So when using Romney as an example, it is good to know that if he did not give this much to charity, the rate would be somewhere around 27%, maybe more if charity deductions avoided triggering some higher rates, etc. Average effective income tax rate (don't confuse with marginal!) for millionaires is 23%, for "middle class" is 20% and below (the figures is for tax year 2010, other years I imagine they may differ).

The real picture is a bit more complicated than that due to variable tax rates, but I don't think there's a case where donating to charity doesn't increase your total payout, since you give up 100% of what you donate instead of whatever tax rate you'd have paid.

I mean, what would you pay someone like Ken Thompson? There are the outliers like him, of course, but I've also heard that even the less-known folks do well.

Though I've heard all of that from Xooglers, it remains anecdotal. I also remain slightly old-school when dealing with other peoples' salary and give them respect; I'll freely tell you what I make (if permitted legally), but I understand people are not as open as I am and I try to respect their privacy.

Tragic, really.

I certainly don't agree with tax policies designed to punish or discourage high incomes, but this is pure hyperbole.

I'm not really sure what "welfare queen" means, but there are plenty of people that face strong incentives to stay on public assistance and little help to get off of it. I wouldn't necessarily place all the blame on them, though.

This is largely because either their state-government is incredibly stingy (see: Texas) or because their potential wages are incredibly low.

In my defense, I live an incredibly conservative area in the US, and many of my neighbors honestly believe this exact thing, so it isn't obvious sarcasm to me.

I'm pretty sure it was satirical.

In a nutshell, "High top marginal personal income tax rates are found to impede long-run productivity". Source on this is OECD, but original PDF link no longer works http://www.cato.org/blog/oecd-admits-high-personal-corporate...

The tax brackets are known to everyone, including those who pay the salaries - if you want to get someone to do that 20% extra work, and they'll want a 20% increase in net pay, then you can just do the math and pay the appropriate gross.