"The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than the history of crime."

--Voltaire

-- Covert History; accessible 2-24-07

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

-- Honoré de Balzac

-- Mexico’s Plutocracy Thrives on Robber-Baron Concessions By EDUARDO PORTER; August 27, 2007; nytimes.com

"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." -- Matthew XXV:29, KJV"

"These people believe they are millionaires. They buy into the hype, but most of these people will go to their graves without ever becoming a millionaire,"

-- Winning the lottery with no riches: Unlucky winners who lost the money (Page 1 of 3) By Ellen Goodstein; Bankrate.com; accessible online 4-29-07

"...what has emerged as something of a pattern among lottery winners nationally: Someone with little training in dealing with vast sums of money gets a sudden windfall, only to see it tumble maddeningly into the wind."

"This guy's a blue-collar factory worker. The only thing he did that you could even say is wrong is he trusted his financial advisers."

"I think that luck plays an enormous role...Society may want to do something about luck."

-- conservative economist Milton Friedman

-- The wages of luck Republican icons Milton Friedman and William J. Bennett acknowledge the link between the birth lottery and poverty. Can their conservative brethren learn from them? By Matthew Miller, 9/28/2003; Boston.com

"Bill Gates is a smart, determined, and hardworking man, but you need more than that to make as much money as he has. You also need to be very lucky."

-- How to Make Wealth; May 2004; paulgraham.com

"People don't become rich because they are smart,"

-- Intelligence not linked to wealth, according to US study; AFP; April 24, 2007; rawstory.com

"...of all the factors that we might consider, where we start out in life has the greatest effect on where we end up. In the race to get ahead, the effects of inheritance come first and merit second, not the other way around."

-- The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington; ncsociology.org; accessible online on or around 8-25-05; Sociation Today Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2004

"...studies indicate that inequality in market economies may be very hard to get rid of."

-- There's one rule for the rich...; eurekalert.org; 9-Mar-2005; UK CONTACT - Claire Bowles claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk 44-207-611-1210 New Scientist Press Office, London; US CONTACT – Kyre Austin kyre.austin@reedbusiness.com 1-617-558-4939 New Scientist Boston office

Of those on the 1997 Forbes 400 list, less than one third (31%) did not possess a wealthy background to begin with, or inherit substantial funds from their family on which to base their own fortune or start a business.

-- Born Rich: The Wealth Concentration in America; Liberal Ink; 11-13-03; centuryinstitute.org; accessible online on or about 5-9-05

-- Success in Life Depends Greatly on Where a Child Lives, Study Finds; January 5, 2007; foundationcenter.org

"It's a world of connections, that's it. If you're young, have no connections, and you're from a modest family, there's nothing you can do, your whole life. This is a big loss to society, a society in which you can't put your talents to use. This kind of society will keep declining."

-- Takafumi Horie

-- How to Make Wealth; May 2004; paulgraham.com

"Cold-blooded, remorseless egomaniacs in the boardroom are a hidden threat to your job, your savings and your investments."

"...the damage they inflict on society is out of all proportion to their numbers, not least because they gravitate to high-profile professions that offer the promise of control over others, such as law, politics, business management ... and journalism."

"...natural- born predators."

-- Snakes in suits and how to spot them By Giles Whittell; November 11, 2002; timesonline.co.uk

"When you see what has happened with Enron and WorldCom and all these other big corporations, and you ask how the hell could this guy get in that position, well, there are answers...When the structure's not there, when charisma is extremely important and style wins over substance..."

-- Dr Robert Hare

-- Snakes in suits and how to spot them By Giles Whittell; November 11, 2002; timesonline.co.uk

"...such hypocrisy...is something like a job requirement for CEOs."

-- The CEO Candidate How Mitt Romney's corporate success explains his campaign—and his flip-flops. By Daniel Gross; Feb. 26, 2007; slate.com

"The wording is so bland and buried so deep within a 324-page budget document that almost no one would notice that a multibillion-dollar scam is going on....And that is exactly the idea...."

"...They create this...for the benefit of a small group of the politically well connected..."

"...a select group of investors and companies will walk away with billions of dollars in tax subsidies..."

"...the obscure jargon of all special-interest tax breaks--almost impossible to decipher, so bewildering is its language..."

"...Many lawmakers, if not most, don't even know it's there..."

"..."the provision originated as an amendment from Sen. [Rick] Santorum [a Pennsylvania Republican]...."

-- A magic way to make billions By DONALD L. BARLETT, JAMES B. STEELE; February 27, 2006; cnn.com

According to the science in the report below, it appears any body capable of wide-ranging effects upon an economy may either purposely increase economic opportunity and security moderately for the majority of the population, or heap extreme helpings of same onto just a few. It would seem both governments and large corporate and criminal organizations would all enjoy such power.

"...wealth, in different forms, can stick to some but not to others."

"By tweaking the conditions, they could make preferential attachment -- a power-law distribution of the number of connections -- stronger or weaker."

-- Why the Rich Get Richer; April 2, 2007; news.ucdavis.edu; Media contact(s): Raissa D'Souza, Center for Computational Science and Engineering, (530) 754-9089, raissa@cse.ucdavis.edu, and Andy Fell, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-4533, ahfell@ucdavis.edu

-- Top 20 Largest Cases of Companies Caught For Committing Fraud Against the Government | Government Dirt; accessible online 4-18-07; governmentdirt.com

"...the most common methods of finding out about financial fraud were still...calls to hotlines or tips from whistle-blower employees."

"...fraud was detected by chance in more than a third of the cases, while internal audit detected the fraud 26 percent of the time."

"Of those who committed the fraud in North America, 60 percent were employees of the defrauded company. Almost one-quarter of the perpetrators were senior managers--the very people required to sign off on financial statements."

-- Most corporate fraud found by luck: study By Emily Chasan; Nov 29, 2005

-- Profit-driven corporations can make management blind to ethics, study says; NEWS - Cutthroat Corporate Culture Causes Moral Blindness FROM: Nancy Gardner (206) 543-2580; nancylou@u.washington.edu; January 9, 2006

-- Report Gov't Secrecy Grows, Costs More - Yahoo! News By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press; 9-3-05; news.yahoo.com ["http://www.openthegovernment.org/otg/SRC2005_embargoed.pdf" is the URL of the report.]

-- Banished Whistle-Blowers - New York Times; September 1, 2005; nytimes.com

"...50 percent of all economic crime detection came from internal or external investigations and audits. Another 36 percent of economic crime detection came from whistleblowers."

-- Economic Crime Detected Mainly by Whistleblowers and Audits, PwC Survey Finds By: SmartPros Editorial Staff; July 9, 2003; accounting.smartpros.com

"...roughly $345 billion, or more than 16% of all taxes owed, initially went unpaid in 2001....this year's gap could be $400 billion or more."

"...average taxpayers pay a "surtax" of more than $2,000 a year to subsidize those who don't pay."

"Clearly our priorities are perverse...Our government punishes the good guys and lets, in some cases, the really bad guys help run the show and set the agendas."

-- Danielle Brian, director of Project On Government Oversight in Washington

-- Waste and fraud inevitable in rebuilding, experts say By Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers; Sep 23, 2005; news.yahoo.com

"The political influence of bankers tops all other sectors, I learned as a young reporter. Regardless of party or ideology, politicians seek their friendship. So the United States has created a truly bizarre banking code that legalizes--and keeps secret--vast flows of ill-gotten gains. For what purpose? Terrorist financing, yes, but that business is dwarfed by the drug trade profits, insider looting of corporations, offshore tax evasion, securities fraud, plain-vanilla fraud, and other uses."

-- Dirty Money by William Greider, citing The Nation of June 24, 2006

"The results suggest that wrongdoing by public officials at all levels of government is deeply rooted and widespread."

-- F.B.I.'s Focus on Public Corruption Includes 2,000 Investigations By DAVID JOHNSTON; May 11, 2006

"...systemic corruption within the highest levels of government."

-- FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker, speaking about the Abramoff case.

-- In Congress, 'we simply have too much power' analysis by Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY; Jan 10, 2006

-- The Case of Jack Abramoff and Friends: Federal Government Facilitates Political Corruption By Elaine D. Willman, MPA, 1/6/2006

"Corruption isn't a natural disaster: it is the cold, calculated theft of opportunity from the men, women and children who are least able to protect themselves,"

-- David Nussbaum, Chief Executive of Transparency International

-- Corruption rampant in 70 countries; 18 Oct 2005; business.iafrica.com

-- U.S. Companies Lag in Responsibility, Accountability - Study by Abid Aslam; Sep 24, 2005; news.yahoo.com

-- Republican Party is very accommodating to rich tax avoiders By ROBYN E. BLUMNER; St. Petersburg Times; December 1, 2002

-- A GOP reward for fleeing taxes By Molly Ivins; Nov. 28, 2002; Star Telegram

"...tax enforcement has fallen steadily under President Bush, with fewer audits, fewer penalties, fewer prosecutions and virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes."

