# $200K/year isn't rich. Why aren't we taxing corporations? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 12, 2011, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110 "2011-09-12T23:36:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Waxwinged](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Waxwinged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waxwinged)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/21 "2011-09-13T01:08:13Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > This has been bugging me, so feel free to educate me. > > I’m all for taxing the rich, so long as they’re actually rich. $200K/year doesn’t strike me as rich though. In some cities, I wouldn’t be that surprised to find a waiter or bartender making $200K and still have three roommates and no car. Well, maybe not, but life ain’t cheap these days. Uh.. Where I’m at, we’ve got a comfortable household of a single income, two people, on 45k. Hell yes, 'd consider 200k/year rich. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/22 "2011-09-13T01:10:28Z")
It’s laughable to suggest that an income in the top 3% of the population of the richest nation in the history of the world is not rich. It’s no different than claiming Wilt Chamberlain wasn’t tall, because Robert Wadlow was taller. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/23 "2011-09-13T01:12:53Z")
The problem is that income doesn’t define wealth. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/24 "2011-09-13T01:57:05Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Let’s talk about corporations “who” make millions and billions a year. Are they not wealthy enough to talk about? I’m more interested in that conversation, but most of the respondents seem fixated on the “$200k rich or not?” discussion. And you have to admit that you pretty much hijacked your own thread. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/25 "2011-09-13T01:59:43Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > The problem is that income doesn’t define wealth. True, but let’s keep it limited to one pedantic war at a time, can we? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/26 "2011-09-13T02:03:44Z")
Oh, all right. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/27 "2011-09-13T02:34:02Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Can you provide a dictionary definition of rich that defines it as relative to other people’s income? > > I don’t think you can. > > What you and the Democrats in government are doing is trying to redefine the term to suit your purposes, which is to ding as many people possible under the guise of sticking it to the rich. “Rich” doesn’t mean you make more money than most, it means that you have assets that amount to great wealth. I can guarantee you that there are plenty of $250k earners who are living a paycheck to paycheck existence and would go under in a matter of months if that income was lost. > > $250k a year is affluent, and even if we’re to start suddenly defining rich in terms of income rather than assets, it’s still not “rich”. Didn’t Kenneth Lay’s wife make the exact same argument? That they barely had money to keep up with the payments on their one house, their retirements were at risk, and so on? I guess they were not rich, by your standards. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/28 "2011-09-13T02:49:05Z")
That’s right. With apologies to **JohnT** , if you don’t have enough income to pay your bills, and your assets don’t outweigh your liabilities by a large amount, you aren’t rich. Conversely, a person might be living in a small two bedroom house worth $75,000 but be holding 10 million in stocks and securities, and that person would be considered rich. Current living conditions and/or lifestyles do not determine wealth. In order to be rich you have to have a large amount of unencumbered wealth. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/29 "2011-09-13T02:57:42Z")
Apologies accepted. 😉 And you’re exactly right, of course. Ken Lay borrowed millions on his Enron stock, facing margin call after margin call as the stock sank in 2001, his liabilities finally exceeding his assets, which is the opposite of “rich”, no matter how large those numbers are. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/30 "2011-09-13T03:04:45Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Apologies accepted. 😉 Thank you. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/31 "2011-09-13T03:10:40Z")
> [@echo6160](#): > > If you don’t think $200k a year is rich, try living on my income for a few years. > > Then form an opinion. You can’t make this argument if you haven’t lived for a substantial amount of time making ~$50k/yr or less. 200k isn’t “rich”, at least not in the classical definition, which is “enough money in the bank to live off the proceeds”. 200k is a well paying job like being a successful lawyer or salesman, 200k isn’t “live off it for the remainder of your days money.” Rich is, IMO, isn’t an annual salary, but a state of being when you end up with enough money so that you don’t have to work, or at the very least, where you have significant income from investments. As for the OP, the reason they don’t tax corporations as much is because in general, corporations are what employ people and drive the economy. They do get taxed fairly seriously, but there’s some governmental interest in promoting the growth of businesses, so that they employ more people and provide more tax revenue that way, as well as directly. Plus, bigger companies trade more, and have knock-on effects at their business partners (i.e. a bigger company buys more stuff, making their suppliers bigger, etc…). ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/32 "2011-09-13T03:24:35Z")
