Thursday, September 23, 2010

Huh...? SInce when is 250K/yr rich?



Amazing how the definition of "rich" changes depending where you are and your circumstances relative to those around you...

250K/yr is a very arbitrary sum. Does "rich" now equate to "evil" in common belief? Is 250K is the new jump from "hard working" to "silver spoon"?

There are many areas in our country where that salary puts you solidly in the middle-class -- not rich at all...

I think the problem is not "taxing the rich" enough (although I think most really RICH people have way too many advantages through access to knowledge and help with loopholes) -- I think the problem is a vanishing middle class.

In my area, at least, even though on average they take home much more money, most "middle-class" families are living a comparative lifestyle to the lower-middle-class of 20-30 years ago.

One thing I have noticed, though - and this is not an indictment, just an observation: people who do make good money, and have done so long enough to have gotten used to it, do not really relate to lower-middle and working class people who are just scraping by. They may say they can "relate", but in my experience they cannot; any more than I can relate to a person raised in a blighted and famine torn country.

This may be why we get so little from government for our money: people we elect don't REALLY relate to us...

I think that the Vanishing Middle-Class is the reason we are seeing "class warfare", this little bit of which is over income taxes.

If the US had a solidly growing middle-class paying a growing chunk of taxes, the economy would be healthier (Duh!) and there wouldn't be the pressure to find revenue expressed in this increase in extreme anti-rich verbiage we are seeing ("Eat The Rich", "Bring back the guillotine", etc...) lately...

Just sayin'.