the HENRY class - High Earners, Not Rich Yet

[IndyColtsFan]

She's not on this forum but I posted

:thumbsup:

 

[Throckmorton]

BTW blanghorst, I think you missed my original point. The HENRYs are successful in part because they live in this country. From public education to infrastructure to a good legal system, the strong first world government that we pay for is what facilitates capitalism. I bet the guy who grew up on his grandparents' farm went to public school, not to mention all the other public services he has most likely made use of. Hell, I'd be his grandparents benefitted from the Farm Bill either directly or indirectly.

The equivalent would be saying that the poor are poor because they live in this country.

 

[spidey07]

BTW blanghorst, I think you missed my original point. The HENRYs are successful in part because they live in this country. From public education to infrastructure to a good legal system, the strong first world government that we pay for is what facilitates capitalism. I bet the guy who grew up on his grandparents' farm went to public school, not to mention all the other public services he has most likely made use of.

The equivalent would be saying that the poor are poor because they live in this country.

LOL! How ironic. You equate private school, provided by private citizens is somehow a blessing from the government.

Poor people are poor because of their decisions, successful people are successful because of their decisions as well. This is the only reason why poor people stay poor and "rich" people stay rich.

 

[Throckmorton]

LOL! How ironic. You equate private school, provided by private citizens is somehow a blessing from the government.

I said PUBLIC school, you know, the taxpayer funded welfare schools that most HENRYs probably went to, and without which this country's entire capitalist economy wouldn't function.

Poor people are poor because of their decisions, successful people are successful because of their decisions as well. This is the only reason why poor people stay poor and "rich" people stay rich.

That's nice little convenient myth isn't it? Nevermind all the people who make all the right decisions, work hard, and stay poor. Nevermind the idiots who are rich because they grew up rich and have the right connections. Nope, in your world, the rich are rich because they made the right decisions, and the poor are poor because they didn't. If everyone made the right decisions, everyone would be rich right?

Maybe you should build a time machine to go back and tell AHenry's grandparents that if they had made the right decisions they'd have indoor plumbing.

 

[AHenry]

what's your other account name, or how did you come across this thread?

i'm not a HENRY but i feel exactly the way you do.

I don't have another account name. I ran across the thread through a google search. There are a lot of people who agree with my post. Search around and read the blogs and forums.

Most of our liberal/progressive/tax-them-to-hell friends don't get the point. If the marginal rates are raised above the point where there is no incentive to make additional dollars, tax revenues will actually fall not rise. When that happens and HENRYs like me decide to take the option of paying less in taxes by moving offshore, retiring, opening up a small business, etc. there will be fewer tax dollars collected.

When the HENRYs don't pay as much in taxes, those sucking off the left hind teat of the government will be in a pickle.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Poor people are poor because of their decisions, successful people are successful because of their decisions as well. This is the only reason why poor people stay poor and "rich" people stay rich.

To be fair, luck and "who you know" plays a big part in your success as well. I've known many people that were "successful" in terms of income, etc, but they were complete and utter incompetents. They had the fortune of 1) being in the right place at the right time (VERY important) and you have to be smart enough to capitalize and 2) most importantly in their cases, they kissed ass and schmoozed the right people at the top. Particularly with #2, I never thought that would actually work, but I saw too many people advance due to their superior ass kissing skills, not job performance.

I worked very hard and saw these kinds of things happen all the time. So, I decided to enjoy life and drop out of the rat race. If I want to "advance" or "make it big," I'll do it on my own terms and with some dignity. I have nothing to prove to anyone -- I am educated (almost have my MSEE), smart, and I have always done well at any job given to me. It just isn't worth the stress to work super long hours or kiss ass hoping you will get ahead.

 

[AHenry]

I said PUBLIC school, you know, the taxpayer funded welfare schools that most HENRYs probably went to, and without which this country's entire capitalist economy wouldn't function.



That's nice little convenient myth isn't it? Nevermind all the people who make all the right decisions, work hard, and stay poor. Nevermind the idiots who are rich because they grew up rich and have the right connections. Nope, in your world, the rich are rich because they made the right decisions, and the poor are poor because they didn't. If everyone made the right decisions, everyone would be rich right?

While nothing is absolute, most of us are a product of the choices we make. I'm a firm believer in equal opportunity but not in guarenteed equal outcomes. I was poor. I was dirt poor. I lived on my grandparents farm as a kid because my mother worked all day in a plastics factory and part time at night as an auxiliary police woman. My grandparents didn't get past 8th grade and my step father finished his GED when he was 30. My parents struggled to provide me the $3/week for hot lunches at school.

