This combines the Bobo “rich people work harder thesis” with a teabagger anti-tax sentiment with another glibertarian empty threat about going Galt to create an epic whine well worth reading:
I’m in the 32% federal and 10% state income tax brackets. I pay a 1.2% property tax on very expensive California real estate. I am subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax. I am self-employed and subject to a 15% payroll tax on the first $100,000 in income and an 8.75% state sales tax. If I have a gain from investing, I pay a minimum of 15% federal and 10% state tax but can only write off $3,000 per year if I lose.
And now the government wants me to pay more?
***I drive a nicer car (bought used), live in a better neighborhood, have more retirement savings than many. But I am certainly not rich, and every month I find my ever increasing bills (and taxes) tend to match my income. I have more than most only because I’ve worked harder than most and because I am a saver. It was not easy.
***Remember it was social mobility that made America great—the ability to earn and get ahead. If Congress continues to buy votes at the expense of social mobility we will no longer be a great nation. The truly rich will stay that way but many “Henrys” (high earners, not rich yet) like me will quit. We may be only a small percentage of the population but we pay a large portion of the taxes and employ many. If you take the incentives away you will lose Henrys.
Please just quit your hard job and open it up for someone who wants it and doesn’t mind paying the taxes while driving a nice car, living in a nice neighborhood, and having decent retirement savings. With ten percent unemployment that is a direct result of eight years of taxation and fiscal policy that you seem to support, I’m betting we could find someone to take that deal.
And can we nip something in the bud- NO ONE wants you to pay more. No one. Every politician in Washington and in Sacramento would like you to pay less, and would love to cut taxes. But we have two wars going on, high unemployment, a necessary social safety net for those not living in nice neighborhoods driving nice cars, roads to pave, sewage to treat, kids to educate, firemen and policemen to pay, and so on. Things cost money. I know everyone likes to bitch about taxes, and no one likes paying taxes, but I like clean water and roads and a fire department and knowing my neighbors aren’t going hungry or without medical care. I guess I’m just a socialist at heart and always have been.
(via Big Media Matt)
Comrade Jake
Ezra had a pretty effective takedown of this sort of asshattery.
TR
If this is true:
Then this is not:
neill
Waaaaaahhh…what a poor put-upon kid.
Naaah, just a cry for love…just like that McArdle person…
Quit yer cryin’ and just put another quarter in the jukebox, ya spoiled brat…
nitpicker
Yeah, no one wants to pay more, but contra teabagger bullshit, two-thirds of Americans think they pay a fair amount of taxes.
Legalize
Wait. I thought CA didn’t have a property tax. Am I wrong about that? And if so, where did I get that idea?
Bulworth
Well, why doesn’t this guy just move to Texas or some other 0% state income tax place? And buy a cheaper place with lower property taxes?
I wonder what this guy’s tax write-off was this year?
russell
To top it all off, the WSJ wants me to pay them $2.00 a week to read “Henry”s cri de coeur.
Things are tough all over, pal.
Zifnab
Indeed. He worked way harder than the single mother with two kids, or the high school drop out who is thankful for a minimum wage job, or the college graduate saddled with a hundred grand in student debate.
But not as hard as the Wall Street Billionaire who made it all betting on black. Or the K-Street Lobbyist taking Congressmen out to dinner on laundered tax payer dollars. Or the kid with rich parents.
It wasn’t easy, mowing lawns at 16. And it’s not easy writing this long winded gas-bag whine now. But hey, I’ve got the time and the energy and the connections to get myself into the opinion section of the Wall Street Fucking Journal. I earned this column space the same way I earned my moderate fortune – by working hard, saving up, and sucking the tiny pricks of my bosses and my bosses friends.
You don’t guzzle this much sperm for fun. You do it for the good of your future and your neighbors and your community and your economy at large. It takes a true American to finally stand up for people making millions a year by dint of having made millions in previous years. You don’t take it up the ass without requesting a little reach around.
This is America, god dammit.
Dave C
@Legalize:
Yes, you’re wrong about that. You may possibly be confusing our ridiculous, insane, no-good-at-all property tax rules that were created by Prop 13 for a lack of property taxes.
de stijl
“I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Stooleo
The very first comment to that epic whine.
“and Atlas shrugged”
Whaaaaaaa. Please go Galt and be gone.
Miriam
The problem is that these people don’t want to “pay for their neighbors health care,” they think privatizing the fire department might not be such a bad idea and that little fairies provide clean water and sewage. They certainly aren’t interested in paying for other people’s children to go to school.
Mnemosyne
How much time do you think he spends complaining about the bad roads and the water mains constantly breaking in Los Angeles? I think it would take something along the lines of a major head injury to get him to understand that the Road Fairy and the Water Main Fairy don’t exist and if he wants to be able to drive and have running water, he’s going to have to pay for it.
FunkyOdor
He forgot to mention that his taxes are reduced by the deductions he gets to take on his mortgage, his property tax, and his state income or sales tax(es). He might have turned in an old SUV to get the cash-for-clunkers credit. Maybe he replaced his windows with energy efficient ones and got a big, fat $1500 tax rebate from the IRS.
I just refuse to feel sorry for somebody who’s got it that good.
dmsilev
I can’t see the whole article (thank you, WSJ paywall, for protecting the internet from your nonsense), but unless his income is above $200K (or $250K if he’s married), he got a tax *cut* from the Feds this year, courtesy of Obama and the stimulus package.
I’m going to guess that this was not mentioned in the article.
dms
cmorenc
You left out the part in the linked article where “Henry” described how when he was a child, he “mowed lawns and shoveled snow” uphill both ways.
El Cid
Wait — is he whining that the marginal federal income tax rate on his income makes it harder for him to be socially mobile into yet another economic class?
