The Daily Escape:
Old Prison, Annecy, France. This 12th century prison sits in the middle of the river Thiou. Because of the canals in the town, Annecy is called the Venice of the Alps.
Yesterday, Wrongo said that we needed a special tax to be used solely to rebuild the economies and infrastructure of states hit by Irma and Harvey. It didnât take long to hear that millionaires already pay enough taxes. In one way, that is correct. From the Atlantic:
Forty years ago, the richest 1% paid about 18% of the country’s federal income taxes. Today, they pay about 40%.
While 40% seems high, we need to look harder at the arithmetic: The number of million-dollar-earners in the US has grown rapidly since Y2K. According to the IRS, the number of households with an adjusted gross income greater than $1 million more than doubled between 2001 and 2014, the last year with complete data. And no group has grown faster than the super-rich; the number of households earning more than $10 million grew by 144%.
Between 2001 and 2014, income earned by millionaires grew twice as fast as income earned by the rest of us. In 2001, million-dollar earners and above collectively reported income of about $600 billion. In 2014, they reported $1.4 trillion, more than double the amount in just 14 years. And the top 10% of wealthiest families in this country control 76% of our country’s total wealth.
So, we shouldnât feel guilty about taxing them for a specific need, for a time-limited period.
If you’re a millionaire, it’s not just because you worked hard. It’s because you worked hard, and you live in a country where the government provides a well-developed infrastructure, stable institutions and markets governed by a strong commercial code.
Rich people need to stop griping and pull their weight, just like the rest of America’s tax-payers.
So Wrongo says again, we all need to pay extra taxes into a special fund for redevelopment of Florida and Texas. As the libertarian Joseph Tainter asserts in his book âThe Collapse of Complex Societiesâ (donât read it), when a society no longer has the reserves to help offset what might otherwise be a recoverable disaster, collapse canât be far off.
Increased revenues will absolutely increase our reserves. And they will help us recover from this current disaster.
Itâs Saturday, and we need to relax. Today Dr. Wrong prescribes a double Hayes Valley Espresso (whole bean is $ 17/lb.) from Oakland, CAâs Blue Bottle Coffee. Get it now, Blue Bottle has just agreed to be acquired by Nestle.
Brew it up, put on the Bluetooth headphones, and listen to the Flute Quartet No.1 in D major by J. J. Quantz, flute maker and Baroque composer. Quantz was extremely prolific. He wrote six flute quartets that were discovered in 2001 by American flutist Mary Ann Oleskiewicz in archives of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. Here is Quantz’s Flute Quartet No. 1:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