I made the right decisions. I worked hard. I succeeded. Everyone else has at least the same opportunity as I did. I don't owe other people the money I earn.

 

[Throckmorton]

While nothing is absolute, most of us are a product of the choices we make. I'm a firm believer in equal opportunity but not in guarenteed equal outcomes. I was poor. I was dirt poor. I lived on my grandparents farm as a kid because my mother worked all day in a plastics factory and part time at night as an auxiliary police woman. My grandparents didn't get past 8th grade and my step father finished his GED when he was 30. My parents struggled to provide me the $3/week for hot lunches at school.

I made the right decisions. I worked hard. I succeeded. Everyone else has at least the same opportunity as I did. I don't owe other people the money I earn.

What tax rates did your grandparents and your parents pay? Since they made decisions to not get the level of education you did, does that mean they shouldn't have gotten a break from the progressive tax system? Should you not have gotten the taxpayer subsidized food at your taxpayer funded public school?

Or do you apply a different standard of success and entitlement to your family?

It seems to me that even though you got out of poverty thanks to the infrastructure we have as a developed country with an active government, you don't want others to benefit in the same way.

 

[DanDaManJC]

I'm guessing that you won't get much sympathy around here for anyone that falls into this HENRY/HENRI category -- too many posters here believe that anyone earning that much is evul and more privileged than necessary. The fact that they earned it through extensive and difficult educations, and extremely hard work, won't matter one bit. To many of our resident morons, $250k/yr is just the same as $250 million.

The envy around here is too great to tolerate such success.

Bet?

it's not envy... it's sound economic theory to have progressive taxation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax

lists several pros and cons. both sides have good points.

i dont care if you dont agree with with one point or another, but that comment is just so bland and partisan it's ridiculous.

 

[Jhhnn]

I offered the whole thing as ridicule of the usual evasions by our usual rightie tightie contributors, blanghorst. People apply for out of state jobs all the time, trust me. And they'll move, if they can, but lots of young couples are now in financial lockdown because they're upside down on their mortgages, or they have elderly family to care for, because they won't be able to have visitations with their children who live with their divorced mothers, so forth and so on.

So if I don't have a lot of sympathy for Henry's who are still working, still knocking down what most middle class people would consider dream wages, you'll understand, right?

What would I suggest we do? I'd suggest that if american capitalists aren't creating jobs thru investment in America, the the Govt needs to do it, kinda like the WPA in the 30's, and I'd suggest that we also need to pay for that, so we need to raise taxes, starting at the top, in order to do so. If we keep going in the current direction, the one that's the reality of reaganomics, we'll end up back at the point where everybody pays taxes just to support the lifestyles of the aristocracy in the form of govt debt maintenance. Yeh, sure, they described it in different terms back in the middle ages, but that doesn't mean it's actually different, or that all this don't tax and spend like crazy doubletalk from the repub leadership hasn't been geared to accomplish exactly that. We're dealing with some of the sharpest and most ruthless financial minds on the planet, after all, so this isn't exactly an accident, any more than the mortgage securitization game was an accident, either.

 

[AHenry]

What tax rates did your grandparents and your parents pay? Since they made decisions to not get the level of education you did, does that mean they shouldn't have gotten a break from the progressive tax system? Should you not have gotten the taxpayer subsidized food at your taxpayer funded public school?

Or do you apply a different standard of success and entitlement to your family?

It seems to me that even though you got out of poverty thanks to the infrastructure we have as a developed country with an active government, you don't want others to benefit in the same way.

As you might imagine, I've got a few years on me now (borrowed from a country music tune) and frankly I don't know what tax rates my parents or grandparents paid then. I can imagine that my grandparents didn't pay any income taxes; they didn't have any income.

I think you are missing the point or maybe pushing the issue too far to the right to make your point. I don't mind paying a fair tax rate. We need good public schools and we need fire and police protection. We need the federal government to provide for national security and to provide for those who truly can't provide for themselves.

The problem is that we have moved far to the left with the "nanny state" concept and our current administration believes we need to yet go further by "spreading the wealth around" (remember Joe the plumber). This is far from equal opportunity and is attempting to engineer equal outcomes. If we allow this to happen it will be the ruin of our great country.

