I hear allot of this kind of reportage. Lou Dobbs is constanly making these kinds of observations, for example, in his War on the Middle Class series. While I don't deny that it is likely substantially true, what sort of adjustments would seem effective in countering such trends? I mean aside from finding income tax cheats, probably a laudable goal at any time, what measures could be taken to equalize the opportunity to partake in this wealth building process? Its one thing to make note and be resentful but another to make rational public policy or telling social commentary to counter such eroding trends in the social fabric.

I think we should have some type of action to stop outsourcing of the better paying jobs and also to bring back jobs that have already been outsourced.

This might involve some type of tax incentives for companies who retain or bring back a certain percentage of the jobs that have already been outsourced.

I'd suggest getting rid of all types of tax-free income. If the federal government wants to help municipalities pay for their debt, let them cover some of the cost of the interest on the payout, thus giving these bonds a competitive rate of return, instead of having tax-free income that benefits almost exclusively wealthy people.

Second, I'd say that no public corporation should be allowed to either pay dividends or pay bonuses (at least to the top level employees) in any year where there was a significant layoff, with the definition of significant left to the reader as a detail.

Finally, get rid of all tax deductions. This will go a long way toward closing loopholes for the rich and also make taxing more fair. At the low end of the tax scale, i.e. 99.9% of the population:

* Why have people who can't afford to buy homes subsidizing the mortgages of those who can?
* Why have people with no children subsidizing the children of those who do?
* Why have different tax rates for different kinds of income, specifically, why lower the tax rate for precisely the types of investments that lower income people are almost guaranteed not to be able to earn, capital gains and such?
* In short, tax people based on what they earn and stop rewarding certain behavior, especially when it is bad behavior, like buying a house in the burbs instead of living stacked on top of each other and reducing one's environmental footprint or having kids when the planet can't support the numbers we have.

The most important thing though is to simplify the tax forms to the point where they are essentially, enter your total income. Look up your tax rate. Multiply one by the other. Pay this amount. How much room would there be for loopholes and tax shelters in that?

J Kelly--Simplest answer is rescinding tax breaks for the rich and retooling the income tax system (including deductions) so that they help the middle class and the poor instead of the rich. And maybe even increasing the amount of money you can earn and still be eligible for the Earned Income credit.

I don't doubt it, but I can't find the original Times article Scott refers to. I'd like something reliable I could show to friends.

Until people start voting their pocketbooks instead of their religion, nothing is going to change...

Feed the rich to the poor,
Until there are no rich no more.

So we all need to find out how the rich do it! I hope to be one of the top 5% in my lifetime. Most of us are not conditioned to know about money but it's time we all get educated. If they change the tax laws the top 1% will find the loopholes.

There is no reason that an able bodied American can not make 100k+ a year. Maybe if the poor hadn't ignored their education, they too could live fat on the hog like the smart working rich this article finds so contemptible.

What is this mindset, Cameron Scott, that requires one to hate those who have made success for themselves? I read your article and rejoice that it is possible for so many to have found success. It is an indicator of something that is so right with America.

Why do people, questioning the disparity between rich and poor, ask how to use the police powers of government to diminish this disparity when they would do better for themselves to ask how to achieve such success for themselves. Unlike the unsuccessful lull themselves into believing, the rich do not cheat and steal to get ahead. The vast majority build their wealth with years of hard, smart work.

The progressive income tax punishes the very thing we should promote: earning. The fair tax promotes earning and investment while punishing spending. Many denounce it as not progressive enough, but I believe it to be far more progressive than the current tax system. After all, the poor pay no taxes at all under the fair tax. The fair tax is essentially voluntary as well. If one prefers not to pay taxes, they simply refuse to purchase a new final good or service. In this way, the government does not have a gun to my head demanding that I hand over my money, which essentially represents a portion of my life.

"There is no reason that an able bodied American can not make 100k+ a year. Maybe if the poor hadn't ignored their education, they too could live fat on the hog like the smart working rich this article finds so contemptible. "

I don't know what world you live in but I'd sure like to live in it. With costs of getting an education increasing (college) and even that education not necessarily meaning a good, high paying job, it is much harder, if not impossible for many people to get the education they might need.

Yes some people are poor because of bad choices they made, but the majority are not, so please stop with the "blame the victim" attitude.

"What is this mindset, Cameron Scott, that requires one to hate those who have made success for themselves?"

