Raising Taxes

[Aphos]

The Wall Street Journal is unhappy about raising taxes.  It claims that the new tax levels will raise taxes on the poor.  As in these people here...(pay close attention to the listed income)...

[Lindorm]

Uhmmm... I seem to remember recently reading that the mean income in the USA was something on the lines of USD 49000 per year for the population as a whole, sinking to 32500 for african-americans.

Then again, nice to know what the Wall Street Journal considers to be poverty -especially on a global scale.

[Aggie]

 

That's what Americans pay in taxes?! No wonder the country is f*cking broke!

[Opsa]

That is totally twisted. Maybe that's how much average people make in New York, but that place is full of bigwigs, like Donald Trump. Mr. Ops makes somewhere in the 45K range.

Plus, they are not raising our taxes. What they are doing is talking away a tax holiday that we've had for years. It was meant to give people a temporary tax break. But now we have to pony up. Holiday's over. How else are we gonna pay off our debt?

[Lindorm]

Come on, Opsa, you can't very well expect the rich to pay any taxes -that's un-american and tantamount to Godless Communism, don't you know! The poor can and ought to pay their taxes, but certainly not the rich!

( He said, with not a little hint of disgusted sarcasm.)

[Opsa]

I saw that Lil' Irony  on you!

This is indeed a bizarro land.

[Aphos]

Well, I know I don't make a decent living on $650,000 per year.

Of course, I don't make anywhere NEAR $650,000 per year.  So I don't make any kind of living on it.  Not even an indecent one.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

If I had $650,000?  I would cheerfully retire and live on the interest of that amount, in an instant.

To me, that's more than 1/2 a mil-- and what I would call "quite wealthy".

... meh.  

20K/year is what I'd call poor, but not poverty-stricken.  I have lived on that in the past myself--it's possible if you are frugal.  

But even 20K is too high for anyone working minimum wage, or part-time or in the service (fast-food/wal-mart) industries.   The majority of folk working for McD's or Wally-world make so little, that they easily qualify for government food stamps-- in fact?  Wally-world's "human resources" routinely hand out "how to get food stamps" to their new hires.... no, seriously--they do that.  

... meh.

[Aggie]

As a single person, I lived quite comfortably this year while making $25K, and was able to save a little money. In fact, I hoped to make a little less than that (under $22K and I wouldn't have had to pay health care premiums).  I did think twice about how much I drove my truck, but otherwise pretty much did everything I wanted to do.

I will have to report back later how much tax I actually paid this year, and how that compares to the years when I was making significantly more.

[pieces o nine]

I was struck by the hopeless expressions on the faces in the illustration.
But then, I realized that must an amazing coincidence.   

In the US corporate culture, (at least the midwestern parts of it) there is an unspoken measure of minimum success: do you 'make your age'?   

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

"make your age?" .... meh.   

It's not always about money---yet, according to the various media carp, it is.   meh-meh.... (double-meh?)  ...

One of the nicer things about living where I do?   The cost of basic stuffs is ... cheap.    Even the local fast-food eateries charge less than the national average for the basic combo-meals (as compared to the West Coast, of which I have family that occasionally come visit, and are surprised how far their dollars can go, at eat-out places.... yet, they continue to vote republican time and again--failing to see the root-causes... sad, really...)

One of the things I used to point out, is that bread cost the same weather you are rich or poor;  but to a poor person, buying bread has to be budgeted as it was a major fraction of his/her weekly income.  But to a wealthy person, buying bread doesn't even have it's own entry on the budget-sheets... it's under "miscellaneous, general foodstuffs".... right after "miscellaneous, cake", naturally.

I suspect that people like Mitt Romney don't even know that bread comes in plastic bags, pre-sliced, and with a little wire or plastic thingy that holds the bag together, and that bread has an expire date on it, and that in most places, nearly 1/2 of all bread baked for consumer sales, is destroyed as being "stale" (even though it's not really).... and that the cost of destroying "day old" bread is figured into the price of fresh loaves-- were the business model to be adjusted to reduce this waste, the cost could be easily cut in 1/2 ...

... but years of pushing the sales of "fresh" bread has conditioned people to expect daily, fresh re-stocking (and removal of yesterday's "stale" bread from the shelves).

Meanwhile, people would gladly trade a finger (or three) for a couple of those "stale" loaves a week ...  but there's simply no reasonable way to get that product to them.  Is there?   So they starve.

... meh-meh-meh.

Sometimes, I'm reminded of that experiment with frogs:  most species of frogs have evolved to only eat live insects--and only live insects.  Their insect-detection systems (including vision) is not equipped to perceive non-live insects, and they will starve to death sitting on a pile of freshly-dead insects-- or even on a pile of insects who are simply stunned (and not dead at all).   More--they will happily try to eat a plastic bug attached to a thin stick, if the stick is waved in such a way that the plastic bug moves like a real bug does...

... in short, the frog is hampered by it's own limited view of the world.  To the point of starvation, even.

.... !!

Are not we humans equally limited, sometimes, by being slaves to our own false or incomplete perceptions? 

Indeed, I think we all-too-often, are. 

Just like the poor frog, we cannot truly perceive what is going on, without making sometimes severe changes to how we "see" the world.

*sigh* Okay, okay.... /end soapbox

[Opsa]

I agree with Pieces, it is just a stupifying piece of propaganda art.

I wonder why they didn't make the multi-child family black. It must have crossed their minds. Maybe they were afraid that no-one would feel sorry for a black family that made $650K a year.

The Ops family would live like kings on the retired couple's income, which is four times what we've been taking in. Wahoo, vacations and new cars! We'd love it.

Who came up with these totals?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I agree with Pieces, it is just a stupifying piece of propaganda art.

I wonder why they didn't make the multi-child family black. It must have crossed their minds. Maybe they were afraid that no-one would feel sorry for a black family that made $650K a year.

The Ops family would live like kings on the retired couple's income, which is four times what we've been taking in. Wahoo, vacations and new cars! We'd love it.

Who came up with these totals?

Well, if that couple were black?  They would feel obligated to list the income from selling illicit drugs...    ... and we can't have promoting the selling of illegal drugs in the Wall Street Journal, can we?  /end sarcasm

[Opsa]

More comments on this graphic can be found here.

[Swatopluk]

At the local baker yesterday's bread is sold cheaper. And it's factory made bread, not even baked on location, so the order must have come from higher up the chain of command.