Sherry Shaw wrote:
> Right.  That's what they're good at.  Kinda my point.

I guess I quoted the wrong part of your screed. It *is* the "cream 
rising" if you define "cream" as "capable of creating wealth." It isn't 
just "being in the right place at the right time", but knowing what 
place you should be in when.

>> And that's why Kenya is a poor country.
> Precisely.  It's circular.

I guess I'm not following why you seem to be complaining, if that's what 
you're doing.

>> No, there isn't. They pay huge amounts of taxes. The top 1% of the 
>> taxpayers in the USA pay something like 50% of the taxes.
> 
> Whoa...hard to know where to start.  Source of figures?  And 
> relationship of top 1% of the taxpayers to top 1% of incomes...?

GIYF.

http://www.house.gov/jec/news/news2006/pr109-94.pdf

I was slightly off. The top 5% pay 50% of the taxes. The top 1% pay only 
a third of the taxes.

And it's apparently getting more skewed:
http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6

> IRAs.  Pension plans.  Savings bonds.  Why do you think people have to 
> be "forced" to invest?  People invest to make money or to secure their 
> futures, not because they can't think of anything else to do with their 
> money.  

Some do, yes: Those who don't have more money than they know what to do 
with. Those who *do* have more money than they could possibly spend 
invest because it's that or burn it in the fireplace. :-)

 > And, if everyone's either too rich to spend their money, or else
> living hand-to-mouth, where's the middle class?

My distinction is between people who could spend all their money (on 
personal material goods) and those who couldn't. I'd expect everyone in 
the "middle class" could certainly find something to spend their entire 
life savings on.

When you have more money than California, it's hard to spend it all.

> Which, oddly enough, tends to hit the middle class way worse than the 
> upper class.

It does now, yes.  In truth, the really rich people don't actually own 
that much money, which is how you get away from AMT.  Bill Gates doesn't 
have all that much money.  He has a whole bunch of Microsoft stock, and 
*Microsoft* has a whole bunch of money.  And Bill Gates has a whole 
bunch of credit.

(OK, yes, Bill Gates has lots of money. But hopefully you follow what 
I'm saying there.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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