"[W]hile I have no sympathy with the idea that making the lower upper class return to Clinton-era tax rates is too hard on them, I think you could have some sympathy with the idea that your person earning $250,000 shouldn’t pay the same marginal rate as much as someone making $1.25 million or $6.25 million. Why not add additional marginal brackets?" ( http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2009/03/10/192079/mobilizi... )
I found this post via an old bookmark to some insightful commentary on it by Nate Silver: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/missing-1000000-tax-b...
The problem is, while these "new rich"--the "petty bourgeoisie," as Marx called them--are all too eager to declare themselves "not rich" for tax purposes, they are just as eager to see themselves as being like the rich. They see themselves as the truly productive class, the ones who really keep the economy going. It's ultimately for ideological reasons, moreso than pragmatic ones, that they end up opposed to redistribution (even in the face of increasingly sickening, 1920s-esque levels of inequality).
Recently, my dentist and dental hygienist tried to strike up a conversation with me after a routine cleaning. My dentist was just so dismayed that unemployment benefits were still being extended when the recession had "ended" years ago (which is true only in terms of GDP growth, not in terms of the effects on employment and income). But in response, the hygienist--who probably makes one-third what the dentist does, for doing three times the work--upped the ante, approvingly quoting her fiance's suggestion that "the unemployed shouldn't be able to vote until they find a job." Of course, the dentist was delighted by this proposal!
The point is, progressives have plenty to offer the petty bourgeoisie: more customers for their small businesses, via boosting aggregate demand; a better educated and healthier workforce "below" them, via treating education and health care as public goods--but what we could never offer is the feeling of saintly victimhood they get from libertarianism. Not only do they nurture this spirituality in themselves, they evangelize it to every promising young worker (e.g., the hygienist) who might someday join the fold.
At the end of the month, after taxes and FICA and health insurance and Medicare and retirement are withheld, and after paying for housing, food, transportation, insurance, utilities, sundry expenses, and student loans--there's not a whole lot of that $100K/12 left!
Raising taxes on $100K would be almost intolerable. I could probably part with a couple thousand more a year, but it would be difficult, and I have very little faith that they'll invest my money wisely....
Now imagine the household isn't one 20-something person, but two adults, closer to middle-aged, with a kid or two. 2.3 people per household in 2011 in SF.
You just proved my point.
What's your point?
Sounds like you're basically saying, I'm lucky to be making this much. Of course, I know that. Yes, I'm extremely fortunate, compared to someone making $25K or less.
I'm also lucky compared to a paraplegic or a quadriplegic person, or someone dying of cancer. So what?
My point is, $100K doesn't go as far as one would think, when supporting a family and living in a big city on the East Coast. It barely meets expenses, and designating this level of income as "wealthy" or "rich" is a ridiculously dated notion.
Then cut your expenses; don't live beyond your means. Isn't that the advice that's always being given to poor people? $100k puts you in the top quintile of the US population. It's definitely wealthy.
When you're a little older, and raising a family, you'll learn that $100K is just the average amount that reasonably affluent households are earning, typically based on two incomes, and it doesn't go very far. Sure, it's better than trying to raise 3 children on one $20K income with an absentee deadbeat dad not in the picture, but that's really comparing apples and oranges. We're talking about the definition of "rich" and "wealthy" here, which is really a different thing from affluent-versus-working-poor. If 90% of American households were earning $100K, that would be fantastic. But it's not the same thing as being rich.
> reasonably affluent households
> it's not the same thing as being rich.
Now you're just playing with semantics. "Wealthy", "affluent", and "rich" are all synonyms with subtly different connotations.
Statistically, if your family is making $100k/year, you have access to more money than the vast majority of American families.
> but that's really comparing apples and oranges
Yes, exactly! It's comparing wealthy people to not-wealthy people.
I get that the money doesn't buy as much as you might hope it would; it doesn't feel "rich" because you imagine "rich" to include luxurious vacations and a huge house or what-have-you. And it doesn't seem "rich" because you measure yourself against even-wealthier people in your social and professional orbit--and you discount not-rich families as "oranges" that are not comparable to your own "apples".
But in terms of raw numbers--not feelings--you're pretty well-off.
With that out of the way, though:
> after paying for housing, food, transportation, insurance, utilities, sundry expenses, and student loans--there's not a whole lot of that $100K/12 left!
That says, "after I spend all my money, I don't have any money left!" Is it really that there isn't enough money or is that your cost base is too high? Millionaires can go broke too, but it isn't because they're not rich.
So you take the entire US, and you pull these numbers out, and then you call one income "rich" and another income "poor" and if you're not displaced in location you don't feel it as that. The truly poor know who they are, and the truly rich know who they are, and the middle folks rarely do.
In Las Vegas where a new house is $150,000 and gas and food 10% - 15% less expensive, making $100,000 a year might feel pretty darn comfortable. Certainly you'd have some left over to save for a rainy day. But if you're spending $40K/year just on rent, another $20K/year on food and gas, well it doesn't feel like you have a lot of extra.
So the median income is a lot higher (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html) and that skews the feeling of rich / not rich.
Its unclear though which is cause and which is effect (if there even is a relationship). Did we start paying people more to work in California so the prices of everything went up? (the Mining Town paradox) Or did the rising prices force us to pay people more?
You're an ignorant idiot.
Hundreds of millions of your countrymen would give anything to be able to pay for the things you're paying for, and you have money left over!
Open your eyes man, millions of people are struggling to survive around you.
You summed up everything that's wrong in one little post.
You're obviously a liberal. Keep your hands off my money, redistributionist!
This is a better list (of liquid assets though and not income):
$1.6m – $3.2 million The comfortably poor
$5m – $6.5m The comfortably off
$8.2m – $24.6m The comfortably wealthy
$26.2m – $64m The lesser rich
$65.6m – $121.5m The comfortably rich
$123.1m – $162.5m The rich
$164.2m – $326.8m The seriously rich
$328.4m – $655.2m The truly rich
$656.8m – $1.64bn The filthy rich
Over $1.6bn The super rich