One of the most frustrating things about this whole silly “Fiscal Cliff” nonsense is that the people supporting our Galtian overlords never tell you the whole story. They just point out the things that they want you to hear- and hope that you are not smart enough, or knowledgeable enough on tax laws to spot the obvious holes in their narratives.
Take this story that appeared in the NY Post and was taunted forth by Phib.
The Post showed a chart and then told “horror” stories of how very well off people are going to “suffer”. Let’s look at the chart, shall we?
Oh
It must be the fault of those goddamned moochers.
Except of course its not one bit true. The chart is one of the most misleading ones I’ve yet to see in the recent month-and trust me, I have seen a fair share.
Let’s take a couple of the “horror stories” that are cited in Phib’s post and dissect it a little more shall we?
“It’s that much higher?” asked IT worker Vikas Kataria, 34, who discovered that his combined household income of about $250,000 per year will cost him nearly $10,000 more in taxes. “I thought it was a couple thousand — but that’s a lot,” said Kataria, who works at Merrill Lynch in Manhattan and is married to a systems analyst for a brokerage firm. “That’s huge!”
With higher taxes, the couple would have to cut out on traveling and family vacations.
Give me a fucking break, you, whiny, selfish, bastard.
First of all, you work for Merrill Lynch and you can’t get decent tax advice? Then you deserve to pay more taxes for being stupid. And second-by your own admission my dear Vikas, you are not going to see your taxes go up by 9730 dollars. Or have you forgotten that Post did not take your dependent deductions into account? Or that it also doesn’t factor in many of the probable tax deductions you will take because being a high earner, you have the ability to take them. And lets not forget the Post chart has deliberately left off the tax sheltering effect of even putting the maximum allowed into your 401K-which at 250K per year should be pretty easy to do.
Factor all of those things in, I’m willing to bet your taxes only go up about 5600 or so. 400 dollars a paycheck on someone receiving a pay check of almost 11000 every two weeks. ( Before taxes and other withholding). 21000 a month.
Yes that is the right number of zero’s.
God damn it all-it must really suck to be you. Oh the heartlessness of having to make ends meet on at least 13000 dollars take home a month.
When is the last time I ever saw that much money in a month? Oh right, never. And I still take vacations and drink premium quality beer-and have a piece of my hard earned retirement stolen from me every month by a thankless, fuck less, fat shrew.
But I’m supposed to feel sorry for you and your plight. Uh-huh. Right…………………………………………….
Now journey to the top end of the scale-someone making a million dollars a year is forced by the hand of a draconian government to get by on a paltry 650,000 a year. So much for that new Lexus or my business class ticket to Paris. Good God Man, just how unreasonable can you get?!?
As Mitt Romney showed us-the odds of the 1 million dollar earner actually paying the amounts listed above are slim to none. And that’s what this pointless whining fails to highlight-effective tax rates are what really matter. And those tend to be statistically higher for those in lower income brackets. Furthermore, its not going to help anyone if all the country does is continue to just hold down already low tax rates on the rich without addressing the real issues that are at stake in today’s economy. And all of this tax talk ignores the fact that neither side is doing what it needs to about addressing seriously the issues of income inequality, wage stagnation, and the forces that are crushing the American middle class. This is why I am not crying any salt tears about the plight of rich people working for Merrill Lynch or business owners who are too stupid to take advantage of incorporation rules that would lower their tax liability. And I am not afraid of the “cliff” except in how it will affect the stock market. The market of course will be affected, primarily because of the whining by people who actually have a lot to be thankful for.
AND TAX RATES WILL STILL BE THE LOWEST IN THE US IN 50 YEARS. The repeal of the Bush tax cuts will, however, restore much needed revenue to balance the budget.
That is something these morons crying about tax cuts conveniently forget.
The social costs of an austerity agenda — and, certainly, all the available evidence from those European countries wherein one was imposed — are profound. Whether you like it or not, there has been a general political consensus for the past eight odd decades that a social safety net is one of the legitimate products of that creative enterprise of self-government, that it is part of what we agree to when we form the political commonwealth. To have an austerity agenda imposed from above, and by a relatively unaccountable political elite, and because of the damage done to the nation’s finances by an absolutely unaccountable financial elite, is to make an obvious mockery of that political commonwealth, and to do so hard upon an election in which the existence of that safety net was so directly and democratically validated, is to spit in the eye of a self-governing people. This, in turn, will engage all the worst popular instincts, including ill-directed and abandoned popular wrath.-Charles Pierce.
Your ex-wife isn't stealing your money any more than a retired field grade is stealing money by working for the Feds. It is the way lobbyist that go through the revolving door works…passing laws for their constituents.
Grant,
There is a huge difference between the case of a retired field grade and my ex-wife. My ex-wife did nothing to earn the money. Not…..a…….goddamned…….thing. She does not deserve it, not one penny.
In the other case, the position is valued at a certain salary and benefits. It would be so regardless of whether there was a retired military person in the position.
Skippy,
My income may be at the low end of the charts, so I can expect an additional $2K in taxes next year, along with the local taxes that have increased as well as the rising costs. My point is, I didn't overspend and promise money to all sorts of special interests, so why am I stuck paying the bill? That's my whole point on this issue to me. I paid what I was supposed to pay, and tried to provide for myself and family by playing by the rules. So now why am I on tap to help bail out Detroit, and all the other Banker-gangsters and politicians who kept overspending.
Because basically, you are falling prey to the mis-information that what you are paying now is sufficient to run the government most Americans say they want. It's not-and besides tax rates were never supposed to have been this low, this long. Now if we wish to keep them this low-and balance the budget, then hard cuts will have to be made. And they will have to come from Defense as well as the rest of the budget. We will need to retrench overseas, cut our force structure and stop buying some really expensive things. Now that may not be the right thing to do-and if it is not, then we have to pay for the government we have. We need to honor promises made-and it takes money to do that. I am not keen on the extra 2 grand I am going to pay-but I am less keen on having to make the cuts my not paying the 2 grand will require. I want services.
Not so on retired field grades working for Feds. Not long ago RA officers lost 25% of their retired pay when they took a Fed job. AUSA and ROA lobbied for an elimination of this rule and got it. I remember all the FGs doing a victory dance in the O clubs in Korea when they revoked the rule. The rule was put in place after an investigation revealed that positions were being crated for retiring RA officers at agencies that they worked at. If you talk to a wife of a divorced service member, she thinks she worked for a share of retired pay over the years of marriage when she took care of the home and kids. When my wife and I divorced she saw it your way. We worked out the terms of the divorce without a man hating lawyer!
By the way, Tarrant County, TX lowered my property taxes t his year by $400 a year. We still have good schools, fire and police services that are responsive, and road improvements. They did raise utilities, and 911 fees so the cost is spread equally between home owners, businesses, and renters.
Yes I am familiar with the reduction-it never made any sense, and having that provisio, the government lost a lot of good talent, especially for positions like mine which requires a military background and a lot of experience. Nor did it stop the problem of people creating positions and retiring into them. That still goes on ( I just never figured out how to do it myself. 🙁 ). But that's a seperate problem that caould be solved by not cutting so many military billets and by letting the hiring process work the way it is supposed to.
As for the military wife's view of retirement-I will never accept. I provided for my ex while she was home taking care of the kids. She was not the one out there doing the hard work-she was just the one sitting on her ever expanding ass spending money and not bringing any in.