My property taxes are about $500 a year when I take the homestead credit. My house is 1200 sq ft, and so is my workshop with about another 500 sq ft in other heated space, with an acre and a half of land.

Today I paid $1.94 a gallon for gas. Thirty percent of that was sales tax.

I don't have any income, but my husband does and he pays about $50 a week in state income tax.

We pay at least 8% sales tax on every little thing we buy. Depending on what municipality you happen to be standing in, it can be close to 11%.

We have many people that make six figures up here in NW Arkansas. We have more than our fair share of millionaires. Most of the millionaires got that way from being on the ground floor of Wal-Mart, Tyson, Jones Truck Lines and JB Hunt stock. We don't have any "old money", except the legacy of Winthrop Rockefeller, but he was slumming.

Karen