Here's weekend rich guys report:
- The Displaced Plainsman finds us redistributing wealth up the ladder to General Electric, which made $5.1 billion from U.S. operations alone in 2010 but paid no income tax. Among other lessons to be drawn, my friend LK says GE's haul "shows the flaws of South Dakota's efforts to gain jobs by bribing businesses; clearly, businesses know how to manage bribes far better than government."
- America made 600,000 more millionaires in 2010, for a grand total of 8.4 million. Millionaire households from from 5.14 million in 2009 to 5.56 million in 2010. At the same time, we added five million people to the food stamp program.
- Alas, four in ten millionaires say they don't feel wealthy. The modern threshold for feeling like you've made it: $7.5 million. I guess $3 million in farm subsidies really is small potatoes.
- The Fidelity® survey also finds 64% of millionaires "extremely or very concerned" about potential changes in the tax code. The other 36% must have GE's lobbyists on their payroll.
- We South Dakotans remain relatively humble folk: we rank 45th nationally for percentage of millionaire households. 3.74% of your South Dakota neighbors are sitting on at least a million bucks. That's 11,865 millionaire households out of 317,030 total. Proportionally, that should mean about 160 millionaire households in Lake County. Anyone care to count locally?
- Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and Connecticut top the list on the above metric, with nearly 7% of their households in the millionaire bracket. Minnesota ranks 16th, with just over 5% millionaire households.
The rich will always be with us. But for the rest of us, great is our reward in the Kingdom of Heaven....
Good eye. Graphic red state failure.
Hummingbirdminds has you in his blogroll, Cory. Are you applying to Netroots Nation? http://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2011/03/help-send-this-blogger-to-summer-camp.html
Maybe GE had losses in 2008 and 2009 that are still being carried forward? What were their taxes in past years?
No summer camp for me, Larry! But give ol' HummingB a shout from me!
Huse, good question! Taxes are so darned complicated. Some quick Googling tells me GE didn't pay U.S. taxes last year, either. They lost $408M in the U.S., while making $10.8B in profit globally. The GE spokesperson said 2009 was the first time in decades that GE saw negative income the U.S.
The benefits of cable: GE has 1,000 accountants to do their 24,000 page return. Ronald Reagan back in the day realized it was wrong GE paid no taxes so he overhauled the structure. Then lobbyists. David Brooks on Bill Maher said GE gets tax credits for wind generators, hence no tax today.
Larry, would you call Montana red or blue ?
To me, it looks blue from one side and red from the other.
South Dakota looks red all over.
No judgment intended herein for either state.
Oh, leave the judging to ip. We voted for McCain pretty decisively, Stan. 2012 will be interesting. Only 45% of Democrats turned out to vote in 2010 producing a 2011 Republican legislature that succeeded in embarrassing itself quite significantly, but energized a popular revolt among us. South Dakota won the Nutwatch race handily, however. Wyoming was already toast politically and environmentally. Mormons and christians: moldy white bread.