??s at Newsweek??

If you're quick ...you might see some doubt expressed regarding 4 paragraphs in an interesting article at newsweek.com entitled "The Rich are no longer Recession-proof" or "How the Mighty are Fallen."

Pages 2 and 3 have four paragraphs that are each led by two question marks (see screen capture here.)

Those four paragraphs are notable in that they seem to have been cut-and-pasted within the article and bear little stylistic similarity with the rest. I'm forced to wonder if something mischievous is happening at the Newsweek offices.

The paragraph that particularly caught my eye was this:

"??Similarly, the rich pay most of the taxes. In 2006, the richest 1 percent paid 28 percent of all federal taxes, estimates the CBO. The richest 10 percent (including the top 1 percent) paid 55 percent. The system is progressive—that is, the richer people get, the more of their income they pay in taxes. In 2006, the effective rate for the top 1 percent was 31 percent, reflecting all federal taxes. By contrast, the poorest fifth paid an effective rate of 4 percent. (State and local taxes are less progressive, because they rely more heavily on regressive sales taxes.)"

Take a look yourself and lemme know what you make of it. Maybe the author, Robert J. Samuelson (full disclosure: someone that lost my confidence years ago), added those paragraphs himself. Maybe the ??'s are editorial notes that made it into the web edition.

In any case, those "??" paragraphs reek of the efforts of Rush Limbaugh and others to paint a picture of the top 10% disgorging themselves of 55% their wealth ...each year. Wage-earners are susceptible to arguments such as that.

The concepts of "wealth" and "income" are hard to separate in the minds of those that can do little more than spend virtually every penny they are allowed to retain.

Samuelson's article, especially that above quote, does little to help 90% of US citizens understand how that 55% figure is probably quite fair...

...90% of US citizens comprise only 19% of the financial wealth of the United States.

University of California at Santa Cruz (2004)

Yep. 90% have just 19% of the wealth ...or, if you prefer, 10% hold 81% of the financial wealth of the "homeland of the middle-class" according to 2004 figures.

If you think that it is unfair for the holders of 81% of all US wealth to pay 55% of annual federal taxes...

...then I'd really like your opinion as to the fairness of the holders of 19% of US wealth to pay 45% of all federal taxes.

Anyway, aside from the deliberate confusing of the issue (accumulated wealth/annual income, wages vs.capital gains) within those four paragraphs ...I'd really like to know what those Newsweek ??s are all about!