On the rich and taxes

How much should the rich pay in taxes?

An opinion: Did you know that Margaret Thatcher declared war on the wealthy, a war so extreme it makes Obama's seem meek by comparison? The top tax rate in the UK was 60% for most of her term in office, and 40% for the last year or so. At no point was it lower than what Obama proposes -- and that's without taking into account the VAT.

Likewise, Ronald Reagan was apparently a Class Warrior: for six of the eight years during which Reagan was President, the top tax bracket was 50%. It's a wonder anyone worked at all! In Reagan's defense, though, he was just carrying on a long tradition of wealth expropriation carried out by socialists like Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.

Isn’t money fungible?

I thought it was, but when couched in legalese and banking jargon, what was intended to be a fungible commodity can be 'unfunged'.

From here: When news broke that Wells Fargo, recipient of $25 billion in bailout money, was planning a lavish Las Vegas retreat for its top employees, lawmakers howled. The bank canceled the trip but took out full-page newspaper advertisements defending such trips. ''The funds to pay for recognition events such as these do not come from the government,'' the ad read. ''They come from our profits.''Does that mean the bank tracks government money and profits separately? No.

Company spokeswoman Julia Tunis Bernard said Wells Fargo doesn't distinguish between bailout money and other revenue. What the newspaper ad meant, she said, is that the bank didn't need the bailout money to pay its routine operating expenses -- including employee trips like the one to Las Vegas.

Another example of 'unfungible' aspects of money here: Ruth Madoff said she owns a Manhattan apartment, $45 million in bonds and $17 million in cash that are “unrelated” to an alleged Ponzi scheme by her husband, Bernard Madoff. ... Madoff’s lawyers claim “only Ruth Madoff has a beneficial ownership” to a Manhattan apartment, about $45 million in municipal bonds on deposit at Cohmad Securities Corp., and approximately $17 million in cash in another account. Ruth Madoff says these assets are “unrelated” to the alleged fraud, citing her husband’s lawyer.