Excerpted from Slate, “The deluded business pundits and Obama critics think $250,000 is a middle-class salary”. by Daniel Gross, Aug. 27, 2008
* * * * *
Barack Obama’s tax plan … promises to improve the nation’s fiscal standing by scaling back tax cuts for people making more than $250,000. Since then, the business pundit class has been griping that people who make $250,000 a year aren’t really wealthy, especially if they live in and around New York; San Francisco; or Washington, D.C.
CNBC’s unscientific online poll found that (surprise!) only 35 percent of respondents believed an income of $250,000 qualified a household for elite rich status.
I have bad news for the over-$250,000 crowd. I regret to inform you that you are indeed rich.
Income data can surely tell us something. And they tell us that $250,000 puts you in pretty fancy company.
The Census Bureau earlier this week reported that the median household income was $50,223 in 2007 …. So a household that earned $250,000 made five times the median. Only2.245 million U.S. households, the top 1.9 percent, had income greater than $250,000 in 2007. (About 20 percent of households make more than $100,000.)
In dealing with aggregate nationwide numbers, we should of course take account of the significant differences in the cost of living from state to state. But even in wealthy states, $250,000 ain’t bad—it’s nearly four times the median income in wealthy states like Maryland and Connecticut.
But people in Georgetown mansions don’t necessarily compare themselves to fellow Washingtonians in Anacostia. Relative income really works at the neighborhood level. As we know from the work of Cornell economist Robert Frank, people rate their well-being not so much based on how much they make and consume, but on how much they make and consume compared to their neighbors.
It is certainly true that in a few ZIP codes and neighborhoods, brandishing a $250,000 salary is like bringing a knife to a gunfight … But the number of places where $250,000 stretches you is small indeed. Even in the most exclusive communities where the wealthy congregate, $250,000 is still pretty good coin.
So, don’t tell me you’re not rich.
* * * * *
Full Article URL:
http://www.slate.com/id/2198806/
* * * * *
Want more from the Homa Files?
Click link => The Homa Files Blog
* * * * *
The Homa Files 
June 15, 2009 at 11:30 am |
All of this gestation, digestion and diahrea of numbers and variables and percentages and adjustments….all of this irrational number crunching more than ever convinces me that we need a “fee” paid government for the military, the courts and the cops…period.
Our income should be ours en toto. I shouldn’t have to be concerned with shelters, write-offs, credits, yada yada yada. It boils down to the tax code responding to the most effective pressure groups. I’m not a “groupee”…I’m an individual which is what the Constitution was designed to protect yielding only specified rights to the Federal govt. with the remaining unnumerated rights to the separate states and the smallest minority in America…the individual.