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In Atherton, Calif., 94027, the most expensive home currently on the market is a 12,840-square-foot Mediterranean mansion with a $21.988 million price tag. Not a millionaire? Good luck finding a place to live in this Silicon Valley enclave. The least expensive home for sale in the 94027 ZIP code is a 1,370-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath bungalow. In other words, a starter home–with an asking price of $1.499 million. The median price of the 24 homes listed for sale over the summer was $9.03 million, making Atherton the most expensive ZIP code in America for the second year in a row. “Atherton...

“Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition, is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Preparing for the worst by setting yourself up with only the best. As CBS 2′s Maurice DuBois reported Thursday, luxurious kitchens, swimming pools, even gyms are being added to bunkers built just in case of an emergency. Bomb shelters were a common site in backyards in the Cold War 1950s. But as one bunker promotional video shows, today’s backyard survival bunker looks more like a five-star resort, equipped with everything from an indoor pool and state of the art movie theater, to a dog run and even an interactive classroom — all underground. “The overall scope of the project was...

Is success being vilified in America? The successful seem to think so. A new poll from American Express Publishing and Harrison Group finds that 1 percenters no longer like to be seen as such. One-third of members of the group said they "like it when others recognize me as wealthy." Though that number (taken in the fourth quarter of 2013) may sound high, it's down from 40 percent a year earlier. And it's far below the 53 percent who agreed with the statement in 2010.

Many “Downton Abbey” watchers are nostalgia gluttons who grieved when Lord Grantham lost his fortune in Canadian railroad shares. There are, however, a discerning few whose admirable American sensibilities caused them to rejoice at Grantham’s loss: “Now perhaps this amiable but dilettantish toff will get off his duff and get a job.” This drama’s verisimilitude extends to emphasizing that his lordship had a fortune to squander only because he married an American heiress. By battening on what they disdained, this republic’s commercial culture, many British aristocrats could live beyond their inherited means — actual work being, of course, unthinkable.

President Obama devoted his State of the Union address to the economy for a simple reason: Americans think he needs to spend more time talking about the economy. They think that because they lack a detailed understanding of the situation in Washington. Obama’s speech was an extended attempt to humor their naivete. The basic underlying fact of the situation is that the economy is growing very slowly because Congressional Republicans have done everything in their power to apply the fiscal brakes to the recovery. Among macroeconomic forecasters, this is not a remotely controversial assertion but rather an obvious fact that...

The former First Lady admits she hasn't driven a car for 18 years. But she's far from being the only privileged person to have forgotten how to do things the rest of us take for granted. "One of the regrets I have about my public life is that I can't drive any more," Hillary Clinton told a car dealers' conference on Monday. Among her most painful memories, you suspect this doesn't rank all that high. Yet the remark is a reminder of how wealth and power tend to separate people from normal life, and how they don't always like it....

When golfer Phil Mickelson hinted last January that he might leave California because of a big jump in his federal and state tax rates, it was met with such venom that he later apologized, saying it was insensitive to state his opinion publicly when people are living paycheck to paycheck. Mickelson still lives in California, but other wealthy people say they have moved out mainly or partly because of skyrocketing tax rates. Whether you sympathize or not, millionaires' migrating out of California has serious consequences to the state's bottom line and is something state leaders are watching closely. In 2011,...

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks as he unveils his plan on climate change June 25, 2013 at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. President Obama laid out his plan to diminish carbon pollution and prepare the country for the impacts of climate change. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) When President Obama leaves office three years from now, the major policy story of his second term — barring some kind of unforeseen invasion — is likely to be climate change. I made this argument at feature length last year, and the evidence continues to mount. Coral Davenport reports today about Secretary of...

It's hard to keep all the new Obamacare taxes straight, but there's one that some couples won’t see until they file their 2013 taxes next April, and bizarrely it could mean a surprise tax bill or a refund. It's the 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on wages and self-employment income (not to be confused with the separate new 3.8 percent net investment tax on capital gains, dividends and passive income). **SNIP** The surtax -- or additional Medicare tax (it is levied on top of the Medicare tax you already pay) -- is effective Jan. 1, 2013 and applies to wages and...

