noticed over time is that way too many lefty types seem to hate themselves. They hate their lives. Perhaps its because their lives are screwed...

Bon Jovi are playing a free concert in New York this weekend, however it seems some ticket holders are selling their "free" entry to desperate fans for as much as $1,500 a pair. Around 60,000 tickets were given away for free by New York City for the giant concert at Central Park on Saturday 12th July, to celebrate the July 15th All-Star baseball game that will be held at the Yankee Stadium. According to the New York Post, 267 listings for tickets being sold on eBay were found yesterday (July 7th), despite the tickets being printed with a warning that...

In 30 years, I have provided this hotel and our guests with over a million orders. One million, two hundred. I have seen a lot of people that I have seen on television. Some use alias names, but I can look on the sheet and know exactly who they are. It's kind of cute because they don't realize you really know who they are. You go along with it. You'd be amazed. You get the guests that really admire their pets. One wanted caviar, and she wanted my waiter to actually hand-feed it to the feline when we were upstairs....

Once known as the Mother of Presidents, Ohio is now getting poorer, older and dumber – and making all the wrong moves to reverse the situation. And that may actually be a plus for Barack Obama. His party is finding that lofty, vague promises of change combined with high-spending, high-tax, welfare state-ish policies are a political winner in the state. How else to explain why Gov. Ted Strickland's approval ratings are in the mid-50s or why Democrats may even win control of the state House for the first time in 14 years? But as a formula for economic revival, it...

University campuses receive a great deal of attention due to the political and cultural indoctrination and activism that some academics try to pass off as education.[1] However, government education bureaucrats are eager to ensure that their prescribed views are etched on the slate of the human mind at a much earlier age. For this reason, the most shameless political and cultural activism is often directed, under the guise of environmental and social education, at young children attending government primary schools.In Australia, governments have adopted environmental education programs that teach children that human intrusion into nature is to be condemned and...

While Disney artists bring their imaginations to life through animation, Disney executives are living a lifestyle that animators can’t even begin to imagine. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Disney chief executive Bob Iger received a 7% pay increase in 2007 for a total financial compensation of $27.7 million. According to the company’s proxy statement, the breakdown is as follows: $2 million salary, which remained the same as 2006; a $13.7 million bonus, which was a decrease from his $15 million bonus in ‘06; stock awards totaling $7.9 million, and $740,000 for personal air travel, security and a car...

t’s time to take a serious look at John Edwards - - again. Capitalizing on the “anybody-but-Hillary� wave that swept over Hawkeye State Democrats last Thursday, former Senator and Vice Presidential Candidate Edwards emerged as a second-place winner in the Iowa caucuses. He achieved this despite his comparatively low levels of campaign funds, and a campaign organization that perils in comparison to that of both his first place rival Barack Obama, and the opponent who now in some sense “trails� him, former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. And given this, and given the highly unpredictable nature of this entire campaign...

Taxes: Charles Rangel, chief of the House Ways and Means Committee, wants to pass the largest incometax hike ever, to punish the rich. That the middle class and poor would lose millions of jobs goes unmentioned. The crafty veteran Harlem lawmaker says it’s all worth it to shield the middle class from the ever-expanding Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) It would be tempting to accuse Rangel of waging a “Class War” on the rich, but the class who would really get hurt here is the working class, those who are employed by the people Rangel would hurt. As House Ways and...

Key legislators and presidential hopefuls in the Democratic Party have proposed raising the top two tax rates. They're also suggesting extra surtaxes for war, for alleviating the Alternative Minimum Tax, for Social Security, and for subsidizing compulsory health insurance. Barack Obama and John Edwards advocate taxing capital gains at 28%; Hillary Clinton favors taxing dividends at the surtaxed income-tax rates... ...The CBO reckons the top 1% accounted for more than 59% of all capital gains, interest, dividends and rent reported on individual tax returns by 2004. Yet estimates of the share of national wealth of the top 1% range from...

ALBURQUERQUE, Spain - Spanish cuisine tickles the palate in a thousand ways: ugly but delicious creatures called goose barnacles; boiled octopus with a dash of olive oil and paprika; thick, mushy sausage made from pig's blood. Spaniards are nothing if not dedicated eaters. Now, hard-core foodies are drooling over the prospect of something truly superlative from Spain, at least in price: a salt-cured ham costing about $2,100 per leg, or a cruel $160 per pound. It's a price believed to make it the most expensive ham in the world. Don't grab your wallet just yet. And forget about asking for...