Is he oppressed because he’s not consorting with even wealthier people?
dmsilev
@Stooleo: Because God knows, if a financial planner Goes Galt, the entire civilized world would grind to a halt.
dms
some other guy
How do these people reconcile the “going Galt” fantasy with the reality of free market capitalism? As long as there is demand and the business model is profitable, someone will take the job of supplier.
I mean, if you close up your otherwise profitable donut shop or auto parts store or what have you simply out of spite for paying taxes, either one of your competitors will expand to take on your customers or someone who’s less of a crybaby than you will open up shop in your place.
Your “going Galt” only hurts the rest of us if you have a monopoly on supply, otherwise you’re only hurting yourself, dumbass.
Crashman
@Zifnab: Bravo.
/slowclap
de stijl
@Zifnab:
That’s what you get for joining the John Casablancas School of Debate. They make you pay thousands of dollars for their special 3×5 cards that are basically the same you could pick up at any five-and-dime for a buck or two.
malraux
A quick check shows that the 32% federal tax bracket is from ~200k to ~370k. That’s certainly not FU rich, but by any reasonably standard it is a very high income, even if you live in an expensive area.
Michael
Nobody works harder than well-connected, well-married, legacy educated white guys, at least, according to them. Of course, on every episode of “Undercover Boss”, it becomes apparent that they have trouble with the pace of work that their lowest paid employees (who are on the front line with the customers) face every day.
Some days, I really wish the communists won.
Ash Can
This encapsulates exactly what’s wrong with the reasoning of this and other entitlement whores. They’re not honest enough to admit that material reward does not necessarily reflect the amount of work done to gain it. Henry may be hardworking and a saver, but he’s also just plain lucky, because his oh-so-hard work isn’t paying him minimum wage. I’m sure those who are stuck in (multiple) minimum-wage jobs are just too lazy to earn a better living than they do, right, Henry?
Asshole.
Brian J
Well, first of all, is there even a 32 percent income tax bracket? I’m not sure there is, unless he’s talking about his overall marginal rate, but it doesn’t sound like he is.
Well anyway, the opinion piece from The Journal tells us that Mr. Donahue is a financial adviser from California. Google tells us that there’s a Mike Donahue with wealth management offices in San Diego, which is right near La Jolla. The description of the firm’s services tells us that the minimum amount to invest is $350,000 with an hourly rate of $250. That might be on the low end for these sorts of firms, but then again, that’s a helluva lot more than most people have in assets outside of a home. And perhaps he’s not raking in millions of dollars each year. But the way the article is written, he makes it sound like he’s selling appliances, until the end, where it says he’s a financial adviser, as if he’s working at a local bank advising a secretary how to stock away $200 every month.
I know nothing about this man’s financial situation, but if I had to guess, I’d say he’s not really doing that badly. And perhaps he’s got such a good case for his taxes being lower than I, a fairly liberal Democrat, would agree with him. But I’d like to ask, what specific government spending would you like to cut?
El Cid
I had a boss once who got a brand new Hummer H2 for free thanks to the $100K tax credit under Bush Jr. for a vehicle with a gross vehicle 2 axle weight over 6500 lbs.
He was soooo oppressed because he wasn’t allowed to get a $200K Bentley for free.
Josie
It’s pretty simple. Our country is divided into two groups – those like John and me and many of you, who care about less fortunate people enough to divide up, and those who don’t. I don’t think you will ever change people from one group to another. It seems to be in our DNA. I have felt this way for fifty years or so, regardless of who is in office or how much money or stuff I have or don’t have.
MikeBoyScout
Jebus is crying for Henry.
Bootlegger
Yeah, just check out all that social mobility in high tax soshulist nations!! The US is #3 baby!! The third most rigid economic stratification system among western economies that is.
nitpicker
Here’s what I love about the stupidity of Randians. When they finally go Galt and move up into the mountains to start their enclave, someone’s going to open a 7-Eleven up there and charge the rich, obsolete fuckers $125 for a gallon of milk. Free market, bitches!
Ugh
I’d be willing to bet that that dude uses more in taxpayer funded facilities and services in a single day than he has paid taxes in his entire lifetime. Did you drive five miles on an interstate highway today Mr. Donohue? You know how much five miles of interstate highway in San Diego or L.A. costs to build?
RSR
In one sense he’s right: about the middle class being squeeze from both sides. But the giant pyramid scheme which America has become doesn’t have the gov’t at its top. Until that realization sinks in, we doomed to fight these stupid battles over marginal tax rates and drilling for six days worth of oil, and so on.
Meanwhile, the top of the pyramid laughs from on high…
nevsky42
This poll’s a nice counter to the WATBiness:
link
But hey, Russia’s got a flat tax, I’m sure he’ll be very happy there in that Boortzian paradise…
FunkyOdor
And his social security taxes are percentage wise less than a minimum wage earner. They top off in the $100,000 of income area, right?
Shygetz
Jump, you fuckers!
Martin
I forgot to link this when the ‘work harder’ piece came by the first time, but Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs did a TED talk on the nature of work. It’s definitely worth a watch.
Oh, and don’t cry for him over that expensive house he’s paying taxes on. The CA property tax structure is rigged so that taxes don’t track with inflation. On an adjusted dollar basis, those taxes get cheaper every year and there’s no fucking way that he doesn’t know that and have factored it into his decision to buy.
Svensker
@Brian J:
Military! Just think of all the savings we could make there. Drool.
Oh, wait, the Small Government, Lower My Taxes, folks don’t want to cut military spending. Which makes so much sense, uh huh.
Brian J
@Miriam:
I wish I could remember when I read it, so I could provide the link, but there was a post from Kevin Drum a few weeks ago where he described an issue people in one California town had with paying for sewer systems or something like that. Because they chose to live on bigger pieces of property in a more remote location, which means there would be fewer people around, the cost of financing basic infrastructure was larger, per person, than it would otherwise be. But that’s the trade off: either small bills for basic needs but more crowded living areas or smaller living areas but larger bills.
cleek
prove it. for fuck’s sake, put your money where your mouth is and quit!
otherwise, STFU you WATB.
Brian J
@Svensker:
Well, yes, I’d probably like to cut military spending, too, but the question was for Mr. Donahue, not you. Please raise your hand next time or you will receive a detention slip, mmmkay?
de stijl
@Bootlegger:
[Splutter] But, but, but…the American Dream&tm!
malraux
@Brian J:
No, but there is a 33% bracket. And I would hope that anyone in finance would understand and use correctly the term tax bracket, though maybe not.
Brian J
@malraux:
He’s also got a wife, who, unless she’s not working, also pulls in an income.
Bob K
I’m looking forward to this republican utopia they seem to want to move towards. The feudal system worked for centuries. Isn’t it time we brought back what works? Or will they just be satisfied when we’re on par with Mexico?
de stijl
Poop! How do you do the trademark thingy again? I always, always fuck that up!
Zifnab
@Mnemosyne:
Well, the problem is that we do have some incredibly government waste going on. When the federal government alone collects $2.3 trillion in tax receipts a year, we’re talking about $7666 per person. That’s a ton of money no matter how you cut it. We should have our water mains and our highways paid for with money to spare.
But when you ask “Where is our money going?”
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/5927/wallstatsdatlarge.jpg
You’ll notice it ain’t all going to highways and aquaducts.
$800 billion on national defense.
$260 billion on interest on debt.
$2 billion on each new fancy jet.
These are not small numbers.
And if the Tea Party was composed of a bunch of deficit hawks and anti-war hippies, I might sympathize with them even if they are running around with big “Get Government Out of My Medicare” and “Obama = Hitler” signs.
But the Tea Party policies aren’t about reducing debt, they’re about reducing government services. And they aren’t interested in reigning in the bloated American military, they’re interested in militarizing us down to the local level. They aren’t interested in balancing Social Security or fighting inflation in basic necessities like food, health care, and energy. Just spouting feel-good nonsense slogans about “Drill, Baby, Drill” and “Lynch the Mexicans”.
If this was just “My taxes are too high”, I could begin to sympathize. But it’s “My taxes are too high and why aren’t we invading Iran and implementing a police state back home and celebrating more Confederate Generals as national heroes?” Lots of bullshit.
slag
@TR: It’s nice to see the WSJ proudly demonstrating how badly they misinform their readership. It’s almost like they’re taking some accountability. Or it would be if demonstrating how badly your readers are misinformed weren’t considered bragging in our media culture.
catclub
32% tax bracket does NOT equal 32% of income taken by
federal taxes.
1. It is actually the 33% bracket, there is no 32% bracket.
and the overall tax rate for a taxable income of $230k
is 23%
2. Likewise no doubt for the state 10% tax bracket.
3. I bet when he bought that valuable real estate there was NO property tax. They only sprung it on him only after Obama was elected. Or… not.
A fine whine.
Bootlegger
@de stijl:
…is apparently that, just a Dream.
It is the height of irony that we rank right with the only two nations still wetnursing their landed aristocracies, Britain and Italy.
de stijl
Test:
[Splutter] But, but, but…the American Dream™!
Drive By Wisdom
You people are bi-polar, subject to whatever stream-of-conciousness rings out the left’s ass. In one post, you are laughing it up about how stupid Tea Patriots are with ‘teabonics’ and in another post you lap up billmon’s post trying to show how they are all spoiled rich white business folks with university degrees.
No where do you stop and think how those two memes of yours do not go together.
I guess it is better you are all here, as it would be a waste of everyone elses time for you to be out trying to contribute.
Brian J
@slag:
Most of my friends from college are conservatives, although to varying degrees of political involvement and severity. But one, who is/was doing very well in law school, complained to me a long time ago about how he would be an attorney in Manhattan and therefore paying all of these high taxes. I don’t remember exactly what his comments were, but it was clear he wasn’t very familiar with the idea of income tax brackets and marginal rates. I really, really hope he wasn’t intent on becoming a tax lawyer.
Paris
Remember it was social mobility that made America great
It isn’t true no matter how adamantly you repeat it.
Bootlegger
@de stijl: There, now ya got it.
(How’d you do that?)
dj spellchecka
i suspect by starting off with this “I’m in the 32% federal and 10% state income tax brackets,” he’s hoping that someone will think that these are his income tax rates across the board…[maybe HE thinks they are, who knows with these randites??]….speaking only for myself, i’d say i’ve worked honestly and i’ve saved….and for some odd reason i don’t mind the taxes that get me parks, and libraries with internet and roads without potholes and police and firemen ready to show up if i need them…. not to mention a safety net for those who didn’t get the breaks i did…obviously i don’t read the wsj op-ed section…
BenA
These people are just stupid.
There’s no other way to put it. I’m self-employeed… make a decent amount of money. It just SEEMS like you pay more when you’re self-employeed because the FICA/SE Taxes are hidden from you the way the are when you are a drone working for the man. I wouldn’t go back… and quite frankly the tax benefits outweigh the tax burden.
I am MUCH more aggreived about the obscene amount I pay for health insurance plus the co-pays, deductible, and the cash I pay because the insurance company just doesn’t.
I think you can sum up the Henry’s and the Tea Partiers: “I’m too stupid to actually notice that I don’t get a tax break from the Bush tax cuts!”
I mean really how does “I think I pay to much in taxes.” translate to “I think people richer than me should pay less.” ?
That’s essentially the Tea Party argument.
Just fucking morons!
It’s this whole notion of Henry’s that tie it together. You’re essentially at the very highest end of upper middle class… but you think someday you’re gonna be RICH! So goddamn I’m not going to let you tax the RICH!