-- Corporate Risk of a Tax Audit Is Still Shrinking, I.R.S. Data Show By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON; April 12, 2004; nytimes.com

"While letting rich tax cheats run wild, Congress did finance a crackdown on the poor. The working poor, most of whom make less than $16,000, are eight times more likely to be audited than millionaire investors in partnerships."

"While wage earners have every dollar of income reported to the government, the super rich control what the IRS knows about their incomes. But the rich are rarely audited anymore. Congress also gives them many perfectly legal devices to defer reporting income for years or decades. That means that the real incomes of the super rich are much larger than the IRS data show and their tax burden is even lighter."

-- Stroke the rich IRS has become a subsidy system for super-wealthy Americans IRS winks at rich deadbeats by David Cay Johnston; April 11, 2004; sfgate.com

"When it comes to tax cheats, the government has been vocal about catching the little guys but hasn't focused on the big-time frauds, like Swift Boat financier Sam Wyly, who happens to be a top-tier Republican contributor."

-- How Tax Cheats Are Using Your Money to Fund Republicans By Lucy Komisar, AlterNet. Posted April 17, 2007; alternet.org

"The figures at the top may be misleading, though, because the I.R.S. is much more accurate in capturing wage income than income from businesses and investments."

"In addition, a sharp decline in audits combined with the marketing of devices to help people understate their true income make figures for the highest nonwage incomes less reliable. Generally these strategies, which range from the little known but legal to criminal tax evasion, do not work for wage earners."

-- Income Down From 1999, Tax Data Show By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON September 28, 2005

"The Bush administration has illegally stopped making public detailed tax enforcement data, which has been used to show which kinds of taxpayers get the most and toughest audits..."

"...since Nov. 1, 2004, the Internal Revenue Service has violated a 1976 court order requiring the release of the data."

-- Are We Protecting Secrets or Removing Safeguards? (washingtonpost.com) By Gary S. Guzy; November 24, 2002; Page B01

-- Official Secrets News: Is the Bush administration using terrorism fears to shield government -- and business -- from public view? By Daniel Franklin; January/February 2003 Issue; motherjones.com

-- Silence About Secrecy (washingtonpost.com) By Mary McGrory; September 12, 2002; Page A23

-- Members hit White House over secrecy =TheHill.com= By Alexander Bolton; thehill.com; AUGUST 7 , 2002

-- 'Homeland Secrecy'; sfgate.com; July 30, 2002

-- Factory Farms Fancy Secrecy By Bill Berkowitz; July 17, 2002.; alternet.org

-- Too many secrets by DAN K. THOMASSON; June 28, 2002; Scripps Howard News Service/nandotimes.com

"precise financial losses resulting from White Collar Crime (WCC) for consumers, government, and business are unknown since no systematic data collection exists."

-- quote from the 2001-2006 strategic plan of the US Justice Department

"The corollary is that as the rich and powerful increasingly focus on potential rewards, powerless types notice the likely costs and become more inhibited."

"In social psychology terms, disinhibited Fast Forward types need ordinary cautious mortals to remind them that the traffic lights do in fact occasionally turn yellow or even, sometimes, red."

-- The Rich Are More Oblivious Than You and Me - New York Times By RICHARD CONNIFF; April 4, 2007; nytimes.com

"Clearly our priorities are perverse...Our government punishes the good guys and lets, in some cases, the really bad guys help run the show and set the agendas."

-- Danielle Brian, director of Project On Government Oversight in Washington

-- Waste and fraud inevitable in rebuilding, experts say By Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers; Sep 23, 2005; news.yahoo.com

-- U.S. Companies Lag in Responsibility, Accountability - Study by Abid Aslam; Sep 24, 2005; news.yahoo.com

-- Republican Party is very accommodating to rich tax avoiders By ROBYN E. BLUMNER; St. Petersburg Times; December 1, 2002

-- A GOP reward for fleeing taxes By Molly Ivins; Nov. 28, 2002; Star Telegram

-- A culture of bribery in Congress; Dec 2, 2005; The Christian Science Monitor

"Our culture's very cutthroat, very focused on money, our economy creates big rewards for the winners on top and insecurity for the people who don't get to the top,"

"Ordinary people feel like the rules don't really make any sense. They look at big shots in our society who often cheat and end up winning or cheat and get away with a slap on the wrist...People are very cynical these days that any rules are worth following."

"The fish sort of rots from the head down, the trickle-down corruption in America...People see the cheating by the CEO's and the celebrities and they think, why not cut corners myself!"

-- Our cheating culture By SAINT BRYAN; April 12, 2007; king5.com

"...tax enforcement has fallen steadily under President Bush, with fewer audits, fewer penalties, fewer prosecutions and virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes."

-- Corporate Risk of a Tax Audit Is Still Shrinking, I.R.S. Data Show By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON; April 12, 2004; nytimes.com

"While letting rich tax cheats run wild, Congress did finance a crackdown on the poor. The working poor, most of whom make less than $16,000, are eight times more likely to be audited than millionaire investors in partnerships."

"While wage earners have every dollar of income reported to the government, the super rich control what the IRS knows about their incomes. But the rich are rarely audited anymore. Congress also gives them many perfectly legal devices to defer reporting income for years or decades. That means that the real incomes of the super rich are much larger than the IRS data show and their tax burden is even lighter."

-- Welcome Back Congress: Wealth Watch Congressional Megabuck Members:Top Five In Roll Call Fifty Are Worth $50 Million or More citing 1996 Roll Call Inc.; accessible online on or around 9-20-05

-- 50 RICHEST IN CONGRESS ; scholar.lib.vt.edu citing THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT; February 15, 1995

"Without counting outside sources of income, the earnings of members of Congress rank within the top 5 percent of the nation"

-- House to Vote on Pay Raise for Lawmakers By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press/Yahoo! News; Sep 04, 2003

-- Senate remains a rich man's -- and woman's -- club, finances show BY ALAN FRAM; Associated Press/Miami Herald; Jun. 14, 2003

-- Dividend Tax Cut Will Benefit Many in House, Financial Reports Show (washingtonpost.com) By Juliet Eilperin; June 17, 2003; Page A03

-- Reports show senators' holdings in oil, drug industries By Dan Morgan; THE WASHINGTON POST/The Austin American-Statesman; June 14, 2003

"The Republican Party enjoys nearly unchallenged control of the federal government. The congressional ethics committees...have been moribund. The cost of running for office and the amount of money being spent on influencing the government have grown sharply."

-- In Congress, 'we simply have too much power' analysis by Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY; Jan 10, 2006

"House lawmakers Tuesday accepted a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500."

"As the old adage says, the little thieves get hung and the big thieves get richer and richer. When it comes to larceny, it pays to be ambitious."

-- What the Republican Revolution has wrought It's the I Got Mine You Get Your Own party, marching under a Christian banner. By Garrison Keillor; Oct. 24, 2007; salon.com

-- Health plans dwindle in U.S. Number of firms offering insurance drops as costs rise by Victoria Colliver; September 15, 2005; sfgate.com

"Twenty percent of large, private-sector U.S. employers will probably terminate health insurance benefits within the next three years for workers when they retire..."

-- More Firms to End Health Benefits for Retirees (washingtonpost.com) By Bill Brubaker; washingtonpost.com; January 15, 2004; Page E04

"If these trends continue...every year the share of Americans who have employer-sponsored health coverage will fall."

-- Drew Altman, president, chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

-- Higher Costs, Less Care By Ceci Connolly, Washington Post; Sep 28, 2004; story.news.yahoo.com

-- Whoops! There Goes Another Pension Plan - New York Times; nytimes.com; 2005/09/18

"Widespread cuts in health insurance and pensions for the rank-and- file are driven by a special law that lets top executives defer paying taxes for years, in a way that adds 35 percent to the cost of their bloated pay."

-- Stroke the rich IRS has become a subsidy system for super-wealthy Americans IRS winks at rich deadbeats by David Cay Johnston; April 11, 2004; sfgate.com

"In 1973, the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay was 43 to 1. By 1992, it was 145 to 1. By 1997, it was 326 to 1. By 2000, it hit a sky-high 531 to 1."

-- A steeper ladder for the have-nots By Derrick Z. Jackson; May 18, 2005

"...the chief executives of the nation's 500 largest companies got a collective 38 percent pay raise last year, an average of $15.2 million each."

-- Steve Jobs Tops List Of Highest Paid CEOs by Christopher Rizo; May 4, 2007; allheadlinenews.com

-- Money for nothing - Warren Buffet on why most CEO compensation models are broken; accessible online on or around 8-28-07; cambrianhouse.com

-- Bad CEOs who walked away rich by Liz Moyer; Forbes.com; 11/10/2007

-- US sage attacks executive greed by Abigail Rayner; May 05, 2003; timesonline.co.uk

-- AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch

"This is the worst example of the influence of special interests that I have ever seen,"

-- Arizona Republican Senator John McCain

-- New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer

-- Spitzer calls critics 'apologists for the powerful' - Yahoo! News by By Ed Leefeldt, 9-15-05; news.yahoo.com

-- The Graft Goes On By Molly Ivins; September 14, 2005; alternet.org

-- Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals; Reuters; 9-10-05; news.yahoo.com

"what apparently started as a stopgap measure may have morphed into a serious moral hazard situation, with market manipulation an endemic feature of the U.S. stock market."