Well, gee, if you have an income of $80 million a year, and every year you go out and buy a new Boeing jetliner (and at the end of the year, you have the old one fitted with a remote control device and fly it into the side of a mountain), you won’t be rich. You’ll also be an idiot. In the vast majority of this country, if you’re making $200,000 a year, possibly you aren’t rich–yet–but you _should_ be able to live very comfortably while accumulating assets towards joining the ranks of the “rich”. Even in the nation’s enclaves of super-high cost of living, you should still be able to live comfortably on $200,000 a year, and have something left over to put away for a rainy day. If someone can’t live on $200,000 a year–in fact, well within that figure, with something left over to put towards a cushion and accumulation of wealth–then they need to figure out how to a. spend less b make more money, or c. both. Same as anybody else. What they don’t need to do is whine about how they aren’t rich and they can barely make ends meet and they live paycheck to paycheck and the cost of living in their chosen neighborhood is just _ **so** _ high. Send the kids to public school; eat at home sometimes instead of at fancy restaurants; move to a slightly cheaper neighborhood. Suck it up, whiny 97th percentilers! There are millions of Americans out of work–running up credit card debt to pay the bills, trying to live off unemployment insurance, living in someone else’s basement, hoping nobody gets seriously ill 'cause there’s no health insurance. Millions more have part-time jobs, not by choice, but because that’s all they can get. (I’m not remotely complaining about my financial situation, even though I’m “only” in the fourth quintile. I live well within my means and regularly put money away towards a rainy day/early retirement.) ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/33 "2011-09-13T03:43:14Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > Well, gee, if you have an income of $80 million a year, and every year you go out and buy a new Boeing jetliner (and at the end of the year, you have the old one fitted with a remote control device and fly it into the side of a mountain), you won’t be rich. Yeah, but I think the IRS only allows you to crash your jetliners at a loss for up to five years in a row, and after that they make you take the deductions. And of course the insurance companies will be flooding you with money after each crash. All in all you’ll have a hell of a time trying to go broke that way. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/34 "2011-09-13T04:48:10Z")
What’s all this about not taxing corporations? We have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, as 35%. Japan is higher, and so are a few Arab countries, but that’s it. And the rates are exactly the same as for the individual, which means that companies should wind up with a higher percentage, since they are generally richer. Look at this [chart from 2005](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg). No, the real problems are the tax breaks and loopholes that lower the _de facto_ rate for most companies. Not that we don’t set a high enough percentage. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/35 "2011-09-13T09:40:15Z")
> [@psychobunny](#): > > Only 1.9 % of households in this country make over $250K, and less than 3% of people earn more than $200k. Not only that, but proposals to raise tax rates for the wealthy would only be imposed on the income above the threshold. If rates went up by 5%, someone making $200,001 wouldn’t owe an extra $10,000, he’d owe an extra nickel. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/36 "2011-09-13T10:49:05Z")
Wow, I never understood before that being rich was simply a lifestyle choice based on how little of one’s income one wishes to spend. I guess the crazy ol’ cat lady who lives in a paid off house, only eats cheap tuna, and stashes tens of thousands of dollars in cash under her mattress could be considered rich, while the NFL star who spends all his money on $7 million houses, a dozen cars, and leases private jets is really just a middle class guy. Thanks for clearing that up, guys! ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/37 "2011-09-13T11:07:23Z")
Why do you seem to think that just because someone buys something, that money is lost? Do you really not understand that a guy buying a $7 million home and a dozen cars still retains the wealth those assets represent? Being rich is a matter of having accumulated wealth. If you blow your money as fast as you make it, you’re not rich. And, to use your example, if you’re a little old lady stashing [many, many, many, many] tens of thousands in her mattress, then yes, you are rich. Furthermore (and this will probably really blow your mind) you can be rich and have no income at all. You could have $10 million sitting in a bank account earning nothing (which would be foolish, but still possible) and you’ll still be rich. And you know why that is? It’s because “rich” and “income” are two different things. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/38 "2011-09-13T14:24:02Z")
If you make $200,000 a year, you are well off. If you can’t cover your bills with it, you’re an idiot. Here’s a thought if you’re having a hard time with your tax burden … don’t buy a fifth flat screen for down in the rec room … maybe send little Muffy back to private school with the same laptop she had last year … possibly let young Biff drive that 2010 Mustang one more year. This notion that $200,000 a year is a pittance because you have to actually pay for things with it is ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/39 "2011-09-13T14:29:02Z")
Lots of people are for “taxing the rich.” But they never talk about _ **why** _ they want to tax the rich. I’ve always found this interesting. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110/40 "2011-09-13T14:47:21Z")
Why does one rob banks? 'Cause that’s where the money is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/200k-year-isnt-rich-why-arent-we-taxing-corporations/596110.md?page=3)