Sorry, Pal, You're Rich

Salary is all relative to your living style, I use to make some good cash, now things have changed, even though I make a national average salary today, im still as poor as i felt when i was making 1/4-1/2 mill a year.
Regardless of what happened and what-not, then I still felt I didn't make enough. Man, I wish I still made that amount today, my views on my personal financial situtation would be very different.

I'm glad others are telling me I'm rich. Don't feel like it considering the school loans, mortgage on a small condo which is now worth less than $200k (down from the $400k we paid for it 2 years ago), car loans on modest cars, and medical care for my in -laws. While we are lucky not to have credit card debt, the thought that we are loaded is just beyond belief. It seems the new metric is how far in the hole you are, and to punish those who have invested the time and expense in getting a good education and doing fiscal planning. Californians in the Bay Area earn more - and pay more. A regionally-adjusted benchmark is more appropriate, at a minimum.

The government needs an overhaul for fiscal responsibity, but I don't know that we are ever going to get it. The Republicans have shown they can't handle money either. Democrats get blamed for giving it away, but the GOP didn't do any better. The fact of the matter is we have a huge mess out there and someone needs to stand up and try and make a change. McCain won't do it for me, so I have to have faith the Obama might be able to take a step in the right direction.

I personally do not care what kind of wage tax the government wants to charge us. The wage tax violates both taxing clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has also ruled on six different occasions that the 16th Ammendment (which was never legally ratified in the first place) "...provided Congress no new powers of taxation." If the Supreme Court says the government can't tax our wages, THEN THAT'S IT! End of story! Additionally, the government doesn't use ONE CENT of the monies collected from the wage tax to pay for any tangible goods or services. It is used soley to pay interest to the Federal Reserve Bank on our currency. Not only is that a complete waste of money, IT IS ALSO FORBIDDEN BY THE U.S. CONSTITUTION. The constitution says: "No State shall...make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." Therefore, our system of borrowing funds from the FRB to print money is illegal. Want to know more? Read "The Federalist Papers." This is a collection of correspondence between the Framers of our Constitution, so you can find out what the Constitution means, and most importantly, WHY it was written the way it was. The Framers of our government must be rolling in their graves. The U.S. government has no legal authority whatsoever to take our property from us. It is a complete waste of time to debate the issue of "should we raise or lower taxes?" "should we charge the rich more in taxes?" because it does not matter. The tax is 100% illegal, and, the government doesn't even need it! The Federal Reserve Bank is a private corporation run by businessmen. The only place your (wage) tax dollars go is into the pockets of wealthy bankers. Schools and roads and the military and whatever else you can think of are not funded by the taxes collected from our wages. It's a scam and the government is doing a pretty good job of hiding all this information. The problem for them is: they can't hide this information from everybody, because it's public record. Anybody can read the Constitution, any body can request copies of the six Supreme Court rulings which forbid the tax, and anyone can put 2 and 2 together.

I believe Steve Forbes said it best when he ran for president, we need a fair accross the board sales tax re-
placing the current income tax. The 17% eliminating all federal tax's and demanding all state taxes be re-
duced to a max., of 5% would be the same as an average low income worker being taxed already at the 22%
we paid when he suggested this system. Forget who's who, and everyone pay the same accross the board!

sorry for the harshness markstev. Maybe I should have said something a little less hurtful. But, the point you make is you don't think you could survive on $250K, whereas most Americans could be doing quite well on that type of a salary. We have this mindset that the more we make the more we need to spend to show it off. People don't really feel wealthier with the more money they make. So why not take that extra money from them and give it to government services that will allow people a better standard of living. Not everyone that doesn't make a lot of money is a acholic, druggie, or evil person. They may just never have recieved a chance to get better. Every situation is unique, but the government doesn't have resources for all the unique cases, so they do blanket coverage.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and have lived in some of the wealthiest areas of the country. But I am shocked and amazed to discover that anyone in this country earning a quarter of a million dollars per year believes that they have grounds for complaint about their socio-economic status. That's appalling. By comparison, my family of 4 has lived in abject poverty at less than $40,000 per year. Needless to say, I join Phil Gramm in weeping for those whiners.

javabarbarian, get a job! Get some self respect.

swmn99...the fact I spend money on material is a good thing...you should be applauding me. if more people in my income bracket/or more were spending right now we could get this help get this economy in better shape, which would ultimately be better for you. I'm not in debt, you mis-interpreted everything I wrote.

All of the dictionaries I consulted define "rich" consistently as "having wealth or great possessions"; the key word there is "having". "Making" $250K in working wages in a particular year hardly puts someone in the position to "have wealth or great possessions"; if someone made $250K in passive income (not wages, but interest, dividends, capital gains, etc.), well that's a different story. Putting aside the definition of "rich" for a moment, the focus of the discussion and of any tax plan - whether its Obama's or McCain's - should be about arriving at the optimal way to derive the most tax revenue. If the President (and Congress) approached running the government like running a business (gee, what a novel idea), you can be sure that maximizing revenue generation would be the objective. What the vastly undereducated masses don't seem to grasp is that a higher tax rate for any entity (individual or business) at any income level doesn't necessarily mean greater overall revenue generation. So, as a voter, what I want to know is whose tax plan is going to generate the most revenue? Is there even an objective source of data on this subject? Sadly, I doubt it. Without even looking, I can guarantee you that the number crunchers for both plans have manipulated their "statistics" (the 3rd type of lie) to show that their plan will result in more tax revenue. The other area where the vastly undereducated masses get confused is when relating taxes and tax rates to budget deficits. The primary reason there have been budget deficits in something like 80% of the last 40 years is because Congress (who has more control over the purse strings - both tax revenue and spending - than the President) and the President have agreed in each of those budget deficit years that it was OK to spend more money than we took in!! How stupid is that? The Democrats and Republicans have been equally guilty of budget deficits and deficit spending. When talking about fiscal responsibility, I encourage our politicians and candidates for President and Congress to explain to us how they are going to improve the bottom line - a function of both tax revenues AND spending. Splitting hairs over who's "rich" and who isn't won't solve our problem. More logic and rational thinking, and less emotional nonsense please.

Do as I say, not as I do. Again tell elephant head to sell the yacht and the many Kennedy compounds. Also the Kerry's (which BTW his wife moved all production of Heinz outside the country) sell all of his propoerties and give his money? They do not want to pay, they want us to pay.

Cough it up richie rich!! I wants me some health care!

As I see it, most of this discussion is about Federal taxes. Using national percentiles for national tax rates is entirely fair, and yes, $250,000 is a handsome family income.
For those in the pricey markets, (I'm in California, so I understand this too), state and local tax schedules should reflect the relative wealth of a particular income accordingly, just as places with lower costs would.
Seems pretty "fair and balanced" to me; obviously, we cannot continue to batter America's FICO score around the world, to perpetuate the illusion of prosperity. I wonder what an economic growth chart of the USA would look like if it was "netted out" against the increase in debt. I suspect that every year, post-Reagan, would display negative growth with the possible exception of that bubble during the Clinton administration.