2 posts tagged “rich”
We all know that the republicans have been having a lot of success in the past in painting virtually any Democrat as a rich elite snob. Of course, we all know that just about anyone who runs for national office these days is seriously richer than you or anyone you know. However, there's rich, and then there's rich. McCain falls into the latter category for sure...
From Tapped:
We know John and Cindy McCain are seriously wealthy
- Cindy's fortune has been estimated at $100 million, and they have
seven, yes, seven homes (if you're keeping track at home, there's the
estate in Sedona, which has two houses on it, the $4.7 million condo in
Phoenix, the condo in Arlington, VA, the condo in La Jolla, and the two condos in Coronado, California). But today, Politico managed to unearth
a few juicy details that show us just what kind of a lifestyle that
gets you. Sure, Cindy buys $3000 suits - not that big a deal. But here
are some other interesting points:
- Since 2004, they've spent $11 million on real estate.
- At times, Cindy has charged as much as $500,000 on one credit card and $250,000 on another in a single month.
You really have to work hard to charge three quarters of a million
dollars in one month. What is she buying, gold-plated Ferraris?
- Though the McCains spent a modest $184,000 on household
staff in 2006, in 2007 they spent $273,000. And who can blame them?
It's so hard to get good help these days.
- This is my favorite quote, about why they own two condos in the same building in the beachside town of Coronado: "When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh, this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go,'” she told Vogue. “Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one.”
One of the biggests non-story news stories of the past 5 or so years of the Bush regime has been the huge increase in income inequality. You'd never know it if you watch the news. Even people who are pretty good about reading the paper on a regular basis would never really know much about it. But it is there. Basically, the Bushies have been working at open class warfare for their entire time in office, and the news has basically decided not to report it. It is the elephant in the room that everyone just seems to ignore. The tax cuts are just part of it. The other part is the defunding of government programs, cutting of money to states from the Federal government, and the various tax cuts on the state levels. All of this is firmly aimed at class warfare, and the middle and working class are getting slaughtered. Huge tax cuts for the rich not only give them more money directly, they also de-fund the government and either erode government programs that are help the middle class, or cause fees to be increased for everything from parking tickets to bridge tolls to national parks. While the government and business news pages trumpet all of the supposedly wonderful GDP growth and profits on Wall Street, nobody is talking about how that wealth is distributed. From 2003 to 2004, real average income for the top 1 percent of households shot up by 17 percent. For the remaining 99 percent, the average gain was under three percent. Indeed, the top one percent accumulated 36 percent of all income increases in 2004, a six percent increase from 2003.
Then
In 2006, the average tax cut for households with incomes of more than $1 million — the top two-tenths of 1 percent — is $112,000 which works out to a boost of 5.7 percent in after tax income. That’s considerably higher than the 5 percent boost garnered by the top 1 percent. It’s far greater than the 2.5 percent increase of the middle fifth of households, and fully 19 times greater than the 0.3 percent gain of the poorest fifth of households." You'd think, given the trends, the government would be using the tax code to smooth out the inequality. Instead, they're giving it a helping hand. Next up, of course, is the effort to cut the estate tax. But don't object, o' Democrats, lest you be accused of class warfare, which, as we know, only happens when the middle class wants their wages to keep up with productivity, as they did in the last generation. Had those trends continued, the median income would now be in the $60,000s, not the $40,000s. Instead, the top 1 percent accounted for 33.4 percent of total net worth in 2004, while the bottom 50 percent commanded 2.5 percent. Yes, you read that right.
That's a lot of numbers, but here's the take home message: The top one percent of the income earners in the US own 33% of all the wealth in the US. The bottom 50% of the income earners have 2.5%. That's really bad. And it is even worse when you consider the top 1% consists of certainly much less than a hundred thousand people, and the bottom 50% is more like two hundred million people...
