"Who ate my hamburger?"

I have trouble imagining really large sums of accumulated wealth, perhaps because I've never managed to accumulate any.

I read something back in August that I keep thinking about. In his August 22 column in the money section of the New York Times, Landon Thomas wrote,

Even some Wall Street Republicans who say they expect to vote for President Bush voice concerns about the deficit as well as the fairness of a tax cut that makes rich people even richer. "My own feeling about the dividend tax cut is that I would not have done it," said Kenneth G. Langone, an enthusiastic Republican and co-founder of Home Depot who owns more than $700 million of the company's stock and runs his own investment bank. "It has meant millions to me, but I would have felt better if you dedicate it to deficit reduction."

First of all, if I were making so much money that I paid millions in taxes, I hope I would have Langone's grace and be generous about paying those taxes. I like to imagine that I would say, "How lucky I am to make so much money that I can pay millions in taxes to help my country."

But beyond appreciating his attitude, I keep mulling over Langone's statement that the dividend tax cut has "meant millions" to him. It's difficult for me to imagine that kind of wealth, and I think that's true for most of us.

After all, most of the wealth in this country is in the hands of a very small percentage of people. John R. Gist, in an article for AARP, cites figures to show that the top 10% (the wealthiest Americans) own over 67% of the total wealth in the U.S., and the top 1% (the ultra-wealthy) own over 34% of the total wealth. That doesn't leave much of the pie for the rest of us. My feeble math makes it look like this: the top 1% gets one-third, the next 9% gets one-third, and the remaining 90% of us share one-third.

It's the ultra-wealthy who have enough accumulated wealth for Bush's dividend and capital gains tax cuts to mean saving millions of dollars. During the 2000 campaign, Bush addressed his audience at an elite fund-raiser as "the haves and the have-mores" and assured them: "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base" (CBS news story). And, I, too, tend to generalize that these ultra-wealthy Americans are mostly Republicans. And while I have nothing to back it up, I feel like Kenneth Langone is unusual in wanting to pay millions of his own money to reduce the deficit--I think that's what makes him newsworthy.

And that reminds me of an old joke: What's the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? A Democrat looks at a half a glass of milk and says, "The glass is half full." A Republican looks at a half a glass of milk and says, "Who ate my hamburger?"