Average American family "can't pay their bills"

[slapshot]

Quote from SWhiting:

Families making 40K or less shouldn't pay federal income taxes. If the wealthly were taxed their fair share people making 60-80K could pay a lot less also. If 5% of the population control 85% of the wealth then they should pay 85% of the nations bills.

Unfortunately, many families earning 40K or less do NOT vote Democrat: they are evangelcal Christians and they have been hoodwinked into voting against their own best interests.

Wow, what a crock of BS this statement is. I can tell you don't make very much annualy or you would never say this.

40% of Americans pay basically zero taxes ($40k or less income)
20% pay a little ($40k to 60k)

So the first 60% of workers pay next to nothing.

Of the remaining 40%, 35% pay 1/2 of this nation's taxes ($60K to $250k income )

The last, top 5% of income brackets pay 1/2 of this nation's tax bills. That's right. One half.

I'm not even in the top 5% and I pay more in taxes every year than a $60k person even earns.

Why should the burden fall just on the wealthy? How is that fair or just? Maybe they fucking work harder, smarter and invest better. Why should they subsidize all of the remora-fish, entitlement junkies?

And these are the same folks that provide most of the jobs for the under $40k crowd to survive on. Talk about biting the hand that feeds.

This is what is wrong with this country. People who have all kinds of opinions on how to spend other people's wealth.

 

[slapshot]

Quote from thriftybob:


Under the current system, I noticed that John Kerry and his wife, who OWN the majority of HJ Heinz, paid less tax than my family. Its called tax sheltering. The tax system is designed to keep them rich no matter how high on the hog they live.

Yes, except you are conveniently forgetting the massive heaps of corporate taxes, benefits and other entitlements that HJ Heinz undoubtedly pays as a successful corporation. Those taxes are a huge load on business and profits.

Plus the payroll taxes, health insurance and other things that corporations pay.

So what if they pay little in personal taxes? They directly and indirectly pay 100 time to 1000 times as much as any one person's personal taxes via the business. And certainly a hell of a lot mroe than you or your family.

To snivel about tax shelters is to completely ignore the other 95% of the benefits, pensions, and multiple taxes that corporations have to pay for.

So how does your personal contribution match even a fraction this? What is your contribution to society or the workers of the world?

I don't even like Kerry. But I understand basic economics, which bleeding hearts like you do not.

 

[slapshot]

Quote from SWhiting:

I don't know about the 40 million working poor not paying taxes: I paid taxes when I earned minimum wage. Maybe those with children get enough deductions to not pay any taxes.

Not true, you got every penny of federal taxes refunded at the minimum wage level. You only paid FICA and SSI.

 

[nutmeg]

"This is what is wrong with this country. People who have all kinds of opinions on how to spend other people's wealth."

We've always had to live with those opinions, but imo, more and more people are actually able to tell you how to spend your money.

For example, local zoning laws, break your balls to plant a tree and landscape. People look in your garbage and come up with a plan on how you can recycle on your dime. I know I'm nitpicking but it is pervasive where people with small weenies are starved for power and control and have no money of their own take control of your money. They'll never live by the rules they make because they have missed the mark.

 

[Robert Weinstein]

Quote from Anunakki:

The arrogance, elitism and simple ability to see shades of grey here is amazing.

Yes...a vast number of people are living beyond their means...they are not saving..they are paying more attention to Britney than their finances...all true.

But there are also plenty of folks that simply got handed a really bad set of cards. it DOES happen regardless of the chip-on-the-shoulder posters who feel everyone in a bad situation made it themselves.

My brother is 37 with a wife and three kids. Been an exec at a large corp for 9 years. Very responsible and doesnt overspend...has a savings.

Recently was told the company is laying off a lot of management and it is likely he will be let go in the next 90 days. So he's looking for a job now.

If he finds one before they lay him off, great. If not he gets a 6 month severance. If he doesnt find one in 6 months he has ~$50k in savings that will buy them another 7 or 8 months...but after that the debt would pile up so quickly it could be impossible to climb out without filing bankruptcy.

He can work 24/7 flipping burgers but that wont put a dent in his monthly living expenses. And lets face it...its not like you can sell your house in this market to help things out.

Fact is..bad things DO happen to good people.

get off your high horse you moron (you know who Im talking about) as one day it could be you.

Final note..I also grew up on very poor living in a trailer park. My family didnt have a car. My dad had two jobs and he took the bus... Im now fairly well off so I know all about climbing out of the gutter.

I think you missed the point here. The fact is that bad things do happen but so many never plan for it. They live in a world that they think 'nothing will happen to change my lifestyle'. Those people are wrong and you don't have to look far to see what happens to them

I would say that if your brother is actually as responsible as you paint him to be and I have no reason to question he isn't then I would think that if he has almost a year to figure things out then there is also no reason for him to run up a debt.

