Meet the CEO Who Cut Worker Pay in Half While Pulling in $21 Million Last Year

[haele]

80. OK - 95% of my family income going to taxes and local businesses means I'm just like the top 1%

Last edited Thu Mar 28, 2013, 09:24 PM - Edit history (1)

So let me get this straight - your argument appears to be... whenever discussing poverty and wage issues, if someone is in the middle income, they should just shut up and say they're part of the problem, should be ashamed for being greedy f*wads just like Paul Ryan or Lee Reynolds or any number of CEO types.
That like entry-level auto technicians, the veterinarian you are complaining somehow doesn't deserve her $80K a year because - well, she's not really a doctor - even though she practices medicine (not critical to people, true) may still be paying off student medical loans, and like every other businessman/woman who has to handle her business costs (true, she can deduct them).

I'm sorry, I'm snarking.
But IF I can understand where your argument with me and my point is, it is that somehow, the people that end up paying the highest percentage in federal, state, and local taxes up - especially those single individuals who are making employment W-2 type income (not capital gains, or annuitized payments, or any of those other financial vehicles) between $45K and $90K are participating in the trickle-down of the top 1% that is currently strangling the poor. They are, after all, part of the 20%. And we're not discussing joint household taxpayers, right? Because a joint household making $90K might be one person making (and paying the taxes on) $60K and another paying $30K and paying the taxes on that.
Those taxpayers usually end up paying more because together, they're usually not paying enough taxes on their W-2 to meet the taxes for a household making $90K, unless they both pay the straight, no exemptions rate.
Single workers in this category pay anywhere from 40% to 65% of their gross income in taxes, depending on where they live, but at a minimum, they pay 40% of their income. They might get the famed "mortgage interest deduction" if they are lucky enough to be able to carry a mortgage, but that's not a big bucket of return, and the various governments are still seeing at least a third of their gross.
So, if you're single, healthy, and working for the city as an engineer with a house, that $90K a year is really only realized as $60K a year in your pocket. Plenty of money, sure - make your house payment, make a car payment, and go clubbing - or put money away in a retirement fund.
If you're making that much, are married, and there's no other income, you realize maybe $70K after taxes.
Woohoo! you're rich! Not rich enough to get hit with an ATM - which actually takes out less of a percentage of your taxes than where you are now, but too rich on the lower levels to be eligible for EIC.
From what you've written, you're bordering on that category, yourself...lower levels, true, but not that far above this "middle level"

As for me, since my spouse just got SSDI (woohoo!) we get a bit more income on top of my salary, but we ended up paying more taxes because even though we have bucu medical bills, the itemized deductions don't make up for having to pay taxes on 85% of his SSDI. So, last year ended up paying 45% of my gross income in Fed and State taxes (bumped us up a bracket), and another 8% or so on sales taxes.

Sorry, your posts is just so - aggressively dismissive.

If your discussion is about the Congressional Budget and policy making, now....

That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish and has nothing to do with what I was talking about, and honestly, from what I could tell had nothing to do with what this thread was originally about.

Put it simply - Congress does not listen to workers, Congress listens to lobbyists. Congress doesn't listen to the 20% - 10%, Congress listens to people who are in the top 5% and have money to buy access.
Chained CPI, Welfare to work - those are Wall Street constructs, and so far as I know, they aren't supported by people who work for a living. They are only supported by people who move money around for a living.

That "poor, poor, middle class individual" you are castigating making $140K a year honestly doesn't have anything to do with your complaint, because honestly - who are you talking about? A lawyer (yeah, right - most lawyers I know make around $70K a year) A network engineer? A scientist? A plant manager? A corporate secretary? A surgeon? An airline pilot? The head of the local school board? A small businessman?

Do any of these make tax policy?

Do any of these middle class consumers have shit to do with "welfare to work", setting the AMT, closing tax loopholes, lowering or raising capital gains taxes, cutting spending on programs that benefit the working class, the disabled, the elderly and children - do they have anything more to do with those policies than someone who is on disability falling behind on their utilities with the bill-paying shell game and spending the last week of one month looking at an empty pantry, waiting on the next SSDI check to buy food for the next?

Or is the problem that they are unfairly benefiting from policies that had been made by people far above them, even though they may vote against politicians and initiatives that promote these policies, or work as activists against these policies? Even though they may know these policies are wrong?

Yes, sure, everyone - and I mean everyone says "don't raise my taxes", but looking at the bond issues that have passed in California that have raised taxes on us nasty, selfish 20%ers, the ballot box shows that people often look beyond their immediate preferences to make their communities better places.

I can agree with you 100% that Congress has gone off the deep end, and is dragging this country to a place most of us would never want it to go. I can agree with you that Third Way Democrats are nothing more than centrist Republicans, and that it sucks big time going to the voting booth to decide which is the lesser of two evils to "represent" you in government. Because you know you aren't being represented.

And I can certainly agree with you that there have always been hard times, and some people just don't have the luck to get opportunities to have a better life, that the past wasn't some sort of "Pleasantville" where everyone made enough to live like the Cleavers, because, frankly, pretty much everyone in my family was almost as poor as dirt until the mid 1970's, and I parlayed my time in the Navy to get far better jobs than I would have gotten if I had remained a civilian.

What such experiences have done to me is make me more determined to work to get equitable wage structure, access to health care, opportunities and community infrastructure improvements in all communities. For everyone. So yeah, I support getting more people into the top 20%. I support more people staying in the top 20% in a stable economy. I support more opportunity for everyone. And I know there's a shitload of work that needs to be done to accomplish these things, because of all the greed and politics at the levels above me.
So, what's so wrong with that?

Complaining about the entry level salary of a technical job? You do know, there aren't any factory auto technician jobs that don't require some sort of computer training before someone can even apply for that job - the technician jobs are such that you are either working on computerized electronic systems or working with fabricating robots that require computer programing.

Maybe an auto fabricator position is what you're thinking about when you wondered why an entry level position "deserved" $20.+ an hour in wages?

I took a quick glance - the average wage for an auto fabricator in Ohio is currently $38K a year - $18.27 an hour, so I figure an entry wage is around $22K to $25K( probably around $11.00). Metal Fabricators supposedly average $47K a year - around $23 an hour. In California, these wages are around $2.00 to $5.00 more due to the cost of living differential.
These are skilled labor positions, but not technical positions, so there's a difference of training requirements before one can get hired.

Go ahead and swing some more at me. Seems as if it's a bête noir that needs to be dealt with.

Haele