 

[AHenry]

I offered the whole thing as ridicule of the usual evasions by our usual rightie tightie contributors, blanghorst. People apply for out of state jobs all the time, trust me. And they'll move, if they can, but lots of young couples are now in financial lockdown because they're upside down on their mortgages, or they have elderly family to care for, because they won't be able to have visitations with their children who live with their divorced mothers, so forth and so on.

So if I don't have a lot of sympathy for Henry's who are still working, still knocking down what most middle class people would consider dream wages, you'll understand, right?

What would I suggest we do? I'd suggest that if american capitalists aren't creating jobs thru investment in America, the the Govt needs to do it, kinda like the WPA in the 30's, and I'd suggest that we also need to pay for that, so we need to raise taxes, starting at the top, in order to do so. If we keep going in the current direction, the one that's the reality of reaganomics, we'll end up back at the point where everybody pays taxes just to support the lifestyles of the aristocracy in the form of govt debt maintenance. Yeh, sure, they described it in different terms back in the middle ages, but that doesn't mean it's actually different, or that all this don't tax and spend like crazy doubletalk from the repub leadership hasn't been geared to accomplish exactly that. We're dealing with some of the sharpest and most ruthless financial minds on the planet, after all, so this isn't exactly an accident, any more than the mortgage securitization game was an accident, either.

I can only hope that you and others like you actually get an education some day. God help us.

 

[Throckmorton]

As you might imagine, I've got a few years on me now (borrowed from a country music tune) and frankly I don't know what tax rates my parents or grandparents paid then. I can imagine that my grandparents didn't pay any income taxes; they didn't have any income.

I think you are missing the point or maybe pushing the issue too far to the right to make your point. I don't mind paying a fair tax rate. We need good public schools and we need fire and police protection. We need the federal government to provide for national security and to provide for those who truly can't provide for themselves.

The problem is that we have moved far to the left with the "nanny state" concept and our current administration believes we need to yet go further by "spreading the wealth around" (remember Joe the plumber). This is far from equal opportunity and is attempting to engineer equal outcomes. If we allow this to happen it will be the ruin of our great country.

I do remember Joe the Plumber, mainly him and everything that came from his mouth being farce. Remember how he claimed his taxes would go up despite the opposite being true? Remember how he claimed small businesses would be taxed more despite the opposite being true? The right wing is all about "newspeak".

Spreading the wealth around is a popular Obama gaffe among the right wing pundits, but he was talking about spreading the wealth around in contrast to the wealth concentration we experienced under Bush. He didn't say anything about spreading the wealth around with welfare.

 

[Jhhnn]

I can only hope that you and others like you actually get an education some day. God help us.

Thanks for the ad hom- it's the last refuge of the argumentatively challenged.

If you're anywhere near as old as I am, then the America you grew up in had a great deal of economic and social engineering, geared towards creating equality of opportunity, something that simply can't exist in a society that has a third world distribution of income and wealth.

It was the era of the New Deal, born from the collapse of the economic system of the 20's, which has become very much the system of today. We've allowed the basically same things to happen that happened in the 20's, and somehow expected different results. Duh!

When I was young, tax rates on the wealthy were quite high, but they managed to be wealthy, anyway. And they were constrained from creating financial flimflams that threatened the well being of the country as a whole by structural limits on the financial industry. Whole classes of fraud are legal once again, thanks to serial deregulation, and the results are all around us. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not fraud, not anymore.

And the truth is that the Henry's have been some of the biggest losers in this collapse, at least in abstract terms. They're the ones whose investments crumpled like Dick Cheney's hunting partner, the ones victimized even though they've played the game well, by the rules, gaining all the right credentials along the way. They're just outclassed in terms of resources and rapacity by the financial elite, that's all... and they still believe, even when they find out that their own dreams and aspirations are stripped away by circumstances quite contrived and quite beyond their control... they still believe that they can get rich through hard work and honest endeavor, when that's never really been the case at all...

 

[Blackjack200]

I don't have another account name. I ran across the thread through a google search. There are a lot of people who agree with my post. Search around and read the blogs and forums.

Most of our liberal/progressive/tax-them-to-hell friends don't get the point. If the marginal rates are raised above the point where there is no incentive to make additional dollars, tax revenues will actually fall not rise. When that happens and HENRYs like me decide to take the option of paying less in taxes by moving offshore, retiring, opening up a small business, etc. there will be fewer tax dollars collected.

