Eat The Rich

Great article by Sam Pizzigati, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Have The Rich Won?

Excerpts:

• Americans in the bottom 90% saw their average incomes increase a meager $47 a year between 1974 and 2007.
• The top 1% households made 12 times more income than the bottom 90% households in 1974, 42 times more in 2007.
• In 1955, our 400 highest incomes averaged $12.3 million...they paid over half their incomes, 51.2% in federal income tax. In 2006, the top 400 averaged an astounding $263 million each in income...paid, after loopholes, just 17.2% of their incomes in federal taxes.
• Between the 1940s and the mid 1960s, America's richest faced at least a 91% federal tax rate on earned income over $400,000. The top rate today: 35%.

Pizzigati also mentions an interesting idea about a "maximum wage." He states, "With a maximum set as a multiple of the minimum, society's richest and most powerful would only be able to increase their incomes if the incomes of society's poorest and least powerful increased first...A maximum coupled to the minimum would instantly create a counter-incentive: the higher the wage at the bottom, the better for the rich - and the better, of course, for the bottom, too."