Rich Get Richer

And the rest of us? Just shutup and pay your taxes. The Gang of 145,000. NYTimes (06.05.05):

"Draw a line under the top 0.1 percent of income earners - the top one-thousandth. Above that line are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and often much more.

The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.

The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell."

Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind

"The group with homes, investments and other assets worth more than $10 million comprised 338,400 households in 2001, the last year for which data are available. The number has grown more than 400 percent since 1980, after adjusting for inflation, while the total number of households has grown only 27 percent."

Mr. Bush's vaunted tax cuts? "In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent over the first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15 percent will go just to the top 0.1 percent, those 145,000 taxpayers."

The Times used a computer model to come up with some projections. It asked folks at several notorious liberal hotbeds (as in the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and Citizens for Tax Justice) to review the projections. The verdict was they were reasonable. The Treasury Department also analyzed the Times model, and characterized it as reliable. The projections?

• Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000.

• Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000.

• The alternative minimum tax, created 36 years ago to make sure the very richest paid taxes, takes back a growing share of the tax cuts over time from the majority of families earning $75,000 to $1 million - thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars annually. Far fewer of the very wealthiest will be affected by this tax.

"The analysis examined only income reported on tax returns. The Treasury Department says that the very wealthiest find ways, legal and illegal, to shelter a lot of income from taxes. So the gap between the very richest and everyone else is almost certainly much larger."

Ever heard of the Isle of Man?

Do this. Go look at a dog. Next time it wags its tail, make note of who's wagging what.

"Bruce R. Bartlett, an advocate of lower taxes who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. 'As long as people think they have a chance of getting to the top, they just don't care how rich the rich are.'"

For all you folks who are seriously thinkin' along these lines, they got this stuff down to the WalMart. It's called reality. Hell, they're practically giving it away. Why don't you just amble on down and pick some up?