Warning: The following post is likely to be misunderstood as a Che Guevarian attempt to promote class warfare. It is not. I oppose the income tax from the ranch hand to the lawyer. I am simply attempting to put to rest the silly notion that the rich are paying more than their fair share. This is not a plea for the government to distribute wealth, it is a plea to return to sound economic policy- mostly involving a sound economic unit. This will bring back the middle class. If you think the middle class is irrelevant or unnecessary to society, I suggest you read a book.

For future Reference: Any attempts to encourage a revolution will be overt, and much more specific.

Many conservatives love to state that the upper 50% of tax payers pay almost all of the income tax. Here is a chart straight from the horse’s… mouth.

Well my goodness. God bless the wealthy. But wait, taxes are paid as a percentage of earnings. Is this disparity due to unfair tax brackets, extreme differences in distribution of wealth, or some combination of the two. Lets go to my chart. Oddly, this one I had to create on my own from the same data listed on Rush’s site.

So there you have it. You can see the evidence of our progressive (in the sense that there are increasing brackets, not that it denotes progress) tax system, but hardly the overwhelming disparity purported by the previous chart.

To conclude, why do the Rich pay almost all the taxes? It is because they control almost all of the money. This fact should not be a talking point, it should be a point of concern for all Americans. This was almost a decade ago. I’ll will search to see if this has improved in the last few years.

… but not four dollar coffee. Everyone calls Starbucks their little indulgence. That is all fine and good, but when people start to feel the pinch from the economy- the indulgences that they are aware of are the first hit. This is not a good sign. The poor didn’t go to Starbucks anyway. The tightening of the belt is happening higher up the food chain, and pretty soon I’m going to show you some pretty convincing charts that might explain why that might be. Starbucks Story in NYT. That Pike’s roast better be good and cheap.

Look for budget menus at casual dining- Slightly smaller prices, significantly smaller portions. Its sad, remember a few years ago when the biggest worry was how much food they gave you and the giant size of the plates. If you have been to a casual dining restaurant in the last few months, you’ll notice the trend away from that model. Fast food will do the opposite. The budget places will expand ever-so-slightly upward to attract the middle class which can no longer afford a waitress and comfortable booth.

Our parents owned homes on one paycheck, had groceries bagged and brought to their cars, and extremely affordable travel. Their parents had grocery delivery, shopped in small boutiques for well made items, and ate natural locally grown foods. We pull imported Geneticly modified food off the shelf. We bag our own groceries, haul our own bags to the car, shop in steel husks for crappy chinese imports where the staff accuses us of theft and knows nothing of the product they are selling. Now those of us with a decent job are getting squeezed out of starbucks and chili’s. But I guess we have cell phones and ipods so we are better off. Our parents had time to meet face to face and could afford to hear live music.

I saw a man holding a large sign at my local gas station. In large bold letters it said “No Blood For Oil”.

Thankfully, they still took bone marrow and kidneys.

CNBC Discusses great ways to save money. One couple is saving 500 dollars a month on organic groceries by forming a co-op. Others suggests include sizing down to a farmhouse outside of the suburbs . Wowie. One elderly couple is jetting all over the country on rewards points from their credit cards. Another decided to share their 12,000 timeshare for amazing savings.

I find that if I offer my maid staff two weeks off at my vacation house, I can pay them slightly less. Also, Flying business class is a great way to cut down on first class flights. Did you know buying a used 40,000 used dollar car is a great discount from buying a new 50,000 dollar car? AMAZING!

Don’t look for tears from me when the investment class finds itself just as broke as the rest of us. I’ll show them how to stretch a dollar so far that Mr. Washington will squirt tears.

In other news, the Federal Government is continuing to bail out Wall Street firms– while claiming that homeowner bailouts are pure socialism.

Source: http://www.bankrate.com/cnbc/news/pf/20080404_savings_sales_shoppers_a1.asp