FranchiseBlade you sir a moron before I go. You know damn well I live in Houston, I was just referencing for Sam what real apartments in NYC cost. FranchiseBlade,Major, and Insane_Man are some of the msot ignorant people I've ever met. If you had rela money like me, you would be fighting to keep every cent too. O well enjoy my money and the $25/week extra you get. Adios ClutchFans!!!!
Oh, how do you manage to spend $1k/mo on AC in summer? It doesn't sound like you live in a big apartment in NY. Do you intentionally leave the windows open?
sure - if you incorporate a massive amount of fixed costs so that the job is right near the margin, a small marginal increase will make it go from black to red - that's math trick though, you're trying to build in a fiction that the tiny additional marginal cost is more "important" than the far greater fixed costs that you have loaded it up with in the beginning. I'd still like to see how 3 cents/dollar in extra marginal costs does this. Let's take your example about the 10k/3k. Assume that you are in top rate territory. That means that, for your wife to have an increase in her taxes of 3k, she's have to be making 100k. So instead of taking home 64,000, it drops to 61,000. YOu claim her net income is 10k. That leaves her with fixed costs of 54k - let's take out $$ for parking and commuting (she would need a car if she stayed home) - let's say $4000, and that's being generous That still leaves us almost 50,000 that you are unloading on Daycare - you're telling me that you are forking over $25,000 per child for day care? Either you have the world's greatest nanny or you are going to luxury day care centers (according to the interwebs, the average cost of daycare in NYC is $12,000 per child). (edited: I originally had $9000 but that's the state average not the city average) Your scenario seems very very unlikely. The fixed costs that somebody would have to be running in this situation are very very high - it would be far more economical to limit them than to stop working. MInd you, you're not going from black to red either, you're just going from plus 10k to plus 7k Essentially, you're saying the net income of $7000 instead of $10,000 would be the dispositive factor in your wife working - really? That's how much the trade off of being a stay at home mother towards having a career is worth ? Sounds very unilikely to me, I doubt it would be the kicker.
I do OK with my monopoly money. I'm in good company apparently. I know you live in H-town. You said that you did live in NY though. You can keep you're real money. I'm curious though. If you have so much real money, surely it can't be too bad for you to pay a little more in taxes. Adios.
You poor poor baby. ????? I know plenty of people who make far more than $400K a year, and I bet many on this site does....there's a lot of rich people out there. But please, they don't act like you do - even for the many that are republicans. There's nothing wrong with being a Republican...there is something wrong with crying about cleaning your pool when people of more modest means are genuinely hurting.
For starters, you forgot the 5% ma state income tax, 6% payroll tax. Not to get into too much details, childcare cost around Boston for 15k-20k a year is very common. How is this scenario unlikely, as my wife have already quit her job, before Obama was even elected. She was already paying close to half of her salary in taxes (35% + 11%), and daycare/work related expense take most of the rest. Staying home with the kids was a easy choice.
I'm aware of extra taxes but I took them out for simplicity's sake...on the other side I did not include AMT relief which is included in the Obama plan (which directly correlates with the higher state and local taxes). Yeah but you need it to be way, way higher than that to reach your "10k/3k" scenario. YOu need it to be $50,000. If it was only $40,000, using your high estimate, in that case your wife would net out 20k per year pre-Obama, which would drop to 17k in 2011 - that's not enough for her to continue working? I just question why 20k is enough but 17k is not for somebody who doesn't obviously need to work to make ends meet, being part of 300k+ household, and is just building up savings - it makes no sense to me. But anyway, my main contention for why the scenario is unlikely is that the marginal increase is very small in pure $$$ terms. If we halve your wife's income to a number more in line with the median salary ( I don't know what it is) , it's only a $1500 increase due to the expiration of the Bush Tax cuts in 2011 - if we halve that to a part time position (where your childcare costs also halve and her net increases), it's only $750. You're saying that with an income level in the low to mid six figures, these very small marginal increases is going to make a lot of people give up working entirely? Again - unlikely - you're assuming a lot of people are right on the line - I just don't see people with large combined net incomes throwing in the towel over $50 a month. This all boils down to the point that is made at the beginning of the thread - it's a MARGINAL rate increase (it's not even an increase, it's an expiration of a previously existing cut), and a very small one at that - its impact accordingly will be small except for a tiny number of very marginal situations. All perfectly logical.
I wish that my life was defined by my (imaginary) bank account like the idiot backup center from Croatia. Then I would be happy all the time!!
All this argument is ridiculous. The people from the article in the op are idiots the people that wrote the article are idiots. The problem is not this increase. The problem is increase. One third of a persons income is enough. People want to argue that it's ok because it doesn't represent a big portion overall or "they can afford it". B.S. one third is enough and more than should be taken from anyone. 3% here or 3% there, it has nothing to do with 3% or helping or not helping it has to do with where does it stop? Everything I own, do, buy, read, rent, , consume, use, make is taxed. We are taxed enough. Arguing over whether or not a little more hurts someone or not is just beyond silly. We are taxed enough.
Yes this is an attractive general argument in the talk radio circuit, but it's just a bunch of sloganeering and doesn't really address real world issues and problems. It would be nice if nobody paid taxes at all but this is the system we have, and have had for a century or so. I'm trying to figure out the real world consequences of a specific policy - as the examples I've gone over show, the impact is pretty neglible despite the claims of basso and zantabak (false) and deepblue (relying on some questionable assumptions regarding marginal preferences.)
Heat of the moment? You strike me as a charlatan and a story teller, not someone who could survive on Wall Street. If you really had lived in New York you would be much better at lying, this was a weak attempt at best.
The real world consequences are negligible on a per instance basis. Agreed. Our government is full of greedy self serving liars who get paid by lining the pockets of their pet special interest groups. The government is corrupt and ineffective as proven by the current economic crisis that I fully believe they created with legislation they wrote. Right, Left whatever they passed the laws that created this. They haven't proven themselves responsible enough to handle the money they already take and they won't do any better with more. My family is doing the best it can to suck it up and get through this dark period in American history and it sickens me that the same government that caused this crap wants me to give them more so they can waste more.
In income tax, probably no change. But there are other taxes on the horizon that will increase the tax burden for my family. Carbon footprint taxes?WTF? It is irrelevant on a per instance basis though. The reality is the government takes enough money but can't use it efficiently enough to get things done. I've seen the same thing in the energy industry, when oil or gas is up they have tons of profit and spend like crazy and waste tons of money. When the price is down though they learn to get things done efficiently because they have to. This doesn't happen with our government though, they waste in good times or bad.