As my wife will attest, I often suffer from futterneid. This is the term Germans use to describe the envy we feel when, for example, someone orders a better meal than ours. I’m also prone to schadenfreude, the tendency to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. So if I get the braised short ribs and you get stuck with the snail tartare, your futterneid will fuel my schadenfreude. Perhaps it’s no coincidence the Germans have so many words for the chillingly petty emotions that run like cold streams through the human heart. Poor, dark, and divided, Germany was an...

As my wife will attest, I often suffer from futterneid. This is the term Germans use to describe the envy we feel when, for example, someone orders a better meal than ours. I'm also prone to schadenfreude, the tendency to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. So if I get the braised short ribs and you get stuck with the snail tartare, your futterneid will fuel my schadenfreude. Perhaps it's no coincidence the Germans have so many words for the chillingly petty emotions that run like cold streams through the human heart. Poor, dark and divided, Germany was an...

So we are agreed. We are living in the second great Gilded Age, a time of startling personal wealth. In the West, the mansion after mansion with broad and rolling grounds; in the East, the apartments with foyers in which bowling teams could play. Or, on another level, the week's vacation in Disneyland or Dublin with the entire family--this in a nation in which, well within human memory, people with a week off stayed home and fixed things in the garage, or drove to the beach for a day and sat on a blanket from one of the kid's beds...

Frankly, those are the only messages you get from her latest column. And what a shame, because she also illustrates how ridiculous the 'feminist establishment' truly has become while simultaneously reinforcing the stereotype that feminists are simply bitter and jealous: "Fred Thompson, would-be presidential candidate, is 64 years old and looks it. His wife, Jeri, is two years younger than one of his daughters and looks even younger than her 40 years. This term is generally used to refer to women who are substantially younger, less wrinkled, and sometimes, but not always, more accomplished than the old model. The old...

The man who was arrested went out for drinks and lap dances, they say. Finally hitting the Lotto may have cost Kalvin Stockford his life. The burly Orange County tree trimmer won $10,000 last month and had been bragging about it ever since. Employees found their crew boss dead on the floor with empty pockets Monday morning at Gator Tree Experts near West Fairbanks Avenue. Suspicions quickly focused on Dwayne Ricardo Smith, a missing co-worker with a history of violent crimes, according to Orange County sheriff's reports. Within hours, Smith's best friend began telling detectives about a night that began...

If the top Democratic hopefuls are under the impression that the way to stop Third Worlders from hating America is to build schools in their countries, they need to think again. On Tuesday, Senator Clinton floated the idea that we should spend 10 billion dollars over a five year period on schools and teachers in poor nations. The justification for this being that such schools could give children an alternative to the anti-Americanism they are so often steeped in these days. Senators Obama and Edwards are of similar mind as well. --snip-- It would seem that more promising strategies would...

The British government has banned all military service members from talking to the media in return for payment following a storm of protests over interviews with the 15 marines and sailors who were held captive in Iran. A defense ministry spokesman told CNN on Monday that a review was announced on Sunday into military personnel speaking to the media in return for payment. While this review is ongoing, a ban is in force on all personnel from speaking to the media for payment. Effectively, personnel can still talk to the media but cannot receive money in return. The move to...

Two days after they were paraded as heroes with a story to tell, some of the 15 British sailors and marines captured and released by Iran seemed today to have decided they have a story to sell. In a highly unusual decision, Britain’s Ministry of Defense – normally tight-lipped to say the least – acknowledged on Saturday that it had agreed for some of the sailors and marines to offer their experiences for sale to newspapers and television stations. Such transactions are common enough among civilians trading rights to their stories for considerable sums of money. But the notion of...

The 15 British military captives who were released by the Iranians have been authorised by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to sell their stories. MoD officials claimed that the move to lift the ban on military personnel selling their stories while in service was justified because of the “exceptional circumstances” of the case. The hostages are expected to earn as much as £250,000 between them. The story of Faye Turney, 26, the only female among them, is expected to be the most lucrative. She could profit by as much as £150,000 from a joint deal with a newspaper and ITV....

On Appeasing Envy By Henry Hazlitt Any attempt to equalize wealth or income by forced redistribution must only tend to destroy wealth and income. Historically the best the would-be equalizers have ever succeeded in doing is to equalize downward. This has even been caustically described as their intention. "Your levellers," said Samuel Johnson in the mid-eighteenth century, "wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves." And in our own day we find even an eminent liberal like the late Mr. Justice Holmes writing: "I have no respect for the passion for equality,...

Alan Mulally, who succeeded Bill Ford last year as chief executive of Ford Motor Co. (F), received compensation valued at $39.1 million in his four months on the job in 2006, including an $18.5 million bonus related to his signing and awards he gave up when he left his previous employer Boeing Co. (BA), according to a regulatory filing Thursday. Mulally took over as CEO in September and also is the Dearborn, Mich.-based company's president. The total of $39.1 million is based on Associated Press calculations. The nation's second biggest automaker lost $12.7 billion in 2006, the largest in its...

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans ? those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 ? receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows. The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression. While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with...

One expects the political left to point to income inequality as a defect of our capitalist system. But when President George W. Bush expresses alarm over a "growing income inequality gap" and urges corporations to rethink the compensation packages they offer to top executives, we would be wise to pay attention. In the past 15 years, incomes in each of the five quintiles (i.e., 20 percent shares of the population) tracked by the government rose in real, inflation-adjusted dollars. Incomes in the top quintile rose by slightly more than 20 percent. Incomes in the bottom quintile rose by 21 percent....

Andrew Paul Gutierrez, a 67-year-old professor of ecosystems science in UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, has a word for those who believe human ingenuity and productivity are boundless. He calls them "cornucopians." He thinks cornucopians are misguided and prone to taking big risks that can backfire. That's one of the reasons he is upset that the university where he has spent his entire academic life is joining with oil giant BP in a $500 million, 10-year program to discover how to mass-produce clean, safe transportation fuels -- such as ethanol -- from biomass in an environmentally safe and cost-effective...

With Democrats in control of both Houses of Congress for the first time in twelve years, economic inequality is back on the agenda. In his response to the State of the Union address, new Virginia Senator James Webb began by contrasting how much those at the top of the average company earned with the amount earned by those at the bottom. Running for the Democratic Presidential nomination, John Edwards is returning to his 2004 theme of "two Americas." They are joined by liberal pundits such as Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait, who between them accuse conservatives of "hatred" and of...

BY all means unfurl the banners, dust off the placards and prop up the distorted effigies of George W. Bush. Start practising those chants of "Down with America" and "America, the Great Satan" and stop bathing and brushing your hair (a less commented on pre-requisite for some protesters) for another anti-American protest. With US Vice-President Dick Cheney in Australia next week, it's not an opportunity to be missed for those who hate the US. But before the crowd tail-gates Cheney as he meets Australian political leaders, maybe it's time to check what it is that drives animosity towards the US....

In a Newsweek column titled "How Dems can win White House," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., opines about the difficulties that the Democratic Party has had in defining itself. The senator wonders, enviously, how Republicans have been able to "identify issues that connected to their deeply held values," reduce them to a few words – eight according to Schumer – and communicate to the American people. "What are our eight words?" the senator asks. But Democrats have a very clear picture of who they are. And newly elected Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, who his party picked to give their...

...The most celebrated case involved Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary who resigned the Harvard University presidency last February after a stormy five-year tenure, which included a no-confidence vote by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the prospect of another. But top officials have also departed after no-confidence votes at a range of other campuses, large and small, public and private, including Gallaudet University, the nation’s premier institution for the deaf; Case Western Reserve, a major research university in Ohio; Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Texas; and the small University of Maine at Presque Isle. The Explanation...

The Homeland Security Department is lumping New York City together with parts of New Jersey to assess how much anti-terror cash to send to the area - a stunning shift that lawmakers fear could take an even bigger bite out of the Big Apple's funding. Under the change, New York is the only major city this year to be saddled by a secondary metropolitan area, one across state lines - Newark and Jersey City in this case. "We are looking at the New York metropolitan area, which includes northern New Jersey, for the purposes of assessing risk," Homeland Security Secretary...

<p>I have a dream that Pelosi, who was chauffeured to school as a child and who, with her investor husband, owns minority shares in the Auberge du Soleil resort hotel and the CordeValle Golf Club, will look over her famous strand of South Sea Tahitian pearls and forge bonds of understanding with the zillionaire corporate barons in the opposing party.</p>

Perhaps it is one of the fruits of the “self-esteem” emphasis in our schools that so many people feel confident to voice strong convictions about things they know little or nothing about — or, worse yet, are misinformed about. One of the hardest things for anyone to be informed about is the value of someone else’s productivity. Yet there are cries from all directions that some people are being paid “too much” and others “too little.” Judging Worth Who can possibly be better informed about the value of what someone else produces than those who use the goods or services...

