That's the economic truth

This is from the July 25th, 2008 edition of the Kiplinger Tax Letter: “New statistics from the Internal Revenue Service show that the highest-earning 1% of taxpayers in America make 22.06% of all income reported to the government. That’s almost twice the 12.51% of total income earned collectively by the lowest-earning 50% of workers. Yes, 1.4 million taxpayers claim 22% of income earned while 68 million share just 12.5%.

But get this: When it comes to taxes paid, an even wider discrepancy shows itself -- in reverse. That top 1% of earners pay 39.89% of all the federal individual income taxes. The bottom 50% of earners pay just 2.99% of those taxes.”

The article further points out that while you may not feel rich earning $35,000 a year, you are nonetheless in the top half of all taxpayers, and at $65,000 a year you’re in the top 25 percent.

You can read the entire article here:

http://content.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2007/11/taxrank.html

No matter where you stand on the issues in this year’s Presidential election, your pocketbook can’t possibly support new tax increases. These numbers are staggering and are clear evidence that mid and upper incomers are paying not only their fair share, but really the lion’s share of the taxes in this country.

So when a Presidential candidate tells Joe the Plumber that he wants to spread Joe’s wealth around rather than let Joe keep his hard-earned wealth, what he is really telling Joe is that he wants to spread more of Joe’s wealth than what is already being done. Not only Joe’s wealth, but also yours and mine as well.

Creating new wealth rather than spreading existing wealth is the solution for a more prosperous U.S. and that’s the economic truth.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum