Will the New York Times soon be distributing broadsheets to Marxists in warehouse squats? Incredibly the Times comes out 4 square against wealth creation in the United States in the June 5th Sunday edition. (As a matter of "policy" I do not link to Times stories. I would like to do it of course, but as they say at car rental and air line counters, "I cannot do it sir because we have a policy against it...")

The stats: (from their own story)
Between 1983 and 2001 -
Percentage increase of all households in U.S. -- 27%
Percentage increase in number of households having inflation adjusted net worth of $1.5 million -- 123%
Percentage increase in number of households having inflation adjusted net worth of $5-10 million -- 304%
Percentage increase in number of households having inflation adjusted net worth of $>10 million -- 409%

The obvious conclusion should be that a greater proportion of U.S. tax payers were able to increase their collective wealth in an 18 year period. In other words: More Americans got "rich". Somehow the Times views this as bad news; their headline: "Richest are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind".

They even manage to pull ole' Dubya into this thing by whining about how tax cuts are going to give the rich even larger breaks in the future. What their tax charts show me is how the upper middle class tax payer is hammered by the system. Based on 2001 numbers; 70.5% of all taxes were paid by the top 20% of income earners. With tax cuts in full bloom by 2015 the top 20% of income earners will be paying -- drum roll please -- 71% of all income taxes paid. These numbers show that tax cuts are a boon to those who earn capital gains and dividends. Every Monopoly player realizes that not just the rich can earn money doing that.

After supplying a bunch of stats with the article and then sidestepping the positive aspects of them, the Times concludes with this absurd and completely unsubstantiated paragraph:
"But in fact, economic mobility -- moving from one income group to another over a lifetime -- has actually stopped rising in the United States, researchers say. Some recent studies suggest it has even declined over the last generation."

Funny that. More people have increased net worth and yet income mobility is static or declining. (BTW this is all based on 2001 numbers, before the real estate bubble.) Something does not compute or maybe those folks have been using dividend and capital gains increases wisely. Bad, bad rich people. Here is a listing of the advertisers from page 2 and 3 of the Sunday Times: Chanel, Movado, Dior, Tiffany & Co., Mikimoto, Jacob & Co., Fortunoff, Tourneau, Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor's, Macy's, Barneys.

Make the rich pay! More.