Rich Man, Poor Man

Rich Man, Poor Man


I just finished doing my taxes and tucked the completed forms into the mail for transport to the giant Black Hole located in a Galaxy far, far away called the US treasury. I happened upon something while doing my taxes that you might be interested in. And please don’t take my word for it, breakout the 1040 booklet that Uncle Sam sent you and go through the numbers yourself to verify what I have observed. What I am talking about here is that if you are a married couple filing jointly, and you make $43K, the Government declares that you are Poor and you qualify for an Earned Income Credit and the Government will take some money from someone else and give it to you. If you are married and filing jointly, and you make $70K, you qualify for the Alternative Minimum Tax and the Government will declare that you are Rich and take money from you and give it to someone else. That’s right, it only requires $27K to separate the Rich from the Poor in this Country. I could have played some games with single filers versus other filers and came up with a separation of only $3K between being Rich or being Poor, but that would have put me into the same league as Flim Flam Politicians. If there was ever a more classic definition of Redistribution of Wealth, I don’t know what it would be. Oh, by the way, there is a stench in the air and I smell it. A national sales tax is coming.