via boingboing.net
Yet another major influence in my life. Slowing down and looking coincidence, I think not.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
How many people make more than $250,000 per year?
How many people make more than $250,000 per year?The short answer: based on information from the IRS, fewer than 3% of tax returns (4 million returns out of 138 million total returns) claimed more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income (AGI) in tax year 2006 (more current data is not available). By definition, the number making more than $250,000 must be less than 3% (since some will fall in the range between $200,000 and $250,000.)
The long answer is pretty long – more than a thousand words long, judging by the length of this article. While I am not a CPA , or even a practicing accountant, I do have a degree in accounting and thoroughly enjoyed my income tax courses in college (yep, glutton for punishment). I’ll make an effort not to get too bogged down in technical terms in this article.
Why the question?For whatever reason, $250,000 has become a benchmark amount. During the presidential campaign, President Obama had a tax plan that would raise taxes on couples making more than $250,000. Recently, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would impose a 90% tax for recipients of bonuses paid by companies that received bailout funds. This tax would be imposed on people making more than $250,000.
Why the source?The IRS is in the business of determining how much money people make and have a vested interest in the accuracy of their data. I have a synopsis of their data in the table at the end of the post, and have also linked directly to their spreadsheet.
Definition of termsHousehold – I am defining a household as any entity that filed a tax return. Note that people who do not have a tax liability are not required to file a tax return. These people tend to be on the low end of the income spectrum.
Income – This is definitely the tricky term. There are a few different things we could measure.
- Total income (line 22 of form 1040). Essentially, this is the result of adding up the money that comes in from all sources during the year – with the exclusion of tax-exempt interest income and the tax-exempt portion of some retirement benefits. This does include capital gains and business income (or loss). This is the largest of the three amounts I will describe.
- Adjusted gross income (AGI) (line 37 of form 1040). This is total income with a few deductions. For the typical person, the deductions would be for student loan interest as well as contributions to retirement accounts and health savings accounts. This amount will be smaller than total income, and this is what is used in the IRS statistics that I have used as my source.
- Taxable income (line 43 of form 1040). This is determined by taking the AGI, subtracting either the standard or itemized deduction, and then also subtracting the amount for exemptions (for tax year 2008, you would multiply $3500 X the number of exemptions – basically, the number of people in your household – and subtract this amount from the AGI.) Taxable income is used to determine your marginal tax rate. (Note: the marginal rate is the rate that is applied to the top slice of your income – it is not applied to your entire income. Income is taxed on a stair step basis, with each chunk of income taxed at a higher rate). In the case of Obama’s tax plan, he would be referring to $250,000 in taxable income, not total income or AGI.
The numbersYou can quibble with the numbers a bit. You may claim that some people cheat on their taxes, so that the number of people who SHOULD be claiming an AGI of $250,000 is higher than the amount that actually do. You may claim that full-time students or single people should not be counted as households (of course, that argument could be countered by the argument that there are valid households that are not filing tax returns). However, it seems unlikely that you’re going to move the needle very much. The fact of the matter is that very few households earn more than $250,000.
Other stats:
67% of returns had an AGI of less than $50,000. 88% of returns had an AGI of less than $100,000.0.26% of returns – a total of just 350,000 households out of a total of 138 million – had an AGI of $1,000,000 of more.
15,196 returns – roughly 1/100 of one percent – had an AGI of more than $10,000,000.
The average (mean) number of exemptions per return was 1.99. The number of exemptions in the “less than $5000 AGI” category is 0.95 (many are students who are claimed on their parents’ returns and thus cannot take themselves as an exemption) and peaks at 2.93 in the $500,000 – $1,000 range. This makes quite a bit of sense. The lower ranges are often going to have a higher concentration of single people, since those people have half the income of a dual-income married couple in a similar career.
“But nearly everyone I know makes $X. These numbers are wrong.”I have had people tell me that these numbers are too low, and that $250,000 is not a lot of money in their location (big cities). It might be true – and probably is – that there is a higher concentration of the higher income jobs in the bigger cities. However, the vast majority of the households in these areas are still going to be below $250,000.
I also think that people tend to look at their own situation and assume that it is typical. If you are college educated, you are actually not typical. Only 30 percent of adult Americans have a degree. Likewise, if you have a household income of $100,000, you are not typical.
It’s very easy to fall into this trap, though. Our friends have tendency to have a income level that is similar to our own – even if we don’t make a conscious effort to ensure this. Why? Think of where your base of friends comes from:
Work – If these people have similar jobs, then it’s quite reasonable that their income will be similar to yours.
College friends – Do they have similar majors, and thus similar occupations?
Neighbors – Your neighbors can all afford homes in your neighborhood, which essentially places a floor on their income level.
Parents of your kids’ friends – School districts in many cities are not particularly heterogeneous. This is because certain sections of town have neighborhoods containing homes in a particular price range. If you put an elementary school in the midst of these neighborhoods, the children are going to come from families with similar economic backgrounds.
Table based on data from IRS Website (Excel file)
AGI range returns % cum % % above ex/ret total 138,394,754 1.99 Under $5,000 14,308,963 10.34% 10.34% 89.66% 0.95 $5,000 – $10,000 11,786,747 8.52% 18.86% 81.14% 1.25 $10,000 – $15,000 11,711,680 8.46% 27.32% 72.68% 1.67 $15,000 – $20,000 10,937,694 7.90% 35.22% 64.78% 1.80 $20,000 – $25,000 9,912,261 7.16% 42.38% 57.62% 1.92 $25,000 – $30,000 8,749,761 6.32% 48.71% 51.29% 1.95 $30,000 – $35,000 7,554,418 5.46% 54.17% 45.83% 1.99 $35,000 – $40,000 6,597,407 4.77% 58.93% 41.07% 2.00 $40,000 -$45,000 5,677,163 4.10% 63.03% 36.97% 2.09 $45,000 – $50,000 5,010,030 3.62% 66.65% 33.35% 2.15 $50,000 – $55,000 4,644,439 3.36% 70.01% 29.99% 2.27 $55,000 – $60,000 4,092,692 2.96% 72.97% 27.03% 2.31 $60,000 – $75,000 10,117,786 7.31% 80.28% 19.72% 2.45 $75,000 – $100,000 11,140,408 8.05% 88.33% 11.67% 2.69 $100,000 – $200,000 12,088,423 8.73% 97.06% 2.94% 2.83 $200,000 – $500,000 3,121,485 2.26% 99.32% 0.68% 2.89 $500,000 – $1,000,000 589,306 0.43% 99.74% 0.26% 2.93 $1,000,000 – $1,500,000 150,431 0.11% 99.85% 0.15% 2.88 $1,500,000 – $2,000,000 64,007 0.05% 99.90% 0.10% 2.84 $2,000,000 – $5,000,000 98,724 0.07% 99.97% 0.03% 2.79 $5,000,000 – $10,000,000 24,975 0.02% 99.99% 0.01% 2.83 $10,000,000+ 15,956 0.01% 100.00% 0.00% 2.82 Legend
Column 1 – Range of adjusted gross income
Column 2 – Number of returns that fall into this range
Column 3 – Percentage of total returns
Column 4 – Cumulative percentage (percent of return that have this AGI or lower)
Column 5 – Percentage of returns that are above this range
Column 6 – Number of exemptions per returnColumns 1 and 2 are taken directly from the IRS spreadsheet. The other columns are calculations based on information from the IRS spreadsheet.
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Assorted
Income statistics
http://www.thesoapboxers.com/how-many-people-make-more-than-250000-per-year/
Interesting numbers.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Our New Safety Overlords - Megan McArdle - National - The Atlantic
via theatlantic.com
This is troubling.
Rio's drug war - The Big Picture
via boston.com
Not sure what is more shocking, the amount of force used or that face that I can imagine something like this happening in the states in the next 10 years.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Safety Question, Pt.2 | Talking Points Memo
The other end of the discussion. Maybe my non-flying friend is even smarter than she seems.
Errata Security: I was just detained by the TSA
So this is a real issue. not so much the scanning or the feeling up, but where is the line for private space, personal freedom and what is best for the group? This includes subjecting people to acceptable levels of radiation, as well as the how much privacy in our comings and goings we can expect.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Birth of Coffee
Join us for the Opening Reception!
Saturday | September 25
6:00 - 9:00 pm
$10 | CAFAM members FREEA festive evening of live music, cool folk and delicious fare provided by plancha: a taco joint and a special coffee tasting provided by Gaviña Gourmet Coffee.
RSVP to rsvp@cafam.org
The Birth of Coffee
Sept. 26, 2010 – Jan. 9, 2011A simple cup of coffee: Millions of people greet the morning, take a break, or end a meal with this dark brew. In these brief moments, coffee's rich flavor and deep aroma are simple pleasures unquestioningly accepted, although few of us ever consider the origins of this evermore popular beverage.
