A little too wonkish for me but, do earnings in the top quintile skew these numbers — just like "average" wages and "median" wages?

Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LES1252881600Q

Social Security Wage Statistics

http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2013

For individuals, Trump's plan would:

• Reduce the top income tax rate on wages from 39.6% to 25% (and lowers the tax rate for low-income people who already wouldn't owe taxes because of the personal exemption.)
• Reduce the tax rate on capital gains for multi-billionaires from 23.8% to 20% (by eliminating the 3.8% surtax provided by Obamacare to expand Medicaid for poor people.)
• Entirely eliminates the estate tax for the trust-fund babies of dead multi-billionaires.

The only tax that goes up for the rich --> Trump's plan would tax " carried interest" at ordinary income tax rates ( instead of capital gains and dividends tax rates). This means that the tax rate that hedge fund managers and private equity investors like Mitt Romney have long enjoyed would be taxed as regular wages. But under Trump's plan, it would only be a slightly more:

Under Trump's tax plan, the top income tax rate for regular wages would be 25%, and capital gains are currently taxed at 23.8% — so Mitt need not worry. All other taxes on the rich go down.

For businesses that generate most of the capital gains --> Trump's plan reduces the tax on corporations and pass-through businesses from 35 percent to 15 percent, preserves the foreign tax credit, and provides a one-time repatriation tax of 10 percent on all foreign profits currently deferred.

The conservative Tax Foundation found that Trump's plan would boost the incomes of the top 1 percent of taxpayers by 21.8 percent, while those of the lowest-income Americans would rise by only 1.4 percent. The national debt, meanwhile, would jump by $12 trillion over the next decade.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-tax-plan_560ac15ce4b0af3706de0539

As a rough idea, the cost of gasoline can be estimated from the price of oil as follows:

Take the $/barrel for oil (Brent sweet crude)
Divide by 30
Add 50 cents to the answer.
That is the cost for a gallon of gasoline.

So with Oil at $45/bbl, gasoline should be $2/gallon.
Currently our prices are a bit high in the upper Midwest, but that is likely due to refinery issues in Indiana.

That is a rough empirical formula, but it is close enough for discussion purposes. I would like to see an accurate regression equation, as that one I worked out in my head one day while filling the tank of my '86 Dodge Power Wagon. (It gives you time to think)

So for gasoline to reach $7/gallon, the price of crude would need to be roughly $195/bbl. Since the likely effect of adding more supply to the world market would be to further lower prices, it seems unlikely that we will see $7.00 gas any time soon, unless we raise gasoline taxes significantly.

Not a great fan of exporting oil, but the only scenario for gasoline to get to $7/gallon in the next decade would be either dramatic increase in demand (global industrial growth) or significant curtailment of supply. Perhaps military issues interfering with oil supply from the Middle East, or legislative activities in the west making extraction of oil dramatically more expensive, or stopping it altogether.

One other possibility would be the Saudis run out of oil - most people I know in the oil industry were really surprised they could bring the price down as dramatically as they did, as there were doubts about their production capacity. Their goal in doing so was probably to discourage further development of US oil resources, so that they could maintain the leverage they have as the big producer, while they hope that the US environmentalists would be able to make curtailment of US development permanent.

I'm still hoping for a technological solution, though fuel cells don't seem to be it, and the so-called electrics are just coal burners.

Maybe someday we will have a Mr. Fusion in the center console, but even then "The DeLorean runs on gasoline."

If you define "rich" as those whose income provides them with more than they need to meet their living expenses (including savings identified for specific lifestyle purchases like housing, health care, retirement, education), then it is true that the only people who accumulate wealth are those who are "rich".

The rest of us get by, we manage to limit our consumption to our available revenue stream. At the same time, our manner of living is defined by the money we can get.

Stated in another way, if a significant increase in revenue or net worth would not appreciably change how you live, then you qualify as rich. I realize that sort of definition is more challenging for statisticians, as it has a behavioral aspect to it. My brother who lives in a rooming house may qualify as rich, while an MLB player who blows his pay on everything fast may not.

However, it illuminates the idea that the rich get richer - if you have more income than you need to support your manner of living, your wealth tends to accumulate.

Obviously, if you have a LOT more, and you can afford to hire smart people to manage your money, and influence governments to favor you, then it grows faster.

That said, I don't think most people in the bottom 95% are thinking about getting rich. They are thinking about getting more income, so they can spend it on things they would like to include in their lifestyle.

I am not sure that taxes are the best way of restoring the balance of income, however. While taxes might help, using taxes in this way would bring to bear the efficiency of government in deciding who was deserving. And the rich people would, of course, hire smart people to help them get the most of the money back again pretty quickly.

