Hey Little Hawk,

you are quite correct that the "rich" aren't taxed much at all, because they have ways of concealing their real income

Actually, the "rich" may not have a real large "income" because they have arranged it that way. The "rich" already have a lot of money and most likely are living off the interest.

The "overachievers", big income earners, are a different story.(That's who I was referring to)

But back to the rich:

If you have a zillion dollars in the bank or Wall Street (that great grandpa already paid taxes on) and you can have an automatic monthly deposit into your checking account of say $4000. You could probably manage to rough it and get by on that amount. The rest would just stay in the account and be added to the principle to gain compound interest (and grow and grow and grow).

If you have a massive portfolio of low dividend stocks, you are mainly taxed only when you sell them. (so just sell a little at a time, at way less than the portfolio's growth)

Take it a step further and put that zillion in TAX FREE municipal bonds, you can take out as much as is prudent and never be taxed on it.

Bonds don't yield much interest so you do need tons of money in the account, but you can buy 30 year bonds which stay at the same stable interest rate for a long time.

May you find yourself in that position someday my friend.(see; dollar cost averaging)

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The politicians that we are given a choice to vote for are generally handpicked by those same very rich people, often from among their own ranks.

Not exactly. Anyone (within citizenship and age guidelines) can run for most offices. If they can raise enough money (your point I assume) they can usually make it to the primaries (sometimes one candidate will talk another out of running).

Fund raising IS the first cut. Many times the same candidates are asking the same contributors for money and it just dries up. You know, the early bird gets the worm.

Once they have the funding they have to win the popularity contest of the primaries.(the second cut) It's sort of like drag racing or maybe the world series.

It's a self-sustaining system, a closed circle, that has effectively rendered the general public virtually powerless in the political arena

Since most individuals don't contribute to political campaigns, the funding chores do fall to a certain type of demographic, but the money only buys exposure not votes. I'd rather they payed for it than I!

Your American public is aware of this on a gut level, and that is partly why your voter turnout is so low

Well, they've certainly been encouraged to believe it, but this last election kind of poured water on that belief.

People know in their hearts that their vote won't change anything anyway, in more than a very superficial sense.

I believe that to be a flawed but popular premise. In case you haven't noticed, all hell's breaking loose with our lefties. You can bet the Justice Department and the Judiciary Branch will change....."Big Time"

If more people were paying attention to what's going on (instead of sports and entertainment)and would bother to seperate the facts from the crap delivered (or worse, not delivered) by the media before they vote, all representative republics would work much better......but then, of course, that would be hard.

It's the same deal in Canada

I know, I know, but they probably learned those bad habits from us.

One thing to consider however, just how valuable is the uninformed vote?

See you soon,

mav out