<p>The dude who said this s delusional with this absurb statement.
Are you talking about India or China or Brazil ? Your grasp on reality is appalling.</p>
<p>Oh and btw the IRS is showing you taxable income figures. There are a lot of other things that contibute to standard of living.</p>
<p>evest1- what, you don’t think most of the nations population is in debt?</p>
<p>wow- if you are paying on a house, you are in debt, if you have a credit card balance, you are in debt, if you are paying on a car, you are in debt</p>
<p>and I know that ALL of my friends fall into that category of being in debt</p>
<p>our nation is also in debt to China, or didn’t you know that</p>
<p>how many people do YOU think are in debt? unless your parents own everything right now outright and owe no money on any credit card, store card, etc, they are in debt</p>
<p>Suprise, and hey most college students will be in debt, now thats a shocker</p>
<p>CGM, I believe the poster that said that meant people who can’t make ends meet, the way he was talking in post #58.</p>
<p>Edvest, did you deliberately take out the part that said “Because that’s the direction we’re headed” to distort what I said or was your attention span just too short to read the entire paragraph? I know these things are a little too complicated to fit on a bumper sticker, but if you try real hard you should be able to hold the entire concept in your mind at the same time.</p>
<p>Higherlead, what part of “Adjusted for inflation, the income at the 99th % of taxpayers increased by 72% in constant dollars. … At the 50th percentile there was no increase in real income at all” don’t you get? There’s no growth in income below the upper income sector - none. Over the past 30 years, inflation adjusted income has increased over time for the affluent. The more affluent, the higher the rate of increase. But at the 50th percentile income hasn’t gone up at all. Below the 50th percentile it has gone down. The rich are getting richer, the middle class is stagnating, and the poor are getting poorer - in absolute dollars, as well as in relative share of national wealth. The abrupt change in relative wealth is bad enough if it continues for a long time - that leads to socio-economic stratification and the breakdown of the middle class, which means that your simplistic analysis is poorly thought out on its own merits - but you haven’t even bothered to tie it to the actual economic facts.</p>
<p>And of course, a lot of things don’t count as taxable income: inherited and untaxed capital gains, residential real estate appreciation, municipal bonds, etc. Of course, it’s again the affluent who have the untaxed wealth building options, which means the IRS figures just understate the extent of the trend.</p>
<p>You guys aren’t going to hear this on Rush Limbaugh, or read it in your right wing blogs. It doesn’t advance the agenda, so you’re not supposed to know about it. It doesn’t fit your prepackaged sound bites, which probably explains why Yourworld had to make something up about my previous posts, so he could repeat one of his standard right wing blurbs instead of responding to what I had actually written.</p>
<p>And where do the earnings of my 401K figure in to your numbers and where do the staggering increase in real estate values figure in to your middle class is getting poorer because their taxable income is stagnant theory? </p>
<p>The economy IS changing but I (as a middle class representative) am not necessarily worse off because I have a big hunk of my income sheltered in a 401K along with an employer contribution instead of say a Teamster’s pension invested in a mob controled casino in Vegas. If I owned a house which I don’t I would really be in hog heaven with the appreciation in that investment really sheltered.</p>
<p>Thirty years ago Jimmy Carter was in the White House and we had the most abyssmal case of stagflation imaginable. Unemployment was high, wages low, and inflation was terrible. There is no way I personnally was better off. Heck I can remember getting a 10 cent an hour pay raise, insulting enough by itself that actually resulted in lower take home pay because it pushed me up a bracket.</p>
<p>Nope I am happy that George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Mark Cuban and all them other incredibly wealthy guys are getting richer and richer. I just wish they would find something better to do with their money than spend it on leftwing politics.</p>
<p>
Note to readers: Anyone whose BS detector wasn’t already pegged should have hit the stop with this one - a favorite of those prone to <cough> exaggeration. Income reaching a higher tax bracket only affects the marginal income - the income that exceed the bracket limit. It can never result in overall lower net pay. The increased tax rate only affects the income that is over the limit, not the part that is below it. So this event actually could not occur as described - which isn’t to say that Higherlead doesn’t actually remember it - just that it didn’t really happen.</cough></p>
<p>Like a lot of the staples of right wing mythology.</p>
<p>kluge obviously does not understand the withholding laws or never saw what happens to an end of year bonus. The withholding is based on the size of the check not total earnings for the year. My take home pay went down when my 10 cent an hour pay raise went in to effect. When your employer withholds he has to project that check as your weekly earning for the year.</p>
<p>kluge it is true that a lot of conservatives like Ronald Reagan occassionally confused myth with reality but it is the liberals who have a tendency to flat out lie as we have seen once more with the SCHIP debate with Harry Reid and the Frost family.</p>
<p>It must be fun to live in the not-Right alternate universe, where George Bush is an ace fighter pilot war hero, Saddam had nukes and is responsible for 9/11, Osama is in jail or doesn’t matter, the Democrats won the last election because the Republicans were insufficiently conservative, a US Senator just likes to keep public bathrooms tidy by picking toilet paper off the floor, the “middle” is “whatever I believe”, and accuracy and logic are not required in discussion.</p>