When the HENRYs don't pay as much in taxes, those sucking off the left hind teat of the government will be in a pickle.

You know what? I find it hard to believe that someone that actually hauls down $200k+ has the time (or inclination) to google random web forums to find people talking about "HENRYs", register a brand new account, and post their idiotic, extremist views for everyone to see.

Really hard to believe.

I find it far more likely that you're some freeper keyboard jockey living in his parents basement who's never made more than $30k in his life, beating off to a portrait of Ronald Reagan and promising yourself that you'll finish that dog-eared copy of "Atlas Shrugged" some day (like that fundamentalist Christian that hasn't quite made it all the way through Genesis yet.)

amirite?

Of course, I may not be. Maybe you really are a brilliant and savvy businessman, and maybe you have climbed to the top of your field through nothing but your own blood sweat and tears. You hate the thought of a sick child being cured with money that could have gone to another BMW in your driveway. How will that child pull themselves up by their bootstraps if someone is killing their infectious diseases for them?

In that case, I humbly request that you exit the workforce and live off your investments. We will suffer mightily for the loss, but it is the only way we will learn. By continuing to work and pay taxes, you are just enabling us to continue down the dark and hopeless road of caring about each other and expecting those that benefit from our society to contribute to it.

 

[ebaycj]

I completely agree. Get rid of the mortgage deduction.

It will NEVER happen.

 

[Hacp]

It will NEVER happen.

Because of politics. Why should people who buy homes and have children have more tax breaks than males who are single and renting?

 

[Blackjack200]

It will NEVER happen.

Do you think it should?

 

[Mani]

renters are already getting gored because of the ridiculous .gov policies to encourage house ownership. and now we're getting double-fscked having to bail out said owners. i'm getting gored extra deep compared to others in my income range due to not having made the decision to purchase a house, get married, or have kids. f-that. when the rest of you decide to pull your own damn weight then you can stop complaining 'as long as it's not your bull getting gored.'

Amen.

 

[dmcowen674]

I will simply choose to not allow the government take my income above $250k at a 50% marginal rate.

At some point people will decide making the extra $$ simply to pay the government is not worth it.

I'm at that point.

Bye, please let the door hit your ass on the way out

 

[StageLeft]

The HENRY's are a strange income class, but the problem with that article is getting me to care about the economic issues of a person that extended themselves to the hilt with fixed expenses and as above keeping up with the joneses.

Bye, please let the door hit your ass on the way out

Another profound piece of wisdom from the board's nomadic worker.

 

[Siddhartha]

There are two or three members of my family who would fit in the Henry class. Two went to state universities for undergraduate degrees but all three went to state schools for their graduate degrees. Their dad went to a private school on the GI Bill and went to a state school for his graduate degree.

I will have to ask them if they think it is worth paying taxes to live in the US. But knowing them, they would acknowledge the benefit they received and that it is worth paying for.

I had an opportunity to go to Medical School and make over $300,000 a year. I would probably have gone to a state school and or a private school with the help of grants and student loans backed by the Federal government.

Yes, I think living in the US is worth paying taxes for.

 

[Tom]

While nothing is absolute, most of us are a product of the choices we make. I'm a firm believer in equal opportunity but not in guarenteed equal outcomes. I was poor. I was dirt poor. I lived on my grandparents farm as a kid because my mother worked all day in a plastics factory and part time at night as an auxiliary police woman. My grandparents didn't get past 8th grade and my step father finished his GED when he was 30. My parents struggled to provide me the $3/week for hot lunches at school.

I made the right decisions. I worked hard. I succeeded. Everyone else has at least the same opportunity as I did. I don't owe other people the money I earn.

LOL, you think everybodies' grandparents have a farm ?

And your story doesn't add up. Nobody who works 2 jobs "struggles" to come up with $3 unless there's some other serious drain on their finances.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Bye, please let the door hit your ass on the way out

You know Dave, you piss and moan more than anyone I have seen on these boards. Certainly more than any of the supposedly "rich" people here. So allow me to say it to you:

LEAVE IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT!

You have nothing to contribute and you clearly don't like our country, so we will be happy to give you a one-way ticket out to Somalia. IIRC, Shiner, MoTF Bane, and myself all have volunteered to pitch in.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Do you think it should?

No, I don't think the deduction should be eliminated unless we went to a flat tax system where everyone paid the same percentage and no deductions are allowed.