Well, there’s you problem right there!

James Surowiecki explains the problem with “taxing the millionaires” in the latest New Yorker: everybody thinks they’re middle class, even the super-rich.

How To Be Rich: A group of wealthy Germans led by a doctor named Dieter Lehmkuhl have put together a proposal to the German government to increase the taxes on the rich to help increase government revenues. Why would anyone want to ask the government for HIGHER taxes? Because, the group says, the rich have more money than they can possibly ever spend. They estimate the German government could increase tax revenue by 100 billion Euros annually by raising taxes, and that if the did this for TWO YEARS, they could erase their budget crisis. This BBC article has a great pull-quote from the petition:

“The path out of the crisis must be paved with massive investment in ecology, education and social justice,” they say in the petition.

Those who had “made a fortune through inheritance, hard work, hard-working, successful entrepreneurship, or investment” should contribute by paying more to alleviate the crisis.

How NOT To Be Rich: Yesterday’s Boston Globe had this immensely sad and appalling article about former Boston Celtics star Antoine Walker, who has pissed away his $110 million fortune on gambling, cars, and buying bling-bling for himself and his hangers-on and is presently facing trial for writing bad checks to several casinos to pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debts.

This being America, most people see absolutely nothing wrong with what Walker did with his money, and look at the Germans as if they were crazy. We really, really need to turn the world right-side-up again, kids.

As I’m sure you know, last week Barack Obama added a salary cap provision to the next round of bank bailouts that would limit the pay of any executive at a bank receiving TARP money to half a million dollars a year. The right-wingers immediately started shrieking “Socialism! Socialism!”, but at this point those people have reached the level of slime mold in terms of credibility (and that’s insulting the slime mold). Since Obama said it was a “take-it-or-leave-it” proposition, Bank of America decided it was more important to continue to plunder their depositors’ money for things like bonuses and Super Bowl parties and so they won’t have anything to do with the next round of bailouts.

Meanwhile, the New York Times had the unmitigated gall to run this article in Sunday’s paper about just how hard it is for the average millionaire to eke by on half a million dollars a year in New York City. Why, a chauffeur alone costs anywhere from $75,000 to $125,000 a year! And Wifey simply MUST spend $35,000-$50,000 on two or three new frocks to wear to all those ghastly social events millionaires must attend. Not to mention the $4 million summer house in the Hamptons, the $20,000 vacations twice a year (sun in the winter, skiing in the spring, dahling!). How ANYONE could expect a person to barely scrape by on half a million dollars is simply a NIGHTMARE.

My friends, I have the perfect solution:

If it was good enough for Marie Antoinette, surely it is good enough for these people.