You're assuming that everyone is wealthy has "made success for themselves. With the economic situation as it has been for the last quarter century, more and more of peoples potential for improving their financial is based upon the level of income of their parents, meaning that advancing into and up in class is more difficult and that you are more likely to remain in whatever economic "caste" you were born into.

Sorry, but we do not live in the utopian world you seen to think we do.

"There is no reason that an able bodied American can not make 100k+ a year. Maybe if the poor hadn't ignored their education, they too could live fat on the hog like the smart working rich this article finds so contemptible."

When there are only 300,000 people in the country making that kind of money, and 150 million who AREN'T making that kind of money, I find it very hard to believe that all 150 million of those people are just lazy and uneducated. I mean, the number of people with college degrees is well above 300,000, which suggests that there are many people who are indeed that well educated who aren't making that kind of money. I find it hard to believe that people who would persevere enough to graduate from college would somehow miraculously become too lazy after graduation to make a good salary.

I wouldn't say that the rich are stealing to get ahead, just that it takes more luck and connections to get to their position than they want to admit. Nor would I deny that some poor people are genuinely lazy and uneducated. But the Calvinist belief that the poor deserve their lot due to their own bad choices and the rich similarly deserve their own good fortune denies the reality that every race has to have a winner. Ever watch the Olympics? The competitors are all very qualified, the best of the best, and yet someone loses every race - and often by very small margins.

There's only a set amount of money in the economy, which means that it is simply not possible for every able-bodied, hard-working American to make $100K+. Wanting there to be a bit more equity between rich and poor - especially when work ethic and education are equivalent - isn't about contempt for the rich. It's about wanting to see adults practice a little sharing, that value we all learned in kindergarten.

"When there are only 300,000 people in the country making that kind of money, and 150 million who AREN'T making that kind of money, I find it very hard to believe that all 150 million of those people are just lazy and uneducated."

Agreed. But the 150,000,000 are guilty of setting the values. As long as we insist on driving gas-guzzlers, allow sports figures $5M a year (whose teams fail to make the play-offs!) and pay entertainment idols many times what we pay teachers, then we've endorsed these income disparities.

Is a war profiteer or an energy manipulator intrinsically more valuable to society than a healthcare worker in an urban ghetto, a nursing home or an indian reservation?

And yes, a large number of us are willing to give a little of what we have earned to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters at home and across the globe.

If only we could get our societal values right, in time the inequities will self-correct.

Not everyone can be rich, somebody has to do the actual work of producing goods or providing services to generate wealth at the beginning. There are a whole lot of those people for each management type and investor.

We could narrow the income gap between those groups by restoring the right of workers to organize, which has been badly undercut under Republican government. Without labor unions, workers have no power to demand a bigger share of the profits, and are at the mercy of employers.

Even better, in my opinion, are worker-owned companies; then workers' earnings are based directly on profits, and tend to be higher since the workers are getting the stockholders' cut. They don't have to strike to get fair pay, and they have a strong incentive to be productive and keep the company profits up. Those who make their money by investing in stock don't like this idea, though - and since they are the ones with the capital to invest, it's hard to see how this more-efficient form of organization can ever come to predominate.

Although I earn about 120K per year, and my wife earns about 60K, we are far from wealthy since we live in New York. Our home is a 20 x 20 studio, and although its estimated value is over 300K, it is small by almost any comparison. The cost of living in NYC is 2:1 compared to the rest of the US, so our seeming affluence really amounts to a combined effective income of 90K, even less when you consider we are more heavily taxed. Even then, as a consultant, my 120K comes without any benefits or safety net. If we weren't living in NY we couldn't earn the kind of money we do, but then again, the wealth and density of New York drives up prices.

The real issues have to do with how the rewards are apportioned in the first place, and I have for years complained about the increasing GINI coefficient (income distribution). For me the real issue has to do with corporate oversight, unionization, social welfare (health care / medicine), and oversight of secretive financial organizations (hedge funds / private equity).

I am a member of the middle class feeling the sting of the pinch afforded a substantial amount of us in spite of many road signs indicating that this is such a rosy economy - Why Me Worry?

