Even high-income earners don’t handle their money well: 34 percent of those who earned $250,000 or more said the need to pay everyday bills was the top reason why they weren’t saving more. One in ten said they weren’t making enough to make ends meet, according to an HSBC Bank report in 2007.

One dollar in tax cuts may only cost the government eighty cents in lost revenue (or fifty cents in extreme cases), as government is taking a smaller slice of a bigger pie.

Progressive taxes include income, estate, and gift taxes. The bigger the income, estate, or gift, the higher the percentage rate the IRS charges. If you make a living, you pay 25% for ordinary income taxes. If you make a killing, you may pay up to 39.6%. That’s progressive—as the income progresses up the scale, so does the rate of taxation.

after generations of redistributive progressive income and inheritance taxes, the economic elite was losing its lead. Income in America during the mid-1970s was as equally distributed as at any time in the country’s history.

If you earn $68K per year, then globally speaking, you are the 1%.