Please define rich (with a poll)

[BoberFett]

I live in the most expensive city in the USA and 100k is a lot. Only person I can think of who makes even close is a programmer 20+ years in his job. You guys are in a fantasy world.

To me he is filthy rich, he has a brand new black Porsche, flies all over the world and has "that" much money where he can write everything off unlike the rest of us. So yes, when you have enough where you can pretty much not have to pay for stuff because you "have" money, your rich.

He is not a bad guy at all, but you can tell really, it is not a bank account thing, it is what money does to a person that makes him "rich". People change when it happens.

Please explain how making 100K/yr means you can just magically "write things off."

This should be good.

 

[Steeplerot]

I make more than 100K, live in a $175K home, have two kids and drive a 2005 Impala. I could never afford to live as you describe. If he's really living that way he's making a hell of a lot more than you think or he lives off of credit.

I am sure he has good credit, his house in downtown SF is paid off.

He is a very good businessperson (paid said house off in 12 years).

As I said, he has the money, so he is not one of "us" anymore although he still works.

 

[Steeplerot]

Please explain how making 100K/yr means you can just magically "write things off."

This should be good.

Simple, set yourself up as a "small business" even though you are rich and you are a protected class with no need really to work or contribute. (unless for some reason you think you need MORE money.) We all know this is how it works, this is why being wanna-be rich is so popular.

If you have capital there is no need for productivity, you are one of the protected parasite capitalist class. God bless USA.

There are two types of rich people:
1. Inheritors
2. Those who know how to not spend money.

 

[PrinceofWands]

I make more than 100K, live in a $175K home, have two kids and drive a 2005 Impala. I could never afford to live as you describe. If he's really living that way he's making a hell of a lot more than you think or he lives off of credit.

I had a wife, and still have a daughter. I've never made more than $30,000 in my life, and only made that a few years. I've traveled some of the world, nearly all of America, had a newer car (when I was still driving), always had all the toys and luxuries at home, went to big events every year like concerts and conventions, etc. I also didn't ever really use credit...I paid cash for everything, even all but one of my cars, and even that one I only financed a small portion of it because it was an emergency.

It's VERY easy to live on it, at least in most areas. If you live somewhere that much more expensive, well, then you've made a choice.

 

[lothar]

Effectively what I want to know is at what point of income for one year should someone be taxed in the upper most tax bracket.

I'm just curious what everyone considers rich.

There is a very popular thread here about "the angry rich" and I always find it curious to see what that point is where you are "rich".

Are you talking about single or household?

Obama believes that a married couple earning $250,001 is rich.
He also believes that a single person earning $199,999 is middle class.

 

[SamurAchzar]

If you have capital there is no need for productivity, you are one of the protected parasite capitalist class. God bless USA.

There are two types of rich people:
1. Inheritors
2. Those who know how to not spend money.

Gee, lets take a case study for that. Let's pick up... hmm, Larry Ellison!

Let's see if he fits all your criteria:

* Parasitic capitalist class with no productivity - Well not really, having founded Oracle and made it a cornerstone for a way businesses work. Even communist sweatshops have production management done on SQL.

* Inheritor - no, actually he came from a pretty modest background.

* Not spending money - well the guy runs yacht races, has a business jet and donates tens of millions of dollars.

100k isn't anywhere CLOSE to being rich. It's middle class. 500k/year buys you lots of freedom but you're still not rich.

Luxury goods companies target what they call "UHNWI", or Ultra High Net Worth Individuals. These are the guys that have upwards of $30m.
This is "rich". I don't think it's fair to tax the guy who makes $500k/year as a working, independent contractor just like you'd tax one of these guys.

Basically, you can't tax the rich. You can't do it because at a certain level they begin acting like mini-corporates, with accountants and assets management companies and trustees, which is not done just for taxation purposes but for other, legitimate reasons as well. Taxing them would severely affect the economical activities of business entities in a way that won't do much good for the economy.

You can go after the little guys, the ones still working as regular, but well-paid, employees or contractors. But there's not much social justice in that, and I'm not sure there's so much money either.

 

[BoberFett]

Simple, set yourself up as a "small business" even though you are rich and you are a protected class with no need really to work or contribute. (unless for some reason you think you need MORE money.) We all know this is how it works, this is why being wanna-be rich is so popular.

If you have capital there is no need for productivity, you are one of the protected parasite capitalist class. God bless USA.