The Birth of Coffee documents coffee’s extraordinary journey from seed to cup. The photography exhibition, based on the book of the same name by Daniel Lorenzetti and Linda Rice Lorenzetti, chronicles the lives of coffee growers in Brazil, Ethiopia, Yemen, Guatemala, Indonesia, Colombia, Costa Rica and Kenya. Black-and-white photographs specially toned in and with coffee are interwoven with eclectic anecdotes and facts, bringing to life the stories of the diverse people who pick, plant and produce coffee.
The traveling exhibition is part of a larger, multiplatform, media project consisting of a book, the exhibition and website. The Birth of Coffee focuses on workers worldwide whose livelihood depends on the growing and production of coffee and relates how coffee is important to the history and society of each producing nation. The goal of the project is to extend the individual's personal coffee experiences, providing them with an understanding of the many people, places and processes involved in bringing coffee to the table. For more information please visit www.birthofcoffee.com.
About the Photographer
Daniel Lorenzetti is the founder of The Image Expedition, a private, not-for-profit organization. As a journalist and award winning photographer, he has written and photographed for over 20 magazines and newspapers including The New York Times and The Miami Herald. His photographs are part of the permanent collection of some of the most prestigious museums in the world, including The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He was chosen to receive the prestigious South Florida Cultural Consortium's Visual Artist Fellowship. His first book of photography, The Birth of Coffee, was published by Random House. Lorenzetti was also a former White House staff intern under President Jimmy Carter and former documentary team member for Public Television. He has also led a core conversation at SXSW Interactive. He lives in Austin, Texas and Three Forks, Montana.
About the Author
Linda Rice Lorenzetti is the Editorial Director of The Image Expedition and an experienced writer with a diversity of publications to her credit. As a correspondent for the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, she frequently writes about coffee; she was also a contributing writer for an anthology entitled The Adventure of Food, published in November 1999. She authored, Introduction to the Internet, an in-depth manual to explain its function and use when few people understood the technology. She also wrote a regular column for On the Internet magazine. She holds a degree in Human Resource Management and a certificate in Women's Studies, but her special interests are indigenous crafts, trade beads -- and, of course, coffee. She lives in Austin, Texas and Three Forks, Montana
To learn more about Linda Rice Lorenzetti and her work visit her web site at www.lindaricelorenzetti.com.
The Birth of Coffee exhibition is sponsored by Gavina Gourmet Coffee
please visit www.gavina.com
via cafam.org
For all the coffee drinkers out there.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Beachy Head located in Eastbourne, United Kingdom | Atlas Obscura | Curious and Wondrous Travel Destinations
via atlasobscura.com
Only the british would have a name like "Beachy Head". Still think I might have to add it to the list.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Spacecraft is first to bring asteroid dust to Earth - space - 16 November 2010 - New Scientist
via newscientist.com
Just incase you forgot while laughing at Tina Fey's speach we have space craft out exploring and binging things back with them.
REMOTE CONTROLLED SPACE CRAFT!
Monday, November 15, 2010
The Staff Recommends: About The Staff Recommends
Why do I need The Staff Recommends?
Because deciding what to read is a difficult proposition. Each year, better than 175,000 books are published, and you’re going to read what, 10? 15? 50? Books can be pricey, a real investment of money and time—you can’t afford to choose poorly. Or, you’re going on vacation and packing space is limited. Do you want to be stuck with a dud? The Staff Recommends makes sure you’ll have a dud-free reading life.
Where do the books come from?
Publishers send us books they wish to be considered for The Staff Recommends. If and only if we decide we like a book and want to feature it on The Staff Recommends, then publishers pay us to have their book featured here.
I get it now, it’s a pay-for-play deal. I’m onto you pal.
Let us reemphasize the “if and only if we decide we like a book,” part of the program. We choose the books we like, and only then does money change hands. If we don’t like it, it will not appear on The Staff Recommends.
I see you call yourselves an “advertorial publication.” Advertorials are those ads in magazines that look like articles, right?
Exactly. We’ve chosen that term because we want you to know the space here has been paid for by publishers. But while most ads just transport you to an advertiser-owned place that tells you to buy something, we think you’d prefer to find out first why we think you’ll like the book we’ve featured.
