It seems to come down to this: The Party of Herbert Hoover wants to use the current recession as a tool to break the backs of the working and middle classes. The Democratic Party wants to preserve the working and middle classes and if that means raising the taxes on the richest Americans, so be it.
What I have to laugh at, though, is the idiots who are saying "well, if the taxes go from 35% to 39%, I'll just make less than 250,000 and fuck them."
Fortunately, most people who make over $250,000 are either smart enough (or have accountants who are smart enough) to realize that is all bullshit.
Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that all income over $250,00, regardless of filing status, is now taxed at 35% and will be taxed at 39%. That is income over that amount; income less than that amount is not taxed as highly. If you make $500,000 a year, that entire $500,000 is not now taxed at 35%.
Here is how it works, and again, for the sake of discussion, I'm simplifying greatly (and I am ignoring all deductions and differences in filing status. Suffer.)
From the first dollar you take to the first $10,000, you pay 10%.
From $10,000 to $30,000, you pay 15%. Note that if you make $30,000 that year, you pay 15% on only $20,000 of that income.
And so it proceeds up the scale.
So if you make $500,000 a year, your taxes on the income over $250,000 are 35% of that, or $87,500. If that goes up to 39%, that would rise to $97,500.
Now let's assume that you follow the bilge of "hey, I'll cut my income to avoid paying 39% in taxes" and that you are making $500,00 a year. You give up $250,000 of income in order to not to pay $10,000 more in taxes; that means that you give up $152,500 in after tax income. You are throwing away $152,500 in cash from your pocket just so you can have the satisfaction of not paying income taxes on the $250,000.
This is where your family and your accountant smack you upside the head and let you know, in no uncertain terms, just how goddamned stupid you are.
And then, if you're stubborn enough to say "I don't give a fuck," then please be so kind as to send us a weather report from Planet Utopia, and please enjoy your stay on whatever locked ward you reside in.
Then we can get into the various people who make far less than $250,000 a year, the ones most at risk for losing their homes, savings and jobs if this recession drags on for many years, and who are so outraged by the proposal to raise taxes on the richest Americans. You may wonder why they are shedding such tears, but that's a topic for another day.
Paper Thin Empathy
1 hour ago
4 comments:
I had this thought yesterday, anent the comparisons/analogies between the post-'29 Depression and this one:
The characters in the current narrative are miscast.
Coolidge presided over the conditions which led to the '29 crash, which happened in the first year of Hoover's regime. Then FDR came along to save capitalism.
Bush presided over the conditions which led to the present crisis. Obama is in the Hoover slot, elected but essentially powerless to do.
so the next president, arguably, will hve to fill the FDR role...
I mean this as a strictly historical, not a personality or other kind of, comparison...
And let's not forget that only 2% of Americans make over $250K/year.
Yeah, the plight of that 2% is sure gonna resonate with the other 98% of Americans (smirk!).
- Badtux the Easily Amused Penguin
Don't forget about the part of the 98% demographic that has been effectively conditioned to believe that any taxes on business owners will immediately translate to the loss of their job. You can actually hear the fear in the voices of the people who call into the talk radio shows. Also, there are companies out there that are actually saying that they will cut jobs if their taxes go up.
Heavens, I also have to work with one of these poor souls.
Hilarious. Look. I've owned a business before. I didn't hire people because I was a charity. I hired people because I needed them in order to meet customer demand. I didn't hire any unnecessary people because (duh) that would have been LESS PROFIT for me. And profit's the name of the game if you're in business.
Any business that is being properly run already has the least number of employees on staff that they can get away with having. They aren't going to lay employees off because of a tax hike. They might take a hit to their profit because of a tax hike (if they can't pass the tax on to their customers), but they aren't going to lay employees off because they can't. If they lay employees off, they can't meet the customer demand. This notion of businesses as charities who have employees beyond the minimum needed to meet demand is just stupid, it totally ignores the reality of owning and running a business. But then, reality is something that Rethugs have little connection with anyhow, so ...
- Badtux the Business Penguin
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