"...frequent surreptitious intervention, conducted through intermediaries, the government's favored financial houses in New York, gives those intermediaries enormous advantages over ordinary investors."

"It is most unfair that the immensely powerful have been further ensconced in their perched positions and thus effectively insulated from the competitive market forces ostensibly present in our society."

"By not informing the public, successive U.S. administrations have employed a dangerous policy response that is subject to the worst possible abuse."

-- Government Intervention in Stock Market is Detailed by New Report, GATA Says; September 6, 2005; biz.yahoo.com; ["http://www.sprott.com/pdf/pressrelease/TheVisibleHand.pdf" and "http://www.gata.org/SprottReportTheVisibleHand.pdf" are URLs for the original report.]

"Fifty-one percent of 280 fund managers...said...that U.S. earnings are the worst in the world when it comes to predictability, volatility and transparency."

-- Pierre Belec, Reuters; 2002

-- Not Buying the U.S. Earnings Story By Pierre Belec; Jun 22, 2002;Yahoo! /Business - Reuters

-- Profits: They Aren't As Good As They Look By Pallavi Gogoi and Robert Berner; Businessweek; FEBRUARY 10, 2003

-- The "Enronization" of America By Thane Peterson; Businessweek; JUNE 10, 2003

-- I WANT THE PRESIDENT TO CERTIFY THE GOVT'S BOOKS By JOHN CRUDELE

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions"

-- US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on...they have to cover it up...that's where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."

-- Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service

"[the defense budget] numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year"

-- Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney

"With good financial oversight we could find $48 billion in loose change in [the Pentagon building]"

-- Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan

-- The War On Waste (possibly by Vince Gonzales); CBSNews.com; Jan. 29, 2002

"the federal government is keeping its books much like Enron did, and all of us will end up paying for it"

-- Sheila Weinberg, the Institute for Truth in Accounting

-- Federal reports blasted BY KEN GOZE; West Proviso [IL] Herald, 1/1/2003; Digital Chicago Inc.; http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-story/localnews/current/wp/01-01-03-27530.html [this article was cached for a time at http://www.unknownnews.net/cache34.html, where it was found on or about 1-1-03]

"...factors like the "depressing prospective of a minimum-wage existence" and the poor example set by government and corporations are making crime look mighty profitable."

-- Life Of Crime Becoming Viable Career Move For Youths - 2004-03-04; Wireless Flash Weird News; ncbuy.com

"Americans overall do not prosper; corporations do. But we allow it because we are frightened into acceptance every time."

-- Cruel, but Usual; March 7, 2003; The Foundation for National Progress; related stories include $11 theft gets career criminal 25 years to life and 50 years' jail for video thefts upheld

-- Fla. Homeless Man Faces 10 Years For Spitting On Deputy

-- Man gets life in prison for spitting on police; CNN

Steven R. Frazier got five years in prison and an order to pay $500 a month for 30,000 years for trying to make a living off selling unauthorized satellite TV signal unscrambling boxes.

And no, that "30,000 years" is NOT a typo.

-- $180 million at $500 a month . . . By Vickie Chachere; The Associated Press; June 28, 2003; orlandosentinel.com

Note that one of the constitutional principles undergirding America is supposed to be a ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Perhaps the closest thing to predictability in American criminal sentencing today is that the rich or powerful who steal millions or billions of dollars, or harm thousands or millions by their actions or inactions, usually get far lighter punishment (if any) than poor whites or blacks or other disadvantaged citizens involved in crimes which are trivial by comparison.

"Criminal prosecutions are highly unusual for corporate criminals, and convictions carrying jail time are even more rare."

-- Big crimes? Maybe. Big punishment? Not likely; Yahoo! Op/Ed - USA TODAY; Gannett Co. Inc.; Feb 5, 2002

-- Crime And (Very Little) Punishment by Arianna Huffington; Arianna Online; July 15, 2002

-- WorldCom, Enron execs elude charges By David E. Rovella; BLOOMBERG NEWS; Aug. 20, 2003; bayarea.com

-- Punishment falls short of crime against investors By Dan Gillmor; Dec. 21, 2002; siliconvalley.com

Gross inconsistency in punishments for businesses which knowingly abused their customers often results in negligible penalties for relatively large-scale crimes.

-- Penalizing Wall Street: Pick a Fine, Any Fine By Heather Timmons and Mike McNamee; Businessweek; DECEMBER 23, 2002

-- Banking's Bigwigs May Be Beyond the Law's Reach By Mike McNamee, Nanette Byrnes, and Emily Thornton; Businessweek; MAY 19, 2003

"Swipe a CD from a record store and you'll get arrested. But when Congress authorizes the entertainment industry to steal from you -- well, that's the American way."

-- Supreme Court Endorses Copyright Theft by Dan Gillmor; January 15, 2003; weblog.siliconvalley.com

"...in its 2001 report the FBI estimated that the nation's total loss from robbery, burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft in 2001 was $17.2 billion -- less than a third of what Enron alone cost investors, pensioners and employees that year."

-- Corporate Crime and Abuse: Tracking the Problem; accessible online on or around 9-28-05; corporatepolicy.org

-- Insiders Collected $1 Billion Before Refco Collapse By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and JENNY ANDERSON October 20, 2005

"All classes commit crime. However, the poor experience higher rates of arrest, criminal charges, convictions, long prison sentences and denial of parole. This winnowing process ensures that most rich criminals never see the inside of a prison, while overflowing them with the poor."

-- Tuesday, citing Fairy Tale Falls Short for Rich By ASHLEY DUNN; March 14, 2000; Los Angeles Times

-- Google Search: newly minted multi-millionaires

"Mr. Smith noted the wealth of ultra-high-net worth individuals (UHNWIs) have investable assets of more than $30 million) increased 6% to $8.37 trillion. The number of UHNWIs rose 3% to an estimated 57,000 people at the end of last year."

The report seems to be saying this was so for the year 2000.

-- portland imc - 2003.08.30 - The Super Rich Are Out of Sight citing "World Wealth Report - 2001" at http://www.ml.com/about/press_release/pdf/05142001_worldwealthreport2001.pdf from Merrill Lynch.

"Most striking: the study found that in the U.S. and Canada, the number of ultra-rich -- those with investment assets of more than $30 million -- has reached 30,000..."

"The number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals is expected to grow 7% a year during the next few years..."

-- US Led a Resurgence Last Year Among Millionaires World-Wide By Robert Frank; Wall Street Journal; June 15, 2004

-- THIS IS AMERICA #1068 - Weddings By Jerilyn Watson; 6/11/ 01; manythings.org

"More than 2.3 million couples will tie the knot in the United States this year..."

-- Love in bloom: Summer brides embrace traditions and trends; pressroom.americangreetings.com; Contact: Amanda Todorovich / 216.252.7300, ext. 2912; accessible online on or about 8-24-05

On 4-3-05 there were about 295,798,362 people in the US.

-- THIS IS AMERICA #1068 - Weddings By Jerilyn Watson; 6/11/ 01; manythings.org

"More than 2.3 million couples will tie the knot in the United States this year..."

-- Love in bloom: Summer brides embrace traditions and trends; pressroom.americangreetings.com; Contact: Amanda Todorovich / 216.252.7300, ext. 2912; accessible online on or about 8-24-05

There appears to be around 999,800 households or family units in the USA around the dawn of the 21st century who qualify as independently wealthy.

BUT-- the vast majority of these likely cannot spin off an entirely new household or family group which itself will qualify as rich too. Even if the wealth available is split right down the middle for the task.

So we need to further prune the numbers. How many wealthy households could actually generate a whole new rich household via marriage if wished?

At minimum twice the annual income required to get into the wealthy ranks in the first place would have to be available. Or $800,000 a year.

This takes us to about 226,000 US households.

But of course few households would likely be willing to hand over as much as 50% of their net assets to help form a new wealthy household.

So just how rich would a family have to be in order to shrug off the assets required to form an all new wealthy household via marriage? Or at least $400,000 worth of annual unemployed income?

Well, the 200 households making at minimum $175 million a year could do that with no concern whatsoever-- as $400,000 for them per year amounts to a rounding error. So those 200 families can certainly spin off such new family units via marriage with no problem at all. Indeed, they might spend $400,000 or more on the marriage ceremony alone.

If 1.56% of those super-rich 200 families produce a marrying member per year, that would amount to three supremely eligible men and women annually.

But what of the rich households making between $800,000 and $175 million per year? Where's the typical cut off point? That is, at what level of wealth does it become sufficiently bearable for an existing household to basically hand over $400,000 a year in income in order to begat a new one of 'poor' rich status?

I suppose that depends on just how extravagant a lifestyle the original household is accustomed to. Plus how easily they might be able to ratchet up their subsequent income to make up for the permanent diversion of funds.

Perhaps most households would tend to sustain such a loss if $400,000 represented something less than 20% of their yearly income. After all, there will be the side benefit of the kids moving out!

