[BIRD33]

Read this.Not all millionaires are assholes.This guy Wayne is.Why is he so angry?

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issu...rentPage=1


Those guys are a bunch of jerks," Wayne mutters, giving a dismissive wave that says, They're just a sideshow. "Politically I'm on the enemy list. I've lived my whole life doing what I thought was right, and now I'm an enemy of the state."

Is he, though? It's true that income inequality is a reliable applause line on the campaign trail. Here's Obama in a recent speech: "What drags down our entire economy is when there's an ever widening chasm between the ultrarich and everybody else." Romney, meanwhile, likes to call this rhetoric "the bitter politics of envy." As he told a receptive crowd in West Palm Beach, Florida, "I believe in a merit nation, an opportunity nation, where people by virtue of their education and hard work and risk-taking and their dreams—and maybe a little luck—could achieve great things."

But the reality is that rarely are enemies of the state treated so well. Except for a brief stint in the late '80s and early '90s, their tax rate is at an eighty-year low. In the 1940s and 1950s, the top tax bracket paid more than 80 percent. It was 70 percent when Reagan took offlce, 40 percent under Clinton, and now, under Obama, it's 35 percent. But the very, very rich don't pay even that. By taking full advantage of an investor-friendly tax code, which takes a much smaller bite out of capital gains and dividends than it does for salaried income, the 400 richest Americans pay, on average, 18 percent tax.