Brian J
@Drive By Wisdom:
1. If we are so useless, why the hell are you here?
2. I haven’t checked the comments in a couple of hours, but there were a bunch of people, myself included, who objected to the idea that it was all about race.
Bootlegger
@Drive By Wisdom: Wrong boyo, they are stoopid, rich white folks with college degrees. I see tons of ’em walk at commencement every year with the degree mumsy and pop bought ’em.
cleek
@Drive By Wisdom:
hmm, i don’t quite see how those two groups are mutually exclusive.
unless you’re saying that people with degrees are, by-definition, smarter than people without degrees…? but no real “conservative” would say that.
Zifnab
@nitpicker:
Nah, they’ll just sell you milk derivatives with which you can expect to buy milk at a later date (assuming the milk derivatives market doesn’t go belly up in the next three years). You’ll get paid 5% of your investment back AND you’ll get a bottle of milk at your door for 20 years. And none of those dirty SEC regulators to worry anybody about what a Ponzi scheme is.
El Cid
@Zifnab: What’s wrong with melamine laced thinned milk water products? Surely they don’t want some oppressive fedrul burkrat ‘protecting’ them from any Chinese food supplier they prefer?
ChicagoTom
@Brian J:
But I’d like to ask, what specific government spending would you like to cut?
Aid to poor people! Duh!
To people like him, that’s wasteful spending. All welfare and entitlements do is enable not to work as hard as this fine upstanding hard working persecuted American!
I don’t even understand what his beef is. Even assuming that he made it to where he is by merit and sweat, he proves that America isn’t in fact choking social mobility. He made it to where he is under the current rules/system so obviously it isn’t that oppressive, is it?
If you take the incentives away you will lose Henrys.
What incentives are being taken away? It’s not like we have confiscatory tax rates nor are we taxing profits at 100%.
Ed Drone
What I have never been able to figure out is why Republicans are so loath to pay for what they get from our society. I have never been able to understand it, and I never will. But I came across a wonderful word to describe it.
My day-at-a-time calendar of “forgotten words” has a very apt word for today — smouge — which means ‘to take more than one’s rightful share, or to make false tax returns and smouge the difference.
So, in honor of the day, I declare the GOP to be the Smougers’ Party. The comment above about the DNA difference that prevents some from feeling empathy may explain it, but simple logic should make smouging at least uncomfortable (the logic is, if I cheat, I may be discovered and disgraced/punished, and if I condone cheating, others’ cheating will be costing me, so I shouldn’t do it).
So Republicans are the smouging free-loaders they claim everyone else (especially the poor) to be.
Ed
El Cid
@Drive By Wisdom: It’s not a contradiction.
The polling is not taking a sampling of those showing up at a particular rally or public outing. It is likely that general population surveys will give different results.
So, on the one hand, you have survey-expressed TeaTard approval by cranky white conservative upper middle classes, who are apparently much more willing to express racial resentment than the general population.
On the other hand, you have a generous portion of brutely racist, ignorant, screaming nincompoops showing up to rallies, screaming at Congressmen, and the like.
How is this a contradiction whatsoever?
Sentient Puddle
@El Cid:
Indeed. The oppressive tax rate is preventing him from moving into the class of lucky duckies who don’t pay any income tax because they’re too poor.
I weep for his plight.
de stijl
Let them drink Malk™!
From Both Sides
@BenA:
Welcome to the wonderful world of aspirational politics. Makes you wonder what ever happened to the idea that if the system lets you succeed more than your fellow man, you should pay a correspondingly larger portion of the costs of maintaining the system that’s set you up so well in the first place.
Patrick
If he is subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax, as he claims, he is not paying on his marginal rate. This is why he doesn’t know there is no 32% marginal rate, because he is paying 28% through the AMT. No doubt, the higher percentage is thrown in there to make his whine more sympathetic.
Sir Nose'D
For the past 11 years, I have done contract work for a country club. It is a small club, only a few hundred members. Despite having over one million dollars in assets, some have tens of millions, not a single one of them is rich. At least, not if you ask them. You might get “I’ve done well” or “money’s not really a concern” but not one of them self-identifies as rich or wealthy.
I think there are only two rich people in the US: Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
de stijl
Since I have the HTML trademark code in memory would anyone else like anything trademarked? Like teabonics™? Maybe social mobility™ is more your stride? I feel like trademarking “lucky duckies” today, so…
Bam!
Lucky duckies™
PS, Bootlegger – it’s ampersand poundsign 0153 with no spaces.
Sentient Puddle
@de stijl: Testing, because I can. Doesn’t it also require a semicolon™?
trollhattan
The poor bastard has expenses damnit!
http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/sd/ticketing/season.jsp
http://www.chargers.com/tickets/season-tickets.html
Leave overtaxedboy alooooooone!
interesting
I might be wrong but self-employed people only need to effectively cough up 7.65% for FICA not the full 15% since half the 15% of your gross income in FICA comes from your employer if you have an employer.
I won’t pretend to understand the AMT, maybe in this guy’s case he cannot make any itemized deductions that reduce his tax burden, but if so he isn’t paying as much in taxes as he pretends.
Bob L
@Drive By Wisdom:
Since you aren’t paying attention you should know the Right is made up of at lest three different group; conservative economic libertarians, rural religious theocrats and and defense conservatives. Obviously the Walls Street Journal caters to the economic libertarians.
Yes, there is a shocking contradiction between the liberationists and the fundamentalists. It’s been going on since Ronald Reagen created that contradiction in the ’80s. You’re late but welcome to the party Drive By.
artem1s
@Michael:
I LUV undercover boss. Oprah did a similar bit with the CEO of Waste Management and the guy could not meet ONE SINGLE production level requirement. All but one of his trainers/supervisors said they would fire him on the first day.