So let's settle on the figure of 20% here. That would put the threshold of income for willingly spinning off a new $400,000 per year income family unit at around $2 million annually for the original household.

So how many households earn $2 million or more annually in the US?

Well, there's roughly 225,800 making between $1 million and $175 million per year.

But how to figure how many make at least $4 million a year? Asset net worth. If a net worth of $30 million is necessary to collect $400,000 minimum a year in interest, then a net worth of $150 million may be required to get $2 million annually.

Yikes!

OK, I admit here I don't have the financial savvy claimed by Wall Street brokers and big bankers. So there may be all sorts of ways to make more than $2 million a year off a nest egg of $150 million. All I'm doing here is basing my calculations on what my own bank gives me in interest on my own investments, and scaling it up.

So in the dumbest, easiest, most straightforward, and maybe worst way to generate income off a nest egg, it appears at least $150 million would be necessary to earn $2 million a year.

If anything like this number holds for a substantial number of the truly wealthy, then that drastically reduces the likely number of all new wealthy households which might be spun off annually from existing family units.

-- The super-rich, the 'plain' rich, the 'poorest' rich ...and everyone else

For there appears to be only some 3959 US households in possession of net worths of $150 million or more (rounded off from 3958.63).

If these households produce marrying folks at the same rate as Americans in general, then some 62 (rounded off from 61.76) eligible men and women from these families get married each year.

I derived this number from an interpolation where F(x)=(((x-xb)/(xa-xb))ya)-(((x-xa)/(xa-xb))yb).

(Yes, I'm awfully rusty in my mathematics, so anyone more proficient is invited to correct my calculations.)

Forbes reported in 2004 some 400 Americans of a net worth of $750 million or more.

-- The Forbes 400 By David Armstrong and Peter Newcomb, Matthew Miller, Jackie Brown, Danielle DiPenti and Adam Kemezis. Additional reporting by Kiri Blakeley, Erika Brown, Brendan Coffey, Kerry Dolan, Jonathan Fahey, Stephane Fitch, Lea Goldman, Christopher Helman, Patrick Keenan-Devlin, Daniel Kruger, Seth Lubove, Victoria Murphy, Dorothy Pomerantz, SarahThorpe and Nathan Vardi; 10.11.04

The Rich Register 2005 lists 4,700 Americans as having a net worth of more than $25 million apiece.

I'm assuming here that we can take the above number as representing some 4700 separate wealthy households. That is, that the majority of individuals listed do not live in the same home with one another.

-- The Rich Register 2005; hoovers.com

So are my estimates of the interest generated on such sums even in the ballpark when compared to real world situations?

Well, getting hold of such information is notoriously difficult. But here goes.

The legal battle over the estate of the late founder of Herbalife International offers us one peek.

The estate was reportedly worth close to $400 million in mid-2000. Since then some $17-20 million in various legal and other fees have been subtracted from it. But the trustees expect the estate to be worth well over $500 million by around 2027-- when it all goes to its legal heir.

Whatever the total amount currently existing, it's yielding something like $3 million a year.

Information relating to a different family member involved in all this says they themselves have a net worth of over $10 million, which is yielding them over $600,000 per year in income.

The article seems to say that this second person also gets $120,000 a year in child support, plus $100,000 a year for other expenses. It's unclear if these other amounts are included in the $600,000 annual income mentioned before. But my impression is that they are not.

$600,000 generated per year from $10 million works out to maybe a 6% interest rate.

$3 million generated per year from $400 million indicates a 0.75% interest rate. I guess the awful rate has something to do with ongoing legal fees taking a bite out of the action.

So anyway in these two cases of real world big money we get an interest rate range between 0.75% and 6%. A range in which my previous assumptions seem still to fit.

-- David F. Swensen, chief investment officer of the Yale endowment, author of book "Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment" speaking about the research necessary for successful investing.

-- Pro Tells Why the Little Guy Just Can't Win; August 13, 2005; nytimes.com

"For the vast majority of investors—including professionals—stock-picking efforts waste both money and time."

-- Why the world's greatest stock picker stopped picking stocks, and why you should, too. By Henry Blodget; Jan. 22, 2007; slate.com

-- 'Zero intelligence' trading closely mimics stock market by Katharine Davis; 01 February 2005; newscientist.com

"If I showed a string of capuchin monkey data to an economist, he couldn't, with any statistical test, tell the difference between a capuchin monkey and your average American stock market investor."

-- Monkeys and Humans Are Both Irrational by Maggie Wittlin; May 16, 2006

"As for making good decisions in our lives, when we do it is mostly random."

-- ROGER SCHANK, Psychologist and Computer Scientist

-- ROGER SCHANK; THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2005; available online on or around 4-2-05; edge.org

"...over a 200-year period, the stock market had an average annual real rate of return of 6.8 percent."

-- This Very, Very Old House By RUSSELL SHORTO; March 5, 2006

"The job of the private-equity investor is...to exploit the idiocy of the ordinary investor..."

-- Michael Lewis, Bloomberg News, 12 December 2006"

-- Hedge Funds, Junk Bonds, Ponzi Schemes by Eugene Plawiuk; January 06, 2007; plawiuk.blogspot.com

-- Chasing the holy grail: the algorithmic arms race The finance industry's secret weapon By Bob McDowall; 7th January 2007; regdeveloper.co.uk

"...economist Gary Shilling's..."How to Make Big Money: 11 Time-Tested Strategies."...help America's 8 million millionaires (and billionaires) to get richer, but they're not much help to the other 292 million Americans."

"...There are actually two distinct kinds of risk.

Risk is fundamentally different for the rich, it almost doesn't exist! They can use these strategies to their advantage, to manage risk and build equities.

But the other 292 million are stuck with the leftovers, not equities but systemic liabilities, such as higher taxes, drug costs, excessive fund expenses, limited opportunities, outsourcing, etc."

"This gap is not just an income gap as Shilling points out, it's a risk gap. The rich get the equities, the rest get the liabilities."

-- How to Make Really Big Money by Paul B. Farrell; March 22, 2007; finance.yahoo.com

"At any given time in the capital markets there are at least two sets of rules -- one for the rich and well-connected, another for the middle class..."

"With the shrewdest and most sophisticated investors armed with essentially unlimited capital, any company that is available to the public is almost by definition an inferior asset, i.e., an asset that the private-equity people have no interest in. We may not have arrived at the point where the publicly traded shares in a company are a sure sign that those shares are a poor investment. But that's the obvious, ultimate destination.

Which raises the question: Why do the proles continue to invest in publicly traded companies? And the obvious answer is: They have no choice."

"The ordinary investor is now and forever cast in the role of the peasant at the king's banquet."

-- Stocks -- Coach Class of Capitalism: Michael Lewis (Update1) By Michael Lewis; December 11, 2006; bloomberg.com

"The average dollar invested in the stock market in...[the last 80]...years has earned only about 8.6 percent a year."

"...the typical investor in Nasdaq earned only 4.3 percent...[from 1973 through 2002]....This is true not just in the United States — the same thing occurred in 18 of 19 international markets that Mr. Dichev examined."

"Anything that you think is news is old hat to the professionals. Trying to outguess the market is a sucker’s game."

...many company chiefs and top lawyers may also show they share the same trait."

-- Psychopaths could be best financial traders?; Reuters; 9-19-05; news.yahoo.com

"Professor Hare estimates that 1% of the general population in North America are psychopaths."

"They could be perfectly qualified for top posts in the military, politics or in huge multi-national companies..."

-- Is your boss a 'corporate psycho'?; 13 January, 2004; news.bbc.co.uk

"...up to 50 per cent of business managers could have psychopathic or similar tendencies...manipulative characteristics are often rewarded in the business world."

-- 50pc of managers could be psychopaths: research 12/01/2007. ABC News Online; BBC; abc.net.au

"One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.

And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public—and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US—roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control."

-- Noam Chomsky

-- Noam Chomsky + Robert Trivers The anti-war activist and MIT linguist meets the Rutgers evolutionary biologist in the Seed Salon to discuss deceit. by Edit Staff • Posted September 6, 2006; seedmagazine.com

"...employees in the US are bullied up to 50% more often than workers in Scandinavia. However, just 9% of employees were aware that the negative acts they experienced constituted bullying, suggesting that bullying behaviour is ingrained in the culture of the US workplace."

"...the negative effects are widespread: employees who witness others being bullied suffer secondary harm, reporting high levels of stress, and low levels of work satisfaction."

"The study concludes that US organizational and cultural structures frequently enable, trigger, and reward bullying. U.S. companies stress market processes, individualism, and the importance of managers over workers, which discourages collaborative efforts and enables powerful organizational members to bully others without recrimination."

-- The easiest way to get rich; paulstips.com; 16 October 2006

"...in some jobs, the top one per cent outperforms the bottom one per cent by a ratio of about 50 to 1."

-- Selection tool could revolutionize hiring, online dating; 6-Mar-2006; Contact: Gregory Harris gharris@ucalgary.ca 403-220-3506 University of Calgary

"Cold-blooded, remorseless egomaniacs in the boardroom are a hidden threat to your job, your savings and your investments."

