David Tepper’s hedge fund earned him $4 billion last year, to rank him first at the top of 25 fund managers who earn-ed, collectively, more than $25 billion in fees and investment gains.
Tepper’s individual earnings equal 10 times the $400 million the state of Kansas needs to balance its budget this year. The 25 fund managers took home more than twice our state’s annual budget. U.S. family in-comes average about $50,000 a year. Tepper’s 2009 earnings equal those of 80,000 typical families. Absurd.
George Soros came second with personal earnings of $3.3 billion.
These extraordinary individual earnings coming in a year when U.S. unemployment stayed in double-digits and the national deficit soared should prompt Congress to get mad and then get even.
Tomorrow, not a day later, a bill should be filed setting higher brackets in the U.S. income tax. It may not be possible to write a law limiting the amount of money that those in the business of investing and managing investments can make. But there is every reason in the world to tax those earnings — whether they come from fees or investment gains — heavily.
When an individual can take $1 billion in personal income out of the economy and allocate it according to personal whim, that one thousand million dollars is not available for other uses, such as health care, housing for the homeless — name your own alternative use that could benefit tens of thousands of individuals in our society rather than a single person.
To let this scene roll on is crazy. It ought to come to an end. Tax policy can fix it.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
