Todd Suomela's Library tagged rich →  View Popular, Search in Google

"The once-stable incomes of America's biggest earners now fluctuate dramatically from year to year. And as go the rich, so goes much of the economy. "

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"If Aspen is the most expensive town in America, it isn't alone; a friend who is an architect in the Hamptons reports that construction for the ultra-rich has barely slowed due to the crash. Budgets? For these the ultra-rich cost doesn't matter. Instead, they set out to build structures that are modelled less on vacation homes and more on resorts. Forget Dubai, everyone knew that was a bubble: the real money goes to places that don't need to advertise.

For some time now, I've been warning that uncritically worshipping city life (or rather, the increasingly bland Starbucks blend that passes for life in global cities like New York, Los Angeles, or London) blinds us to the real changes and problems such communities face. Although some of these—like the lack of economic diversity and growing homogeneity—appear to hardly be of interest to urban boosters, the development of exurban enclaves should be."

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"It is perhaps telling that Blankfein is the son of a Brooklyn postal worker and that Hayward—despite his U.S. caricature as an upper-class English twit—got his start at BP as a rig geologist in the North Sea. They are both, in other words, working-class boys made good. And while you might imagine that such backgrounds would make plutocrats especially sympathetic to those who are struggling, the opposite is often true. For the super-elite, a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire high self-regard, and that self-regard—especially when compounded by their isolation among like-minded peers—can lead to obliviousness and indifference to the suffering of others. "

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Nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions. High top tax rates did not create tax havens.

Many will argue that tax havens arose as a response to high taxes. Tax havens came into play after top rates had fallen significantly. To argue that 50% tax rates or higher--say 70% or even 90%--forced the wealthy to go elsewhere is not exactly persuasive.

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in list: Economic Crisis

America’s rich have, in effect, seen their tax burden shrink a third since 1986.

Over this same period, the top 1 percent have doubled their share of the nation’s income, from 11.3 percent of the total in 1986 to 22.1 percent in 2006.

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