"...the damage they inflict on society is out of all proportion to their numbers, not least because they gravitate to high-profile professions that offer the promise of control over others, such as law, politics, business management ... and journalism."

"...natural- born predators."

-- Snakes in suits and how to spot them By Giles Whittell; November 11, 2002; timesonline.co.uk

"When you see what has happened with Enron and WorldCom and all these other big corporations, and you ask how the hell could this guy get in that position, well, there are answers...When the structure's not there, when charisma is extremely important and style wins over substance..."

-- Dr Robert Hare

-- Snakes in suits and how to spot them By Giles Whittell; November 11, 2002; timesonline.co.uk

"Professor Hare estimates that 1% of the general population in North America are psychopaths."

"They could be perfectly qualified for top posts in the military, politics or in huge multi-national companies..."

-- Is your boss a 'corporate psycho'?; 13 January, 2004; news.bbc.co.uk

"In the end, as in all things, luck trumps talent."

-- Warren Adler, author of 27 novels, including "The War of the Roses," on which the film of the same name was based.

-- Steal This Book. Or at Least Download It Free. By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH; August 21, 2005; nytimes.com

"Some people believe that good ideas always rise to the top. They're wrong...."

-- If At First You Don't Succeed How my father tried to reconcile his big ideas with a small-minded world. By Hillary Johnson; Inc. Magazine, July 2003

"...just plain bad luck can suppress the effects of merit."

-- The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington; ncsociology.org; accessible online on or around 8-25-05; Sociation Today Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2004

"A 1979 Carnegie study ("Small Futures: Children, Inequality, and the Limits of Liberal Reform", Richard de Lone principal investigator) found that a child's future to be largely determined by social status, not brains."

-- An Overview of Social Inequality; trinity.edu; accessible online on or about 8-25-05

"...IQ scores only account for about 10% of the variance in income differences among individuals..."

"Educational attainment clearly depends on family economic standing and is not simply a major independent cause of it. The quality of schools and the quality of educational opportunity vary according to where one lives, and where one lives depend on familial economic resources and race. Most public schools, for instance, are supported by local property taxes. The tax base is higher in wealthy communities and proportionally lower in poorer areas."

-- The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington; ncsociology.org; accessible online on or around 8-25-05; Sociation Today Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2004

"The language of business is not the language of the soul or the language of humanity. It's a language of indifference; it's a language of separation, of secrecy, of hierarchy." (Quoted, Bakan, The Corporation, Constable, 2004, pp.55-56)"

"Secrecy is a key aspect of corporate media control. It is a secrecy protected by walls of silence."

"The reality is also that all corporate media consistently, over decades, suppress critiques of their own practices, and there is next to nothing the public can do about it."

"Secrecy and silence are jealously guarded by media gatekeepers and are rooted in a form of absolute power..."

"Media decisions are made behind closed doors, in corporate meetings completely inaccessible to the public....No one even knows that silence on a particular book or topic has been manufactured by corporate media with identical interests right across the spectrum. It is a kind of negative thought control - we don't know, and we don't know that we don't know."

-- Silence, Secrecy and Book Reviews by David Edwards; March 07, 2006

It's especially risky, tough (and expensive!) to be a low income inventor/innovator in America today, as $10,000 to $30,000 can be required just to go through the patent process itself (mostly in patent lawyer fees).

-- Nando InfoTech, on or about 5-6-97

In 1998 the average cost of a complete patent infringement lawsuit in the USA, with appeal, was roughly one and a half million dollars for each side of the dispute.

-- Would You Buy a Patent License From This Man? By Ian Mount; April 2001; eCompany Now

-- When It Comes to Innovation, Geography Is Destiny - New York Times By G. PASCAL ZACHARY; February 11, 2007

-- Entrepreneurs sacrifice health for success

-- Slashdot | Inventor of Optical Storage Gets Little Reward Posted by michael; Dec 28, '04; citing Scientist's invention was let go for a song By Brier Dudley; November 29, 2004; seattletimes.nwsource.com

"...it took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corporation and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it: Andreas Pavel invented the portable personal stereo player."

"At one point, Mr. Pavel said, he owed his lawyer hundreds of thousands of dollars and was being followed by private detectives and countersued by Sony. "They had frozen all my assets, I couldn't use checks or credit cards," and the outlook for him was grim."

-- An Unlikely Trendsetter Made Earphones a Way of Life By LARRY ROHTER; December 17, 2005

"I have known other inventors in similar predicaments and most of them become that story, which is the most tragic, sad and melancholic thing that can happen...Somebody becomes a lawsuit, he loses all interest in other things and deals only with the lawsuit."

-- Andreas Pavel

-- An Unlikely Trendsetter Made Earphones a Way of Life By LARRY ROHTER; December 17, 2005

"GEOFF GOODFELLOW is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who came up with an idea that resulted in a $612.5 million payday. But he will never see a penny of it."

-- In Silicon Valley, a Man Without a Patent By JOHN MARKOFF; April 16, 2006; nytimes.com

"Finally, five years after his brainstorm became the law, Szilagyi, who earned about $80,000 annually at the time, was given a check for $25,000. By this point, his idea had generated roughly $14 billion."

-- Filling in the Tax Gap By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT April 2, 2006; nytimes.com

-- Why you can't earn $1,000,000 selling your software ["http://www.pastukhov.com/researches/why_you_can_t_earn_1_000_000_as_a_software_developer.php"] apparently by Max Pastukhov; found on or about 5-17-06

"An extension to the protections on intellectual property, the harshening of the bankruptcy process, the removal of social safety net protections, and rampant healthcare inflation all work to slow entrepreneurial activity."

"As self-employment has declined, the size and dominance of corporations has increased. This leaves many fewer opportunities for "self-made" individuals to enter existing markets or to establish new ones."

-- The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington; ncsociology.org; accessible online on or around 8-25-05; Sociation Today Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2004

"The breadth of executives’ social networks with colleagues at other firms plays a crucial role in deciding which tech start-ups will live or die..."

-- Size Really Matters – New Insights for Tech Start-Ups’ Survival in February Management Insights Hanover, MD, February 26, 2007; Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences; informs.org

"Just 18.7 percent of the millionaires own — or owned before they retired — part of a business or professional practice...."

-- New Rise in Number of Millionaire Families By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON; March 28, 2006

"Completely without warning, their family business, South End Cleaners and Tailors, had won a "Best of Boston" prize as the best neighborhood dry cleaners. The letter came with a certificate and an invitation to a fancy party to mingle with the rest of Boston's finest.

The next news to arrive wasn't nearly as gratifying. Their landlord stopped by to tell them that he was increasing their rent from $2,900 a month to $5,000. If they chose not to pay, they had to vacate the Tremont Street property by Oct. 1.

That's wasn't all the bad news. The landlord, Wayne Doherty, also told them that he planned to open his own dry cleaners at the same location, once they departed."

-- Undoing their 'Best' By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | August 28, 2007

"There is a large random factor in the success of any company. So the guys you end up reading about in the papers are the ones who are very smart, totally dedicated, and win the lottery."

-- A would-be real estate mogul follows boom tips straight to bust By Carol Lloyd, Special to SF Gate; October 6, 2006

-- Renovating With Profit in Mind? It Just Might Not Pay By DAMON DARLIN; April 29, 2006

"...from 1963 through 2005, on a rolling basis over any five-year period, residential real estate returned 1.73% annually in inflation-adjusted terms. That beat out Treasury bills (1.44%), but it lagged bonds (3.18%) and stocks (5.84%).

The same proved true during that period for any 10-year time frame. Residential real estate's real returns reached 1.62% annually. That beat Treasury bills again (1.44%) but lagged bonds (3.33%) and stocks (6.47%)."

-- Will You Live Off Your House? by Mary Dalrymple; March 6, 2007; finance.yahoo.com (includes a handy chart of Average Annual Real Returns for major investment types over various time spans).

"...home prices in the U.S. going back to 1890 showed an average annual increase of a meager 0.4 percent."

-- This Very, Very Old House By RUSSELL SHORTO; March 5, 2006; nytimes.com

"From 1890 through 1990, the return on residential real estate was just about zero after inflation."

-- The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington; ncsociology.org; accessible online on or around 8-25-05; Sociation Today Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2004

-- U.S. Racking Up Huge "Sleep Debt" by Stefan Lovgren; National Geographic News; February 24, 2005

"High US productivity hasn't been translated into higher incomes as efficiently as other OECD countries."

-- John Robb's Weblog; July 08, 2004; jrobb.mindplex.org, citing the Wall Street Journal

"From 2000 through 2003 the median household income fell by $1,500 (in 2003 dollars) - a significant 3.4 percent decrease. That information becomes startling when you consider that during the same period there was a strong 12 percent increase in productivity among U.S. workers."

-- An Economy That Turns American Values Upside Down By BOB HERBERT; September 6, 2004; nytimes.com

"US 'Productivity' Mostly a Function of Longer Hours, More Two-Income Families...Americans now are...working fierce hours...usually with both parents working, to make the same income that a European makes in a 35-hour week with 7 weeks' paid vacation."

