In the United States, the share of total pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% has more than doubled, from less than 10% in the 1970s to over 20% today (pdf). A similar pattern is true of other English-speaking countries. Contrary to the widely-held view, however, globalisation and new technologies are not to blame. Other OECD countries, such as those in continental Europe, or Japan have seen far less concentration of income among the mega rich.

At the same time, top income tax rates on upper income earners have declined significantly since the 1970s in many OECD countries – again, particularly in English-speaking ones. For example, top marginal income tax rates in the United States or the United Kingdom were above 70% in the 1970s, before the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions drastically cut them by 40 percentage points within a decade.

At a time when most OECD countries face large deficits and debt burdens, a crucial public policy question is whether governments should tax high earners more. The potential tax revenue at stake is now very large.

For example, doubling the average US individual income tax rate on the top 1% income earners from the current 22.5% level to 45% would increase tax revenue by 2.7% of GDP per year – as much as letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire (only a small fraction of them lapsed in January 2013). But of course, this simple calculation is static: such a large increase in taxes may well affect the economic behaviour of the rich and the income they report pre-tax, the broader economy and, ultimately, the tax revenue generated. In recent research, we analyse this issue both conceptually and empirically using international evidence on top incomes and top tax rates since the 1970s.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/24/1percent-pay-tax-rate-80percent?CMP=share_btn_tw

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I put this comment in good reads for a very good reason ...

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/26/7915359/andromeda-galaxy-video

Americans who live abroad -- more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) -- often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States. Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world.

In my long nomadic life, I’ve had the good fortune to live, work, or travel in all but a handful of countries on this planet. I’ve been to both poles and a great many places in between, and nosy as I am, I’ve talked with people all along the way. I still remember a time when to be an American was to be envied. The country where I grew up after World War II seemed to be respected and admired around the world for way too many reasons to go into here.

That’s changed, of course. Even after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I still met people -- in the Middle East, no less -- willing to withhold judgment on the U.S. Many thought that the Supreme Court’s installation of George W. Bush as president was a blunder American voters would correct in the election of 2004. His return to office truly spelled the end of America as the world had known it. Bush had started a war, opposed by the entire world, because he wanted to and he could. A majority of Americans supported him. And that was when all the uncomfortable questions really began.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/11/country-crazy-inquiring-minds-elsewhere-want-know

sat·ire
ˈsaˌt??r/
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
synonyms: mockery, ridicule, derision, scorn, caricature; More
a play, novel, film, or other work that uses satire.
plural noun: satires
"a stinging satire on American politics"
synonyms: parody, burlesque, caricature, lampoon, skit; More
a genre of literature characterized by the use of satire.


FURTHERMORE as journalists we are not supposed to be sensitive to others sensibilities when this BIZZARRO WORLD is burning in its stupid idiosyncrasies ... We are supposed to be screaming the idiotic nature of humankind until it finally echoes in the chambers of the consciousness of man ...

YOU are totally wrong, Nicholas "Bill" Kristof for stating otherwise today ...

Two of the three suspects in the massacre that decimated the writing of Charlie Hebdo , Wednesday, January 7, were still at large in the Wednesday and Thursday night. The Police launched a national search warrant against Sharif and Said Kouachi two brothers aged 32 and 34 years. They are "considered dangerous and heavily armed ed " by investigators.

Shortly before the unveiling of their portraits in a call to witnesses issued by the police headquarters in Paris , a third suspect, aged 18, presented himself voluntarily to the police station of Charleville-Mezieres in the Ardennes. A police source, contacted by Le Monde said that "no charge" had been made ​​against him and that "in his case, it's just simple checks. »

En savoir plus sur http://www.lemonde.fr/attaque-contre-charlie-hebdo/article/2015/01/08/attaque-a-charlie-hebdo-que-sait-on-des-deux-suspects-recherches_4551181_4550668.html#iXC7sOpxiJfqKeIk.99

Source: Slate

an. 7, 2015, 8:45 p.m.: ABC News, France 24, and the AFP are reporting that the youngest of the three suspects in Wednesday’s attack has surrendered to police.


NBC’s Pete Williams, meanwhile, appeared to walk back an earlier report that one suspect had been killed and the other two had been detained. “To be fair here we just don’t know exactly what the situation is in France,” he said on MSNBC.

Earlier, Williams had reported that two senior U.S. counterterrorism had told NBC that the three men were no longer at large.

Read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/01/07/paris_terror_attack_terrorists_attack_charlie_hebdo_killing_at_least_12.html

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http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.635931