Free Republic

Federal income tax rates would have to be nearly tripled across the income spectrum if Congress were to close the deficit in fiscal year 2010, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Instead of taxing joint filers with rates ranging from 10 percent to 35 percent, tax rates would have to start at 27.2 percent and reach up to 95.2 percent.

In a world full of paradoxes, Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has become rich decrying what he deems "income inequality." Only in America could an individual denounce the wealth gap while becoming the very person he denounces. In that sense, it may be that polar opposites Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter were right: capitalism is seemingly its own worst enemy. In rich societies, commentators can become wealthy while trashing wealth creation. The irony with Krugman is that when it comes to policy prescriptions meant to elevate the living standards of the lower and middle classes,...

Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., understands something that continues to escape House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is radioactive, owing to multiple investigations of his serial failures to disclose millions of dollars worth of income and investments. Rangel had contributed more than $19,000 to Welch, but the Vermonter recently sent it back. That was a good decision because Welch is a member of the House Ethics Committee, which is conducting one of the investigations of Rangel. But it shouldn’t be necessary to be on the ethics panel in order to understand that Rangel’s actions disgrace...

The great Canadian economist Reuven Brenner noted in his 1983 book, History: The Human Gamble, that periods of massive income inequality frequently lead to economic innovation. Simply put, those who are not yet wealthy see those who are, and they gamble on exciting ideas in hopes of joining the existing rich at the top of the heap. As Brenner put it, "it is the perception of inequality that induces people to take risks." Along those lines, USA Today founder Al Neuharth wrote in 2007 about his own career path compared to that of CNN's Larry King. Neuharth observed: "[King] was...

<p>Ask almost any Democratic politician the most important economic facts about income distribution in America, and you are almost certain to hear the following three points: (1) incomes have fallen substantially over the past ten years; (2) labor's share of income has fallen significantly behind the pace of new productivity and innovation; and (3) income distribution has worsened dramatically over the past generation and over the past decade in particular, with people at the top getting a bigger fraction of total personal income.</p>

And, I've found the data. It's actually a report from the U.S. Census Bureau entitled, "We the People: Asians in the United States" (the full file can be found here and the link is also in the Selected Articles part as you scroll down on your left hand side). I've taken a photo of the graph and circled the relevant portion in red. While definitely, not the poorest, it does show that Korean-Americans are the poorest among Northeast Asians and actually have a lower median income than that of all American households, which stands in stark contrast with the fact...

The chart above is based on global personal income tax data (highest marginal rate) just released in KPMG' study "Individual Income Tax and Social Security Rate Survey 2009." The trend globally over the last six years is towards reductions in the highest personal income tax rates, which have fallen from 31.2% in 2003 (average of 86 countries) to 28.9% in 2009. The highest marginal tax rate in the U.S. has been 35% since 2003. As Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute points out: The Obama administration plans to let the U.S. rate jump to 39.6% in 2011, which would...

For the first time since the great depression (and possibly even then), US wage earners suffered through A Decade With No Income Gains. The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago. To me, that’s the big news from the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance, which was released this morning. Median household fell to $50,303 last year, from $52,163 in 2007. In 1998, median income was $51,295. All these numbers are adjusted for inflation. In the four decades that the Census Bureau has been tracking household...

The deepest downturn in the U.S. economy since the Great Depression may finally shrink the gap between the very best-off Americans and everyone else. If so, it won't be by lifting up the bottom. It will be by pulling down the top.

"A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.” President Obama State of Union Speech The distribution of income is central to one of the most enduring issues in political economics. On one extreme are those who argue that all incomes should be the same, or as nearly so as possible, and that a principal function of government should be to redistribute income from the haves to the have-nots. On the other extreme are those who argue that any income redistribution by government is bad… Alabama Constitution: “That the...

Income and spending numbers are out for the last month.... Personal income increased $3.8 billion, or less than 0.1 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $4.6 billion, or less than 0.1 percent, in July, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $25.0 billion, or 0.2 percent. In June, personal income decreased $133.4 billion, or 1.1 percent, DPI decreased $119.9 billion, or 1.1 percent, and PCE increased $60.9 billion, or 0.6 percent, based on revised estimates.

The explosive stock market rally since early March has fueled hopes that the worst is really over and that the economy is no longer on the brink of a prolonged deep plunge. The recent tenth of a point drop in unemployment sealed the optimism. The President and his party spent a few days bragging about the success of their Porkulus plan (even though the week before they were telling people to be patient because very little of the stimulus bill had been spent). Today's news indicates that maybe the president and his allies should have put off the celebration for...