But I am somewhat taken aback by suggestions that we are somehow undereducated (I believe we are but wonder at this being the panacea it is often touted), at the mercy of outsourcing by nefarious multinationals or prisoners of a bad tax policy. Frankly, I am more an adherent to the NY Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, who has been warning about a significant shift in opportunities afforded educated folks in the "third world". There is a substantial body of educated workers who are able to perform work that was once the purview of Western educated professionals and do so at a substantially lower rate. That is a fact! I am concerned that no amount of tax incentives or public policy will alter that circumstance. It will only get more severe as these opportunities are afforded a wider section of world populations. And these folks are hungry for this change! Not convinced? Who populates the majority of positions in the advanced degree-granting schools for Engineering and Science, arguably the corner stone of the leaders of tomorrow? This is certainly not commentary to provide angst or worse about these folks. They have a right to the fruits of this competition. We were once them.

Is this a matter of strongly encouraging the next generation of Americans to adhere to the currency of the controllers of the many intertwined economies (Math, Science, Technology to name a few) so that we are able to compete? Not if the citizens of India or China or the Pacific Rim are also afforded these opportunities and still command much less compensation. We in the more "advanced" nations have become accustomed to a higher standard of living and would chafe at earning 20K per year after the vaunted college degree award. And with the digital revolution and the Internet widely available, you won't have to be in Northern California or other American technical enclaves in order to throw your hat into the ring in many situations.

Say we are successful at encouraging Susie or Johnnie to major in Computer Science, Engineering or sophisticated Business Analysis. Would that be the solution? They perhaps become overpriced educated contenders but not necessarily the leaders of tomorrow's most likely successful ventures.

I think that when we contemplate the incongruity of sports professionals earning up to 1000 times what dedicated teacher's earn, we face the prospects of disconnected priorities. Since America is ranked rather low in competitive examinations of crucial subjects in comparion with other cultures, perhaps we need to reexamine what the most significant War on ... we really need to be involved in. While I maintain that education may not be a panacea, it is crucial to any sort of edge we could provide in a world-wide competition for who might be running things in the 21st century.

I am uncertain if providing tax breaks to a culture with a breathtakingly poor savings rate and an inclination to buy their way to happiness is any solution. Maybe some could enhance their down payment in obtaining their sub prime fantasy house loan and move up to a larger McMansion. I am suggesting that some of the advisors in this blog or commentary section or whatever you care to call this might have something in decrying the minimalist economic education most folks have about the basic concepts of different types of incomes, capital, spending, savings and planning. And, no, I don't have allot of ideas on how to attack these central issues. This is why I am posing these kinds of questions.

I would think that we might benefit by a collective examination and analysis of best scenarios for adopting techniques and social goals which might develop the core talents avialable to a still competitive and ingenuous culture and decide what aspects of the economic solution we are likely going to have to concede to others. If we fail to concentrate on the most telling factors in this competitive puzzle, things will turn on the rules of the game no matter the good intentions.

No culture which has tasted the fruits of being at the pinnacle of success has lasted as long as they would have thought.

The figure in question is not 300,000 making over $100K--the figure is 10% of Americans making over $100K. With the current US population above 300,000,000, that makes 30,000,000 Americans making at least $100K.

Being one of the 30,000,000 (I am at the ~$115,000 level) let me state that I paid over $29,000 in payroll taxes last year, and an additional $9,000 in student loan payments (from my 11-years of college/grad school)on top of that. That is before private school tuition for two of my three children ($13,000). I had a great public primary and secondary education in New York State--unfortunately, for my children; this is not available in North Carolina. Additionally, $16,000 was paid out in mortgage interest ($270,000 home), and $2,400 for real estate taxes. Altogether, these items alone account for over $43,400. I am not complaining, I feel truly blessed to be in this position, and I agree that I should have to pay my fair share--but as you can see, it can not be said that the bottom of the 10% has/is "also lived off the fat of the rest of us. Nicely done, lads!" as is stated by the author. Additionally, through tithing, our family managed to give $8500 to charity last year (not including 100% of our children’s allowance--which they volunteered to give, no coercion, honest.)

The main point is that regardless of your achievement level (both educational and financial), someone will learn more, and make more (Bill Gates will be surpassed within 2-years by Carlos Slim Hel [Mexico] (whose up $20B last year alone)) and someone will learn less and make less--it is up to all of us to make the best of our situation and to boost the lives of those around us and less fortunate—and give when able.

To everything there is a season…. There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.
What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils?
Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

10% figure applies only to those that are gainfully employed, the work force, not underage children and the retired folk. It also does not apply to the underground economy(e.g. Humboldt County gold farmers) which is large. The W-2 and 1099 earnings pay the tax. The cash economy(you know who you are) do not pay taxes. Some say that cash is king.