Having worked clerical at some pretty big companies I see this quite a lot. Most of the CEOs and VPs would be lost without their executive secretaries.
Sly
Speak for yourself.
1) There is no 32% Federal income tax bracket. It’s 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33%, and 35%. If he’s in the 33% bracket, that means he’s making between $190k and $370k. Given that he claims he is subject to the AMT, but doesn’t give his AMT liability (always a tell), I think its safe to assume that he’s on the upper end of that spectrum.
2) A tax structure that places the burden of paying for government disproportionately on the middle-class and working poor is doomed to failure. The middle-class and the working poor do most of the spending, and therefor produce most of the aggregate demand in a consumer economy.
3) This guy deserves to pay extra for being a douchebag. There should be a mandatory Douchebag Surtax for people who write LTTE to the WSG complaing about their tax liability.
clone12
Henry’s like him make Henry’s like me want to punch him in the neck.
Speaking purely from experience, a Henry is nowhere as oppressed as he makes it out to be- After all those evil gub’mt taxation I still get by alright.
And those government services that my taxe money paid for- GPS statellites, the entire airline industry, highways, the internet, and the fact that we no longer suffer from yellow fever here in the states? You know what? I’m glad we paid taxes for all that.
Pangloss
So all that stuff about democracy and freedom was just a smokescreen?
sukabi
sounds like he’s whining about paying taxes on property that he really doesn’t need…. no one said he had to move into those “nice neighborhoods” with their really nice houses with nice property taxes to go with… he could move to a more affordable neighborhood in a modest house, pay less property tax, have an economical car and pay less excise tax… and in the process save even more for his retirement…
what he doesn’t understand is that a good share of the taxes he pays are a direct result of the choices HE’S made about his lifestyle.
Pangloss
This.
MTiffany
I always thought it unfair that the name ‘Henry’ was becoming less and less popular as far as given names go. Then this guy’s self-indulgent pity-party has gave me something to think about — if this ‘Henry’ guy whines like such a bitch, he probably fights and fucks like one too.
jrg
Don’t forget Social Security and Medicare. Conservatives are entitled to that.
I personally don’t have a problem with people who make more than I do, and I think that thrift is good… But where do “conservatives” think federal dollars are spent? At some point, they need to accept the fact that if you want lower taxes, we need to cut Defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or all four.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that these people don’t want to fix problems, they just want to blame thuh libruls for something.
jnfr
Ezra actually responds to the editorial directly. My two favorite bits:
And this:
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
Well, yes, but that’s not this guy’s complaint. What we have here is your classic California Howard Jarvis anti-tax jihadist who absolutely refuses to make the connection between the ever-shrinking pool of tax money available thanks to Prop 13 and similar legislation and the ever-shrinking public services like roads and schools.
Howard Jarvis convinced people that public services like libraries, schools, and fire departments are actually free, so there’s no need for tax money to go towards them. Now our state is on the verge of collapse because everyone wants services and no one wants to pay for them.
This guy is a very familiar Southern California type, is what I’m saying.
Egilsson
I also have to embrace Sly’s comment in #74.
Maybe TimF can start a “Douchebag Surtax” movement?
RSA
Note the only. You too could have more than most, if you weren’t such a lazy profligate.
cleek
@de stijl:
also: amp ‘trade’ semicolon. no quotes around trade.
there are dozens of fun symbols out there.
¶·¶·¶ !
de stijl
Yeah, but he also invented that neato artificial heart so he has that going for him.
Egilsson
What really bugs me about that moronic, self-pitying column in the WSJ is that he’s a financial planner!!
That profession is hinged upon trust people have – in banks (through FDIC), in pensions (ERISA, etc), in social security, in insurance products, in corporate holdings (stocks/SEC) – all of which can flourish due to the presence of progressive legislation that help ensure security, transparency and accountable. You know, the ability to plan and invest.
These things did not exist years back, and his profession did not exist. He ought to think about why that is, and is it better there were voices that called for regulation?
I mean, there’s obviously a lot of room for improvement in these laws, but this guy is so blind to WHY it is that he can make the money he does.
And let’s not get into the whole “if society burns to the ground, you’ll go first” scenario that he’s blind to …
Shinobi
I am so sick of hearing people bitch about having to pay taxes, it’s been like 3 months straight now.I am proud to pay my taxes and support the infrastructure of the country I live in. (And I don’t even go for that whole unbridled patriotism thing.)
If certain people don’t want to pay for the privilege of being “comfortable” in one of the richest nations in the world then they should fucking leave.
I am not even kidding, I will in fact donate money to get all of these whiners out of our country. I AM THAT SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT. JUST PAY YOUR TAXES LIKE AN ADULT AND STFU.
Bill H
Not to pick nits, but I have actually never bitched about paying taxes. Really. I shit you not. Fot three years when I didn’t have a job I bitched about not paying taxes, and it pissed me off to listen to people who were bitching about paying taxes.
My wife makes enough money that we even pay income tax on my Social Security income. I don’t bitch about that.
This is a great fucking country. I pay for the privledge of having been born here. What kind of asshole keeps bragging abour what a great country we are and then bitches about having to pay to be part of it? Not this asshole, anyway.
Brian J
@Bill H:
I think most people complain about it in the same way that they complain about getting shots, eating a vegetable they don’t like, or spending some time on the treadmill when they’d rather be on the couch with a bag of chips. Lots of people complain, but adults shut the fuck up and deal with it by paying their taxes and then going on about their lives. You and I are apparently in that group, as are most, if not all, of the people here.
That’s what the way I think about taxes. I had to pay more in state income taxes than I paid last year…because I made more money. Seems pretty straightforward, right?
Zifnab
@Mnemosyne:
Well, the state-by-state issue is a different ball game. But, again, you can single out the biggest money wasters easily enough by finding the highest paid lobbyists. And they are… the California prison guard’s union.