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — Chuck Dettman said he had not really considered the notion back in 2001 that he and his friends in a job-search support group would never recover from being laid off. The country was in a recession then, as now, and the professionals who had just lost their jobs met weekly at a local job center to network and trade advice. Despite the national economic problems, they remained confident that they would not only find work but would also be compensated as they had been in the past. Eight years later, however, most of the people who...

A common liberal argument aimed at America's free market economy and reinforced in President Obama's budget proposal A New Era of Responsibility is that, over the last 25 years, the rich have gotten richer while the poor have gotten poorer. While this assertion should be of concern to anyone interested in domestic and economic policy, a critical examination of the data reveals the claim to be almost certainly spurious and uncovers an even more interesting question -- what is the motivation for the current administration to propagate such a claim? The following chart, produced by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez,...

Not one investor in a hundred realizes this, but now is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for income investors. Most people will never recognize this opportunity because they don't know what a truly great income investment is. Most income seekers like to buy things like commercial real estate stocks (REITs) to collect rents. REITs have a big problem: They're required by law to pay out 90% of their distributable earnings. So if they want to grow, they have no choice but to take on debt or dilute your interest by selling more shares. That's why so many REIT dividends have been cut...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--News Corporation (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) today reported third quarter net income of $2.7 billion ($1.04 per share) compared with net income of $2.7 billion ($0.91 per share) reported in the third quarter a year ago. During this third quarter, the Company recorded a net gain of $1.2 billion on the partial sale of its ownership stake in NDS Group plc (“NDS”) and a non-cash tax benefit of $1.2 billion from the resolution of various tax matters. The prior year’s third quarter net income included a $1.7 billion tax-free gain on the asset and stock exchange...

"A billion trillion here, a billion trillion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money." - - attributed to Senator (1960-1969) Everett Dirksen; revised. As closely as I can calculate, May 16, 2009, is National Insolvency Day - - the day when the principal owing on the national debt, per citizen, equals the amount of income per citizen, per year.

At what point in time will the Federal debt, per person, outweigh per capita income? We need to figure this out, so that we can prepare to celebrate National Insolvency Day! So before you stock up on pretzels and beer, do the math and make your best guess as to what the future may hold.

Obama proclaimed many times during the campaign, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” He and his throngs of supporters preened in the glow of their own righteousness like cats in a puddle of sunlight. They were for “shared sacrifice” and a “new era of responsibility.” They wanted to put aside the “old politics” and the “tired arguments” of the past.

Policy Failure Wanted You’ll never guess who wants Obama’s tax policy to fail. via Yahoo: “I would never want to adversely affect anything that is charitable or good,” Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said of Obama’s call to limit high-income taxpayers’ itemized deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest. Wow. That’s breaking pretty hard left. I thought policy failure wantage in the form of opposition to higher taxes was a Capitol offense. Republicans said the president’s plan to charge fees to industries that spew greenhouse gases amounts to a stealthy tax increase...

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is facing new questions about why he has not disclosed any royalty income on his 2007 memoir … And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since: From the Streets of Harlem to the Halls of Congress. The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocate for government transparency, wants to know why the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee has failed to report royalty income and has not voluntarily disclosed details of his book contract. Sunlight senior fellow Bill Allison noted that Rangel’s book has already been published in paperback form, usually a sign that the...

Going into "household income" vs individual income. And CEO pay.

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give toanybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend,...

NY officials want older trucks fitted with emission-reducing equipment; cost put at $195M ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- New York is taking steps to reduce diesel emissions in its construction fleet. The Department of Environmental Conservation is floating proposed regulations requiring trucks made before 2007 to be fitted with emissions-reducing equipment and to use ultra-low-sulfur fuel by 2011. The new regulations would apply only to state-owned trucks or trucks used for state contract work. The DEC estimates it will cost $195 million to retrofit about 30,000 state trucks. The New York State

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks. “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report. The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique...

There’s no “change” when it comes to politics as usual in The Empire State, in fact the Emperor’s latest edict is not being well-received. Gov. Paterson’s proposed $121 billion budget hits New Yorkers in their iPods - and nickels-and-dimes them in lots of other places, too. Trying to close a $15.4 billion budget gap, Paterson called for 88 new fees and a host of other taxes, including an “iPod tax” that taxes the sale of downloaded music and other “digitally delivered entertainment services.” “We’re going to have to take some extreme measures,” Paterson said Tuesday after unveiling the slash-and-burn budget....

