I believe the President is the top paid federal employee.  His salary of $400,000 is no more than 8 — 10 times the median income.   So that suggestion of yours is already easily satisfied.   And he’s got a much tougher job.

Most economists agree that raising the minimum wage will reduce the total level of employment.   There are some empirical studies that refute this,  and a theoretical argument that under certain conditions raising the minimum wage actually increases employment ( the creation of free agency in baseball is shown as an example).  But the consensus is still that raising the wage decreases total employment. 

I think that in 2012  there was a federal estate tax exemption of infinity for assets passed on to a spouse,  or $5.1MM  for assets passed on to anyone else who was not a charity.  So very very very few estates were caught by the Federal estate tax.  

This was a sunseted law,  so in 2013  it reverts to an unlimited exemption for a spouse and a $1.0 MM exemption for anyone else.   I strongly suspect this will be changed before the end of the year, whoever wins the election.   

For the tax year 2010,  there were 6,711 estates that had ANY federal tax liability.  Since there were about 2.5MM deaths,  we’re looking at a very very small percentage of dead people who owe any federal estate taxes.  

McClever — re #3.   Of these 6711 estates,  only 689  had any farm assets.   That’s probably not fair,  because even a family farm is likely to be incorporated,  so the assets would show up as stock.  But there were only 1563 returns that had closely held (i.e. non-publicly traded) stock,  most of which weren’t farms.  So there were at most maybe 1500 farms,  and probably a lot fewer,  farms that had ANY estate tax liability,  let alone enough to cause liquidity problems. 

I’m somewhat sympathetic to the idea of allowing legitimate farms a higher estate tax exemption,  except that it would cause all sorts of estate assets to be classified as farms.  But it still affects a really miniscule number of farms.  

I’ve read somewhere that the federal estate tax causes liquidity issues  for almost nobody,   maybe a couple of hundred estates a year.   I’ll research that some more and get back ( or ‘revert’ in corporate speak).

But the bigger issue is that the entire estate tax bruhaha is a complete red herring.   The federal estate tax is imposed on maybe 0.2 — 0.3%  of all estates (i.e. dead people),  and even there,  90%  of the tax falls on estates of $5.0MM or more.    Considering that,  how did the Republicans ever generate this brig groundswell against the estate tax.

Utah struck me as a particularly interesting state.  Some areas are $0.35 on the dollar.  It’s a non sequiter, but those areas in eastern Utah are where the gaps are in the Christian Mingle map locations on that TV ad.   Hmmm.
What does it say when your pay rate for women is worse than Alabama. I understand that when all factors are included, we should be at ~80% to parity.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/10/gender_income_inequality_maps_by_county_and_by_state.html

http://www.rollcall.com/news/Holding-Texas-14th-District-Might-Be-Challenge-for-GOP-218305–1.html?pos=htmbtxt

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/18/koch-backed-activists-americans-for-prosperity