Propaganda

This post tries to make a family income of $250,000 appear "not-rich" so that you'll feel bad about increasing taxes on these poor families.[Fiscal Times - down and out on $250,000]

A few comments.

A family income of $250,000 puts them in the top 2% of US households. 98% of families make less than this.

These families make about 5 to 6 times the median household income in the US which is about $50,000 [Wikipedia]

Look over the expenses shown and think about how your family compares. A few stand out.

Saving $33,000 for retirement and $8,000 a year for college? That's 16% of pretax income. Is  your family saving that much? That $41,000 a year that this family is putting in the bank is what about half of the families in this country make in a year.

A 4,000$ vacation, $235 a month for eating out + $1,000 a month for food and household supplies. Over $300 a month for entertainment (out and at home), $300 a month for clothes. Over $400 a month for maintenance on the house plus another $400 a month for cleaning the house? $1,000 a month for baby sitting. 9000$ a year out of pocket medical expenses. Sure, these people are spending everything they make but they're living damn good.

But the thing that really pisses me off about this is,....

If we raised taxes on incomes over $250,000 a year by another 3%, it wouldn't affect these "poor" families one god-damned bit. They wouldn't pay any more taxes, not a penny more. The increase would only be on income over 250,000. Someone looked up all these numbers, wrote this article about these poor folk and forgot to mention that the tax increase that the President is calling for wouldn't even apply to these people. odd, eh?

Sure, if they made $300,000, the increase would cost them a little more,.. about $1,500 more. The poor bastards would have to get rid of their dog.

tnb