I really don’t get why people have been discussing what “rich” is for so many pages, when it’s so obviously subjective and arbitrary.
For instance, my own definition of “rich” is quite simlilar to Terr’s . For me, to be rich means a net worth of say €/$ 5-10 millions or so. Nevertheless, I also think that his posts are completely full of crap.
It doesn’t matter how you personnally define “rich”, nobody will agree on that. But assessing that making 200 000 is mostly similar to making 50 K, let alone 20 K, is absurd and disingeneous. He’s not, by my definition “rich”, but there’s a gigantic gap between him and people with a median income.
As he admits, people (including himself) can live a generally pleasant life on 50K. So, as many pointed out, he does have 150 K to play with and use discretionnally. For most people, that’s an enourmous amount of money and having it even only once would make a significant difference in their lives (paying their mortage, for instance, or not having to worry about bills for many years)
Because that isn’t what I said? I clearly said they don’t pay federal income taxes. This means they aren’t contributing to the nation’s “common good”, which of course means their share of the common good is being paid for by someone else - a group which coincidentally has become more resistant to the idea of increased taxes for the common good.
So the idea of a social contract that involved all of us was merely an idyll, was it? Passed away and left us behind, kind of like the innocence of childhood, did it? Nice. And the fact that the majority of the spending increases is attributable to the party that now is so incensed that they wish to destroy the entire system of government and abrogate the social contract rather than actually reverse their own practices doesn’t strike you as – well, insane feels insufficient as a descriptor to me, but it’s the best I can do right now – doesn’t strike you as plumb batshit crazy? Sigh… I guess not.
You’ve been corrected on “One” over and over and over again. The fact that you’ve recently begun specifying ‘federal income taxes’ instead of your former broader brush of ‘taxes’ doesn’t demonstrate any improvement in your argument. The people who pay no federal income taxes still pay lots of other taxes – and regressive taxes that hit them harder than other people in higher income brackets, to boot. And you know why they pay no federal income taxes? It’s because they make so little money that taking anything more from them means they will slide even further into poverty than they are already. It isn’t because they are shirking responsibility, it’s because you can’t get blood from a rock.
As for “Two”, it isn’t only those being poorly supported and poorly served by the minimal and ever more restricted aid available that believe more taxes are needed. It’s also reasonable people who understand that acting like adults and actually paying for the wars we were snookered into, and paying off the costs of the economic collapse brought on by deregulation, lack of oversight, and plain old greed will require shared sacrifice by all members of our society. People like, for instance, me.
And the assertion you call “Three” requires mental gymnastics that can only be called cognitive dissonance as a kindness rather than a host of other terms not to be used in this forum. Those who are now “fundamentally opposed to big government” are actually only opposed to certain parts of big government. Parts that attempt to take care of people in need, people out of work, people with bankrupting health problems, people who require retraining for tomorrow’s jobs, and many similar parts of government must be decimated or eliminated. Other parts, like the military, and the branches devoted to violating our own personal liberties in the specious attempt to provide some elusive kind of security, and the never ending attempts to expand government into our bedrooms and other places of former privacy are happily allowed to grow by leaps and bounds and provided with lavish funding. Apparently they aren’t connected to big government, huh?
I feel pretty comfortable saying that the $400 your hypothetical family of three is spending each month on entertainment (not even including the cable and Internet bill!) is non-critical.
Yet your language here continues to describe them as “not contributing to the nation’s ‘common good.’” And that’s bullshit. They are. They are just disproportionately contributing at the municipal and state level. Due to historical accident, the lower levels of government rely mostly on regressive forms of taxation. If the federal income tax wasn’t progressive, most low income folks would pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than higher income folks. And yet you still call them freeloaders.
Go ahead and let me know exactly how much tax theses others do pay. How does it correlate to tax on a paycheck (because as you know the people who get taxed by paycheck also pay all these other taxes as well)
Starving Artist, it might be the people earning less that are arguing for high earners to pay more (though some high earners, like Warren Buffet, are making the same argument), but they are not the ones ‘deciding’ anything. The poor don’t have a lot of power in politics.
No, I just went with what he’d said, which is why I said a few hundred. That’s where I got that ball-park figure from. Including property, the number is a lot higher. This is now, what the sixth time we’ve gone round on this? Shall we carry on to double figures?
