Re: "The figure I continue to obsess over is that 1% of the population controls 95% of the country's wealth" >> where do you get this number?
I can't validate that. No doubt the result of an imperfect memory, but the underlined portion in a statement from Stephanie's link sounds close to what I recall:
The richest one percent of U.S. households now owns 34.3 percent of the nation's private wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent. The top one percent also owns 36.9 percent of all corporate stock.
Re: Dejected? I'm just pointing out the obvious. [...] No doubt taxes of all kinds will be going up. Certainly higher income earners will pay a greater portion.
Well, dejected or not, I agree with your conclusion, and don't feel a bit of guilt over it. Moreover, I can see sufficient revenues from taxes on the wealthy without having to increase income taxes for anybody else. It may be true that other taxes appear on goods and services, such as the proposed softdrink/junkfood tax, but I support that as well, since it would discourage people from buying that which contributes to obesity in this country, and if that can save our system in terms of health care costs, then it's a double benefit.
Re: those making less then the $250,000 threshold; the imaginary line between the wealthy and the middle class.
The cut off has to be somewhere. Agreed that this is arbitrary, but it sounds about right to me, and probably at the point where they see the best trade off of incremental tax revenue vs. the number of people affected. Do you have a better target in mind?
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