Feeling Rich

I just came back from lunch, satiated with roast pork, sweet potato and asparagus. I sit here in my dark blue recliner in my comfortable apartment. My Social Security check is already in the bank. Since I sold my house, I have more money in my checking account than any time in my entire life. I feel rich.

Others are not so lucky. Times are tough. Unemployment is approaching 10%. Hundreds of thousands of young people move back in with their parents. Young mothers do not take their children to the doctor because they can’t pay. Middle-aged men depend on working wives to make their mortgage payments. Many families make a choice between car payments or buying food.

Under these conditions I am outraged by the “salaries” paid to ball players, actors, and executives, not just bankers but all those fat-cat C.E.O.’s who fly around in their private jets to their various houses in New York, Palm Beach, and Paris.

According to Time Magazine, in 2007 the top 0.01% of Americans consisted of 14,588 tax payers making MORE than $11.5 million a year. This group controlled more than 6% of all U.S. income.

Using my $5 calculator, I figured that at the current tax rate of 33.3%, a man “earning” only $11.5 million would pay $3,829,500 in taxes, leaving only $7,670,500 to live on all year. That works out to $147,509.61 per week. To me that is obscene!

The same Time article stated that 90% of Americans have an average income of $32,421 a year, or $4,550 less than the megarich gets in one week! That would buy a lot of lettuce and tomatoes even at today’s inflated grocery prices.

Who really “earns” more than $2,000,000 a year? Let’s not just “restore the Bush tax cuts.” I vote to raise taxes on the rich! Call me a Socialist. That’s okay by me. But as the rich get richer and the middle class becomes poor, something is wrong. The system needs to be fixed.