KILL That Golden Goose !

How's this for "fairness"? It turns out that out of New York City's 8 million people, 50% of it's income taxes are paid by a total of 41,000 of its residents. The other 50% is paid by the remaining 7,959,000 residents.

So in this time of economic turmoil, when these residents are the ones whose income will be most desperately needed to keep the city afloat, what does the Council do?

They do everything in their power to chase these golden geese away:

Officials later provided figures showing that 1 percent of taxpayers, or 41,282 filers earning $500,000 or more, paid 47.8 percent of the $7.3 billion collected by the city in income taxes.
The top half percent, or 19,387 filers with $1 million or more in taxable income, accounted for 40.6 percent.
Those in the upper income brackets face a potential double-whammy this year.
Council Speaker Christine Quinn has proposed boosting the city's income tax from 3.65 to 4.25 percent for those earning at least $297,000; to 4.45 percent for folks making $532,000 and to 4.65 percent for the $1.2 million league and above.

At the same time, there's a movement in Albany to raise the state income tax from 6.85 percent to 8.25 percent for people making a minimum of $250,000; 8.97 percent for those making $500,000 and above in taxable income and 10.3 percent for those at the $1-million-and-up level.

One voice of sanity, who will undoubtly go unheard:

Mark Page, the city's budget director, testified at a City Council budget hearing.
"You don't need to lose many of them before ending up with less money than you had before you increased the tax."

But the looters and the wealth-spreaders don't understand that; they want to taketaketake, assuming that the rich have an endless supply of cash, and that they'll just keep generating more and more monies for the government's usage, no matter what penalties are placed upon them for their productive abilities.

I think certain people - not the least Barack Obama - have a steep learning curve ahead...