As we enter perhaps the busiest month of the year, I thought it would be a good idea to tap the brakes somewhat in December on our blog posting. Today I want to catch up on a couple items I encountered recently that I think you will find interesting.
The first is a chart and commentary that appeared on Carpe Diem last week. You can read the full post here: Tuesday Afternoon Links
Chart of the Day (above) displays IRS data on the tax shares of the top 1% and the bottom 95% from 1980 to 2015. In the most recent year available (2015), the top 1% of US taxpayers (N = 1.4 million) reported about $2 trillion in adjusted gross income (AGI), which was 20.6% of total taxable income that year, and that group paid $568 billion in federal income taxes or 39% of total taxes collected. The bottom 95% of taxpayers (N = 134 million) earned 64% of total AGI ($6.5 trillion) and paid $588 billion in income taxes (and 40.4% of total taxes paid), which was just slightly more than the taxes paid by the top 1%.
The second is a “Photo of the Day” with commentary that was also posted last week.
Photo of the Day (above) shows the contrast in Romania, where ordinary people were lined up for bread (“piine is the old spelling of bread in Romanian, it’s since been changed to “paine”) in 1980 under communism and they’re now lined up to buy Apple products, probably the iPhone X.
As attributed to Andrew Carnegie – “Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities.” It is apparent that socialism accomplishes just the opposite.
Until next time, cheers!
Jim