Imagine that – The NYT shows that the largest tax breaks go to the richest:

The first data to document the effect of President Bush’s tax cuts for investment income show that they have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000.

An analysis of Internal Revenue Service data by The New York Times found that the benefit of the lower taxes on investments was far more concentrated on the very wealthiest Americans than the benefits of Mr. Bush’s two previous tax cuts: on wages and other noninvestment income.

When Congress cut investment taxes three years ago, it was clear that the highest-income Americans would gain the most, because they had the most money in investments. But the size of the cuts and what share goes to each income group have not been known.

[…]

Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million.

¶These taxpayers, whose average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of the lowered rates on investment income.

¶Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each. By comparison, these same Americans received less than 10 percent of the savings from the other Bush tax cuts, which applied primarily to wages, though that share is expected to grow in coming years.

¶The savings from the investment tax cuts are expected to be larger in subsequent years because of gains in the stock market.

It is obvious Bush is trying the same theory as Reagan did – the trickle down theory. The problem is it does not work. Reagan proved that and Clinton had to fix it. The problem is that the money never goes down. The people with that money are greedy and won’t make return investments.

CEO salaries have increased at record paces and the increase in retail sales is generally indicative of an increase in luxury item sales. The nations fat-cats have been getting fatter and the American workers are suffering. Salaries are getting lower and there is a “race to the bottom” in terms of corporate salaries. All this is doing is creating a wider divide between our social-economical classes and that threatens our democracy. Of course this is exactly what Bush has planned on.