Numbers

  • $174 million Average annual income of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers in 2000, nearly four times what it was in 1992

    22.3% Percentage of their income paid in federal taxes, down nearly 4 percentage points from 1992

    104 million Number of telemarketer phone calls placed every day

    1,000 Consumers per second who visited the FTC's national do-not-call-list website in its first 12 hours of operation

    $18.1 million Money Congress authorized the FTC to collect from telemarketers to finance the program's first year

    4 million Number of children born in the U.S. in 2002, or 13.9 births per 1,000 people, the lowest birthrate in nearly a century

    7.8% Percentage of low-birth-weight babies born, the highest level in more than 30 years

    900 million Files being shared on Kazaa one afternoon last week

    $150,000 Potential penalty for illegally downloading a single song from the Internet

    Sources: IRS; AP; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; USA Today