At the Very Top, a Surge in Income in '03 ...David Cay Johnston

Nice article on wealth under Bush by David Cay Johnston. The Bush's base prospers while the rest of us pick up the tab...not that you didn't know that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/business/05tax.html?pagewanted=print
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After falling for two years, the share of income going to the richest slice of Americans - the top tenth of 1 percent - grew significantly in 2003 while the share going to 99 percent of Americans fell, tax data released yesterday showed.

At the same time, the effective income tax rates paid by the top tenth of 1 percent fell sharply, declining at more than 10 times the rate reduction for middle-class taxpayers, the new report, by the Internal Revenue Service, showed.

Overall incomes rose by 2.7 percent in 2003, compared with the previous year, the I.R.S. said. A quarter of this increase went to the top tenth of 1 percent, the 129,000 taxpayers with reported incomes of $1.3 million or more, an analysis of the data showed.

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Paid for by the middle income and lower income; our schools and health care; our complete infrastructure.

...are growing richer while the rest of us income-wise are taking it up the keaster! But, there is a better indicator than waiting around for two years or more for the I.R.S. to provide factual data. If the idle rich are happy and the rest of us are not, you know that they are beating the rest of us. My inflation rate is well into two digits, so this idea that 2.3% or 3.1% is totally bogus for the average wage earner. It is well over twice that rate and climbing. The next big impact on inflation will be interest rates. Once Greenspam leaves as Federal Reserve Chief, those rates will skyrocket. Although I don't know who it will be, you know that Bush will nominate the worst possible candidate for Fed Chief who will do the bidding of the rich banks and that will mean high high interest rates fro the vast majority of Americans.