fair and balance in tax reporting

a friend of mine sent me this link to consider: http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/106769/Do-the-Rich-Really-Deserve-Such-a-Bad-Rap

It actually gave me an opportunity to do a little research on what i think the 'real deal' is. What I mean by that is uncovering just exactly what the super rich people make in relation to how much they pay taxes, so after a little "research" i wrote back this message:

good article, but:

"Approximately one fifth, 20.58%, of all income was earned by the top 2.67%, those households earning more than $200,000 a year." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

If someone complains that 2.67% of the country pays 20% (or whatever) of the taxes and that's not fair, then they're not giving you all the relevant information to assess the facts. It is said that "there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics." To be fair and balanced in that statement/complaint, that those 2.67% also make 20% of the money.

The same page also says:

"Roughly one third, 32.5%, of all income in the US was earned by those households with an income over $150,000, approximately the top five percent."

and "The bottom 6.37%, however only earned 0.27% of all income."

I think that's a little more balanced.

***I cut some of the rest of the message out because it was the start of another argument/line of thinking. I didn't even mean to send it to him. Hope he didn't get confused from it.***


for instance, those 400 people they paid 1.77% of all taxes for the year, but i would also like to know what percentage of total income they earned.

Those 400 people made 105 billion total.

It's one thing if you pay 1.77% of taxes, but if you make 5% of the money, then that doesn't "add up"

the gauntlet and the dollar

so i've decided to actually do it. I'm going to publish my stuff way before it's time. i think it'll be good for me. The good thing is that nobody reads my blogs anyway (yo tom!). The bad thing is that nobody reads my blogs anyway.

That's good because nobody will steal my idea, bad because i don't know if the idea is worth stealing. Good because i'll actually be putting my ideas 'out there', bad because 'out there' is already filled with a whole lot of other crap. drumroll . . .

the website
wealthscore.googlpages.com

and my money blog:
wealthscore.blogspot.com

ps: apparently i'm on a publishing kick

Truth in Credit Charges

apparently congress is just getting around to looking at the credit card industry and all of its fees [link at bottom]. That's good, but everything they're doing is hacking away at the branches of this evil tree, and not the root. The root of this is un-information. The credit card companies make goo gobs of money by using un-informed people to fatten their paychecks. What we need is more information.

Remember when the FDA mandated nutritional information to go on foods. The food industry gulped, yelled and eventually relented. We need the same thing for credit card companies. I think something like this should be mandated:

Total principal You owe:	Monthly payment	Months to pay off the debt	Total interest to pay
	Minimum: $XXX.XX
	Min + $10
	Min + $25
	Min + $50
	Min + $100

and that should be placed prominently on any bill that you get that charges interest.

I think that if/when people see this on a monthly basis, they'll get perturbed and start paying down their credit a lot faster.

Sure, just because we have the nutrition information on the sides of boxes hasn't actually decreased the average weight of americans, but at least that information is a step in the right direction.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070307/ap_on_go_co/congress_credit_cards;_ylt=Aq3dUdPBvR1lL0ZDk_cBvfKs0NUE