... Democrats in Congress are saying they now want to address the "wealth gap" even as they deplore and want to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT. It was a previous crusade against the wealthy that created the AMT. Haven't we learned anything about the perils of tax policy rooted in political envy? ...The latest data indicate that the eight states with the highest percentage of tax filers subject to the AMT all voted heavily Democratic in 2004 and 2006 -- including Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Those voters are now screaming for relief, and the question...

   by Fr. James Farfaglia Other Articles by Fr. James FarfagliaContact this Author Envy — It’s a Killer 11/04/06 Quick — what do Cain, Satan, and Claudias (Uncle of Hamlet) have in common? And do you have it in common with them? In This Article...Bad CompanyThe Envy Trap Be Transformed Bad Company I’m talking here about envy, one of the seven deadly sins. They all had it — Satan still has it — and if you have it, well, suffice it to say you may not want to be in their company. To diagnose whether you have envy — or whether...

Satan's Arsenal"The Seven Deadly Sins" Peter and Paul Ministries 1)The SIN of PRIDE:Pride is the "mother of all sins" and is the cause of every other sin. Pride is an excessive self-love. Examples of Pride:* Boasting* Arrogance* Inordinate exaltation of oneself* The total rejection of the Catholic Church.* Stating one is already saved.* Picking and choosing Catholic teachings one wishes to follow. 2) The SIN of GREED:Greed wants to get its " fair share" and much more.The unquenchable desire for money or material possessions. Examples of Greed:* The love of money* Obsessive consumerism * Living beyond ones means *...

by Marcellino D'Ambrosio, Ph.D. Other Articles by Marcellino D'Ambrosio, Ph.D. Anatomy of Envy 09/25/06 Recently a prominent CEO told a mixed group of business leaders that regardless of their religion they simply had to read the Bible. Why? Because success in business depends not so much upon understanding financial reports as it does upon understanding people. And when it comes to a book that reveals what makes people tick, there is none better than the Bible. Perhaps Christians ought to pay heed to this businessman. We often get our ideas about people more from our own wishful thinking than God’s inspired...

Come listen to the most explosive talkshow host in the country, the one who dominates the airways, the one and only................

Number 2 on the roll of the Se7en Deadly Sins is envy. Envy is second on the Highway to Hell Sin List, as it lags behind pride a wee little bit in being the nastiest and most common vice. Primal in its poison, envy forms a big chunk of the foul compost heap that stimulates the growth for human stupidity aplenty. Envy (like pride), is an extremely deadly sin that doesn’t get the verbal hailstorm that other sins get in our current culture with its totemic view of vice. Someone who’s been saddled by the envy monkey will probably not...

Two weeks ago, the Senate killed an effort to repeal the federal estate tax on multimillion-dollar fortunes. The "no" votes were a stand for budget sanity and basic fairness. But the pro-repeal camp doesn't want to take no for an answer. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed an estate-tax cut that is a repeal in everything but name. The so-called compromise would exempt more than 99.5 percent of estates from tax, slash the tax rates on the rest and cost at least $760 billion during its first full decade. Of that, $600 billion is the amount the government would have...

Ann Coulter may have perfected the art of flogging liberals—and 9-11 widows—to flog her books. But it looks like she's been getting a little help in the sales department. Her new screed, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, is now reportedly the fastest selling non-fiction book in the country, with 48,408 copies sold in its debut week, according to the latest Nielson Bookscan figures. No doubt a lot of that reflects the shitstorm of controversy she's kicked up by attacking those widows who dared challenge the official explanations for 9-11 as "harpies" who are somehow "enjoying their husbands' deaths." But the...

The publication of cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish daily earlier this year inflamed the pious and mobilized the militant across the Muslim world. The American casting of Chinese actresses in "Memoirs of a Geisha" stirred the considerable ire of Japanese nationalists when it was released. At a recent Rolling Stones concert in Shanghai, the Chinese government prohibited the aging rockers from singing "Let's Spend the Night Together." Indonesian Muslim activists are in an uproar over the launch of a local version of Playboy magazine - even though there is no nudity. These are but the latest...

