Chicago professor: It's tough to get by on $250K!

The people who did the studies don't have nannies and lawn guys, but this guy does?

 

The other thing is, the rich are whining that they're being taxed too much. Yet historically, even putting the highest tax rate back to where it was before Bush cut it (39.6 percent) is still extremely low when compared to previous decades.

Heck, it was 50 percent for most of the eighties and 70 percent throughout the 60s and 70s. And it was 90 percent in the 1950s.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/federalindividualratehistory-20080107.pdf

 

And rich people are tired of the class warfare.

They're not all lazy heirs of family fortunes.

This guy & his wife went to law school & med school respectively. Do they not deserve a higher standard of living than folks who didn't do the work, who didn't invest in their education & future?

The Democrats have demonized the very folks who create jobs & pay the majority of federal taxes.

And they've reached a breaking point.

Lost in the hype of Scott Brown's Senate win was the County Executive races in suburban New York.

In both Westchester & Nassau Counties, Republicans won offices long held by Democrats.

These communities are the homes of the bankers, traders, and hedge funders. Many of them are (at least socially) liberal. But they voted out the Dems because they were sick of being portrayed as the bad guy as they continued to fund a larger & larger portion of the Government's budget.

The Dems used them as piggy banks, and then threw them under the bus.

And now their wondering why their money -- and likely their voter -- are migrating towards the Republican Party.

And folks at places like the New York Times have been writing articles worrying about the "rich's" downturn in spending & its affect on the economy.

You think? That didn't occur to you previously?

We should be looking to make it easier to make, save, and spend money, not punishing success. We should be trying to help more people move up to middle class and then into the upper echelons of the "rich".

Instead, to make everyone feel better, we're going to tax the rich back into the middle class and the middle class back into poverty.

And the implications of that will be devastating.

 

There were a lot more ways to shelter your income too. You can't just look at the top tax rate.

 

Oh, I'm sure he's got a nanny & a lawn guy.

But should money earned in Chicago go to Washington D.C., on to the City of Los Angeles, over to a guy who does government studies, and then ultimately into the pocket of his lawn guy, or should it stay in Chicago, where the earner can spend it in his local economy?

 

That's an entirely different argument. I understand the argument that it is unfair for the government to decide economic winners and losers. I can understand the argument that taking money away from high-earners takes away incentive to do the things for society that earn high incomes.

I just don't understand the idea that money spent by the government disappears off the face of the earth.

 

The problem is, what you said in the last paragraph has already been happening for the last 20 years. Taxes have been cut, as I noted earlier, to historical lows.

Yet, the wealthy have not been bringing up the middle class to their level, and the lower class to the middle class. They've been shipping the jobs overseas and not investing in this country.

Through the peak of this country's prosperity (arguably, from 1946 through the 1960s), the wealthy paid a lot more in taxes. They also took care of their workers with good wages, pensions, and benefits. Now, wages have barely kept up with inflation for the last 30 years. Meanwhile, the wealthy have seen their incomes grow.

I can even see keeping the Bush tax cuts for some of the wealthy who are on the edge of the bracket (maybe raise it from $250K to $300K). But like I said earlier with my Dubow mention, there are plenty of people getting rich and doing very little for their money. Those are the ones who deserve to have their taxes increased.

 

The rich probably should have considered that when they were helping create the biggest gulf between rich and middle class since the 1920s.

 

No, it doesn't go away, but it's often spent inefficiently, on favored classes.

It doesn't do what it promises to.

It doesn't "invest" in our society. When Microsoft, Google, or Abbott Labs spends money, the create products that generate additional jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.

When Government spends money, they produce studies, reward government employee unions, and award contracts to political donors.

(And yes, occasionally a highway, or airport expansion for example, will lead to economic development, but even that money is often spent inefficiently, and examples like it are becoming fewer & fewer.

Projects like the Big Dig in Boston, or the Javits Center in New York were exponentially over budget and late.

The City of New York tried for years to renovate a simple ice skating rink in Central Park. Donald Trump got it done in a few months.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Agency has been trying to build a 2nd Avenue subway for decades.

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey was created for the sole purpose of building a rail tunnel between New York & New Jersey. 89 years later, no tunnel.)

So, when Governments spend money instead of individuals, it does pick winners & losers. It does take money out of the communities where it was created & earned.

It does take away incentives to earn money & generally interrupts the free flow of capitol.

 

Then they can leave . . . wait, they already have, figuratively, given the flood
of outsourcing.

Way to aid in maintaining the American Way of Life.

F'n one-way douches, they are.

 

So what's the answer? Tariffs? Higher taxes?

Everyone decries it, but the fact is that price determines where we spend our money.

If their was a market for goods and services produced here as opposed to abroad -- and folks were willing to pay a premium for it -- they would be provided.

I'm not sure how you blame the corporations when they're just reacting to the marketplace.

 

I like that this has turned into a spirited quasi-political discussion without name-calling and some of the other b.s. that gets these things locked.

Someone posted about how the Democrats are hypocrites for standing up for the middle class when the people actually running for office are rich. This is a classic straw man that I just don't buy. You can be rich and still believe in leftist economics. I don't see any inconsistency there at all.

And to keep it non-partisan, I feel the same way about the "hypocrite" charges I keep hearing thrown at Christine O'Donnell. The argument there is this: "The Tea Party believes in individual liberty, but she thinks people shouldn't masturbate!"

Well, Christine O'Donnell believes that masturbation is a sin, it's true. But I don't think she's ever said that the government should criminalize it. She just doesn't think people should do it. That is an enormous distinction.

I know that was a little off topic, but it's just my other example of how I think that the rush to tag the other side as hypocrites obscures actual substantive debates we should be having.