Please provide a cite that the top 3% income earners are living middle class lifestyles over 50% of the time due to high COL, because it sounds like a talking point or something you pulled out of your ass.
No one would bother with these high incomes if it didn’t come with lifestyle bonuses. Bullshit.
Yes, people seem to be assuming you get to make $200K/year, and then you get to pick where you live. That would be nice, but it usually doesn’t work that way.
And living in San Francisco over Mayberry, Nowhere is a lifestyle bonus regular people like myself cannot afford. So where they live itself is a luxury that they have, and it counts.
Yeah; I’m more of a mind to agree with this type of structuring. “Tax The Rich” isn’t going to help much because there’s not THAT many rich people to tax. “Tax The Big Corporations” is never going to fly, because, they’ll get their money in other ways that suck even worse for the average citizen/the economy/jobs. What we need is a more streamlined, less arcane and loophole-filled tax structure with fairly low rates across the board, but less ability/incentive to avoid paying taxes in general. Plus, um, spending more wisely would help immensely. I don’t think revenue is as much of an issue as spending, and I’m a Yellow Dog Democrat. Go figure.
The top 1% of the country consists of 1.1 million households that have an average income of $1.8 million a year.
For the top 10%, there are 12 million households that average $380,000 a year.
There’s more wealthy people around than you may think.
That sounds like a lot, but those numbers are absolutely dwarfed by households with incomes somewhere between the poverty line and $200-300k. A teensy increase on those households would bring in more revenue than a significant tax increase on the rich. However, that assertion is about as popular as pedophilia in today’s political climate.
This is an extremely inaccurate statement. I know at least a dozen people who live and work in New York City. They are all able to support themselves fairly comfortably, and none of them make anything close to $200K a year.
Feel free to debate the definition of being rich and the merits of different tax plans all you like. But don’t go around thinking that $200K a year isn’t a lot of money because the big city is expensive.
Sorry - I don’t mean to belabor the point, just for my clarification:
I’m just unclear on when you say “jobs that will pay that much” whether you’re talking about $100K or $200K, since there’s a big difference between those numbers.
Thanks for helping me understand. 
200K per year is a good salary, and one that can afford a bit higher of a tax liability. Make it work, and move to a cheaper place if you just can’t make ends meet. I make about 1/4 of this and I consider myself to be living pretty comfortably.
One would think that, wouldn’t they?
However, the facts state that the top 10% of income earners take home 41% of all income in this country. If you get down to the bottom 40% of Americans, who are those who most likely pay very little or no income tax (and those who get EITC funds back), those 46 million households take home 12.3% of all the income in this country.
It is just math: raising taxes a little bit on poor people will bring in very, very little money; raising taxes a little bit on high earners will bring in a great deal more.
Perfect- I don’t know anyone who works at the super high end places where the normal meal is $500 per person. But I stipulate that those jobs exist, same as the CEOs everyone is so het up about.
I have known waitstaff who DID make close to $100K. This in upscale areas of large-city but low-cost-of-living area in Houston.
I do not have any cites, and I can just about guarantee that NONE of these jobs shows these people as earning these wages/tips on their paystubs, as you don’t put down cash you don’t have to- so the point is relatively moot. It would not affect taxation anyway.
Follow me? You certainly don’t have to agree, as I don’t have any proof…
Sometimes I think that this is the biggest pile of bullshit we have been ever sold - that $200K is not rich, they are people just like the rest of us poor sods, struggling from paycheck to paycheck. And so many people, even people who make nowhere near $200K have bought it.
You know what people do around here that make $200K or more? They absolutely do not live in NYC. Why the fuck would they need to? They buy a nice huge house in Northern NJ or downstate NY and commute. A few of them do live in high-rises in Manhattan, but there are a shit ton of people living in the Hudson Valley who commute to NYC daily or weekly, and they are really really well-off (still not in the $200K range).
You will never be able to sell to me that an income that falls in 3% of the population is not filthy fucking rich, and it blows my mind that middle class and poor people buy this somehow.
