tax rate
i added up all the taxes we paid last year: federal, state, local, self employment, property (house, two cars, airplane, land), sales (estimated), etc. then i divided it by our income. i included our non-taxable investment income. because well, frankly, it should count. our effective tax rate was 17%. seventeen lousy percent. and we're not even trying to shelter income. crikey, that's a lower rate than i paid in federal taxes alone when i was a starving college student. but wait! there's more. incomes higher than mine generally pay a lower effective tax rate. why? because many taxes have caps: social security, medicaid, sales. sales tax is included because rich people proportionately spend less on goods than on services which are mostly not subject to sales tax. and rich folks are strongly motivated to shelter their incomes from taxes. neat huh? anyone still want to argue with me that the income tax rate on rich folks is too low?