Prisons in California mop up a fortune. And with things like the Three Strikes Law and the aggressive state imprisonment of potheads and the privatization of the prison system, you’ve got a massive money sink with no serious value.
Does California need flexibility in tax structure in the short term? Probably. Could it use more money from the federal government to shore up education costs and infrastructure? Absolutely. Is a permanent tax hike on all citizens (or even on the richest top percent) the best way to maintain needed government services? Maybe not.
California has money. The United States Treasury has money. There is a fortune in the pipe for both the state and the feds. But when it comes to “government waste” the first thing the Tea Baggers go for is the vital government service – the schools or the highway or the fire department – rather than the actual holes in the budget – the prisons, the tax-free yachts – that a minority support but (apparently) still don’t want to pay for.
Shinobi
@Bill H: Word.
(I will admit that when I have under payed throughout the year I will kvetch about trying to gather the necessary funds to make up the difference but that isn’t really the same as being mad about having to pay taxes ever at all.)
Bill H
@Shinobi:
Well, yeah, there’s a difference between, “Oh fuck, I didn’t have enough withheld and now I’m scrambling for some cash,” and “Damned gummit is taking all my damned money.”
And off topic, but my wife has gone absolutely beserk on the Intertubes, because the UPS guy just came to the door for the fifth day in a row. Oh well, she makes more money than I do.
Citizen Alan
BTW, where the hell are these people going to college if they come out owing $300,000 in student loans? And more importantly, did they sleep through the school’s student loan orientation lecture? When I was in law school and clerking during the summer, I lived frugally and paid any extra income I got towards the principal of my student loans. By the time I got out, I was down to around $15k, and by the time the grace period ended and I actually had to start paying, I was down to $8k. A friend of mine in the next office was almost in tears when he got his first student loan bill: around $1000 a month on $100k in loans because he did his undergrad at Vanderbilt instead of a more reasonable state college.
IMO, someone who goes to Harvard or Yale or some other premium school, puts his entire education on a credit card because he’s not bright enough to get scholarships or grants, and then doesn’t do well enough in school to walk out with a job that pays well enough to cover his student loans deserves what happens to him.
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
I don’t disagree with you. I’m saying that our local anti-tax douchebags take a very specific and easily recognized form. I knew he was in Southern California just by reading the excerpt.
Bootlegger
@de stijl: Awesome™
licensed to kill time
@de stijl: I make the trademark sign by putting tm in parentheses(tm)
Eazy peazy
ksmiami
Fine then Galtians, I have been radically thinking that we need to move from a consumerist society to a saver / overall wealthier nation so how bout we abolish all payroll, income and property taxes (since income and home ownership are “good things”) up capital gains taxes to 44% and then use a flat sales tax of 6% on all necessity items and a 76% luxury tax on most yuppie purchases or for unhealthy products like McDonald’s and gasoline. I know it sounds pretty radical, but dammit the a**** driving a hummer SHOULD pay more because he is using an obscene amount more resources, space, etc than others with smaller cars, or environmentally-friendly transportation options.
cleek
our ‘financial planner’ is a frothing libertarian, we’ve recently discovered. he’s started going on rants about taxes and the government in the monthly newsletters he sends us. i’m tempted to tell to STFU and start making us some money instead of preaching his bullshit… but that’s not how i roll.
Nazgul35
I especially like the morans commenting about their student loan payments which enabled them to go to school and get that high paid job they now have….complaining about taxes.
Fred Fnord
No, Henry, the government wants you to leave. This is just their way of saying so.
Please, Henry. Please leave. At least leave California.
-fred
The Populist
Another Henry here, John. I have all those things yet somehow I still make a good living, have extra cash and can have fun if I want.
I find all this bitching to be ridiculous. Guys like that should just pay their fucking taxes and accept that we still live in a great country with one of the lowest tax rates in the world.
demtom
The story I heard is that when legendary composer Irving Berlin’s accountant told him he needed to take some steps to cut down on his tax payments, he replied that this country had given him every opportunity to have the outlandish success he’d had, and that he’d be embarrassed to try and figure ways to avoid paying taxes on that. Where are the Irving Berlins today?
But of course Berlin was from Russia so he was probably just a Communist at heart.
Mnemosyne
@ksmiami:
Not only that, but the largest SUVs cause much more road damage than smaller cars. In Santa Monica, they restrict commercial trucks over 6,000 pounds from driving on residential streets, but their streets are still torn to shit because the residents are driving on them in their 6,000-pound SUVs. So people are driving on roads that their giant Hummer tore to shreds and complaining about how bad the roads are.
I still don’t understand why there isn’t a special annual registration fee for passenger vehicles over 6,000 pounds. They do far more day-to-day damage than an occasional commercial truck.
handy
Brian J gets it: people who talk all brave about “government waste” and “cutting fat” need to be reminded that the devil is truly in the details and unless they have specific ideas about how and where we can reduce costs and therefore be able to cut those big bad taxes, they should just keep their high-minded philosophizing to themselves.
de stijl
parenthesis test(tm)
de stijl
@licensed to kill time:
Sweet! Thanks, dude!
Michael
Make sure you send Michael a personal note and encourage him to go Galt.
catclub
Who pays high taxes? Poor people.
Join a Habitat for Humanity group and find out how the clients live. If they live in subsidized housing, they are NOT ALLOWED to have a savings account.
If they earn more income it is taxed at an effective 100% tax rate – it is all taken off the housing subsidy.
I don’t know who would want to work under that circumstance, nor how to fix it.
de stijl
@cleek:
Re: Your libertarian financial planner
I’m not usually in the business of telling others how to run their lives, but perhaps it’s time to think about voting with your feet.
The Invisible Feet.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: #106
Damage by weight is estimated to be proportional to the cube of axle weight, so that 30ton commercial truck actually does
far more damage than the SUV.