ALBANY - Gov. Paterson released a $121 billion slash-and-burn budget Tuesday morning that slams New Yorkers with 88 new fees and taxes - even on their iPods. Calling the budget the "greatest economic and fiscal challenge of our lifetimes," Paterson acknowledged his spending plan cuts deep. But he said the pain must be shared to deal with the fallout from the Wall Street collapse. The budget will cost the city an estimated $650 million in aid. But it's the $4 billion in new fees and taxes that are sure to aggravate everyday New Yorkers, who would be

No other stimulus provision will be as immediate and as effective,' says small business lobby Posted: December 14, 2008 10:51 pm Eastern © 2008 WorldNetDaily WASHINGTON – Big business bailouts and "economic stimulus packages" are all the rage in the Capitol these days. Most involve massive transfers of wealth from taxpayers to government-directed projects. But a new and very different bill, proposed by a heretofore little-known congressman from Texas, is gaining traction from Republicans – and even a few Democrats, according to the sponsor. It's called "the tax-holiday plan." And one version of it picked up support from the National...

New taxes, deep cuts to education and health care, and a restructuring of the state's economic development programs will be hallmarks of Gov. David Paterson's first budget plan to be released in two days, according to interviews of people briefed on components. The plan will come with a host of revenue raisers — increased taxes on hospitals and insurance policies, for instance — and at least one new assessment, a so-called obesity tax on non-diet soda to raise $404 million. The governor also is contemplating requiring new license plates to raise cash, reviving sales tax on clothing purchases, removing the...

Forecast: A Long, Cold Winter Stephanie Pomboy, Founder and President, MacroMavens By LAWRENCE C. STRAUSS AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE POMBOY: It will take consumers at least five years -- and probably more -- to recover from this crisis. "LIKE THE BUBBLE IN FINANCIAL ASSETS, THE NEW REAL-ESTATE bubble has its own distinctly disturbing characteristics," Stephanie Pomboy wrote in an April 2002 note titled "The Great Bubble Transfer." The founder and president of MacroMavens was on to something, even if she was early, and she worried about the big buildup of consumer debt fueled by rising home prices. Pomboy, whose Manhattan...

How much is a CEO worth? What is appropriate compensation for the leader of a large and complex organization? The standard reply has always been, “Let the market decide.” Lately, though, markets have proven themselves to be spectacularly ill-suited to be the last word on just about any issue. Even before Alan Greenspan recently and belatedly figured it out, “the invisible hand” and “magic” of the markets were mostly what their airy nomenclature implies: figments of irrational economic exuberance. Markets have never been stand-alone forces of nature; rather they are shaped, controlled and guided by human beings as fallible and...

A Florida tourism group has dropped its long-standing opposition to offshore oil and gas drilling, saying that a cheap national fuel supply would trigger a boom for the Sunshine State's No. 1 industry. When gasoline prices skyrocketed to more than $4 per gallon this summer tourist spots such as Florida suffered, as would-be vacationers stayed home. So in response, the Florida Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus (FACVB) has adopted a new policy that encourages a "comprehensive, long-term energy policy" that includes increased oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico along Florida's coast.

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...

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife on Friday released a decade of their personal financial records, showing a veteran U.S. senator who earned less than many of his congressional colleagues.

Adjusted gross income reported on tax returns in 2006 averaged $58,029. In 2006 dollars that was an increase of $739, or 1.2 percent, from the $57,289 average in 2000, analysis of Internal Revenue Service data showed. Total income increased by $619.2 billion or 8.3 percent, all of which went to those making more than $75,000, and 42 percent of which went to the roughly one in 400 taxpayers who made more than $1 million in 2006. Average income fell sharply in 2001 and in 2002, when it dropped to $51,870, off nearly 10 percent from 2000, tax data show. The...

Which of the following families is "richer"? The first family consists of a wife who has recently become a medical doctor, and she makes $160,000 per year. Her husband is a small business entrepreneur who makes $110,000 per year, giving them a total family income of $270,000 per year. However, they are still paying off the loans the wife took out for medical school and the loans the husband took out to start his business, amounting to debts of $300,000. Their total assets are valued at $450,000; hence, their real net worth or wealth (the difference between gross assets and...

WASHINGTON DC, April 24, 2008 – Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released estimates of personal income at the county level for 2006 based on newly available source data. Personal income is a comprehensive measure of the income of all persons from all sources. In addition to wages and salaries it includes employer–provided health insurance, dividends and interest income, social security benefits, and other types of income.1

The Obamas often say they would still be in debt if not for his best-selling books, which began to swell the couple's bank account in 2005. In fact, for some period of time, Michelle Obama tells audiences, the couple's college loan payments cost them more than their monthly mortgage. As young lawyers, the Obamas pursued non-profit or public service during much of the 1990s. Obama once said he was so broke when he arrived in Los Angeles for the Democratic National Convention in 2000 that his credit card was rejected when he tried to rent a car. Still, it's hard...

