XKCD’s megachart on money
(via Boing Boing):
“MONEY: A chart with almost all of it, where it is, and what it can do.”
This is an awesome, zoomable infographic on who owns what. (Hint: you are probably a very tiny piece chart.)
Pay your damned taxes, deadbeat
“Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of Society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from Society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire… He cannot become rich…. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him from living in Society; and he owes, on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilisation, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”
Thomas Paine – “Agrarian Justice”, 1797
Republican Wealth and the Economic Struggle of Ordinary Americans
This was an interesting juxtaposition of articles that came through my feedreader today. Via Metafilter, I learned that Vanity Fair did a breakdown of dollar value of the clothes the women of the Republican National Convention were wearing:
One of the persistent memes in the Republican line of attack against Barack Obama is the notion that he is an elitist, whereas the G.O.P. represent real working Americans like Levi “F-in’ Redneck” Johnston.
It caught our attention, then, when First Lady Laura Bush and would-be First Lady Cindy McCain took the stage Tuesday night wearing some rather fancy designer clothes. So we asked our fashion department to price out their outfits.
Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600-$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000-$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100
Note that Cindy McCain’s earrings COST MORE THAN MY HOUSE. As Vanity Fair notes: “No wonder McCain has so many houses: his wife has the price of a Scottsdale split-level hanging from her ears.”
On the same day, Heather Armstrong asks her readers to rethink some of the Republican talking points in light of the economic realities facing regular citizens:
Any time I engage with one of my conservative friends or family members, or sometimes the conservative commenters on this website, it usually devolves into them screaming about WELFARE! and TAXES! and THE GOVERNMENT IS TAKING MY MONEY AND GIVING IT TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T WORK! And what they don’t understand is that this is not the issue at all. What I and many of my more liberal friends want is to HELP people, not give them a free ride, but also not to ignore those who would benefit from us tossing them a life jacket.
Case in point: Because Leta was diagnosed with plagiocephaly when she was two months old, she cannot qualify for private insurance until she is thirteen years old. So the only insurance we can get her is high-risk insurance that costs us upwards of $300 a month. Just for her alone. And even then that insurance won’t cover anything until she has reached a $3000 deductible. I am fortunate enough to have grown up in a white, middle class family who could afford to send me to college, as did my husband, and we have enough work experience to run a business that makes it so that we can afford this insurance for our daughter. We don’t have to make the choice between buying food or insuring our daughter. We are really fucking lucky.
But what about the family who cannot afford that insurance for their child? The family who can barely make rent, and if they stretch the budget they can eat three meals a day all week, let’s hope nothing bad happens to their kids because then they’re screwed. Kids, go hug your father, he’s off to one of his three jobs, none of which provide him insurance. And it’s not because he’s lazy or unwilling to work, it’s that his family couldn’t afford to send him to college, or he came from a family that didn’t know they should encourage him to go to college because they were busy trying to survive. If giving up more of my paycheck could help get this family adequate healthcare, then PLEASE. TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY.
The Rich and Taxes
Excellent quote from Salon:
I am speaking here semi-professionally, as an economics professor (currently at Purdue, but I taught at the University of Chicago for five years, so my conservative bona fides are in order). It is not the case that the rich pay an overwhelming portion of taxes. They pay an overwhelming portion of income taxes. When you figure in payroll taxes and sales taxes, the distribution skews much more strongly toward the poor and middle-income Americans. This is because payroll taxes are only levied on the first (roughly) $70,000 of income, so you effectively pay 13 percent of every dollar of income up to that point, and nothing thereafter.
Of course, the fraction of income that is consumed falls rapidly with income, so the rich pay a much lower percentage of their income in sales taxes. These other taxes comprise roughly 45 percent of the federal budget, and a much higher percentage of state and local budgets. By defining the debate in terms of income taxes, rather than the entire tax burden, the Bush camp has made a reasonable case for a tax cut skewed heavily toward the wealthy. Now perhaps a case could be made that the wealthy should pay a lower burden than the rest of us, or that there is a particular reason to pay attention to income taxes rather than all the other taxes that eat away at our paychecks. But the Bush camp is not making this case; they are trusting in the public’s inability to uncover this fundamental dishonesty. If you’re interested in learning more, we suggest to suggest to look into professional corporate services in Thailand.