@hawkeye10,
Quote:It’s not that hard to explain to Americans in distress that the protection of vast fortunes should not be the priority of government.
Right on target?
Postponing a raise in taxes for individuals making $200,000 a year and couples making $250,000 a year is protecting "vast fortunes?"
Now $250,000 is not chicken-feed but, by conservative estimate, it's less than a quarter of Maureen Dowd's annual income. Considering that Rachel Maddow makes $1,000,000 per year, estimating Dowd's income as residing in the same vicinity is most likely low balling, but let's use it.
I don't begrudge whatever Dowd makes. She has a relatively unique talent that appeals to a great many people and so deserves whatever the market will bear. By all accounts, she enjoys the
good life in NYC, and a standard of living that is considerably higher than the working class she is said to champion. Again, from my point of view, there's nothing wrong with this. It's her money, she comes by it honestly (at least when she isn't plagiarizing John Marshall), and so she is free to spend it as she wishes.
From her lofty vantage point though she is in a position to well realize that a gross annual income of $250,000 doesn't, by American standards, produce
vast fortunes. In fact, I doubt that Dowd's annual income (seven figured though it may be) is generating a
vast fortune for her.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of people making in the range of $250,000 to Dowd, haven't been making that amount throughout their entire careers. Dowd didn't begin her career in 1974 as an assistant editor for the Washington Star making a seven figure salary, and I would bet
my current salary that she didn't start at $200,000 either.
People in the $200K to Dowd range are not filthy rich or vastly wealthy or whatever other term you might use to distinguish multi-millionaires from those who are affluent.
The difference between someone making $22,600,000 a year (Derek Jeter) and someone making $200,000 a year is both mathematically and materially much greater than the difference between someone making $200,000 a year and someone making $22,600 a year, and yet Dowd and the Democrats would have us believe the person making $200K rightly belongs in the same economic class as super-star athletes, Wall Street brokerage house executives, and CEOs of software giants.
The problem is that there isn't enough money to be had from raising the taxes of the Super-rich alone, for what the Democrats want to spend. Or more precisely, the Democrats are, themselves, too beholden to the Super-rich to attempt to get the money they need solely from them. Instead the pool of high tax targets has to be expanded to include those in the $200K - Dodd range. In order to justify this expansion the people in this lower segment have to be referred to, considered, and demonized in the same way the Super-rich are.
Let me be clear, I don't support raising tax rates for the Super-rich either, but how much easier, politically, would their task have been if they had drawn the line at say $1 million (Dowd territory)? In the last couple of months quite a number of Democrats changed their rhetoric (if not their policy preference) to employ the $1 million dividing line:
"With the deficit problem looming so large for our country, I just can't get behind cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, for people making...
more than $1 million a year."
Too late, but nice try.
Again though, a $1 million dividing line was not low enough to provide the funding they needed for their grandiose spending plans, and if they made it work by increasing the increases planned for the "Rich," network anchors, trial lawyers, Senators, Wall Street political donors, and NYT columnists, would have had to pay a bigger share.