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"Who gives a crap about some imbecile?" Marcus said. "Are you kidding me?"Former New York gurbernatorial candidate Tom Golisano, the billionaire owner of the billing firm Paychex, offered his wisdom while his half-his-age tennis champion girlfriend hung on his arm:
"If I hear a politician use the term 'paying your fair share' one more time, I'm going to vomit," said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.
Highlights of the $1 trillion-plus 2012 spending legislation in Congress:
- $518 billion for the Pentagon's core budget, a 1 percent boost, excluding military operations overseas. [...]
- $3.5 billion for low-income heating and utility subsidies, a cut of about 25 percent.
Their target was the state of the economy when the empire was at its population zenith, around 150 C.E. Schiedel and Friesen estimate that the top 1 percent of Roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth, less than half of what America's top 1 percent control.Of course, the millions of Romans at the bottom of the empire's class structure - the conquered and enslaved, the poorest Romans, and the women who had little civic or economic empowerment - would probably disagree with the study's conclusion. Still, it serves as yet another highlight of how large the income gap in the United States has become over the last three decades.