Want to keep the tax man away from your money? It's easier than you think. There are lots of ways to increase your wealth without having a chunk gobbled up by the IRS. It's not that the agency doesn't want your money. It's just that the tax law prohibits the IRS from touching it. And with a bit of planning, you can start to cut your current tax bill and put money in your pocket now. Let's look at a few examples....

The L.A. Times editorialized in December: If tranquillity is best assured by “a more equal distribution” of the nation’s wealth, we have much to fear. Our schools are faltering; our healthcare system leaves millions without access to doctors. Many are homeless or face the loss of homes. Some seethe at illegal immigrants who compete with Americans for jobs. In our America, 60 million people survive on $7 a day. Annie Jacobsen was skeptical of that number, and wrote a fascinating piece about where this statistic came from. She notes that, if you accept this number, it means that fully 60...

Every Democrat running for President wants to raise taxes on "the rich," but they will have to do something miraculous to outtax President Bush. Based on the latest available tax data, no Administration in modern history has done more to pry tax revenue from the wealthy. Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all...

On Fox News this Sunday, Fred Thompson laid out the most creative tax proposal yet in the race for president. It should have been an important moment, the point at which GOP aspirants finally dug into a core issue and went a few rounds over marginal rates and corporate levies. Instead, nothing. The Thompson plan inspired little fanfare, less press and didn't even merit time during this week's GOP debate. The black hole says everything about the mess that is the Thompson campaign, and just as much about today's intellectually bereft Republican primary campaign ...The Watergate attorney has made himself...

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 People who are in the top one percent in income receive far more than one percent of the attention in the media. Even aside from miscellaneous celebrity bimbos, the top one percent attract all sorts of hand-wringing and finger-pointing. A recent column by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek (or is that Newsweak?) laments that "the share of the nation's income going to the top 1 percent is at its highest level since 1928." Who are those top one percent? For those who would like to join them, the question is: How can you do that? The second...

November 21, 2007 When most of us look at income statistics, we are not just being numbers junkies. We want to find out something about actual flesh-and-blood human beings -- specifically what their standard of living is like. But you cannot always just take statistics at face value -- or, worse yet, with the spin that politicians and the media put on them. Income, for example, is not the same as earnings, and neither is the same as the economic resources on which people's standard of living is based. Since most of us get our income by earning it, it...

November 20, 2007 Anyone who follows the media has probably heard many times that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and incomes of the population in general are stagnating. Moreover, those who say such things can produce many statistics, including data from the Census Bureau, which seem to indicate that. On the other hand, income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent -- "the rich"...

It is already clear that one of the great election issues of 2008 will be the relative impoverishment of the American middle class, defined in the American rather than the British sense to include well established blue collar workers with families and mortgages. Republicans who ignore this problem will find themselves talking only to the winners, the top 1% in the income scale – laughably inadequate as an electoral base. Democrats who propound the usual socialist nostrums to cure it will find themselves ardent proponents of an economics that doesn’t work. A new intellectual paradigm is required. The declining share...

OK, "hokum" is our word. The study, to be released today, is a careful, detailed piece of research by professional economists that avoids political judgments. But what it does do is show beyond doubt that the U.S. remains a dynamic society marked by rapid and mostly upward income mobility... The Treasury study examined a huge sample of 96,700 income tax returns from 1996 and 2005 for Americans over the age of 25. The study tracks what happened to these tax filers over this 10-year period. One of the notable, and reassuring, findings is that nearly 58% of filers who were...

This article is a compilation of income and wealth statistics by percentile. It is fairly comprehensive. Among the quotes are: "...Whenever I slip these tidbits into cocktail party chatter, people are surprised to realize how little money it takes to win a gold star from the Fed. If you and yours are bringing in $40,000 a year, you're doing better than half the households in America. Or, as a Washington think tank recently pointed out: If you're a teacher married to a policeman, your combined household income puts you in the top 25 percent of all households in the nation....

Atlanta - The plight of the South's school-reform movement now hangs on kids from families that make less than $36,000 a year. For the first time in 40 years, two new studies show, more than half of public school students in the South are eligible for free or reduced lunch – a watershed moment in a 15-year wealth slide that comes amid resurging racial and economic inequalities in the former Confederacy. The rise is part of a nationwide surge: Low-income students now represent 12 percentage points more of the student body than in 1990. In response, schools from the Delta's...

A Chicago couple is challenging the Conservative government's taxation of income trusts, calling it a "blatant discrimination" of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Marvin and Elaine Gottlieb are the first Americans to file a Notice of Intent to Submit a Claim to Arbitration under NAFTA. Prior to the taxation policy, income trusts had grown in popularity because businesses paid little or no corporate tax. Instead, corporations that converted to trusts paid most of their cash flows to investors in monthly distributions, who in turn paid taxes on the income. In October 2006, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty shocked investors...