The income of the 400 wealthiest Americans swelled in 2006, soaring nearly 23 percent from the previous year, to an average of $263 million, according to data released Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service. Since 1996, this group has nearly doubled its share of all income earned in the United States. Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala
This gives a lot of figures straight form the proverbial "horse's mouth"--namely from the IRS. I was especially shocked by the final graph about deductions from charitable contributions.
Hope President Obama can correct this posthaste; this is about the most out of whack of the industrialized nations!
Interesting compilation of statistics and totally out of meaningful or useful context. Utterly devoid of perspective or comparative analysis with the overall size of the economy in general. The New York Times can do much better.... The writer failed to mention the Dow doubled from 1996 to 2006 as well and too many other mistakes to enumerate..or that lower effective tax rates yield HIGHER tax revenues.
Articles about successful people are usually just boiled down to raw numbers..it would be nice to see a similar compilation when times are good on how many jobs this weatlh created, how many hospitals got donations, scholarships given, endowments fullfilled. Whats interesting is how much of the stolen Madoff money was Donated Money, given to help the less fortunate.
I wonder if any of these are the people who took huge bonuses after their investment firms were bailed out.
This money story balances facts and figures with context. It is well-written, well-researched and easy to understand.
If this trickle down theory was working, would't some of us get wet. It's dry as a bone around my house and the weatherman is calling for clear sky's.
I hope all of Bush's friends got what they wanted, because their's a new sheriff in town. But after eight years of Bush, your Grandchildren probably could't spend the money you stole from the American people.
This is quality journalism because it portrays both sides of an issue: It reports the income and taxes paid by the the wealthiest of Americans and contrasts these figures against the rest of us taxpayers.
I've seen the issue of need for tax reform reported in a couple of other stories in non-mainstream media publications. It heartens me to see the issue broached in the widely read NYT.
That was then. Obviously they are much worse off now. The tax system hasn't changed that much from Clinton days when Cap gains was 20% instead of 15%. The 15% dividends may not be so significant since high divided tax was evadable if companies bought back their stock.
There are a slew of interesting facts in here, but the writing is stale. The only quote from Mr. McIntyre is hard to understand. Little context for the serious numbers. Only one quote?
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