So, Anaa- We have talked before, and I don’t recall how much of our situation you recall, but once my wife finishes up her dissertation, her career path and experience will give her an income of $150k+, and with me thrown in we will be over that. At that point we will be comfortable, and we won’t have to worry about me bouncing atm purchases at Starbucks, but we won’t in any way be rich.
Now- this doesn’t mean we couldn’t fly out to visit you some weekend, or bring you and hubby out here to visit us sometime, but it would take a bit of planning. Definitely NOT filthy fucking rich, however.
I do know people who make more than a million a year, and while they might be filthy fucking rich, they sure don’t show it.
I know somebody who put his law firm’s corporate jet on his amex, but I don’t envy him- too many factors, but I wouldn’t want that life! But yeah, I know filthy f’ing rich, and just making $200k wouldn’t be it.
One can only assume that most of those median income earning residents of RPV had bought in long ago when house prices were lower. For someone moving into the area in 2007–or even 2011, I can understand the perception that 200K doesn’t go far. It’s barely enough to support the Hollywood version of a middle class lifestyle, after all. But in terms of income percentile, it’s still “rich”.
Someone earlier made the really fucking dumb assertion that wealth isn’t measured relative to other people’s wealth, as though there’s some other way to measure it.
Do you have WAY FUCKING MORE money and/or stuff than most people?
If so, congratulations! You’re rich.
Most people make significantly less than 200K. They also skip the Starbucks and certainly don’t have sushi three times per week. And they’d be mightily pissed off to hear that people who do think of themselves as just barely “comfortable”.
Around here $500k-$600k gets you a 5,000 square foot home in a gated community. I can find 7,000+ square foot homes for $700,000. I toured a 7,500 square foot house with custom woodwork and 24k gold leaf accents in some rooms for $699.999 the other week, on 1 acre, in a fantastic neighborhood. Yes, I am house hunting right now…
No, I made the very accurate statement that wealth isn’t measured in terms of relative income.
And it isn’t, as I’ve shown with examples of people with high incomes buy next to no net worth and people living modestly or with no income at all but who may still be rich.
If you all want to start arguing that we should tax high income earners, your verbiage would be correct and we could argue the merits of that. But the Democrats over the decades have done such a good job of capitalizing on class resentment and demonizing the “rich”, and now you’re trying to apply the term to any group whose income makes yours seem puny for no reason other than to justify increasing their taxes too.
No, I made the very accurate statement that wealth isn’t measured in terms of relative income.
And it isn’t, as I’ve shown with examples of people with high incomes buy next to no net worth and people living modestly or with no income at all but who may still be rich.
If you all want to start arguing that we should tax high income earners, your verbiage would be correct and we could argue the merits of that. But the Democrats over the decades have done such a good job of capitalizing on class resentment and demonizing the “rich”, and now you’re trying to apply the term to any group whose income makes yours seem puny for no reason other than to justify increasing their taxes too.
You might note also that no one thus far has answered my challenge to come up with a dictionary defintion of rich that defines it as being relative to other people’s income.
Income does not equal wealth. Period. End of story.
Well, 3% of the country is still 9 million people. Plus we’ve exempted half the country from having to pay federal income tax, so the 3% then becomes 6%. And it accomplishes the goal of changing the definition of rich so that it applies to people who earn more than others, which of course creates an ever wider pool of tax targets the lower we get to the 50% who pay nothing.
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again - if the government keeps raising the amount people at the lower end have to earn before they have to pay taxes, and it keeps redefining and lowering the defintion of rich, eventually the two groups will pass each other and the lower income group will be paying taxes for the higher income group. 
Sorry for the semi double post.
Horse shyte.
If you make $200k a year, and feel the need to spend all of it every year, then you are stupid.
Put most of it in the bank, and soon enough, you will have enough to live off the proceeds of interest/investments.
$200k a year is rich, because it confers some serious spending power to the person. Seriously…you could buy a new BMW (with cash) every year, and still have a nice house. Unless of course you spend above your means…maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel rich. People feel the need to live like the guy making $500k per year, and then they overspend and feel not so rich.
$200k per year is rich, period. How you spend it may make you poor, or may make you richer still.
Which is good, because it means their money went to framers, drywallers, electricians, roofers, masons, etc. The more money we steal from the rich, the less that gets trickled down to other people.