<p>As usual, Tom Tomorrow gets it right:
<a href=“http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/10/the_neocon_gameshow.html[/url]”>http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/10/the_neocon_gameshow.html</a></p>
<p>Anyway I’d rather discuss how the rump republics that will be left when the USA breaks up will fare after the breakup. Will Vermont change its name to the peoples republic where rich liberals fled after the screwed up New York with their kooky economics?</p>
<p>Higherlead, I’m sorry - I do understand withholding. It’s you who don’t understand how tax brackets work (and are comfortable repeating right wing myths because you generally don’t get challenged on them.) Your tax (and your withholding) on the pre-existing part of your income doesn’t go up when you get a raise which puts you in a new tax bracket. Only the tax rate on the extra pay does - but never by over 100%, which would have to happen for your story to be true. You still keep most of your pay, even in the highest brackets. Your takehome pay always goes up with a raise, unless something else happens to create some other deduction. There’s no such thing as a raise that results in lower net income - despite widespread stories about it happening.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t question your sincere belief that it happened - just the reality of what actually did happen.</p>
<p>Kluge, Isn’t it depressing to have to explain simple taxation?</p>
<p>“Your takehome pay always goes up with a raise”</p>
<p>Well kluge I can either belive you or my own lying eyes because I just called up my bonus check from last year and it is withheld at a much higher rate than my regular paycheck (because it is much bigger) I’ve also had to explain to my directs why their bonus checks were so severely raped by the tax man. </p>
<p>I may also be getting a little older but it is the short term memory that goes not the longterm and I am quit certain of the impact on my paycheck. Anyway I don’t want to distort your urban myth of the rapidly disappearing middle class which is daily being thrown into poverty and homelessness so let me keep mine :-)</p>
<p>BTW when you try to figure out if people are better or worse off what is the relationship between income and wealth? Can you be wealthy with a low income? Go ask Harry reid’s posterchild’s father. Can you have a high income and have little or no wealth - go ask the guy hitting the slots jackpot in Atlantic City. Is your income constant over a lifetime? What is the effect of increasing number of cohabiting adults on standard of living and number of tax returns filed? What is the affect on median family income? What are the effects of 20 million illegal aliens on wages and those tax returns you referenced?</p>
<p>padad - there is nothing simple about taxation in this country. Filling out a federal tax return is the only use I have ever found for calculus.</p>
<p>While money$$ is important, it isnt everything. </p>
<p>What does a Turn Toward The Middle - if it happens - means:</p>
<p>to our border (in)security, long term immigration policy, America’s competitiveness in the world in this new century - there’s no argument that American kids lagged far behind in math and sciences, legal/judiciary reform, school curriculums, health care reform…for starters.</p>
<p>Keep talking about $$$ if you like, but lets also hear about other equally important agendas.</p>
<p>“there’s no argument that American kids lagged far behind in math and sciences”</p>
<p>I would disagree with that. It may be true for kids as a whole but I think American kids who are good in science and math are likely more advance than those in other countries. The statistics that are out there mostly just compare all kids in an age group.</p>
<p>Kluge, even if your take home pay did somehow end up being less, there is no way the tax at the end of the year could have resulted in you have a smaller income after paying taxes. You must have gotten big rebate checks those years. You can always change the number of exemptions on your W-4 form if it’s somehow resulting in your overpaying your tax.</p>
<p>To poster of #75 who refuted American kids are lagging far behind in math and sciences, all the scholars, presidential candidates, editorial writers having been lying and the studies they recited are all lies ? We have no work to be done ?</p>
<p>Parents, do you agree with poster #75 ?</p>
<p>Edvest, I think you are arguing apples and oranges with Padad. The studies show that American students get lower average scores on standardized math tests, but that may be because a higher percentage of American students take them,including students who, in other countries, would not get that opportunity, thus artificially raising their averages and lowering ours comparably. I don’t know which is the truth, or if it lies somewhere in the middle.</p>
<p>Higherlead: I give up - you’re right. And to prove it, I think you should march in and demand a pay cut from your boss so you can increase your takehome!
P.S.: In Japan they wouldn’t let you take that math test…</p>
<p>higherlead: I just wanted to say that I’m a little bit appalled that you imply that Gates and Buffet’s donations are politically motivated. The Gates Foundation is doing more good (on a purely non-partisan basis) for the poorest, most downtrodden people in the world than any other organization ever. And it’s doing it more efficiently than any other charity ever has. Give the political rhetorics a break.</p>
<p>My comments were not directed againts the Gates Foundation. I merely noted that most extremely rich people lean Left. Conservatism is a value of the middle classes.</p>
<p>But as long as we are on the subject the large foundations (tax free and directed by tiny self-perpetuating boards) have immense influence over public policy and essentially set the agenda for public discourse. They ought to be highly regulated with perhaps a percentage of publicly appointed or elected board members.</p>