Well, if his net income can’t meet his bills because he’s living in a mansion and driving an Aston Martin, it’s not as if he’s in the same financial boat as someone who makes $30k a year and is $30k in debt. I’m willing to accept varying definitions of the word rich, though, so I understand where you’re coming from.
I don’t think that that would ever be the top bracket, but it may be the basis upon which some tax proposals have been made. If that were the case, however, it would require either changing the brackets (lowering the top from 380 to 250 for instance) or raising the taxes on more than 1 bracket.
I have no doubt that you’ve heard it somewhere, but I think that whomever you received the message from failed to flesh out the full meaning (which, to me, is the problem). For example, they may have referred to the group as ‘top earners’ - intending to imply that they were in the top 3% or something, when it sounds like they are implying that they are in the top bracket, making the word choice either disingenuous or ill-conceived.
“Rich”* is when you don’t have to worry about how much money you have anymore. Specifically, that is when you have enough money that, no matter what, you’ll be able to maintain your standard of living indefinitely. So, earning $250,000 a year from a job doesn’t necessarily make you rich, but owning assets that pay you $250,000 a year definitely would.
*Not scare quotes, quotes to show I’m defining the word.
You’re absolutely right. I live around there, and don’t quite make $250K, but am not living hand to mouth. San Jose itself cost a lot compared to El Paso, but nothing compared to Los Gatos and Cupertino. The people getting screwed around here are not the managers making $250K, but the average Joes who can’t command that kind of money but have to deal with the prices set by those who can.
Again, I agreed. Michael Jackson wasn’t poor, he was a rich moron. Almost all people like this could get out of debt rapidly giving heir income if they just stopped throwing away their money.
In general, capital does play a role. If you talk about someone who’s making 250K, but has only been making that for a couple of years, has students loans, owns a house that recently lost a bunch of equity and is going through a merger where he or she thinks they may lose their job - I doubt that they’d be comfortable being labeled as rich.
The thing is that that situation isn’t exactly a stretch in today’s economy, and it’s not like the person described above wasting their millions of dollars. It’s someone who may be on their way to being rich but is still, rightly, concerned about money and faces the possibility of being broke with just a couple of bad breaks.
But from the point of view of someone making 30 grand - yeah, that person probably is rich. They see them with a nice car, eating out at good restaurants, and living a good life that may well never be accessible to them.
The thing is, I’m not sure that comparing which of those perspectives is correct is particularly helpful when it comes to fiscal policy. Probably just easier to deal with facts.
Well, those of us who actually are rich would never consider someone making a paltry $250k/year “rich”.
Could I reiterate that, as I said, someone who’s making around the minimum of that tax bracket isn’t who’s in question? It misses the whole point. It appears that the number is actually 380k rather than 250k, but my point is that if you’re right at 380k, you’re not paying an extra cent due to a rate increase on the 380k+ bracket. You’d need to be making 600k+ before you felt the tax increase meaningfully. And I don’t think many people would dispute that 600k+ per year is rich.
So granted, someone making 250k or 380k whether they are rich or not are not impacted at all by a top marginal tax rate increase. Someone making a little above that, say 300k or 450k, is only affected on the last portion of their income, so their taxes would only increase a small fraction of the increase in the top marginal rate.
Didn’t Obama use the $250k figure while he was campaigning?
Boding mine.
From wiki, ftfoi.
eta: didn’t see your post, before posting this Senor, and would respond that yes, you’re right - although the conversation has diverged a bit (big surprise :))
Yes. IIRC, he promised not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000.
Then apparently there are not many rich people out there, under your definition, since people tend to spend more as they make more.
Well, they are both idiots and if the first guy loses his job he is going to be in the same boat as the second guy should he lose his job, right?
At that level, probably, as long as people kept buying his recordings.
Households that make over $250,000 constitute the top 2% of all households in the country. If “rich” is to have any meaning at all, it must be fairly applied at least to this group. Where would you draw the line? 1%? .1%? .0001%?
While there’s certainly some correlation between the two, I’d base the definition more on net worth rather than income. That will shift the rich demographic to a higher age group.
From your article, it seems that the language was actually meant to apply to households making 250, and that there could be potential tax increases for individuals making 125,000.
While that’s a small group - I just can’t agree 125 is rich. I make more than that and don’t even have a car.
(note that I’m not opposed to raising taxes, I’m just saying is all)
You can’t afford a car, or you choose not to have one?
Why would that be a good thing?
I would prefer to have a car, but I can’t justify the expense. If I save up for a while, and things go well at work, I would like to get one next year.
If it was a neceissty, I could squeeze it into my budget. But, imho, the rich don’t need to make decisions like that.
Correct. I view rich as a description of net worth rather than income. A person might be making two million dollars a year, but if he’s blowing it all on hookers and blow he really can’t be said to be rich. On the other hand, there might be a person who has no income at all but keeps many millions of dollars secreted in a vault buried in his back yard, and that person certainly could rightfully be called rich.
Plus, people’s wealth is almost always referred to in terms of net worth. Bill Gates is called a billionaire because he’s worth many billions of dollars, not because he makes billions of dollars a year.
Really, it’s fallacious to apply the word rich to income.
Thank you. That a perfect description. If you want to make an argument that the rich shouldn’t pay more taxes, fine. But don’t insult my intelligence by using bullshit terms like “job creators.” That’s really little more than just another form of the overly-sensitive PC crap that conservatives so like to rail against.
I was stating a fact, not making a value judgement.