Junior, not senior. And the mostly spurious Laffer curve, the perplexing rise of Reaganomics, etc.

Countries with steeply progressive taxation of incomes don't have this problem, at least not nearly to the degree we do. From the 30s through the 50s our highest marginal tax rates were over 70 percent, while taxes on equites were relatively low.(though still higher than today.)

We had genuinely steep progressive taxation of salaries,and relatively modest taxation of equities, because FDR and the congress operated on the assumption that the wealthy(including those who indifferently lead failing companies)will pay themselves first if no disincentive existed to do so, and if they felt neither the obligation nor the confidence to try to shore up the economy through long-term stock ownership.

Additionally,the market inefficiency of concentrating large amounts of capital on paying a handful of insiders royally would make less capital available for the salaries of ordinary workers and for investment in research and development, etc. (Just as true today, of course.)

During the Clinton years, the highest personal income tax rate was 39.6 per cent, the economy boomed and we were finally in the black on a year-to-year basis. Bush lowered the top rate by some 5 points, CEO compensation took off, the budget started to hemorrhage red ink again, and so forth.

The president makes 400 grand a year. How about disallowing tax breaks to corporations on executive salaries on amounts past the first 400,000, including deferred and in-kind compensation?

Likewise, whereas the top income tax tier is around 35 percent, how about additional tax tiers starting at 1 million, 5 milllion, and 10 million dollars a year-- say 42,45, and 48 percent? And tax capital gains as regular income for equities held for under five years?

ben quite pointedly writes:

So many of Cary's correspondents are like this -- there is no "problem" here, there's just another boring, self-obsessed whiner fishing for validation. "Oooh, I'm such a perfectionist, I'm so great, what's wrong with me?"

yes. I realize you have to have a really big-ass brain and a penchant for european movies and overpriced coffee or they won't let you read salon, but enough is enough.

I too am tired(do you like that? "I too...") of all these letters from the chic and precious.

Look: if all of you went into the liberal arts, surely some of you, as per the national trends, are failures with college degrees, who read Ayn Rand or The Atlantic on their breaks and glower at the customers. Working as cashiers or telemarketers, or bucking for shift leader at Hardees. No?

Don't you ever get letters from guys who work in the deli at Walmart who find out that their new girlfriend's ex is back from the penitentiary, and lookin' for luv?

Surely you must.

First, thanks for the information regarding Brian Turner. I'd never heard of him. The only post 9-11/Iraq War Lit with which I was previously familiar is Baraka's "Somebody Blew Up America".(Like one of the other commenters, I've also wondered if there has been any popular music protesting the war-- although I don't wonder about the dearth of actual radioplay.)

Secondly: it's pretty clear, especially in light of the 60 minutes Bush interview aired yesterday, that at this point the only way to end the war is to remove him from power. For the longest time I was leery of impeachment rhetoric because I thought it just made progressives look hotheaded and unreasonable, but enough is enough.

firstly, I completely agree with Cary, that the lady should not feel sheepish or reluctant to contact the appropriate boards.

secondly, I understand that often osteopaths can perform some of the same procedures as chiropractors, and insurance companies tend to be less leery of paying D.O.s. Please note that I don't mean that as a slight towards chiropractors, but purely as a practical concern about the insurance going through ok.

Not descended from West African slaves brought to America, he steps into the benefits of black progress (like Harvard Law School) without having borne any of the burden, and he gives the white folks plausible deniability of their unwillingness to embrace blacks in public life.

...He didn't attain power through traditional black channels (not a minister, no time at the NAACP) so, technically, he owes the civil rights lobby nothing...

At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won't bother to make the distinction. They're both "black" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term.

First of all, I fail to see how not having actually descended from slaves makes any black person who grows up in the US removes you from collective black experience in a way that any other black American who did in fact descend from slaves but also grew up with one white parent and an absent black parent does not. A lot of people grow up that way, and they don't need to apologize to the author any more than Obama does.

Apparently Obama needs to kiss Debra Dickerson's ring, so that she might bestow some authenticity on him. She knows, better than he does, how he grew up, how people may have treated him, how his experiences shaped him, how the gears whir in the inner recesses of his psyche. And the guilty white liberals who read Salon better not call her on any of her crackpot assertions, or she'll put 'em in their place.

If I'm uncouth, forgive me; but who made you Pope of Black Folks, Miss Dickerson?

geez, why do people worry so much about this president's hurt feelings? why are they more important than the lives and countries he destroys?

If he's ever found to be the war criminal he is, will we ask Bill Gates to move out of his mansion so that Junior can be housed in a suitably august prison?