I have nothing against the rich that a cool swig of a fifth couldn’t deal effectively with; but still let me list 5 ways to Heaven that I resemble their impudence:
1)The Super rich, the top 6% of income earners, rake in over 30% of all US Income in 2005. But I reserve my scorn for the hyper-rich => the 0.1% of Americans that “earn” 6% of the National Income;
2)Their hyper wages are secured by diligence, great effort, unflinching allegiance to cohorts, and contractual agreements every step of the way that insure there will be no ratchet back and likely double digit or greater increases in their incomes;
3)They insist their total compensation is market driven and and reflects what is happening in the industry whereas in fact their compensation is going up when their employees (those left of them) compensation , their stockholders return, and their customer satisfaction may well be going down- way down;
4)they insist their occupations and their positions are subject to great risk since they can be fired at anytime (with $50++ million golden parachutes and the documented return to privileged positions again within less than 2 years and at even higher compensation then before) and managing their organizations is subject to stress and great risk (again, management and health studies both show that the people at the top of organizations have the lowest health and psychological problems of all people in organizations). Meanwhile design engineers, doctors, military officers and others who face really high personal risk and/or whose clients/comrades are often subject to life and death risks earn barely 1/100th of what the hyper-rich pulldown every year;
5)Despite the fact that they accrue huge benefits in their positions from science, education, and government they not only heap scorn upon those organizations but they don’t pay their fair-share of taxes using capital income to avoid regular income tax rates and then add external, hidden Cayman Island and Swiss accounts into the tax evasive maneuvers.
Remarkably – its reason 5 that really galls me. I grin and bear it every April and then have to read in the Economist or the New York Times or Forbes how another hundred or so whopinillionaires dodged the Fed tax men with the latest dance to the left, sidestep, bow down and get out of paying anything to the future and proper running of their country. And often they then complain about schooling standards or not enough subsidies for their operations.
So it is with great delight I can report that the US Feds are tagging the Tax Dogers – bigtime.
Apparent the secrecy associated with Swiss banks like UBS is being challenged. Hyper-rich tax dodgers may get Spitzer-ed. Now what I would like to challenge is the notion of white collar crime should only get 1-5 year raps on the knuckles. These fairness evaders are getting away with hundreds of millions of undeclared taxes, meaning huge payouts to the government. Say someone held up a bank for $10million – what sentence would that “criminal” get ? I assume you can connect the five dots together.