income != wealth whenever i say something about taxing the rich. someone sends me a link to income tax statistics showing that the rich really are paying their fair share. poppycock. don't confuse income with wealth. wealth and income generally correlate. ie people with high incomes generally have lots of wealth. however, the converse is less true. people with lots of wealth don't necessarily have proportionally high incomes. one of the big reasons for this disparity is the way the tax laws are written. for example, i invest $10m in my portfolio. after 4 to 10 years it doubles in value. 4 years if your warren buffett. closer to 10 years for everyone else. anywho, i sell half. what's my income? joe on the street would say it's $10m less the $5m that i paid for it. so $5m, right? heh. that would be naive. according to the law, i can claim any portion of the $10m i paid for it. even all of it. my tax rate is irrelevant cause my income is $0. and now i have $10m cash with which to repeat the process. and a $10m portfolio. the defenders of this ludicrosity say i will eventually have to pay taxes on it. but i don't. i can keep deferring taxes forever. the tax bill will outlive me. cause there's no estate tax. bill gates gave a huge chunk of his wealth away to charity. pardon, to *his* charity. and since it's a charity, it doesn't pay taxes. neat huh? i should learn to say what i mean. i don't literally want to raise the current tax rate of the rich. i really want to close the loopholes that allow them to pretend they have no income.  ¶ 8:00 AM