[Newspoetry] The Middle Class and Wealth

[DL Emerick]

Ruy Teixeira, with the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said Obama
was "smart not to say" who else might be hit down the line if revenue runs
low. Even working-class Americans hold out the hope that they might someday
earn $200,000. "It's hard to take away tax cuts from people who are even
moderately well off. It's a lot easier to do it with people who are
recognized as having a lot of money," he said. Obama "is playing it
relatively safe, which makes sense."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022702
952.html?wpisrc=newsletter
"As Task Force Debuts, Some Ask: Who Is Middle Class?
Definition Will Help Determine Who Benefits From Changes"
By Alec MacGillis --- Washington Post Staff Writer --- Saturday, February
28, 2009; Page A03

Income By Quintiles: 0 ... 20K ... 39K ... 62K ... 100K ... to infinity
The middle would be 39K to 62K.  This doesn't mean anything --
the measure doesn't ask "how does this person live".

If you are earning, say, 60K per year from 3 million dollars in bonds (2%
interest earnings),
You are not middle class, no matter what the income number is chosen.

You'd still not be middle class if you owned luxury cars, fine houses
clothing and such,
Yet only earned 60K per year.

You'd especially not be middle class if you managed to get a corporate
entity to pay only all the costs of your personal existence in luxury --
even if you only had 60K cash income given to you.

In short, income measures are inadequate.

Wealth is defined by assets, especially and necessarily so in a capitalist
economy.
Income is just the yield of labor and of wealth,
But measured after the fact that you may loop through the holes in the tax
code.

I believe in taxing wealth, itself,
as a toxic asset whose concentration is dangerous to democracy and freedom.

That was why democracy is damaged when large estates are not heavily taxed
--
And by large, I don't mean those over $10M.  I mean all those over $100K.

Studies show that the smaller estates are about all just spent in one-time
sprees,
Anyway -- and if the dying realized that, they were only financing a party
for heirs,
And a party that they would not be attending (as being dead, at the time),
They'd probably not make such a big deal over their estates.

And, why not rob the dead, as it were?  Who else is more deserving than the
taxpayers,
When some guy dies after manipulating the system so well as to be so far
ahead of almost everyone else?
By the way -- 95+% of Americans will never ever earn $200K a year (in
constant $) -- what fools they can be.