1630 Top One

I was reading some articles about distribution of wealth the other day and found several interesting factoids. One was that the wealth gap between young and old has never been so humongous.
Households headed by those 65 or older have 47 times the net worth of those headed up by folks under 35. I guess that's no surprise. It's hard to find the extra cash to buy a Learjet on minimum wage.
And really, judging by Keith Richards and his ilk, the rock star factor alone has moved megabucks along the baby boomer bulge. Not only that, compiling wealth is tougher generally when you're trying to pay back massive student loans to institutions paying tenured professors and obscenely over-compensated football coaches.
A word of caution. Don't let it get too extreme. Young people are a lot better at protesting and rioting than arthritic oldsters.
Another article bemoaned the fact that 21% of total taxes (not just income taxes) are paid by the top 1% of Americans. Sounds pretty bad doesn't it? But coincidentally, the top 1% of Americans, those same poor, poor millionaires, also earn 21% of the total income in the US.
Hmm, sounds about right. This without a 999 or flat tax.
Funny how that old complicated tax code shakes out.
To bad it's not that great at trickling.
You'd never guess who some of those top 1% are. The ones who decided the best business is government. The most successful personal small entrepreneurs are...legislators.
The guys who are in charge of whether the top 1% of taxpayers pay more taxes? Top one-percenters themselves. More than half of the members of the Senate and the House make over $516,000 a year.
But good news, a couple of 'em are actually under 65.
America, ya gotta love it.