Are there any stats available on registration rates? Between motor voter and Democratic-allied group working hard to register minorities, I’d be surprised if they have a significantly lower registration rate these days.
I’d suspect that Democratic politicians have done internal polling, plus talked to their donors, many of whom are in the $100-250K range. I think that if Democrats felt they could get away with raising taxes on low six figure incomes, they would.
I know many millionaires want their taxes raised, but I have yet to hear such sentiment from upper middle class people.
Anyone here making under $250K who are willing to pay more?
Raise my salary to $250,000, and you can double my taxes.
Well, I’m making $45,000, and I won’t accept a tax increase.
And you think Republican policies are more likely to benefit you than Democratic ones? What’s the matter with Kansas indeed.
Anyone who pays income taxes benefits more from Republican policies.
Name a few.
Republicans ask less of us while delivering the same level of services. The main people hurt by Republican policies are those who don’t pay taxes and ask ever more from those of us who do.
How dare they!
Not if the country goes broke or goes to manufactured crisis by those Republicans.
On this, I do agree with Steve Benen from the Maddow Blog:
I’d be fine paying more if I knew it was going to things that are universally beneficial like schools, health care, and social programs, rather than defence spending and cutting taxes on the rich.
No, because they do the exact opposite of what I described above.
Not at all. We’re not all obsessed with playing the game “he who pays the least taxes wins”. Taxes are the cover charge of living in a civilized society. Republican policies result in tax cuts at the top and an ever greater wealth disparity between the haves and the have-nots. If you want to see a feudal society with robber barons at the top and serfs at the bottom, keep punching that R ticket.
As a family we’re filing very low 6 figures. I’d pay more. I’ve lived in California my whole life, and I’m old enough to have benefitted from a public school system that once was among the finest in the world while being affordable. Now my own kids are approaching college age, and the JCs are a joke, and the university fees are very high. I’d pay more taxes, not just because it might end up being nearly a push for me personally if tuitions went down substantially, but because I am willing to pay more to help those fortunate, and I believe that only government can substantially help, as a class, the least fortunate among us. Sure, you can point to Horatio Alger exceptions, but I won’t be satisfied until the kids in South Central have schools comparable to Beverly Hills.
I consider myself upper middle class. My and my wife’s combined household income is more than $250K and we’d be willing, and can easily afford, to pay more in taxes, even though I run an S corp, the taxes for which are borne by me personally.
I will agree with this statement:
although I would amend it to: Anyone who pays income taxes benefits more from Republican **tax **policies.
I am able to legally mitigate my personal tax burden via benefits available to me as a principal in a corporation, and adjustments to shareholder distributions that the average employee does not have.
Also, not to get too heavily into a discussion about taxes, or place too much weight on anecdotes, or definitions of what constitutes middle class, but the individual tax burdens of many members of my extended family (whose incomes are on average a fifth of mine) relative to their incomes are much higher than mine. So no, I wouldn’t be okay with raising taxes on those making lower middle class wages, but I think I would be for those making $200K and above, and definitely for those making $250K and above.
No, they don’t, they just get to take a bit more of their paychecks home. That’s something, but it’s not everything.
And that’s only in theory. When federal income taxes are cut, there is a domino effect that means that other taxes will rise, you’ll get less in exchange for it, cuts in services and programs will result in other things becoming more expensive.
Actually, reading this again, I’d qualify my agreement with it as the higher one’s income, the higher relative tax benefit one receives. Also, once one reaches certain general thresholds of income, other factors come into play that increase personal tax benefits. Someone making, say, $400K a year will probably have a much more robust compensation package that includes perqs in addition to base salary than a standard at-will employee making, say, $90K will have. Also, those making higher-end salaries will tend to be employers rather than employees, which opens the door to many tax loopholes and other tax advantages.
For small values of people, it is.
Yep, I am.
And I reject the notion that pay a few less dollars in taxes is going to benefit me more than social justice, a safety net, universal education, comprehensive regulation, sound infrastructure, affordable health care, sex education for all, and a healthy environment would benefit me.
Or for people of small values . . .