The Dirty-Little-Secret of the Filthy-Rich

I have been scathing in my criticism of Western governments for serving the interests of the ultra-wealthy, to the detriment of more than 75% of their citizens – who have seen their own standards of living falling steadily for the last thirty years. I have been especially critical of the U.S., and now a new article has been released which confirms my analysis, in every respect.

Wikipedia provides a very interesting definition for the term “plutocracy”:

• Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called “plutarchy”

I must confess that the term “plutarchy” is new to me (or I would have already used it on a number of occasions). Clearly, the former U.S. democracy is now a plutarchy, and the following numbers demonstrate this with devastating detail.

An article from AOL's Daily Finance provides a breakdown of how those at the top have been given a “free ride”, which actually started at the beginning of the 1990's – long before George Bush Jr. made hand-outs to the ultra-wealthy his second highest priority (behind only invading Afghanistan and Iraq):

The 400 wealthiest Americans have seen their incomes skyrocket over the last two decades, while their tax rates have decreased dramatically according to newly-released data from the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, between 1992 and 2007, the annual incomes of this tiny club of uber-rich increased seven-fold to a whopping $345 million on average, while their effective tax rate dropped by more than one-third from a 1995 peak of nearly 30%.

How many average people saw their incomes rise by 700% from 1992 to 2007? How many average people had their effective tax rate nearly cut in half since 1995?

When I talk about the filthy-rich getting a "free ride" from the tax system, keep in mind that most of the increased wealth for the ultra-wealthy comes from the (un-taxed) appreciation of assets - not from income. Thus, the fact that they are grossly under-taxed on the tiny portion of their wealth which is (at least theoretically) subject to taxation is a(nother) despicable betrayal of the American people by their morally bankrupt leadership.