So what you’re saying is that The Staff Recommends is kind of like the part in the bookstore where the employees put little cards on the books saying what they liked and why, only online?
Yes, that’s what we’re saying.
I love that stuff.
We do too, which is why we came up with The Staff Recommends, a way to spread the book love across the internet at no cost to you, the book lover.
Who does the deciding?
All books on The Staff Recommends must pass muster with our editor and ombudsman, John Warner. All recommendations on The Staff Recommends are written by John and his team of readers.
Why should I trust this guy and his pals?
You may be familiar with John as a Tournament of Books commentator, an editor-at-large for McSweeney’s, and the one-man book recommending phenomenon, the Biblioracle. He’s also the author of the definitive book of fake writing advice, Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice From a Published Author to the Writerly Aspirant. His novel, The Funny Man, which he’d love to recommend on The Staff Recommends, but can’t for obvious conflict-of-interest reasons, will be published in 2011.
The Staff Recommends is operated by Andrew Womack, a founding editor of The Morning News, home to the Tournament of Books. John and Andrew maintain a strict line between the editorial and advertising aspects of The Staff Recommends—that barrier is your assurance that all the opinions here are real.
I arrived here from one of my favorite websites. How are they associated with you?
We have a group of partner websites that feature links to the recommendations on The Staff Recommends. Our network includes The Bygone Bureau, The Millions, and The Morning News.
How do you choose these partner sites?
We select sites with loyal, thriving readerships—we’re more interested in reaching individual readers than racking up pageviews. Our network sites’ readers are also book readers. Their appetites vary from voracious to snacky. They’ve had a “to-be-read” stack since they were 10. They want to find out about new books they should read, and we have their answer here.
Cute, fun, nice, cool.
Hajj 2010 - The Big Picture
via boston.com
WHY? Where are they going to hide in plants. These photos are great but his one is silly
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Aaron Huey: America's native prisoners of war
via ted.com
Feeling less mixed up about things after watching this.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Pleideans shot down U.S. mystery missile attack on Iran - Boing Boing
via boingboing.net
This is not a test, no seriously... I've got more information...
10/10/10 Project – 27rayArt
10/10/10 Project
A series of 1153 photos take with an iPhone 4 & Nikon D80, assembled 1 per frame 15 frames a second, with ambient recorded sound layered in, enjoy.
Created for the One Day on Earth project
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Art, Video and tagged with airshow, awesome, fleet week, flickr, russian hill, san francisco, The San Francisco Maritime national historic park, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Edit this entry.
Comments are closed.
via 27rayart.com
A little video i put together from 1153 photos, enjoy.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Our Banana Republic
But guess what? You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
That’s the backdrop for one of the first big postelection fights in Washington — how far to extend the Bush tax cuts to the most affluent 2 percent of Americans. Both parties agree on extending tax cuts on the first $250,000 of incomes, even for billionaires. Republicans would also cut taxes above that.
The richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut of $61,000 from President Obama. They would get $370,000 from Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And that provides only a modest economic stimulus, because the rich are less likely to spend their tax savings.
At a time of 9.6 percent unemployment, wouldn’t it make more sense to finance a jobs program? For example, the money could be used to avoid laying off teachers and undermining American schools.
Likewise, an obvious priority in the worst economic downturn in 70 years should be to extend unemployment insurance benefits, some of which will be curtailed soon unless Congress renews them. Or there’s the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which helps train and support workers who have lost their jobs because of foreign trade. It will no longer apply to service workers after Jan. 1, unless Congress intervenes.
So we face a choice. Is our economic priority the jobless, or is it zillionaires?
And if Republicans are worried about long-term budget deficits, a reasonable concern, why are they insistent on two steps that nonpartisan economists say would worsen the deficits by more than $800 billion over a decade — cutting taxes for the most opulent, and repealing health care reform? What other programs would they cut to make up the lost $800 billion in revenue?
In weighing these issues, let’s remember that backdrop of America’s rising inequality.
In the past, many of us acquiesced in discomfiting levels of inequality because we perceived a tradeoff between equity and economic growth. But there’s evidence that the levels of inequality we’ve now reached may actually suppress growth. A drop of inequality lubricates economic growth, but too much may gum it up.
Robert H. Frank of Cornell University, Adam Seth Levine of Vanderbilt University, and Oege Dijk of the European University Institute recently wrote a fascinating paper suggesting that inequality leads to more financial distress. They looked at census data for the 50 states and the 100 most populous counties in America, and found that places where inequality increased the most also endured the greatest surges in bankruptcies.