There are two types of rich people:
1. Inheritors
2. Those who know how to not spend money.

You don't have a clue what you're talking about, do you? Just parroting left wing talking points about all these make believe tax breaks?

 

[Acanthus]

Are you talking about single or household?

Obama believes that a married couple earning $250,001 is rich.
He also believes that a single person earning $199,999 is middle class.

A married couple will have a lower taxable income than a single person. Especially if they have kids.

Apples to oranges.

 

[Engineer]

I make more than 100K, live in a $175K home, have two kids and drive a 2005 Impala. I could never afford to live as you describe. If he's really living that way he's making a hell of a lot more than you think or he lives off of credit.

I don't make as much as you (but have in the past (not currently counting the wife's income)), have two kids and drive a 2003 Dodge Intrepid. I have ZERO debt and can't come close to being able to afford that stuff, even when I was making quite a bit more (with overtime) than that.

I live a comfortable (some would call it "lazy greedy") lifestyle but am in no way rich. I'm able to place 20% of my income toward retirement and probably another 10% towards savings/education funds for kids/etc. but that's only because I spent every available dime of my overtime (years ago) paying off debt not to mention that I don't try to live a lifestyle listed above (buying all kinds of fancy shit).

$100K is not rich. Well off (in certain parts of the country) but certainly not rich.

And for the record, I voted for $500K (for a single person) as "rich" but again, as others have said, rich has more meaning than just income levels. I understand this but picked $500K as a "general" starting point.

 

[lothar]

A married couple will have a lower taxable income than a single person. Especially if they have kids.

Apples to oranges.

Because people living single cannot adopt kids to lower their taxable own income?

 

[Zebo]

What difference does it make? We tax all dollars the same for everyone with a sliding progression.

Rich? I would be rich living in a single wide on 50 acres on a pond with 20K unfortunately people I live with have other plans, expensive plans.

 

[ebaycj]

Effectively what I want to know is at what point of income for one year should someone be taxed in the upper most tax bracket.

I'm just curious what everyone considers rich.

There is a very popular thread here about "the angry rich" and I always find it curious to see what that point is where you are "rich".

Here are the brackets I'd propose:

---- top rate ----
50.00% - 50.0M+
48.00% - 25.0M+
46.00% - 10.0M+
44.00% - 5.0M+
42.00% - 2.5M+
---- divider ----
40.00% - 1.0M+
30.00% - 500k+
25.00% - 250k+
20.00% - 100k+
15.00% - 50k+
10.00% - 25k+
05.00% - 10K+
02.50% - 5K+
01.25% - 2.5K+
00.75% - 1K+
00.00% - 0+
---- bottom rate ----

Above the divider, you no longer get any deductions of any kind, as you have made more in one year than the average american makes in his life.

 

[Anarchist420]

I would say somewhere between 1 and 5m, and probably closer to 1m, but I picked 5m without thinking. With the income tax in place, I'd say the top tax bracket should start at about 1.5-1.8m, and be 24.5%. That's what it was in the roaring 20s adjusted for 2010 USD.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I think we've all been tricked into thinking that someone who has a nice house in a subdivision and cars less than a year old and a big boat is rich. They bring home $200-$500k/year and they're rich. But you know what? If you only make $200-$500k/year you're still working for someone else. And those are the RICH people. The people who make millions a year, the ones who have even our upper middle/middle class people fighting one another to decide the variance between who is rich and who is poor but don't really realize that everything they have can be taken away at the whim of the truly RICH.

OP, the answer to your poll is probably $1M+ (maybe even $5M) in my opinion. Everything else is just a variance of the middle class. If you aren't in the class controlling the strings and you aren't at the bottom living in the streets then you are somewhere in the middle.

So really what we're talking about here is 'What do you consider to be RICH... for the middle class?'

 

[JD50]

I think steeplerot is actually cosmo kramer. "They just write it off!"

 

[Fear No Evil]

Since everyone is in favor of taxing the rich more.. why doesn't the left run on that platform?

 

[SamurAchzar]

It's very easy to target the rich. They don't have a wide electoral base, and no political appeal whatsoever. The question is, as a public, how far will you go to rob the minorities?

There should be flat taxation for all, together with special programs for relief to the lowest income brackets. Simple, effective and fair. If you try to milk too much from the rich cow, it'll no longer give you milk. Proposing 50% tax on "$50m" is ridiculous - you really think someone takes home a payment slip of $50m? Such compensation packages have many different aspects which are taxed differently. The base salary of such people is usally few hundred K's, rarely few millions a year, but certainly not more.