The twin pillars of the disembowelment of the American economy have been

Lowering of trade barriers of all sorts, so goods can be made wherever labor is cheapest, and sold anywhere in the world. While this lowers the cost of goods, and sometimes the price, it lowers purchasing power for American workers. Most of the benefit goes to those wealthy enough to engage in multinational trade.

Importing workers from everywhere in the world, legally and illegally, to lower the cost of labor for those things which cannot reasonably be done a long way away, such as housing construction, health care, janitorial services, etc. This surplus drives down the cost of labor across the board, as it increases the supply substantially.

So while taxes may be a relatively quick fix, I would support a candidate who would deal with these problems at their root - which is by curtailing the supply of low cost labor. This will raise real income.

I'm not enough of an economist to understand the secondary effects and unintended consequences of such a change. I would expect the wealthy to fight to maintain their revenue stream. It does appear that The Donald sort of agrees with my perspective, and that gives me pause...

You are confused. You're information is just wrong. You also don't understand what a corporate tax, which, is officially 30% but an actual 17% and is 49th out of the top 50 wealthiest nations when it comes to tax revenue from corporations. We have that tax so we can have a much much lower payroll tax and still maintain income because we have one of the lowest payroll tax in the world because it makes it easier for small businesses to grow because we want free market competition...or capitalism does but republicans no longer do. Republicans now fight to merge banks they call to big to fail into even bigger banks so that...if the one bank was too big to fail, what the heck do you call this now? Its a laugh. Republicans are now CREATING monopolies. They want to protect monopolies in the state too when it comes to health insurance. Of course republicans think that when it comes to the health of the citizens of this nation that they should have to worry about the costs of that healthcare and the costs of health insurance as well. There are just some things that should be above profit in an advanced and enlightened society.

Also, we have no national sales tax, no luxury tax and the lowest tax rate on any import/export that isn't with a free-trade nation. Corporations also are provided services by the nation that they don't directly pay for. WHy should we help your corporation that just got hacked? Why should we help your corporation that just was defrauded? Why should we build roads so people can have better access to your facility...or why should we repave those roads? Your factory is on fire? Ok. Well, you are a corporation and not an individual by definition and law. Of course, we have some republican supreme court justices who could care less about the fact that a corporation by definition for legal protection is not a person but then when it comes time to give money to politicians, then they are individual people somehow. Don't you love your conservative supreme court justices? They really know what they are doing. Anyway, best of both worlds again for corporations. Do individuals pay taxes for themselves or for corporations that have factories in Vietnam? The truth is, without the government, corporations would fail. The people in your party not only want to get rid of the IRS but also the EPA, FEMA and the craziest of all, the FDA.

"So, you say this is pill is an antibiotic? Ok. I trust you. Wish there was a group that tested this stuff to make sure it is what the seller says and that if it isn't, I have some legal recourse. OH well, too bad there isn't an agency that does that with our drugs and food to make sure its safe."

And the fact that you are bringing inflation and deflation into this is just a joke. You wanted to be compensated for inflation? So why can we not all be? What about your house? Should you be able to sell that house for more than you bought it because of inflation? Oh geez...I bet you flipped out the first time you tried to sell your car. "What do you mean its value depreciated??!!"

You are a joke and so are your attempted arguments. Capital gains is how rich people stay rich off of the labor of others and when they may stock gains they pay a lower tax than everyone else but when they lose money on stocks they get to write it off on their taxes. No-lose situation.

And why? If you don't like this nation, go somewhere else. You will have less of a deal in India than you do here. So why don't you go to India? If you want to stay here, you should think about giving back. If you have enough money that you are worrying about the capital gains tax rate, you should shut up and give back to this nation that has afforded you the lifestyle you have.

I used a different calling method and please do not use their "embedded" code for it slows down the site and doesn't scale right.

they fixed the old (restored it) enough so I could still use it and thank god because that's thousands of graphs.

Frankly I couldn't get the Fed to update but they should be tomorrow.

Research by Gabriel Zucman (a Tom Piketty protege) shows tax havens hide $7.6 trillion -- about 8 percent of the world’s net financial wealth. For individuals, he estimates at least $2 trillion held in Swiss banks is still undeclared by account holders to their home countries. Zucman’s calculations are conservative because he can’t count assets like art, jewelry or real estate. Those trillions were missing because they were showing up as shares of mutual funds incorporated in tax havens, primarily in Luxembourg, Grand Cayman and Ireland. His theory: wealthy investors around the world have used the investments, often made through Swiss bank accounts, to hide their wealth.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-21/if-you-see-a-little-pi...

* Maybe the richer someone becomes, the greedier and cheaper they become.

Back in the day when capital gains taxes were much higher, the way companies and investors avoided or reduced their tax burden was to reinvest the money back into capital equipment, physical plant or R&D - basically investing in the future and creating jobs in the process.

by lowering the rate it only encourages profit taking, stock buy backs and asset bubble inflation