General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: $20,833.00 per month???? [View all]FreeJoe
(1,039 posts)All of these class distinctions are pretty arbitrary and variable. There are few people in America that aren't rich by the standards of people living before this century. Most would even be considered rich by the poorest half of the people in the world today. On the other hand, to the extremely wealthy, people I think of as rich are probably people they think of as working class.
I have been fortunate to have been paid over $250K/year several times, but I think of myself as upper middle class rather than rich. Why not rich? Because I work for a living. Because it could all end for me tomorrow. Because I know a lot of people a lot better off than me that live a very different lifestyle. I suspect that rich is someone that makes several times what you make, regardless of what that is.
To me, someone that travels first class is rich. I guess to many people, the fact that I fly on some of my vacations makes me rich. To others, the fact that I take any vacations makes me rich.
My house is a little over 3,000 sq ft in the suburbs on a 1/4 acre lot. The people I see as rich have 7,000 sq ft houses on acre sized lots. I drive an 8 year old mid-tier luxury car (bought used) and my wife drives a 10 year old minivan. The rich people I know drive 7 series BMWs or S-class Mercedes and trade them out every few years for new ones. They probably think the people in Bentleys are the rich people. I subscribe to one of the basic TV packages. The rich people I know get HBO, ShowTime, the NFL Sunday Ticket, and all that stuff. My kids go to great public schools. The rich people I know send their kids to even better private schools. It's all relative.
As for the tax issue, I think that starting the tax hikes at $250K is too high. I understand the political reason for doing it and I'm OK with it. If I was the king, I would have started by asking anyone making more than median income to pay some additional money in taxes so that nation feels a true sense of shared sacrifice. I would start the tax increases very small and very gradual with the real bite starting around $100,000 and hitting progressively harder as they go up. I would also have blended an increase in rates with curtailing many of the tax breaks that are subsidies to the well off (home interest deduction, tax free muni-bonds, unlimited charitable contributions, etc).