John Lennon's Working Class Hero and my previous post

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear

It's only gotten worse since Lennon wrote that. There are fewer ways to make a decent living in this country. The jobs that remain wherein a decent living can be made are fiercely competitive to win. The fear rarely ends with the job; when qualified people who desperately want your job abound, you'd better not do anything to lose it. Like publicly stand up for things that might piss off your boss. Like being your own man. 

As soon as you're born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all.

I was in law. One thing that made me change career paths was realizing that many highly desired jobs in that field have blurred the line between being at work and being off. Young associates are given a firm-specific Blackberry when they come aboard. If that thing starts flashing at 12:30 am, it's time to return to work, even if they don't have to get out of bed to do so. Somewhere, in the back of the young associate's head, they are always at work.

Top Federal Income Tax Brackets over Time

In this post I'm focusing on brackets, not rates. Averaging 20 different top brackets over a century (all inflation adjusted to 2013) yields an average top bracket threshold of  $12.4 million.  Our current top bracket of $406,000 is 3.3% of this figure.

Brackets: Averaging the number of brackets for the same years, yields an average number of 17.8. Our current number of brackets is 7.

                

My opinion: there are many reasons to consider expanding the number of brackets and doing so above the current top bracket. Tax revenues could remain the same while per-capita disposable income could increase. I think that such an increase would lead to a more stable society and a healthier economy, with more money being made by Americans being spent on goods and services.

This is without even treating the demise of the "Middle Class" as a self-evident harm as is common in today's political discourse. Adjusting brackets and rates seems like the simplest way to keep the middle class afloat. 

Of course, the individuals interested in a person making $400 million paying the same amount in taxes as a person making $400,000 are those who make more than $400,000. Our current political system allows individuals to wield influence in proportion to cash on hand. This probably needs to be changed before politicians begin to discuss obvious solutions to problems that, to many in this country, are obvious.

Chart below the jump: 

"The Classic Function of Wall Street"

A Daily Dish reader wrote that "the financial masters of the universe  [...] truly believe that [...] the work they do is absolutely integral to a well-functioning capitalistic society." John Bogle describes such work as "the classic function of Wall Street" in noting how little of it firms still do:

The classic function of Wall Street is to direct capital to its highest and best uses. Well, let’s look at that. Last year [2011], Wall Street directed about $200 billion in capital to IPOs and other long- term investments. But Wall Street was also an intermediary for $40 trillion worth of trading volume. So only one-half of 1 percent of what Wall Street does is capital formation. Most of the rest is short-term speculation. 

Wall Street has become a casino. I once asked a former Wall Street tax attorney why he thought this had happened and he pointed to the earnings incentives: performance is evaluated on a quarterly basis so it suits a financier to pursue short term gains rather than the sort of long-term growth that isn't really noticeable in three month windows.