Here’s their explanation: When inequality rises, the richest rake in their winnings and buy even bigger mansions and fancier cars. Those a notch below then try to catch up, and end up depleting their savings or taking on more debt, making a financial crisis more likely.
Another consequence the scholars found: Rising inequality also led to more divorces, presumably a byproduct of the strains of financial distress. Maybe I’m overly sentimental or romantic, but that pierces me. It’s a reminder that inequality isn’t just an economic issue but also a question of human dignity and happiness.
Mounting evidence suggests that losing a job or a home can rock our identity and savage our self-esteem. Forced moves wrench families from their schools and support networks.
In short, inequality leaves people on the lower rungs feeling like hamsters on a wheel spinning ever faster, without hope or escape.
Economic polarization also shatters our sense of national union and common purpose, fostering political polarization as well.
So in this postelection landscape, let’s not aggravate income gaps that already would make a Latin American caudillo proud. To me, we’ve reached a banana republic point where our inequality has become both economically unhealthy and morally repugnant.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
via nytimes.com
Never have so many stood up for so few....
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
Free Range: The Social Index : The New Yorker
Human relationships used to be easy: you had friends, boy- or girlfriends, parents, children, and landlords. Now, thanks to social media, it’s all gone sideways. I decided to try to index these new entities—to draft a sort of Social Media Bestiary. Here it is, so far:
MODERN RELATIONSHIPS
- The friend you know well, have encountered frequently in the flesh, perhaps even hugged, have visited domestically, and would invite to your child’s wedding, and with whom, coincidentally, you might occasionally communicate via social media in addition to more traditional friend channels such as lunch dates, telephone calls, et cetera (formerly known simply as “a friend”)
The friend you sort of know, because you have friends in common and have maybe attended the same events—not together, but you’ve both ended up there because you know a lot of the same people. You perhaps would not have thought to invite this person to a small party, and yet you do include him in your wider sense of your social circle—and you now communicate with him via social media more than you ever did before such a thing existed, and you now have a surprising intimacy after years of static, unenergetic just-sort-of-knowing one another (formerly known as “an acquaintance”)
The friend, or friend-like entity, whom you met initially via Facebook or Twitter or Goodreads or, heaven help us, Myspace. You met—online, that is—because… well, who remembers now, anyway? Maybe through some friend of a friend of a friend, or because some algorithm on Facebook “suggested” that you should be friends. In any case, you now interact with this person/stranger frequently—in fact, maybe many times a day—and, as a result, she enters your conversation the way anyone would with whom you exchange chitchat several times a day. When a real flesh-based friend asks you who this person is, you describe her as a friend, for lack of a better word. It’s an awkward description because you have a) never met in real life b) might not actually know this person’s full name or profession or background. Yet you look forward to interacting with this person, and if/when she mentions experiencing a sad event, a birthday, a job loss, a cute baby experience, or a car accident, you have a strong, actual reaction (this sort of friendship formerly had no name at all, since the only kind of liaison that even comes close to this in the history of human relations is that of pen pals)
The friend-like entity mentioned in No. 3—that is, someone whom you know only virtually—but in this instance you and this person have actually met. The meeting was probably brief and a one-off encounter, and it probably occurred because one of you happened to be passing through the other’s hometown. When you finally meet, you spend most of your time chuckling over how much smaller/taller you look in your profile picture.
via newyorker.com
This is used with out the expressed written permission of the author. Who I will now friend on facebook.
Great Migrations - The Big Picture
via boston.com
The BIG Picture rarely disappoints even when they are part of a "marketing push" Great and beautiful photos.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
April 25th, 2007 – Leshan Giant Buddha, China – 27rayArt
via 27rayart.com
This was a bit of a persona ll hurdle, as Aperture 3.1 started to eat my photos and i have to rebuild my 260,000+ photo library finally all the photos are fine and you can actually see the Giant Sitting Buddha, apologies for the multiple posts in the past.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
I Am Detained By The Feds For Not Answering Questions - Court Jesters
Ian Schray and Shawn King - uncensored and filtered through beer...Grab the RSS/XML Feed URL right here
Contributed by Court Jesters
Freedom's a bitch.
Monday, November 1, 2010
What the fuck has Obama done so far?
Check out this website I found at whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com
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