(4 axles, 30 tons = 7.5tons/axle)
(2axles, 3 tons = 1.5 tons/axle)
(7.5/1.5) ^3 = 125
Now tell me I need to pay taxes when I ride a bike on public roads. (Actually I do, of course, but any bike rider is assumed to be a freeloader.)
Lurking Canadian
This is a great fucking country. I pay for the privledge of having been born here
When I was a kid, my parents had friends who were Holocaust survivors. Every year at this time, when people were bitching about their taxes, this couple would say, “It is a privilege to pay taxes in this country.” It usually shut the bitchers up.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
How often does that commercial truck drive on the residential street compared to a resident with a Hummer who lives on that street? Unless that commercial truck is driving down that street a minimum of twice a day, I find it hard to believe that an occasional pass by a commercial truck is far more damaging than having a 6,000-pound SUV drive on it every single day.
Of course, the point is moot because commercial trucks are banned from driving on those streets while SUVs of a similar weight are not. I wonder where this mysterious street damage could be coming from if 6,000-pound SUVs don’t damage the streets but commercial trucks don’t drive there. It’s a mystery, I guess.
ksmiami
Taxes are patriotic. Seems the right has simply forgotten that part of the Constitution that says “PROMOTE THE GENERAL FUCKING WELFARE (PAID FOR BY TAXES)” This Henry dude should really go see how people live in places where Galtism is in place – like in the hills behind Rio, or Somalia, or the Phillipines… People like Henry, or Cheney, or Dimon simply don’t understand that they have it better than like 99% of people on the entire PLANET. They will never have enough, or understand that they owe their very existence and their wealth to the myriad of advantages given to them simply by living in the USA. Just stop whining you jerks!
licensed to kill time
@de stijl: No prob. Occam’s razor, no html code req’d.
Tonal Crow
It’s time for them to stop threatening to Go Galt and finally do it. I suggest South Waziristan for their “homeland”. They should get along nicely with the current inhabitants.
As for the “Galt hypothesis”, the data refute it.
The top marginal tax rate was at least 79% from 1936 to 1963, at least 70% from 1963 until 1980, and at least 50% from 1980 to 1986, when it got lowered to 38%, near which it’s hovered ever since. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213 .
However, GDP grew far more strongly during the 1936-1986 period (average 4.3%/yr) than afterward (average 2.7%/yr). (Averaging data from http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=1&ViewSeries=NO&Java=no&Request3Place=N&3Place=N&FromView=YES&Freq=Year&FirstYear=1936&LastYear=2009&3Place=N&Update=Update&JavaBox=no#Mid )
If the “Galt hypothesis” were correct, the stats should show the opposite.
GOPbaggers are liars through and through.
PurpleGirl
@demtom: Re becoming a tax refugee, see JK Rowling in the Times Online.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7096786.ece
When her accountant brought up moving someplace where she’d pay lower taxes than in the UK, she said “no.” This column starts as a comment on the current election campaign and her reaction to the Tories trying to be friendly to working class and poor people.
slag
@Drive By Wisdom: You clearly slept through the Bush years. If you were awake, you would have noticed that privilege, money, education, and appalling ignorance can coincide quite comfortably within a single individual.
Jules
When will these Galtians like “Henry” shut up and go Galt already?
There are lots of folks just begging for a break to fill the need left by all these “Henry” folks.
flukebucket
I see where the Obamas made 5.5 million last year.
And Sarah Palin has made 12 million since July.
I wonder if Sarah will go Gault on us soon because it just ain’t worth the effort anymore.
catclub
@Mnemosyne:
Well, I was wrong, but in a way that makes my argument stronger. Wikipedia reports road damage as proportional to the 4th power of axle weight.
5^4 = 625 rather than 5^3=125
so one 30 ton truck once every six months is about the same
as a 3 ton SUV 4 times per day.
Do moving trucks ever enter those streets? How about
garbage trucks?
Note that I am not saying the SUV’s do no damage.
They do 16 times as much damage as a 3000 pound car.
What I am saying is that the effects of rare nonlinear things
are hard to estimate, and often underestimated.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
So you’re saying that a 6,000-pound truck does more damage with a single drive-by than a 6,000-pound SUV does? Because you seem to be comparing a 30-ton truck to a 6-ton SUV, and that seems a little weird. Are you arguing that a 6-ton truck does the same damage as a 30-ton truck?
I’m very confused because you seem to have changed the parameters from two vehicles that weigh the same to two vehicles with vastly disparate weights.
asiangrrlMN
@licensed to kill time: Me, too(tm).
For everyone threatening to go Galt, fucking do it already. My brother (a reformed Republican) was asking me about the Healthcare bill because he heard from a woman he knew that “our country would never be the same under Obamacare(tm).” I told him what’s what (and he agreed with me). All these fuckers really need to put their money where their mouth is. They don’t like sockulism? Don’t drive on the roads, use the fire and/or police department, schools, draw on SS or Medicare or join the military (which is where it would be easiest to save money, by the way), etc. Fuck ’em all.
shortstop
This stuff enrages me so much I can hardly see straight. These self-satisfied pieces of dog doody cannot get it through their heads that the vast majority of Americans, including the poor, work extremely hard. This country is not composed of massive hordes of freeloaders supported by a handful of noble souls like this smug jackass.
My husband and I earn way above the average American income, and you better believe we never forget how much that’s a product of luck, of being in the right places at the right time, of having certain demographics and of growing up in communities with universal access to good public education. The idea that wealth or even a comfortable income is always solely the product of merit, virtue or productiveness is unbelievably condescending to the hundreds of millions in this country (not even getting into the rest of the world right now) who labor their asses off with competence and pride in their work and yet cannot get ahead.
