{"id":6669,"date":"2011-09-19T18:24:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T17:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6669"},"modified":"2011-09-19T18:24:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T17:24:26","slug":"americans-rich-and-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6669","title":{"rendered":"Americans: rich and poor"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Last week the US census revealed that 46 million Americans \u2013 one in six \u2013 now live in poverty, the highest number ever.<\/li>\n<li>In 2010, the top 20% of Americans earned 49.4% of the nation&#8217;s income. The top 1% account for 24% of all income.<\/li>\n<li>About 47% of US people pay no federal income taxes, either because  their incomes are too low, or because they qualify for enough tax breaks  to eliminate their liability.<\/li>\n<li>People who make money from investments pay far lower taxes than those who earn it from their wages.<\/li>\n<li>Last year Warren Buffett, who has a $50bn personal fortune, paid $6.9m  in federal taxes \u2013 17.4% of  his taxable income. The other 20 people in  his office paid between 33% and 41%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is against this background that President Obama struggles to persuade the US Congress to tax the rich a little bit more. Some background <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2011\/sep\/18\/obama-millionaire-tax-war\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week the US census revealed that 46 million Americans \u2013 one in six \u2013 now live in poverty, the highest number ever. In 2010, the top 20% of Americans earned 49.4% of the nation&#8217;s income. The top 1% account for 24% of all income. About 47% of US people pay no federal income taxes, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6669"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6672,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669\/revisions\/6672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}