George Will writes a bit about rich people in his Washington Post op-ed today. It concerns the problems the rich are experiencing purchasing enough to keep our economy humming.
America's richest 1 percent of households own more than half of the nation's stocks and control more wealth ($16 trillion) than the bottom 90 percent.
The richest 20 percent account for almost 60 percent of consumption. So it's easy to see the problems the rich have in spending enough to keep our country's economy humming along. Forbes magazine has a CLEW index (Cost of Living Extremely Well) and that index is rising faster than the CPI (consumer price index).
Lucky for the rest of us, prices of things the rich love to buy have been increasing. Learjet 40 (7.9 mil) up 2%, Sikorsky S-76C+ (10 mil) up 11%, Hatteras 80 (4.7 mil) up 4% or an Olympic size swimming pool (1.3 mil) up 12%.
Lucky for the rest of us, that top 20% of taxpayers don't have to pay too much more in taxes than the next 40 percent of taxpayers. If they did, that would be redistribution of wealth.
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