Hard work is irreplaceable, but only in extremely rare cases is it sufficient on its own. But the ability to recognize that requires the thinker to stop blaming the poor en masse for being poor.
God, I hate these people with the intensity of a thousand suns.
Seanly
@catclub:
I’m not sure about the precise proportion but the gist of what catclub sez re: vehicle damage weight is true, at least for bridges. You can run personal vehicles & even small trucks over any bridge built in the last 50 years (and maintained!) and it’ll be good forever. See the Garden State Parkway and differences in the bridges between the North half where semi-tractor trailers are allowed and the South where they are not.
Poorly compacted road bases and subbases will settle under smaller vehicle loads, but for the most part, it’s semis that tear everything up. I believe Arkansas requires semis to be in the left lane and hence in Arkansas, the left lanes tend to be in worse shape.
Mnemosyne
@Seanly:
This is where I’m getting confused — is that true for all trucks that have multiple axles, or things that are more in the realm of the semi towing a trailer? Catclub seems to be saying that a 6-ton truck does the same amount of damage to a road as a 30-ton truck, which is very confusing to me.
I can understand the whole “more force from the axle” thing making a difference between trucks of the same weight, but I’m very confused about where the 30-ton truck suddenly came from and it seems very strange to me that a single drive-by of a multi-axle 6-ton truck would do more damage than four trips a day for six months in a two-axle 6-ton truck, which seemed to be the claim.
I is confuzzled.
OC
How dare you care about things other than yourself John Cole. Don’t you know the whole purpose of America is to look out for yourself and no one else?
I have a couple of friends that whine about their taxes under Obama. They cry about how they work harder than everyone else and how they’re punished because of their hard work. As if to say that your pay is always a direct result of how hard you work. This is all because they might face a marginal tax increase of 3.6%.
Think about that. The world is ending because they can’t stomach paying a 39.6% marginal tax rate instead of 36%. It’s all about me, me, me. They’re my friends and I love them but I want to punch them in the face every time they bring this up.
OC
@shortstop: I could not agree more. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home where money was not an issue. My family could afford nice things and I didn’t miss out on opportunities due to a lack of money. But my parents made sure I was aware of how fortunate we were and to appreciate it. Life can deal you a losing hand regardless of how hard you work or what kind of person you are.
I’m all for hard work – but I go crazy when people correlate success with simply being better than others.
WereBear (itouch)
I would love to be in a higher tax bracket. Gimmee. Lay it on me.
Sly
@Mnemosyne:
The guy makes paying 1.2% on “very expensive California real estate” sound exorbitant. That’s all you need to know about him, and why California is in a fiscal shithole.
If that property is worth a million dollars, even in this shitty market, his property tax liability is $12,000. Fuck him. Depending on the area, a tenant would pay two to three times that a year in rent on a one bedroom apartment, and not have the benefits of building equity when times were good.
These people are practically begging for the guillotine.
iLarynx
Wall Street Journal Pay-Wall Workaround:
Here’s the free link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303828304575180330903787128.html
I learned about this workaround after Rupert Murdoch complained about it. Google allows up to 5 free accesses per day.
Rupert doesn’t need your money (he’d just give it to Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck anyway).
Lihtox
@Zifnab: Yes, it would be awfully nice to have some real fiscal conservatives in Congress: not to run the country, necessarily, but to make valid criticisms when spenders of all stripes go too far. In other words, an intelligent opposition party, one whom you wouldn’t mind losing to every now and then (or even to vote for, if the local Democrat is a crook or an idiot), without the fear that they might do something batshit insane.
Sigh.
dcdl
@Shinobi:
this
Nylund
You know what would have been nice for that taxi driver? If Reagan hadn’t raised the payroll taxes, the largest peace-time tax increase in US history, to make up for the lost revenue that occurred from absolutely slashing the tax rate of those that make millions a year.
bett
The man should definitely go out to his money tree and pluck some extra if he’s running low. For God’s sake, there are civil servants who have worked for 20 WHOLE YEARS then retired, who need a steady six-figure income pension, who depend on losers like him to pay his taxes. Whiner!! Just make more!!
Honus
@Zifnab:
“mowed lawns at 16”
fuck that guy. He should try mowing lawns at 40 to make a living.
The comments over there are all about taking “their” money and giving it to deadbeats for… medical care. They don’t seem to realize most of it goes to defense contractors. And other stuff they might use, like roads, airports, etc. A number of them are bitching about student loans, but seem to have missed the fact that their republican representatives have prevented Clinton and Obama from loaning the money directly at 2% instead of guaranteeing bank loans at 8 or 9%
They also don’t seem to realize that college tuition has skyrocketed since Reagan due to tax cuts, so that’s why they have huge student loan debt, which was not common when the top marginal rate was 50 or 70 ore 95%.
They also bitch about sales tax and property tax, which are very much in their control, largely regressive, and fund local initiatives, out of the control of the federal government.
oh yeah, these people are smarter and harder working than the luckie duckies in the lower tax brackets.
Honus
@Mnemosyne: There’s really no such thing as a 30 ton truck. Tandem axle weight limit on intertate highways is 34,000 pounds or 17 tons
Honus
@Nylund: amen I’ve been saying this for years to people who think Reagan lowered taxes and they just look bewildered. At that time I was a carpenter/contractor who made about $25k per year and basically paid only self-employment tax. Reagan doubled my taxes. Talk about class warfare and redistribution of wealth.
Honus
@interesting: No, you are wrong, self-employed people have to pay the full FICA rate. Before Reagan, we paid a little over half, like employees, but he changed that.
Little Dreamer
I’ve heard the “I’m not rich” line from my own parents (now both deceased), who invested heavily, bought the finest of things and behind closed doors they acted like they were so far above everyone else. They only used the “We’re not rich” line to make others think they had a bit of humility when they really didn’t have it at all.