Posted on 06/18/2014 6:17:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“Congratulations, Joe! You’re rich!” John McCain said to Joe Wurzelbacher in the 2008 presidential campaign. Joe was thinking of buying a small plumbing business. He was dismayed to learn from Barack Obama that the candidate’s plan to raise marginal tax rates on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year was described as “taxing the rich.”
Mr. Wurzelbacher didn’t think he was rich, which makes him a lot like the rest of us. Only 5 percent of Americans describe themselves as “rich.”
While ideas about how much money it takes to be rich fluctuate depending on current income, most Americans agree with Joe (who happened to be in a one-income household); they think being rich means having a household income over $200,000 a year. And despite the equal opportunity promised in the American Dream, most people don’t think they’ll ever get there.
These data come from the survey research firm YouGov, which recently asked a representative sample of 1,000 Americans if they thought they would ever be rich. Nearly three-quarters of respondents to the survey said this was unlikely, while 20 percent thought it was at least somewhat likely.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Less and less likely, and if you do more and more will be robbed from you by the government. Gotta level the playing field level the scoreboard in good democrat/communist fashion.
I’m rich, and I’m on Social Security. Rich isn’t just about money...
“rich” is a relative term.
Thank you Captain Obvious.
I’m about as broke as anyone else, moneywise, but I too am rich.
I am “rich” compared to the truly poor of the world.
And “rich” in terms of non-material wealth.
One could probably GET rich after several years of an annual income of $200,000 - if he’s prudent with “his share” of it.
Spending his share renting money from banks (to buy stuff he doesn’t have money for) probably wouldn’t qualify as prudent.
Oh and add to that...
I have read articles where a vast majority of lottery winners say they wish they could go back in time and tear up the lottery ticket.
A window that owns a $500,000 home in Miami and is making 2.5% on savings of $2,000,000 only has an income of $50,000/year yet is obviously rich compared to a businessperson making $100,000/year but with debt from the business and a $1,500/month mortgage payment.
Rich is about what you own and not how much you make.
I totally agree with that. My problem with income tax is that they don't really take into account how many people the income is supporting, other than a few token deductions. So if I make 200,000 a year, but I have four kids and a wife, I'm supporting six people, but a couple with no kids and the same income is only supporting 2, so they would likely have much more expensive things than I could afford, and I might see them as "rich" simply because they have new stuff and everything I own has been repaired multiple times. Over time they will definitely accumulate more wealth then I will, but I'm the one who get's penalized more than they do with every tax increase, since it means cutting back on the money I spend on the family, whereas the couple making the same might have to make do with one less vacation each year or hold off on on buying that new sports car, boat, or house. How fair is that? Then they complain that people aren't having enough kids and we need to let in illegal aliens to fill the vacuum, instead of fixing the tax code to favor people having more kids.
A real "tax the rich" plan would tax based on assets, and maybe include taxing distributions from trust funds(or taxes on the interest earned by trust funds), but we'll never see such a tax because the people writing the tax laws are already rich and don't really want to "tax the rich"
Every time taxes are raised, they squeeze families more, and before you know it, you have to have two incomes to pay for what one income used to cover. So I think taxes on the "rich" are code words for taxes on families to force everyone into the workforce in order to support the government to keep funding the rich to get richer, and then they have the nerve to turn around and tell us we're not paying our fair share because some of their buddies aren't rich yet or they don't yet have that vacation home in the Hamptons and they need my family to work hard and sacrifice so they can have whatever they want.
“Rich” — someone who DARES to make more than whatever wealthy, ellitist liberal happens to be speaking at any given moment.
Yep. And most of the public still think rich == large income so there won't be any pressure from the public either.
You’re on the edge of learning why businesses lease vehicles.
Don’t encourage them or give them ideas.
We already have wealth taxes. The two biggest are property taxes and inflation.
If someone owns an expensive property but doesn’t have a large income, taxing their assets would force them to sell the property. Get enough people doing this at once and you will crash the housing market.
We need to stop the Government from spending so much money. That is the real answer.
Speaking personally,I could do just anything I wanted to on $200,000 a year because I am used to much,much less...but at the same time,I have no desire to trade places with the one making 200k/yr. They usually have more problems than meets the eye.
Agreed -- I really don't think anyone, even the "rich" should pay more taxes until the government learns to spend what they have wisely. My point was that the government doesn't really want to tax the rich. They want to tax the working and reward the lazy which basically makes us all serfs laboring to enrich the political class.
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