-- October 24, 2004 REMAINDERS, by Dave Pollard, How to Save the World blog; citing OECD Employment Outlook 2004 How does the United States compare? [PDF]; oecd.org

"Americans now work 350 hours more per year than the typical European – almost nine full weeks"

-- Frank Talk on Free Trade by Jeff Gates, President of the Shared Capitalism Institute; SustainAbility Radar March 2000

"The average American today is working longer hours than the people of any other major country on earth"

"The number of Americans working more than one job at a time increased 92% between 1973 and 1997"

-- Making Ends Meet; Working Families in the Global Economy; web site of Congressman Bernard Sanders, Vermont's Independent Representative; found on or about 10-18-03

"...today the American worker is working longer hours by far than the people in any other industrialized country"

-- We Are the Majority by Bernie Sanders; February 2004; progressive.org

-- America's incredible shrinking vacation By Ellen Goodman, 8/7/2003; boston.com

"...Americans still lead the pack for working the most hours, followed by the French, British, Australians and Germans."

-- Around The Weird: Bizarre News Briefs; 2004-06-30 - Wireless Flash Weird News; ncbuy.com

"...annual work hours for the middle quintile of income earners-households that had a mean income of $64,832 in 2000-rose by 20 percent from 1979 to 2000. That adds up to one more full day per week."

-- RUSH HOUR ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY By Clive Thompson; Issue 445: April 8-15, 2004; timeoutny.com

"You and I, my fellow Americans, have become the unpaid laborers of a do-it-yourself economy...the average American now spends an extraordinary amount of time doing work that once paid someone else's mortgage."

-- The do-it-yourself economy Outsourcing labor abroad is cheap; outsourcing it to you is free by Ellen Goodman; 02.03.04; workingforchange.com

"The average worker gets a raise every year but has less money to spend. Why? Inflation and health insurance costs gobble up the raise -- and more."

-- Perfectly Legal The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston; excerpt, ThinkingPeace; accessible online on or about 4-21-05; thinkingpeace.com

-- P-I Focus: Our tax system is helping the super rich get richer by DAVID CAY JOHNSTON; March 7, 2004; seattlepi.nwsource.com

"In 1979, the top 1 per cent of the US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest 20 per cent. In 2000, this multiplier had grown to 88.5."

-- There's one rule for the rich...; eurekalert.org; 9-Mar-2005; UK CONTACT - Claire Bowles claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk 44-207-611-1210 New Scientist Press Office, London; US CONTACT – Kyre Austin kyre.austin@reedbusiness.com 1-617-558-4939 New Scientist Boston office

"Americans are being taxed more than twice as heavily on earnings from work as they are on investment income..."

"For an increasing number of Americans, work provides no relief from poverty."

"In 1996, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that at least 19 percent of the homeless population were employed."

"In 1996, the U.S. Conference of Mayors' survey of 29 American cities found that 19 percent of the urban homeless population were veterans."

-- Salt of the Earth: homeless statistics; available online on or around 4-2-05; salt.claretianpubs.org

"Working hard and being employed may no longer be enough to ward off poverty..."

-- American dream, in peril, is successfully pursued through state programs ["http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-12/bu-adi120605.php"] Contact: Keith Blackman keith_blackman@was.bm.com 202-530-4585 Brandeis University 7-Dec-2005

-- One quarter of working Americans live in poverty: study AFP; Oct 18, 2004; story.news.yahoo.com

-- Nearly 36 Million Americans Living in Poverty by Andrea Hopkins; commondreams.org; citing August 26, 2004 Reuters article originally located here.

New research has found that people who score higher on intelligence tests end up with the same net worth as others when lifestyle factors are taken into account."

-- Smarter people are no better off by Roxanne Khamsi; 25 April 2007; newscientist.com

"Although money and mental muscles may seem a natural match, brains, alas, may be more hindrance than help when it comes to getting rich, concludes a new study in the journal Intelligence."

"a one point increase in IQ test scores is related to an income increase of $346 per year. But at most, that same one-point increase in IQ leads to "a net worth increase of at most $83, but probably zero."

"...when it comes to financial distress, smarts are no help at all."

"...intelligence is not a factor for explaining wealth..."

-- Study: It doesn't pay to be smart by Dan Vergano; 8-13-07; usatoday.com

"REEF's economic analysis shows that college is a financial mistake for more than half of the American young people today."

-- The Biggest Gamble of Your Life (Is College Worth it?) by Michael Robertson; December 7th, 2006

"Is a college degree really a sign of competence? Or is it chiefly a signal to employers that you've mastered the ability to obey and conform? "

-- Higher Education Conformity By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com. Posted May 2, 2007; alternet.org

"Their point was simply that when you look at wealth accumulation, the professions aren't a pathway to wealth accumulation. So these were people who'd accumulated $60-million, $100-million, $1-billion or whatever, and education hadn't been a factor in the process of wealth accumulation."

-- Michael Gilding

-- The National Interest - 21/7/2002: Tasmanian election result The rich and powerful Housing finance with Terry Lane; abc.net.au

"...the super rich simply don't view education as the be-all-end-all, mostly because their wealth and connections can already open doors for their kids that the less wealthy have to struggle to pry open."

"Even the mega rich (those with more than $10 million) send more kids to public school than private..."

-- How The Rich Raise Their Kids by Liz Moyer, 10.24.07; forbes.com

"The educational levels of the 'young and rich' are not strikingly different overall from a much broader stratum of Australian society..."

-- Workers Online : November 2003 : Who's Got What by Frank Stilwell; workers.labor.net.au

-- Billionaire Dropouts; October 9th, 2006; pennylicious.com

-- 15 Successful Entrepreneurs Who Didn’t Need College By admin; Nov 10, 2007

"...the Fortune 500 CEOs and high school teachers have about on average the same number of years of education. They're not exactly experiencing the same pay raises. So this is tremendous elitism."

-- Paul Krugman on the New Class War in America; June 19th, 2006; democracynow.org

"Just 18.7 percent of the millionaires own — or owned before they retired — part of a business or professional practice...."

-- New Rise in Number of Millionaire Families By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON; March 28, 2006

-- In Academia, Big Brains, Empty Pockets citing "The Ph.D. Glut Revisited," by Gary North at www.lewrockwell.com/north/north427.html; February 5, 2006

"Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains.

The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004."

-- PAUL KRUGMAN: GRADUATES VERSUS OLIGARCHS; February 27, 2006

-- In Debt, Forever How Can You Cope With $55,000 in Student Loans on $33,000 in Income? By Tim Jones and Jodi S. Cohen, Chicago Tribune

"According to the College Board, it takes 14 long years before the four-year college grad's income, net of loan payments, starts to beat what the high school grad earns. During all those 14 years, college doesn't pay. High school pays."

-- Is college worth the money? For students who rely on loans to cover costs of attending private colleges, the answer is not as clear as you might think. By Scott Burns; Oct. 10, 2007

"...What if all those Ivy graduates whose parents shelled out $150,000 or even $200,000 for their undergraduate degrees could have done just as well if they'd gone somewhere else? Somewhere much cheaper?

Research implies that is actually the case. According to these recent studies, when you do a cold, hard analysis...the Ivies and other elite private schools simply aren't worth the money."

-- Heaven's Gate Will gaining admission to one of the nation's elite colleges guarantee a prosperous future -- or just a mountain of debt? By Dante Chinni; April 2, 2006; Page W10

"...there is no real difference between the academic performance of public school students and private school students who are from the same low-income bracket and background, suggesting that family involvement has more of an impact than the school setting."

"Neither private school students nor public school students with similar background characteristics were more likely to attend college.

Private school graduates are no more satisfied with their jobs at age 26 than public school graduates."

-- Public Schools vs. Private Schools: New Study Says There is No Difference -- Education-Portal.com; Oct 12, 2007; education-portal.com

As one example of the notion above, I give you George W. Bush, who received degrees from BOTH Yale and Harvard(!), then went on to lead possibly the worst and most incompetent presidential administration in all of American history, helping greatly accelerate the historic decline of America. By (among other things) squandering a surplus left to him by his predecessor, then generating an enormous new mountain of debt likely to steal away entirely (or greatly diminish) the quality of education, jobs, health care, and pensions for our children and our grandchildren. And all that's if we ignore entirely the awful legacy of many other of his policies.

-- Writing Well Installment One; Dan Simmons - Author's Official Web Site; January 2006

"...it is virtually impossible for an unknown author to break into print through the U.S. mails..."

-- Polish Joke; Feb. 19, 1979; time.com

"1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives."

"42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college."

"80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year."

"70 percent of the books published do not make a profit."

"A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies. A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies."

-- Some startling statistics by Robyn Jackson; accessible online 2-24-07; humorwriters.org

"Rowling...now estimated to be worth $1.12 billion, making her the first dollar-billionaire author."

-- Many See Lottery As Way to Wealth By Alice Ann Love; Associated Press; citing www.yahoo.com; October 28, 1999

"Abetted by Congress, legislatures from 48 states now sponsor gambling operations and lottery monopolies to balance their budgets on the backs of their poorest and most vulnerable citizens -- while basking in the virtue of fighting tax increases."