 

[Engineer]

It's very easy to target the rich. They don't have a wide electoral base, and no political appeal whatsoever. The question is, as a public, how far will you go to rob the minorities?

There should be flat taxation for all, together with special programs for relief to the lowest income brackets. Simple, effective and fair. If you try to milk too much from the rich cow, it'll no longer give you milk. Proposing 50% tax on "$50m" is ridiculous - you really think someone takes home a payment slip of $50m? Such compensation packages have many different aspects which are taxed differently. The base salary of such people is usally few hundred K's, rarely few millions a year, but certainly not more.

Would seem since the 60's the only people getting a tax hike are the middle class. The rich and poor alike have had their taxes cut (significantly for the rich with the exception of the top 20% (top %'s above that have had big, big cuts)) since then. Not saying that they should have their taxes raised to 50% but people thinking that the rich are getting kicked "more and more" when their rates are going down faster than anyone else....just saying. Graph ends in 04 but the rates are not significantly different now (except maybe lower for the poor with Obama's cut when he came to office).

 

[SamurAchzar]

Look at the text below the graphs - it includes corporate taxes too, which of course apply to the rich more than to the poor. Even so, with the graph it still looks like there's a reasonable spread of the tax burden.

 

[Engineer]

Look at the text below the graphs - it includes corporate taxes too, which of course apply to the rich more than to the poor. Even so, with the graph it still looks like there's a reasonable spread of the tax burden.

The point was that everyone seems to think that the rich and paying more and more and more % of their incomes as taxes, when in reality, their rates have come down over the last 5 decades. The middle are actually going up (from what I can tell).

As for wages, guess who's wages have went up and who's wages have stagnated (after inflation for both) over that same time?

 

[RabidMongoose]

I live in the most expensive city in the USA and 100k is a lot. Only person I can think of who makes even close is a programmer 20+ years in his job. You guys are in a fantasy world.

To me he is filthy rich, he has a brand new black Porsche, flies all over the world and has "that" much money where he can write everything off unlike the rest of us. So yes, when you have enough where you can pretty much not have to pay for stuff because you "have" money, your rich.

He is not a bad guy at all, but you can tell really, it is not a bank account thing, it is what money does to a person that makes him "rich". People change when it happens.

$100k is nothing in the SF Bay Area. I know tons of people who earn more than $100k, including myself, and we're certainly not rich, let alone filthy rich...especially when living in SF itself.

Your friend must be selling drugs on the side.

But if your friend has no student loans, no mortgage, etc. then I assume that he looks a lot richer to you than the average person who earns $100k.

 

[child of wonder]

$500,000/year is "rich" to me. $250,000 is "upper class" but not "rich."

I define rich as being able to easily afford items in one month that the common consumer must save for at least 1 year to purchase.

$500,000 per year is $22,000 take home pay each month in Minnesota. Even with a $4,000 mortgage, $1,000 in car payments, etc. there is still over $15,000 per month in disposable income. One could easily live on $5,000 per month for food, entertainment, gas, etc. and still have $10,000 left to save.

An "average" middle class family would need about a year to have $10,000 to spend on "whatever."

 

[Jaskalas]

$100k is nothing in the SF Bay Area. I know tons of people who earn more than $100k, including myself, and we're certainly not rich, let alone filthy rich...especially when living in SF itself.

Your friend must be selling drugs on the side.

But if your friend has no student loans, no mortgage, etc. then I assume that he looks a lot richer to you than the average person who earns $100k.

Mortgage alone on a 350k house would be 1/3rd of the income. After taxes you'll have, what, 30k left to live off of to be "filthy rich". Hope you don't need medical.

 

[BoberFett]

I think steeplerot is actually cosmo kramer. "They just write it off!"

LOL, exactly.

 

[Tom]

Having grown up around plenty of wealthy people, it has been my experience that the majority of them are very generous. The left likes to associate them with the few bad apples so that they can demonize them all and justify their punishment through higher taxes. I'm sure jealousy also plays a role in some way.

Democrats don't want higher taxes to punish anyone, it's the only responsible alternative to massive deficits.

The argument to cut government spending instead isn't good enough, we need to both.

I think we Democrats should propose spending cuts over time, that match the tax increase on higher income levels, to show the seriousness of the situation.