I'm about to see a huge increase in my income. What should I know? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Apr 28, 2009 - 26 answers

I'm looking for philosophical treatises that touch on the subjects of taxes, wealth, income and the like for a blog post I'm thinking about writing. Specifically, I'm looking for philosophical musings on the government's right (or lack thereof) to collect taxes and the right (or lack thereof) of an individual to do whatever he wants with his earnings. It would be more helpful if you could point to a specific chapter/section/passage, rather than saying "try reading Marx."
posted by ekroh on Apr 13, 2009 - 11 answers

I saw a website last year that allowed me to type in my annual income. The result was that it showed my modest income to be in the 97-percentile of the average income across the globe. It was helpful to put things in perspective. Now I want to share that webtool with a friend, but can't find it. Anybody know the site?
posted by rdauphin on Sep 27, 2007 - 5 answers

Are there any statistics on what portion of the US GDP is now and historically (over the past 100 or 200 years) has been spent on luxury goods? I'll refrain from defining that term and hope that any studies referenced will do the work for me. Any international comparisons would be greatly appreciated as well.
posted by shivohum on Jul 5, 2007 - 2 answers

After reading hundreds of blogs (Why, oh why?), I’ve come to the conclusion that a big number of the people who write about their own financial situation, explicitly or indirectly tell of how broke they are; Like Jim Anchower, many describe low wages and bad jobs, job losses and unemployment, crashing bills, life in apartments with roommates who don’t care and having a hard time paying rents & bills, etc. I understand that the real median household income in 2003 was $43,318 (US), and I know that times are hard for most people. Still, is the average blogger poorer than the average person?
posted by growabrain on Jan 12, 2005 - 18 answers