Our combined income exceeds the $250,000 threshold...Without telling us what the combined income actually is, the rest of the figures he tries to shock us with don't really mean anything. There's a big difference between $251K and $500K.
Without telling us what the combined income actually is, the rest of the figures he tries to shock us with don't really mean anything. There's a big difference between $251K and $500K.he tax change he's talking about increase the amount paid on income over $250,000 per year. Which means that they have to be making quite a bit more than $250,000 for it to matter. As others have noted, if you're making more than a quarter million a year and you're not also funneling it straight back into operating costs for a new business, you are rich. Sorry, them's the breaks.
Missing the point . . . .I had most of these things growing up, and I gotta say...
I pay my “gardener,” who just arrived from Mexico, $20 per week to cut my grass etc.
The nanny is a must for two-income couples with kids. Many people have them. Mine is a nice Thai woman who runs it out of her house.
My housecleaner is a dear Polish immigrant who employs dozens just like her. They are much more efficient at this than me, and given we both work and I believe in the principle of comparative advantage regardless, this is again sensible.
As for school, the incompetence of the local schools gives me no choice.
But again, this is not my point. Sure, if my taxes go up, I can fire all these people, but how is society better off?
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."posted by symbioid at 7:50 AM on September 22, 2010 [3 favorites]
-Anatole France
Without telling us what the combined income actually is, the rest of the figures he tries to shock us with don't really mean anything. There's a big difference between $251K and $500K.Someone did the math based on their total tax bill and estimated that their income was about $400k.
He makes probably somewhere between double and 50% more than most of us, and we're ready to hang him? Everybody has gripes, and everybody focuses on their own gripes, because they are the only gripes they know.It's more like 6-10 times as much. You think the average mefite makes between $200 and $300k?
A final note: I am especially saddened that my post was misconstrued as being about anything other than the impact that tax increases will have on people at the lower end of the high-income bracket. Agree or disagree, certainly questions like this need to be part of the equation. I understand the suffering of the world and the good fortune I have. The debate is not, or should not, be about whether we should try to improve the well being of everyone in our neighborhoods, our country, and around the world, but how..That's exactly what happened, dude. You explained how it would affect you, and people read what you wrote and decided you were a self-entitled a-hole and that taxing you 3.9% more on income over $250k would be awesome.
1. Private school for kids: if you don't have kids, please shut the fuck up. It costs all of your money to raise kids in America. If you make $50k or $500k, they will take all your money, because you will not cut back on opportunities for them. If private school is 10% better than public school, there isn't a parent out there that will spend 100% more for the better school.Cry me a river.
“I don’t know anything about Afghanistan, but I know it’s full of terrorists, speaking as a mother.” So what is this "speaking as a mother" then? Is that a euphemism for "talking out of my arse"? "Suspending rational thought for a moment"? As a rational human being, Al-Qaeda are a loose association of psychopathic zealots who could be rounded up with a sustained police investigation. But speaking as a parent, they’re all eight foot tall, they’ve got lasers under their moustaches, a huge eye in their foreheads and the only way to kill them is to NUKE every country that hasn’t sent us a Christmas card in the the last 20 years!! Speaking as a mother.posted by seanyboy at 9:05 AM on September 22, 2010 [2 favorites]
The point is that none of the people who have something are advocating any tax structure that involves tapping into that "something." How about a 10% tax on all assets for those people with over $750M in assets? The Forbes 400 would then pay $120+ billion.I'd be all for it, but why start at $750m? Seems $1m - excluding housing up to maybe $2m, and allowing for the deduction of property taxes seems more reasonable. Also 10% seems kind of high. Maybe a bracket system makes more sense.
I'll restate more reasonably that I have a problem with taxing assets instead of income. It encourages consumptionThat's what we want. When you consume, that helps people who make the stuff you consume. When you don't, you don't help anyone (except yourself, since you get a little extra security and theoretical freedom)
This is why I agree with the point in his rebuttal about how we should concentrate to some degree on government efficiency. That's a fight where we can all win.The idea that we could somehow solve our budget problems by making the government more 'efficient' is absurd. Most of the money we spend is checks for Medicare and social security. You can't reduce those things by making them more "efficient". I think if Medicare tried to reduce payments for things, which would reduce the amount of money his wife made as a doctor, you'd see plenty of similar bitching from the guy. He's totally myopic.
It's pretty damn important to throw money at a child's education from pre-school on up if the goal is to attend the most prestigious university in order to make the most prestigious connections.Yeah, the point of this stuff isn't to get a good education, it's to make sure they know the right people. Think about kids who go to Exter and slack off vs. go to a public school and work really hard the public school kid will probably learn a lot more, and the Exter kid will probably make orders of magnitude more money.
I'm reminded of the exchange in Six Degrees of Separation between the budding con man and his preppie mark about the latter's wealthy peer group. "Is these all rich people?" "No. Hand to mouth on a higher plateau."Indeed. The mouth just gets bigger, and the hand turns invisible.
I went to elementary school in Ottawa, and then to a private secondary school. When we moved back to the United States in 1933, I went to private schools in New York City and on Long Island, and then completed my high school education at the [private] Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut.Robert B. Laughlin, Physics 1998:
My mother, who was professional schoolteacher, was particularly concerned about our formal education and even went so far as to start a private school together with some other parents so that our intellectual needs would be met. They acquired an old two-room schoolhouse out in the country among the walnut groves at the foot of Venice Hill, added some indoor plumbing, and hired a small faculty to teach us a broad curriculum that included such things as Latin and French.So it looks like privately educated Nobel winners are not uncommon.
I’m the president’s neighbor in Chicago, but we’ve never met. I wish we could, because I would introduce him to my family and our lifestyle, one he believes is capable of financing the vast expansion of government he is planning.What vast expansion? Where does that come from? It seems like he's schooling himself in public affairs by watching Fox News.
Nobody's talking about tax brackets: Yes, $250,000 is a lot of money, but there are still people who make orders of magnitude more than that who get taxed pretty much the same amount. Why is 373k the top tax bracket? Why not another at 1 million, and then as many more as you need?
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posted by Memo at 9:26 PM on September 21, 2010 [57 favorites]