For 2010, federal income marginal tax rates begin at 10% and
lurchingly rise to 35% on every dollar of taxable income above
$373,650 for married filing jointly. And then the marginal tax
rates stop rising. Couples who make $374,000 per year, well,
they're about as rich as it's worth thinking about, right. A
generation ago, it made sense not to worry much about squeezing
a little extra tax revenue out of people making extremely
gigantic amounts of income because there weren't very many of
them and it didn't add up to all that much. Today, though, the
term "orders of magnitude" just comes up a lot more when
thinking about income. Consider baseball contracts as a well-
known example. Free agency started around 1975, but by the 1980
season, only one player, Nolan Ryan, was averaging a million
bucks per year over the life of his contract. During the 1989
season, Eddie Murray was averaging the most at $2.7 million. By
1996, Ken Griffey Jr. was getting $8.5 million, and then pay
really exploded, all the way up to Ale