This is kind of interesting

[MontanaEA]

http://www.tax.com/taxcom/features.nsf/Articles/0DEC0EAA7E4D7A2B852576CD00714692?OpenDocument

[joanmcq]

whoa. That was illuminating...

[kcjenkins]

Gee, what a surprise. The very richest manage to take advantage of every tax break? And this fact surprises who? The most interesting fact in the whole article was how few people appear in that group of 400 more than one year.

[BulldogTom]

The most interesting thing to me was that wages were the least of their earnings. Their income comes from capital. They are investing in businesses and reaping the profits. The data come from the period just before the bust in the market. I wonder what the next report will look like.

Tom

Lodi, CA

[kcjenkins]

Well, sure you would bring that up! Don't you know that risking your capital to build up a business is not a PC-correct excuse for making a Profit? Oh, yeah, I forgot, the word 'profit' is supposed to automatically include the prefix Obscene or Ill-gotten, right?

We know that the reason that most of the time a person does not show up in that list two years in a row is because it's usually a one-time 'blimp' in their income, often due to selling a business that they built up over many, many years of investing their profits into growing the business. And along the way, employing many people, but that is not supposed to be relevant. We're just supposed to resent them for ending up with a very valuable asset, I think. I'd love to see such a list include the age of the taxpayers, because I bet the majority of them are elderly, don't you?

Sure, some of them are blood-sucking greedy corporate fat-cats, or Wall Street brokers, that were grossly overpaid. I don't doubt that. But my common sense says that most of them were hard-working people who built their wealth by taking risks, investing great time and effort, and working very hard to build a business that they eventually sold. I will never resent someone like Sam Walton, who died extremely rich, but built his business from scratch, investing everything he had, and working every day to keep it growing, living very modestly, driving his truck for 5-7 years between trade-ins, right up until he died. He earned it, so I do not resent him owning it.

[BulldogTom]

Don't yell at me for bringing it up. I just found it interesting. The path to wealth in this country is still the same, business ownership or capital investment. It is also the road to ruin, so be careful what lane you are in.

Tom

Lodi, CA

[kcjenkins]

I DID NOT YELL! Seriously, that first paragraph was sarcastic, I know you are not one of the anti-capitalists, Tom. :scratch_head: