Who Are The Top One Percent - Road to the Middle Class

YESTERDAY we looked at the IRS’s most revealing spreadsheet (xls), the one that says that the top one percent of income tax filers pay 40 percent of the federal income tax.

It’s mighty nice of those folks to pony up all that cash, particularly when you consider that they only earn 21.20 percent of the income reported to the IRS. But who are these generous chaps and chapettes?

In short, how much money do you have to make in order to make it into the Top One Percent? What do you think? A million dollars a year? A hundred million? A billion?

Actually not so much. In 2005, the latest year available from the IRS tax return stats, you needed an income of $365,000 to make it into the One Percent Club. That’s up from 2004, but about the same as 2000.

It’s interesting to see how the club entry fee has trended over the years. Back in 1986, you could get into the club with an income slightly under $100,000. Not any more. Not after the Clinton years. That’s when the entry fee for the Top One Percent Club went from $100,000 to $350,000.

What is it about those Democrats? They talk a good line about helping the little guy, but when push comes to shove they’d rather line the pockets of their rich friends.

When George W. Bush became president, he taught those high-rollers a lesson. After he’d finished with them, he’d lowered the entry bar to $250,000. That’s the soft bigotry of low expectations for you.

Of course, Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) wife, Michelle, belongs in the Top One Percent all on her own, with her reported $400,000 job at the University of Chicago.

In other words, the Obamas are part of the problem. They are not paying their fair share. Right, Senator?

All right. Just kidding.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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