Singer Dionne Warwick files for bankruptcy in NJ This headline on Yahoo News made me wonder how does a hugely successful singer find herself broke at the age of 72? The easy answer is she didn't pay seven million in Federal Income tax and 3 million in State tax in the nineties. A lot of time this gets blamed on bad, lousy, incompetent, criminal, professional money managers (often relatives) and other times it's just something big stars just don't like to deal with (Wesley Snipes). No matter what happened, finding out you're 10 million in debt is a bad way to spend your golden years.
Dionne is a singer and there are no royalties paid to singers, or musicians, so every time one of her hits gets played on the radio Burt Bacharach gets a check but she doesn't. Even Hal David gets a check and he's dead. If she's not, at age 72, traveling around the country playing ever Community Theater she can she's not getting any income. Of course the idea is that she invested her money while she was making it so now her money is making money and she can stay home and relax but you still need to pay Uncle Sam his cut.
There was a time that when I saw the credits at the end of a movie I thought all those people are making money but now I realize that if I'm watching the finished movie all those people listed on the credit scroll have long since been paid their salary and have most likely spent it all already. Most of them are probably as unemployed as I am, waiting for their next movie gig to come in. I also used to think that every time I heard a song on the radio the band was getting rich but that too is an illusion.
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