Why do you say it will make quantitative difference but also say that it will make little difference? Either it makes a noticeable difference or it doesn’t. Either you were wrong when you said that 50k is broadly the same as 200k, or you think there actually is a big difference.
Ferchrissakes, who gives a shit? It doesn’t matter what magic number is the dividing line for this ridiculous ‘you’re rich and I’m poor’ argument. If you’re to the point where you’re excluding your principle residence but including all your property to try and figure out your total assets … shut the fuck up and pay your taxes.
Most of the middle and lower class can tell you what their total net worth is by running down to the ATM and printing out their balances.
We have bankrupted the country by cutting taxes for the wealthy and for corporations since Eisenhower. Our country was wealthier and able to pay its bills for a long time. We were able to build and maintain the infrastructure.
The fact is we have slashed the taxes for the wealthy and our country has become weaker and poorer since then. Eventually the poor will react. they can not have their pockets picked forever and not react.There will be a price to pay.
The top 400 rich people have more wealth than the bottom 150 million people. They did not accomplish that with good budgeting. They did it by having the politicians exempt them from all sorts of taxes while they engaged in tax shelters and foreign bank accounts. They have no intention of paying their taxes, no matter how small their tax load gets.
The concentration of wealth in America has changed the entire vision of the country. It is not the land of opportunity any longer. It is a Plutocracy that could turn ugly.
Well, thats pretty much it. Folklks who live in San Francisco or Manhatten and are struggling BECAUSE they have decided to live in San Francisco or Manhatten feel like they are not rich. If they were willing to move to Long Island, New Jersey or Brooklyn, then they wouldn’t feel so frikking poor.
Apologies for resurrecting a really old thread, but I wanted to correct this statement. As a reference point, my household income is ~$230k and the govt cut (tax, social security, medicare…) is around 35-40%. $120-130k take-home pay sounds about right for a $200k income. Maybe some people in this tax bracket can take advantage of creative loopholes and lower that 40%, but I think the average $200k household is facing numbers similar to the example given.
I still consider $200k/year rich, but that is a different story and more to do with my upbringing.
Given that $200,000 a year is at leasttwice the median income no matter where you live (with the exception of a a couple of counties in VA for which it is 1.7 times and 1.9 times) $200,000 a year should be considered quite well off regardless of where you live.
This entire debate about whether $200,000 is the cutoff for rich or not is entirely irrelevant to the whether a tax on incomes over 200,000 will affect the middle class. Suppose Obama raised taxes by 3% on income over 200,000, you will pay no more taxes. If your income is $210,000 your income tax is only an additional $300, or an effective tax increase of 0.14%. To count as even a 1% effective tax hike you would need to earn at least $300,000/year. This cutoff is more along the lines of what we should be looking at in terms of who the tax rate will be affecting.
A family of 3 is spending $1.2K in groceries a *month? *Seriously?
You can buy a pound of ground beef, a pound of chicken (whole), a loaf of bread, gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, some apples, bananas, ground coffee, tomatos and other green vegetables, each day for around $25 - which would only be $750/month–still less than this $1.2K figure.
We’re a family of four right now, one still in diapers, which we include in our grocery bill. We’re not necessarily extravegant in our grocery spending, but we’re definitely not uber-thrifty either, and we eat fairly well. Our monthly bill is barely over £450/month, which is under $700 a month.
$800 for utilities, internet & cable? I have high-end cable with the full package of HD & 3D sports/movies/children’s channels, with excellent internet for $100 combined. My gas/water/other utilities/landline /mobile phone costs combined don’t even come to $300/month.
Monthly real estate tax would only hit $1K on properties valued at $1 million or more…I doubt someone making $200,000 is buying a house worth more than 5 times their annual income. More like they’re buying a home worth around 3 times their annual income, or $600,00 or so; monthly tax would be closer to $600.
Sadly, your monthly figure for private school tuition might be too low :eek:
But a more realistic figure for monthly expenditure would be closer to $8,000/month, with 75% or so of that due to housing and schooling. And I highly suspect you could find a place to rent for less than $4K/month, and public schools won’t cost you $18-25K/yr…
Well, the mortgage payment is also more along the lines of a house closer to $1 million than $500K. So both of these might be accurate, or neither of them would be. I too doubt the wisdom of purchasing a $1 million home when you’re only making $200K.