Talk about expensive real estate: A House seat can easily cost millions. Every cycle, a few wealthy candidates dig into their deep pockets to fund their own campaigns. This cycle is on track to be no different — except that Republicans dominate the ranks of potentially self-funding congressional candidates. Democrats constituted some of the richest candidates of 2012, including Reps. John Delaney of Maryland, Suzan DelBene of Washington and Scott Peters of California. All three made Roll Call’s 50 Richest list this year. But in 2014, Republicans boast far more self-funders among their recruits — at least nine so far....

More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data. The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million). President Francois Hollande's Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual's overall taxation at 50 percent of income. The...

A crafty, millionaire identity thief will spend at least four and a half years in prison after admitting today that he paid waiters at some of Manhattan's fanciest restaurants to skim the AmEx cards of wealthy customers. Between 2010 and 2011, some 265 diners had their Black and Platinum AmEx card information stolen by waiters at Smith & Wollenski, Capital Grille, Wolfgang's Steakhouse and JoJo, all thanks to Luis Damian Jacas, who pleaded guilty on the brink of opening statements in his now-scuttled enterprise corruption trial at Manhattan Supreme Court. Jacas, 42, of Manhattan, paid waiters $500 per Black card,...

DRIVE through almost any neighborhood around the country, and class divisions are as clear as the gate around one community or the grittiness of another. From the footprint of the house to the gleam on the car in the driveway, it is not hard to guess the economic status of the people who live there. Even the landscape is carved up by class. From 15,000 feet up, you can stare down at subdivisions and tract houses, and America’s class lines will stare right back up at you. Manhattan, however, is not like most places. Its 1.6 million residents hide in...

A common argument you hear from conservatives is that raising taxes on the rich is a joke of a deficit reduction proposal, because it hardly makes a dent in the deficit. According to CNBC, reverting to Clinton-era levels would just get you about $40-$45 billion in the first year. GOP Congressman Tom Price has gotten a lot of attention for saying it would only fund government for 8 days... So what is the point? Well, it's not really about deficit reduction at all. Zachary Goldfarb at The Washington Post has a great piece on how Democrats once vehemently opposed the...

Kerry Has Investments in Companies Accused of Violating Iran Sanctions Daniel Halper December 21, 2012 12:59 PM John Kerry, who will be nominated later today to be the next secretary of state, is the richest member of the U.S. Senate. His estimated net worth is, at minimum, $198.65 million, according to disclosure forms. Kerry's disclosure forms also reveal that he has invested in companies accused of doing business with Iran. One of the companies Kerry is invested in is called Petroleo Brasileiro SA Petrobras (Petrobras), it's a Brazilian-based oil and gas corporation. Disclosure forms reveal that Kerry has between $150,000...

The scariest thing about lies is that if they are repeated often enough, people eventually assume that they are true, especially when they go largely unchallenged by the victims of those very lies. The president of the United States has lied so often about “the 1 percent” that even House speaker John Boehner, and some wobbly Republicans, have swallowed Obama’s toxic fiction that “fairness” requires the rich to surrender more of their money to Washington — albeit through narrower deductions rather than higher tax rates. Washington’s problem is not a paucity of revenues but a nicotine-like addiction to blowing through...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While Republican leaders in the House of Representatives insist that raising tax rates on the rich is an impossibility, some Republican lawmakers now see it as inevitable to avoiding the "fiscal cliff" of severe tax hikes and spending cuts set to start January 1. Congressional aides, who asked not to be identified, said Republicans are losing the public relations battle over keeping low tax rates for the rich and are getting battered by President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress following their November 6 election victories. On Capitol Hill aides often play an important role...

Well, that $80 billion a year will come in handy, no? That's the impression that six in ten Americans have as a solution to the trillion-dollar deficits in the latest Washington Post/ABC poll — and 39% of Republicans, too. The result demonstrates the political leverage of Democrats in the fiscal-cliff fight, and perhaps the leeway for the House GOP to compromise as well: Sixty percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll support raising taxes on incomes more than $250,000 a year, long a popular option overall, but also a divisive one: While 73 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of...

An article in the Wall St. Journal paints a gloomy picture for the future U.S. companies are scaling back investment plans at the fastest pace since the recession, signaling more trouble for the economic recovery.Half of the nation's 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders have announced plans to curtail capital expenditures this year or next, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal of securities filings and conference calls. Nationwide, business investment in equipment and software—a measure of economic vitality in the corporate sector—stalled in the third quarter for the first time since early 2009. Corporate investment in new...