"Last year, Americans legally wagered more than $1.1 trillion. Along the way they lost more than they spent on movie tickets, recorded music, spectator sports, video games, and theme parks combined."

"...80 percent of gambling revenue comes from households with incomes of less than $50,000 a year."

"...US gamblers -- most of them scraping by on limited incomes -- had to lose $84 billion last year in casinos and lotteries for the states to raise $24 billion in new revenues."

"For the state to make its $350 million on slots after payouts...147,000 gamblers -- about 3 percent of the entire adult population -- have to lose a total of $496 million. That's an average annual loss of $3,374 apiece."

"...the best stock market investors might plausibly be called "functional psychopaths."

...many company chiefs and top lawyers may also show they share the same trait."

-- Psychopaths could be best financial traders?; Reuters; 9-19-05; news.yahoo.com

"Professor Hare estimates that 1% of the general population in North America are psychopaths."

"They could be perfectly qualified for top posts in the military, politics or in huge multi-national companies..."

-- Is your boss a 'corporate psycho'?; 13 January, 2004; news.bbc.co.uk

-- Snakes in suits and how to spot them By Giles Whittell; November 11, 2002; timesonline.co.uk

-- Yahoo! News - Sex Attacker Wins Lottery on Weekend Out of Jail; August 11, 2004; Yahoo/Reuters; story.news.yahoo.com

-- Yahoo! News Teenage Thief Wins Lottery at First Go; Reuters; Nov 05, 2002

-- Yahoo! News Lottery Millionaire's Troubles Get Worse By BETH GARDINER, Associated Press; Feb 18, 2004

-- Convicted U.S. felon's 'Cures' tops book charts By Claudia Parsons; 8-21-05; news.yahoo.com

-- The nature of luck

Check the history books: A couple of mass murderers basically gained control of half the industrialized world during the 20th century: Stalin and Hitler. It took everything the US and its allies could do to stop Hitler in WWII-- even after Stalin too turned against the German dictator.

It could be argued that Hitler had fully as much to do with his own downfall as all the efforts of the allies combined. Due to (among other things) simply trying to conquer the world too fast. For instance, while Stalin was trying to delay a formal war with Hitler, Hitler was actively pursuing that course-- while at the same time attacking other nations as well. Hitler's maniacal vision might have prevailed upon us all had he been a bit more patient, listened more to his wisest advisors, and been less prejudiced (his persecution of Jews, among other groups, caused brilliant people like Albert Einstein to flee Germany for the allied nations(!)). YIKES!

Once Hitler was out of the way Stalin pretty much did as he wished until he died of natural causes in 1953, ruling over the vast USSR and its satellite states with an iron fist. The power of Stalin and his successors managed to scare all the other major powers of the world (including the US) sufficiently for them to sink awesome sums into their respective war machines and intelligence agencies, even after Hitler's threat was long gone.

-- The Parmalat Syndrome How U.S. financial firms -- including Bank of America -- allegedly abetted a multibillion-dollar fraud, and how U.S. regulators are letting them get away with it BY MATT SMITH; sfweekly.com; January 12, 2005

-- Yahoo! News - Study: White-collar criminals dodging fines By Richard Willing; Apr 02, 2005; USATODAY.com

-- Top Executives Elusive for Prosecutors (washingtonpost.com) By Carrie Johnson and Brooke A. Masters; January 24, 2003; Page E01

-- Yahoo! News - Prosecutor: WorldCom Ex-CEO a Con Artist

-- Yahoo! News - Mine execs indicted in poisonings

-- Tapes Show Enron Arranged Plant Shutdown

"Clearly, wealth alone is not a reflection of moral superiority. To get ahead in America, it no doubt helps to be bright, shrewd, to work hard, and to have the right combination of attitudes that maximize success within given fields of endeavor. Playing by the rules, however, probably works to suppress prospects for economic success since those who play by the rules are more restricted in their opportunities to attain wealth and income than those who choose to ignore the rules."

-- The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington; ncsociology.org; accessible online on or around 8-25-05; Sociation Today Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2004

"1. Go to work early. 2. Stay late. 3. Find oil."

-- John D. Rockefeller on how to get rich in three steps

"Studies of Fortune 500 companies have found that American executives are seeing exploding pay, but there is no correlation between their pay and a company's profitability. In fact, companies with the greatest inequality of pay suffer worse product quality."

-- Myth: The rich get rich because of their merit. Fact: Researchers have uncovered dozens of social factors that contribute to becoming rich.; huppi.com; accessible on or about 10-22-06

You're much more likely to die in at least sixteen different ways (as much as millions of times more likely), before you'd ever strike it rich in a powerball lottery.

-- Most Americans Experience Poverty Sometime In Adult Life, Study Finds; 7 APRIL 1999; Contact: Gerry Everding; gerry_everding@aismail.wustl.edu; 314-935-6375; Washington University in St. Louis

"...American families live just one illness or accident away from complete financial collapse"

-- US Study: Medical Bills Main Culprit In Bankruptcies by Araminta Wordsworth; www.commondreams.org; October 09, 2002; originally published by the National Post in Canada, April 27, 2000

-- Here Comes The Class of 2005. Can It Pay the Rent? By HUBERT B. HERRING; March 6, 2005; nytimes.com

"The typical American household now carries $8,500 in credit card debt"

-- A deluge of credit S.F. man tallies credit card offers -- 217 solicitations by David Lazarus; March 7, 2003; San Francisco Chronicle

-- Yahoo! News - Credit Card Penalties, Fees Bury Debtors

"The average American now has eight credit cards and the average household's debt is $16,500, according to the Federal Reserve"

"In the second quarter of 2003, says the American Mortgage Bankers Association, more than 400,000 homeowners lost their houses to foreclosure -- a record"

-- No Way to Plan, Thanks to Uncle Sam By Ric Edelman; The Washington Post; July 6, 2003; Page B01

"Nearly a quarter of Americans would be late on mortgages, rent or other bills if a single paycheck were delayed"

-- Homelessness grows as more live check-to-check By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY; 8/12/2003

-- Illness and medical bills cause half of all bankruptcies 2 Million Americans financially ruined each year; 2-Feb-2005; eurekalert.org; Contact: David Himmelstein david_himmelstein@hms.harvard.edu Harvard Medical School

-- Get Sick In The US, You Might Go Bankrupt By Staff; Feb 2, 2005; halifaxlive.com

-- Yahoo! News - Half of Bankruptcy Due to Medical Bills -- U.S. Study

-- Study Ties Bankruptcy to Medical Bills

-- Number of Homeless in America Has Grown

-- The Meek Shall Inherit the Bill

-- Poor to pay price of US deficit

-- Bush's Class-War Budget

-- Bush budget takes pennies from hungry kids, feeds billions to Star Wars by Molly Ivins; 02.17.05; workingforchange.com

-- Bush to Poor: Drop Dead

-- Yahoo! News - Average-Wage Earners Fall Behind

-- Yahoo! News - Study Nine in 10 Americans Worry About Retirement

-- Yahoo! News - Poorest Face Most Risk on Social Security

-- Retirement Turns Into a Rest Stop as Benefits Dwindle

-- Congress has given the I.R.S. additional funds to audit the working poor even as it has cut money for other audits

-- Talk of Changing Pension Math Raises Concern on Benefit Cuts

"Americans are paying the full cost of national health insurance through taxes but not getting the benefits,"

-- Steffie Woolhandler, Harvard associate professor of medicine

-- Study: U.S. health care taxes world's highest -The Olympian; July 9, 2002; theolympian.com

"Health insurance premiums rose five times faster than U.S. workers' salaries this year..."

-- Health Insurance Costs Soar, Workers Hit By Kim Dixon; Reuters; Sep 09, 2004; story.news.yahoo.com

"There are at least 5 million fewer jobs providing health insurance in 2004 than there were in 2001..."

"This year, 63 percent of firms offered health benefits to workers, down from 68 percent in 2001."

-- British Cat Inherits Widower's EstateThe Associated Press/ABC News; May 6; 2003

-- Helmsley's dog gets $12 million in will; AP; 8-29-07

-- Oprah Reportedly Leaving Her Four Dogs $30 Mil In Trust; September 14, 2007

"...[wealthy high profile conservative William Bennett] had lost as much as $8 million over the past decade playing video poker and high-dollar slots..."

-- Bennett says he set bad example, will quit gambling by Mimi Hall USA TODAY/Yahoo! News; May 06, 2003

-- Bush's Suits Cost $2,000 to $14,000 A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY; December 6, 2002; citing Stitch in time produces new classic; Chicago Sun Times May 6, 2001 by Lisa Lenoir and Bush Inaugurated In Oxxford!; October 2003

"...when you put that kind of money in the hands of somebody with problems, it just helps them kill themselves."

-- Marilyn Collins, first wife of recently deceased lottery winner Mack W. Metcalf

"...a striking example of good luck - the kind most people only dream about - rapidly turning fatally bad."

