Please explain something to me

[TXDem72]

Why exactly am I supposed to be excited about a deal that raised taxes on households making $500,000 a whole $2,300? Of the 4 trillion dollars that was added to the budget debt from the fiscal cliff baseline according to the CBO, over 90% to 95% seems to have come from tax cuts. This deal is a boon for the upper middle class, not for the people who really need assistance from the federal government. Pardon me if I don't accept the premise that by extending 99.5% of the Bush tax cuts, the Democrats won and the Republicans lost. There is a saying in politics.

"There's nothing you can't get done in this town if you're willing to let someone else take the credit."

I guess this adage applies even if a party takes credit for something that have spent 12 years opposing.

[blogslut]

1. We broke their "no taxes EVAR!" fever

THIS Texan is damned happy about it.

[Amonester]

2. ass-teRt rule: gone. gRover pledge eradicated.

worldwide misery averted (for now).

Just a start.

[BeyondGeography]

3. For the same reason you would have been excited over a $900 tax increase on a HH making $260K

Because that's all they would have paid if the cut-off level was $250K.

I don't know what your complaint is. Obama always said the first $250K would be taxed at the prior level. We had an election about that, remember? When that got raised to $400K in negotiations, it cost the government a grand total of $9 billion a year.

You obviously have an issue with Obama's whole strategy on tax cuts. Should he have campaigned on restoring Eisenhower's rates?

[TXDem72]

4. I believe restoring Clinton's rates in entirety would have been reasonable.

I'm hard pressed to understand how reverting to Clinton's rates would cause an economic recession now, but it did not in the 1990s.

I would much rather let all taxes rise, and then with the savings created give everybody an refundable tax credit of $1,000 per person, regardless of whether the individual is working or not.

[BeyondGeography]

7. We're losing the payroll tax holiday (which I agree with)

Tax hikes on top of that in this tepid economic environment would have hurt, even with a refundable credit.

I agree that Americans at the upper end and perhaps lower remain relatively undertaxed. But Obama is dealing with an issue that has been raised to religious significance by the Right, which also controls the House, and couldn't realistically have been addressed in a more aggressive fashion than he did, IMO.

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. $23,000, not $2,300

It could be a few thousand higher or lower depending on where the brackets are and if they're just going to add another bracket above 35% or replace that bracket.

[TXDem72]

6. The first 450,000 of income are not taxed at higher rates

So we get the illusion that income taxes are going up significantly for rich people, when they're really not.

[Fumesucker]

8. Depends on how you define "rich"

From where I sit $450K is a great deal of money but in the grand scheme of things that's not really rich.

http://www.lcurve.org/

The US population is represented along the length of the football field, arranged in order of income.

Median US family income (the family at the 50 yard line) is ~$40,000 (a stack of $100 bills 1.6 inches high.)

--The family on the 95 yard line earns about $100,000 per year, a stack of $100 bills about 4 inches high.

--At the 99 yard line the income is about $300,000, a stack of $100 bills about a foot high.

--The curve reaches $1 million (a 40 inch high stack of $100 bills) one foot from the goal line.

--From there it keeps going up...it goes up 50 km (~30 miles) on this scale!

[Demo_Chris]

13. The largest employers in America pay as close to min wage as they can

The average Walmart checker earns 17K per year, no benefits, no nothing. They cannot even live on that salary without the government assistance that we are now going to decimate in order to ensure that the wealth class can enjoy just a little more than they already have.

Walmart is America's largest employer, followed by McDonald's at number two. These are the new American jobs. Thanks to Clinton and NAFTA, this is the new norm. For tens of millions of American's, a Walmart job, as crappy as it might be, would be freaking awseome compared to what they currrently have -- which is all too often nothing.

So yes, half a million a year makes you rich.

$250,000 a year is fucking rich as well.

[Fumesucker]

18. I get by on considerably less than the Walmart employee you mentioned

As I said, $450K sounds like a great deal of money to me but that's not the truly rich.

Not when the highest annual income is a stack of $100 bills 30 miles high.

[bubbayugga]

9. their cap gains and dividends taxes should be going up significantly because of the PPACA though

no?

[jeff47]

10. Because we didn't fuck the poor.

We've been using tax credits to paper over the fact that we haven't raised the minimum wage like we should. This deal continues those tax credits.

Life is not all about rich people.

[TheKentuckian]

11. It doesn't though, not even close.

If minimum wage was pegged to inflation since inception, it would be like $20 an hour.

Maybe some families are struggling at a quarter million, the kid making fries is supposed to be 40k or so.

[jeff47]

12. The credits add up to a significant amount of money

And you missed the second part of what I was saying:

Too many people on our side are fixated on the rich. Destroying the poor just to get a small increase in taxes on the rich is not worth it.

[Demo_Chris]

14. Progressives want to save the poor

Progressives want to save the poor. Others (from both parties) have adopted the every man for himself philosophy. They are sitting in the life boats, sipping brandy, watching the majority drown.

Obama is offering refills.

For myself, I really don't care if the rich folks get a little wet, I want in the boat.

[Egalitarian Thug]

15. Forget it Chris, they're in the orgasmic thrall of "The Big Win" and when reality slaps them in the

face in the next few months, it will be somebody else's fault. Just like the Health Insurance Industry Profit Protection Act, they've already got a variety of scripts about how it's just wonderful and nothing else could possibly ever have been done anyway.

[Demo_Chris]

16. Pretty much.

[jeff47]

17. Progressives demanding that we go over the cliff so that there's a tax hike on $250k

are not out to save the poor. Because they're so fixated on that tax hike they're ignoring the effects on the poor.