Joe the Plumber, a new spin
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| Fri, 10-17-2008 - 4:16pm |
The appeal of Joe the Plumber is that he puts a face to a tax number. Even if he's really not earning that much or isn't even a plumber. I am married to someone who makes that much and let me try to make the same point from a different perspective.
Go ahead, raise my taxes Obama. You are right, I can afford it. But first I'd like you to meet Mike, Steve and Emily. I don't own a business or anything, but I do spend my money (you know, since I'm one of the have's, that's what we do). Obama wanta to spread my wealth around and here's how it will affect 3 people in the middle and lower income brackets.
Mike - Mike is a music school teacher. He does private lessons on the side to make a little extra, in addition to volunteering in a community band. He loves teaching and playing music. He teaches one of our children and we pay him $100/mo.
Steve - Steve works full time doing private music lessons. He has two kids who he pays child support for and he lives on the edge of poverty. Private lessons is his only source of income. We pay for him to instruct three of our children and me every week. We pay him $364/mo.
Emily - Emily works full time but became a mom at age 18 yo, has no education past high school and lives near the poverty level. She is on her own being recently divorced. She helps us out once or twice a week, earning $120-$160/mo.
I recalculated Obama's tax proposals and realized it will only cost my family $1,350/mo on average. I can cover almost half of that by cutting my budget back, not hiring the babysitter and doing away with private music lessons (they are luxury items anyway).
I'm sure Mike, Steve and Emily will be glad to know that instead of earning money from my family, they will get $500 refundable tax credit next year under Obama's plan. And maybe even if $300 stimulus check like they got from Bush in the past.
Make less and pay less in tax, that's Obama's plan for the middle class.
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/

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Far from the truth so far from it.
I think what Steve or any other person teaching music is a wonderful job and they should be commended.
PA Mom stated that Steve was not able to make a living doing this work. If he cannot make a living teaching music he needs to find employment where he can make a living perhaps he should do this part time while working at something something more lucrative.
My words were twisted and taken out of context, weren't they? The person who did it was a liberal, weren't they? In what way is that far from the truth?
You are generalizing all liberals.
I can't help but wonder why you decided to pick at me on this one little statement when this wasn't the main theme of my response in the first place. What did you hope to gain from it? A TOS violation? I'm not playing that game, so don't try to go there. I know when I'm being baited, and baiting people is also a TOS violation.
Don't take the bait.
<<<"I recalculated the tax cost to my family using only the earnings over $250k going up, and payroll taxes increasing only 4% over $250k. That comes to an average $1,350/mo.">>>
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Our family income is very slightly above the national mean, and our kids get music lessons, which cost $200 per month. And jazz camp. Etc. If our nation has sunk so low that music is a "luxury", we are in dire straits indeed. Or possibly our priorities are a little awry.
I'm a violin teacher (amongst other things), and most of my students come from families that are far from being as well off as the "upper middle class". In fact, lots of them are scraping to make ends meet. (And like many private teachers, I have occasionally offered reduced price or free lessons to students whose families fell on hard times. I've even done this for kids of a doctor when she was a poorly paid resident with college loans to pay off.) Most musicians aren't in their profession for the money, but because they couldn't imagine doing anything else.
Small private liberal arts colleges (where lots of well-off people like to send their kids) want students who can do more than pay tuition and make good grades. They look for students who can contribute their skills to building a strong campus community: students who are good at sports and the performing arts, among other things. Savvy parents of EVERY income bracket who want their kids to have the option of going to a "good" college do not cut the music lessons. College admissions officers work very hard to get students that are a good fit, regardless of income.
The problem is not that some Americans are making over $250K per year; it's that many others are making so little. That's not due to a lack of virtue or initiative or education (dh has a Ph.D.) on our part, but the fact that the super-rich have been doing their best for the past three decades to outsource our professions and destroy our local economies with their big box stores, to give a couple of examples. Americans could continue to accept the increasing disparity in incomes. This is what those who are benefiting from our current economic situation want us to do. Or we could ask ourselves why 35% of the citizens of the richest nation on earth are too poor to owe income taxes. And then discover how to remedy the situation.
We could start by recognizing that "trickle down" economics is voodoo. Jobs are trickling AWAY, not down. The top tier earners are richer than ever, now bailed out by a $700 billion corporate welfare package because we couldn't bear to let their standard of living slide, apparently. It didn't help their victims, including my dh, whose retirement annuities have crashed.
>>>If what you say here is true, then why are 40% of the people Obama has targeted for a tax cut already exempt from paying taxes? <<<
Because when they say 33% or 40% don't pay "tax" they are talking about federal income tax. Those people still pay 7.65% payroll tax. Obama's middle class tax cut is $500 of your payroll taxes given back to you in the form of a federal income tax credit, assuming you earned at least $8,100 during the year. So rather than just not owing any federal income tax, the federal govt gives you back $500 to offset other taxes you had to pay.
The middle class can get other tax credits under the Obama plan IF they have a mortgage, kids in college, making minimum wage or have kids in daycare.
Pennsylvania Mom
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
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