-- Instant Millions Can't Halt Winners' Grim Slide By JAMES DAO; December 5, 2005

"Some big winners have filed for bankruptcy within a few years, been attacked by family members..."

-- H. L. Hunt Biography / Profile of H. L. Hunt Biographies, accessible online on or about 4-21-05; bookrags.com

"...he doesn't see how anybody could study happiness and not find himself leaning left politically; the data make it all too clear that boosting the living standards of those already comfortable, such as through lower taxes, does little to improve their levels of well-being, whereas raising the living standards of the impoverished makes an enormous difference."

-- The Futile Pursuit of Happiness By JON GERTNER; September 7, 2003; nytimes.com

"Money that lifts people out of poverty increases happiness, but after that, the better paychecks stop paying off sense-of-well-being dividends..."

-- The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don't Use Them by Robin Lloyd; Special to LiveScience; LiveScience.com; Feb 28, 2006

Either excessive wealth or poverty can lead to a greater tendency towards mental illness related suicide...but the wealthy person is a bit more likely to commit suicide than the poor one, under these conditions. So it would appear an increased redistribution of wealth from rich to poor would actually help reduce suicide rates among both groups.

-- Wealth Tied to Suicide Risk in the Mentally Ill; Reuters Health/Yahoo! Health Headlines; February 9 2001; citing British Medical Journal 2001;322:334-335

-- Poor less likely to commit suicide; Agence France-Presse; February 10, 2001; Nando Media/Nando Times; http://www.nandotimes.com

-- Greater suicide risk amongst rich people with mental illness; EurekAlert!; 8 FEBRUARY 2001; Contact: Emma Wilkinson; ewilkinson@bmj.com; 44-20-7383-6529; BMJ-British Medical Journal

"Human beings are more aroused by rewards they actively earn than by rewards they acquire passively, according to brain imaging research by scientists at Emory University School of Medicine."

"It is like the difference between winning the lottery and earning the same amount of money. From the brain's perspective, earning it is more meaningful, and probably more satisfying."

-- The human brain responds to receiving rewards 'the old fashioned way' 12-May-2004; eurekalert.org; Contact: Holly Korschun hkorsch@emory.edu 404-727-3990 Emory University Health Sciences Center

A survey of people possessing a net worth of $10 million of more revealed that on the average they own between three and five cars, and spend roughly $10,000 a year on jewelry and watches, plus $10,000 on things like shoes and bags.

Most spend at minimum $20,000 per year on clothing alone.

-- $1 million lottery winner dies with $34,000 payout; Apr. 26, 2007; Associated Press; fortwayne.com

"A German pensioner who won €2-million (about R19-million) on the lottery refused the cash because he didn't know what to do with it, reports Ananova.com.

The 70-year-old man...reportedly said: "What would I do with so much money? My wife has already passed away, my parents are dead, I have no children and no other relatives. I don't want it."

He said he had only bought the lottery ticket out of a habit because his late wife had been a passionate player."

-- Man refuses R19m lottery win; September 19 2007

"The could-have-been club boasts a surprisingly large roster, with dozens of hefty jackpots left unclaimed around the country in recent years...$51.7 million in Indiana [appears to be the record unclaimed win so far]"

-- Millions in Lottery Prizes Go Unclaimed - New York Times By JENNIFER MEDINA; February 14, 2007; nytimes.com

-- Powerball winner: Thieves cleaned me out; AP; 1-12-07; news.yahoo.com

The woman winner of $9 million (after taxes) was the daughter of a major drug-trafficking kingpin in the Houston TX area.

Her winning male partner ($14 million after taxes) had completely abandoned his first wife and child decades before.

-- Instant Millions Can't Halt Winners' Grim Slide By JAMES DAO; December 5, 2005

-- Yahoo! News Rich Merchant's Wife in Lottery Windfall; Reuters; Jul 29, 2003

56 year old Andrew Whittaker already owned a multimillion dollar construction business before he won another $113 million after taxes in a lump-sum take from a lottery win.

-- Yahoo! News Fame Takes Toll on $315M Lottery Winner By GAVIN McCORMICK, Associated Press; Dec 26, 2003

"Mr. Gregg, who heads the Budget Committee, has $1.5 million to $6.2 million in stocks, real estate and other investments, according to his latest financial disclosure form. He is one of at least 40 senators who enjoy millionaire status."

-- Senator, Millionaire and, Now, a Lottery Winner By DAVID STOUT; October 21, 2005

"U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, already a millionaire and heir to the Kimberly-Clark fortune, is on a lucky streak.

The Republican hit it big in 1997 with a $250,000 jackpot in the District of Columbia lottery. Then, last spring, he won $1,000 prize in the Wisconsin lottery, and he won another $1,000 in that lottery last week."

"...he recently reported a net worth of about $11.6 million. He said he spends about $10 a week on lottery tickets."

-- Millionaire U.S. Rep. wins lottery again; 9-7-07; AP

"Whittaker was a self-made millionaire long before he became a lottery winner, having built a pipeline business worth $17 million. Then he hit the Powerball in December 2002. It was then the largest-single jackpot ever."

"Whittaker's family never wanted for anything, and he admits they have long been accustomed to a lifestyle most would consider lavish...But winning the Powerball was a different kind of wealth that brought instant celebrity status."

-- Powerball win: Fantasy or nightmare? By SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 13, 2007

-- Yahoo! News Man in Hospital After Missing Lottery Jackpot; Oddly Enough - Reuters; Aug 20, 2003

-- Yahoo! News 90-Year-Old Wins $16 Million Lottery; Jun 04, 2003

"An 89-year-old couple who won a C$7.5 million lottery jackpot..."

-- Lottery winners, 89, want new nylons, car; Reuters; news.yahoo.com; 8-23-05

-- Widow, 84, Wins Record $10M Slot Jackpot By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press; 4-20-06

A 60 year old Australian won three times in the same night.

-- Yahoo! News Man Wins Lottery Three Times in One Night; May 10, 2004; Strange News - AP

-- Odd Odds - Couple Wins Multimillion Dollar Jackpot Twice In Ten Years Submitted by Dmitri Davydov 2007-09-01

The Angelos are 81 and 74 years old.

-- Couple Wins Millions in Lottery _ Twice By RICH MENDELSON | Associated Press; August 31, 2007

-- Yahoo! News Lottery Millionaire's Troubles Get Worse By BETH GARDINER, Associated Press; Feb 18, 2004

-- Yahoo! News - Woman Who Won the Va. Lottery Is Broke; Strange News - AP; May 03, 2004; citing The Roanoke Times

-- Be Careful What You Wish For Lottery Win Exacerbated Va. Man's Troubles, Friends and Family Say By Eric M. Weiss; washingtonpost.com; June 26, 2003; Page B01

-- Yahoo! News California Lottery Winner Shot to Death; Oct 13, 2004; AP

-- Yahoo! News Ind. Man Dies After Winning Lottery Game; Jan 25, 2004; AP

74 year old Croatian Frane Selak won $1 million "...after surviving seven major disasters..." and four bad marriages over his lifetime.

-- World's luckiest man wins the lottery ; accessible online on or about 4-21-05; ananova.com

-- Google Search: "Frane Selak"

-- Yahoo! News - Sex Attacker Wins Lottery on Weekend Out of Jail; August 11, 2004; Yahoo/Reuters; story.news.yahoo.com

-- Yahoo! News Teenage Thief Wins Lottery at First Go; Reuters; Nov 05, 2002

-- In Charity, Too, the Rich Get Richer By RICHARD M. WALDEN; January 3, 2006

-- Lottery Winner Loses $114 Million In Four Years - Plus A Look At The The Biggest Winners Of All Time By marvin - Posted on August 31st, 2007

"Many lottery winners end up worse off than they were before they won, says Susan Bradley, a certified financial planner who runs a practice specializing in helping people who come into sudden wealth."

"Roughly one-third of lottery winners find themselves in serious financial trouble or bankrupt within five years of turning in their lucky numbers..."

In my old article Normal Luck, I theorized that it may turn out some people are sort of metaphysically lucky, and so taxing them more heavily than other folks might not only fail to harm them, but prove to be a perpetual fountain of wealth.

Now Austan Goolsbee of the National Bureau of Economic Research has..."...used executive-compensation figures from 1,500 corporate proxies in the five years surrounding a 1993 tax hike...[and]...found that these execs' income, excluding stock options, was twice as responsive to growth in GDP as lower-income groups' and 50% more responsive to growth in company earnings. That means in a growing economy, their earnings rose despite the '93 tax increase..."

-- "SOAKING THE RICH DOES WORK"By Peter Coy , Business Week: 5-11-98

"...Congress now literally takes money from those making $30,000 to $500,000 per year and funnels it in subtle ways to the super rich -- the top 1/100th of 1 percent of Americans."

-- Stroke the rich IRS has become a subsidy system for super-wealthy Americans IRS winks at rich deadbeats by David Cay Johnston; April 11, 2004; sfgate.com

"The federal government has taken billions of dollars from the taxes and fees paid by airline passengers every time they fly and awarded it to small airports used mainly by private pilots and globe-trotting corporate executives."