[hi_im_god]

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

What makes me bananas about how the media paints this fight over the tax rates is how it's depicted- with very, very rare exceptions, any news outlet I've seen has painted it as "middle class tax cuts." No, you f*cking morons, it's tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income. EVERYONE gets this tax cut. And for people who are fortunate enough to make more than $250,000 in income, their rates will go up only on the amount earned over $250,000.

I don't understand why the concept of progressive tax rates is so f*cking hard for six-figure media personalities to understand.

I guess the wealthy don't care about the first $250,000 of their income, because it's just not much money to them. Megan "Gastritis Broke My Calculator" McArdle, one of the dumbest people ever to get an Ivy education and a six-figure media job, wrote a really awful piece about how Wal Mart's business model is superior to Costco's because Wal Mart returns less of its profits in wages to workers. She explained that if Wal Mart lowered its profit margin to Costco's in order to give workers higher wages (as Costco does; it's apparently a pretty good place for people to work), that it would only amount to an extra $2850 per year for each Wal Mart worker, and really, that isn't very much money, so Wal Mart is better off continuing to pay their workers the crap they do.

Only a girl born to privilege could shrug and say "oh, $2850 isn't life changing." For a lot of people, many of whom work at Wal Mart, it is.

to illustrate:

2012 tax rates for a head of household:

• 10% on taxable income from $0 to $12,400, plus
• 15% on taxable income over $12,400 to $47,350, plus
• 25% on taxable income over $47,350 to $122,300, plus
• 28% on taxable income over $122,300 to $198,050, plus
• 33% on taxable income over $198,050 to $388,350, plus
• 35% on taxable income over $388,350.

assuming that no changes are made a mythical taxpayer with $300,000 in taxable income pays $78,271.

apply the prior top rate of 39.6% to the amount over $250,000 and that jumps to a sky high $81,571. The extra $3300 paid amounts to increasing their effective tax rate from 26.09% to 27.19%.

a whopping 1.1% increase.