Both Sides of Taxation on the Wealthy

Yesterday, I posted a New Year's reading list that included a December 30th 5-page article from the Washington Post entitled, "Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes."  Today's reading list contains a December 29th 11-page article from the New York Times entitled, "For the Wealthiest, A Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions."  I thought it was appropriate to begin this new year with a modest demonstration that, contrary to popular perception, the financial media is actually capable of some objectivity.

This I have found particularly true of Wall Street guru Barry Ritholtz's blog, which incidentally is regularly featured in both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.  I have found Mr. Ritholtz to be an equal opportunity offender, or to put it in more genteel terms, an equally opportunity informer in that he has always shown a willingness to present opinions on both sides of an issue.

For those of you new to this Marias blog, this begins my second year after a launch on January 1st 2015.  For many years I had been grateful to read the very brief and easy to digest Daily Market Summary that appeared in the Wall Street Journal but then they discontinued that convenient feature in favor of more detailed analyses so I subsequently turned to Reuters to get my daily update.  When I enrolled in an investments class in 2010 and subsequently found myself surrounded by technicians who placed no value on macroeconomics, I was shocked to learn that the main reason they ignored the fundamental big picture was because of some misconception that it would be a full-time job to do otherwise.

I then introduced my classmates (all four of them) to my daily summary as a way to show them that this is two minutes of their day, not a career at all, and then subsequently converted that daily email into this blog as a courtesy and more efficient form of distribution.  My fondness for Barry Ritholtz began as a way of finding some kind of market information during the weekends and discovered his column on the Wall Street Journal web site.  Without doing an exhaustive search of the available media, his was the only source I could find that supplied both pithy and concise observations of the market, the most valuable of which is the half-page weekly summary that he publishes every Friday evening, and that I post every Sunday evening in this space.

My secondary purpose in publishing this blog has been to document my journey as I train for a new career as a Certified Financial Planner and, as I learn about new investment concepts and strategies, I will be sharing them here.  But the original purpose was to simply provide a courtesy to the four members of my finance study group, and have made no attempt to publicize the blog beyond that universe.  Nevertheless, I am pleased that, during this inaugural year, a number of people throughout North America and Europe have discovered this blog.  For this initial year, I have enjoyed over 2,700 page views or an average of 8 per day.  But there have quite regularly been as many as 15 per day and, on occasion, as high as 30, not bad considering I only inform four people.

Of course, as I proceed in my CFP training and subsequent career experience, I shall endeavor to quite deliberately expand my visibility and hope to someday have thousands, if not perhaps even hundreds of thousands of readers.  Until then, please continue to enjoy what I offer in this space and enjoy what I am offering today -- both sides of the debate concerning taxation on the wealthy.

For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions - The New Yo

Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes - The Washing