The housing spin There's nothing funnier or more satisfying (for me, at least) than watching the National Association of Realtors (NAR) change its tune these days. The latest news release from this sunny-Jim industry group finally fesses up to its past fiction, but even when it admits the bubble's going to pop, it can't muster the courage to just come out and say it. Nope, according to the news template the NAR released to the press on June 6, "The housing boom has ended, but sales at historically healthy levels will continue." Wow, sounds great! What about all those poor...

by Edward Hudgins Norway recently lost its wealthiest citizen. No, he didn't die. Rather, he left or, to be more accurate, was driven out of the country for the sin of wanting to remain wealthy. John Fredriksen has made a fortune in shipping and aqua-business. But in past years he's spent less and less time in his homeland in order to avoid its confiscatory taxes. Recently the Norwegian government decreed that the only way to avoid those taxes was for citizens -- Fredriksen was the target -- to spend no more than 90 days a year in the country. In...

I have for many years now, been warning of the age old battle between the super rich and the middle class. Only in the usa during the 19th and 20th century, did the middle class win that battle. During the 19th and 20th century in the usa the power of the super wealthy was curtailed. Government enacted laws that protected the middle class and encouraged exspandsion of the middle class. Anti-trust laws prevented the super rich from gaining control over entire industries. Today these laws are ignored. Labor laws enabled workers to bargain for a living wage. Today these laws...

Eighteen of America's wealthiest families, including the Timkens of Canton, are bankrolling efforts to permanently repeal estate taxes that would save their families a total of $71.6 billion, according to a report released Tuesday by public interest groups. Groups funded by the super-rich have engaged in a deceptive campaign to convince the public that estate taxes cause widespread problems for small businesses and family farms when they actually affect about one in 370 estates, said the report released by Public Citizen and Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. This year, all assets under $2 million for individuals and under $4...

by Mark Finkelstein April 20, 2006 On the heels of MSM outrage at the retirement package granted to Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, Good Morning America was back at the class-warfare ramparts this morning with a new target in its sights, Dr. William McGuire, head of United Health Group. As the result of share prices that have increased over 7,000 percent, stock options granted McGuire are currently worth in excess of $1 billion. ABC reporter Dan Harris narrated the segment, and GMA set the tone with its title - "You Must be Kidding!" But there was no joking about the class-warfare...

When I was 8, my family moved from Kumasi, Ghana, to Carmel, California, and I fell into a depression. It wasn't about having to make new friends -- in our peripatetic lifestyle, I was used to that. The cause of my downward spiral was something else: It was about space, urban design and the way that an environment shapes our souls. What is it about a place that makes someone happy? Since I had moved from a region known more for desperation, danger and deprivation to one known as a veritable paradise, I've always thought my melancholy a curious example...

by Edward Hudgins ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org Governments often get their wealth-destroying, morally depraved ideas from our often misnamed institutes of "higher learning." The latest that's popping up in bulletins, newsletters, and probably soon in legislation is from a 2005 study on "The Economics of Workaholism," co-authored by Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan and Daniel Hammermesh of the University of Texas in Austin. The study starts by stating that "Economists have recently re-considered whether a range of individual behaviors are self-destructive, and possibly addictive, and have proposed that it may be Pareto-superior to tax them in order to induce people to...

Clinton calls Blair’s government the ’envy’ of the United States (AP) 28 March 2006 LONDON - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Tuesday that Britain’s economy, environmental policy and attempts at modernization were envied in the United States, where comparable policies under President George W. Bush were lacking. Speaking to a packed audience at London’s Guildhall, Clinton specifically responded to criticisms that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labour party were “long in the tooth,” or past their prime. “If you live where I live and you look across the Atlantic, it does not look that way,” he...

DELRAY BEACH, Florida (AP) -- Livia Landry likes life the way it is in this quaint tree-lined neighborhood few blocks from downtown -- front porches with wind chimes and potted plants jutting out into sunshine-filled, groomed green yards. Young mothers push three-wheeled strollers up sidewalks past century-old homes, chatting with neighbors about day's events. Talk has turned to history as this seaside city confronts a growing national trend, the "tear-down phenomenon," with wealthy buyers replacing turn-of-the-century bungalows on tiny lots with so-called McMansions. Plainly put, it's out with old and in with new. Communities across the country are grappling with...