Why doesn't President Obama ask America to call their Rep's and DEMAND taxes be raised on the RICH?

[Octafish]

11. That is the logical conclusion. And to think we live in such a wealthy country.

Unfortunately, the wealth is concentrated in a very few pockets these days.

Wealth, Income, and Power

by G. William Domhoff
Sociology Department, University of California at Santa Cruz

This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.

SNIP...

This document focuses on the "Top 1%" as a whole because that's been the traditional cut-off point for "the top" in academic studies, and because it's easy for us to keep in mind that we are talking about one in a hundred. But it is also important to realize that the lower half of that top 1% has far less than those in the top half; in fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand. (To get an idea of the differences, take a look at an insider account by a long-time investment manager who works for the well-to-do and very rich. It nicely explains what the different levels have -- and how they got it. Also, David Cay Johnston (2011) has written a column about the differences among the top 1%, based on 2009 IRS information.)

As you read through the facts and figures that follow, please keep in mind that they are usually two or three years out of date because it takes time for one set of experts to collect the basic information and make sure it is accurate, and then still more time for another set of experts to analyze it and write their reports. It's also the case that the infamous housing bubble of the first eight years of the 21st century inflated some of the wealth numbers.

There's also some general information available on median income and percentage of people below the poverty line in 2010. As might be expected, most of the new information shows declines; in fact, a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (2011) concludes that the decade from 2000 to 2010 was a "lost decade" for most Americans.

CONTINUED...

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Lots at the link, excellent resource that's good to bookmark for future holidays and furloughs and communicating to those hard-to-reach areas in Washington.