It seems simple to me. If you lose your job and your not finding work that supports your current lifestyle then you sell your house and buy something that you can afford. Along with it you change your spending as well.

I don't mean to be rude but perhaps your brother was overpaid for the amount of value he brought to the company and his current lifestyle is actually beyond what it should be based on expected earnings. maybe not and he will find a job that pays what he is hoping to get.

Again I am sorry that your brother is being let go but I just don't see anything that you wrote that changes the need for personal responsibility. If anything its a good example of why people need to save and not overspend.

 

[Robert Weinstein]

Quote from slapshot:

Wow, what a crock of BS this statement is. I can tell you don't make very much annualy or you would never say this.

40% of Americans pay basically zero taxes ($40k or less income)
20% pay a little ($40k to 60k)

So the first 60% of workers pay next to nothing.

Of the remaining 40%, 35% pay 1/2 of this nation's taxes ($60K to $250k income )

The last, top 5% of income brackets pay 1/2 of this nation's tax bills. That's right. One half.

I'm not even in the top 5% and I pay more in taxes every year than a $60k person even earns.

Why should the burden fall just on the wealthy? How is that fair or just? Maybe they fucking work harder, smarter and invest better. Why should they subsidize all of the remora-fish, entitlement junkies?

And these are the same folks that provide most of the jobs for the under $40k crowd to survive on. Talk about biting the hand that feeds.

This is what is wrong with this country. People who have all kinds of opinions on how to spend other people's wealth.

Well said, If things were "fair" then everyone would pay the same in taxes regardless of anything else. Anything else is not "fair"

 

[Reaver]

Quote from nutmeg:

"This is what is wrong with this country. People who have all kinds of opinions on how to spend other people's wealth."

We've always had to live with those opinions, but imo, more and more people are actually able to tell you how to spend your money.

For example, local zoning laws, break your balls to plant a tree and landscape. People look in your garbage and come up with a plan on how you can recycle on your dime. I know I'm nitpicking but it is pervasive where people with small weenies are starved for power and control and have no money of their own take control of your money. They'll never live by the rules they make because they have missed the mark.

Good post as usual, nutmeg.

 

[blackjack007]

anunakki, your brother is a loser if he's been working for 9 yrs as an exec of a large corp and only has $50k savings. you just provided a great example of someone who lives on the edge and was one job-loss away from disaster.

as for income taxes, wealthy people subsidize low-income people. everyone except poor people and those ignorant of tax laws knows this.

 

[billdick]

Quote from turkeyneck:
Some people have no one to blame but themselves. ...

Not true. Your link was interesting read, but does not support your statement, nor does the current issue of the Economist - The cover story at:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880718

Where you will find:

"...Thanks to cheap money, they could take on more debt—which makes investments more profitable and more risky. Thanks to the information technology, they could design myriad complex derivatives, some of them linked to mortgages. By combining debt and derivatives, the banks created a new machine that could originate and distribute prodigious quantities of risk to a baffling array of counterparties. ..."

In other words, blame Big Al Greenspan and the creators of the many new types of "liar loans," "no money down," "teaser rate loans" etc. and the CDOs, SIVs, etc. that quickly moved these "designed to fail" mortgages off the books. (To escape the already poorly enforced regulation entirely. The SEC was asleep - did not know, or want to know, what risk was accumulating in these new financial instruments being sold.)

The Economist article goes on to specifically share the blame with the regulators and asset evaluators as follows:

"... The financial system, or a big part of it, began to lose touch with its purpose: to write, manage and trade claims on future cashflows for the rest of the economy. It increasingly became a game for fees and speculation, and a favourite move was to beat the regulator. Hence the billions of dollars sheltered off balance sheets in SIVs and conduits. Thanks to what, in hindsight, has proven disastrously lax regulation, banks did not then have to lay aside capital in case something went wrong. Hence, too, the trick of packaging securities as AAA—and finding a friendly rating agency to give you the nod. ..."

SUMMARY: There is no shortage of people and companies blame for this easily foreseeable disaster, but at the heart of it is the government's failure to understand and control the risk of stuff moved off the books. Essentially the same thing that lead to the 1929 depression, with the excessive “on books” risk, which has now been fixed, mainly with FDIC and better bank regulation. It will take another depression, IMHO, for US to learn that the risks transferred "off books" also must be regulated. – Sad, but education is always expensive.

 

[drsteph]

Its the assumptions.

We have become so accustomed to inflation that we ASSUME that there will be constant inflation. Go to any financial calculator - it will ask you what your expected inflation rate is and plug that into your wages as well as your expenses.

Problem is, wages aren't rising. They are stagnating, and therefore decreasing in real terms.

If people 'got' financial literacy, they would realize that not only are their wages NOT going to rise over time, but that they are forced to save and accept that their savings purchasing power will decline somewhat over time. That's just not fun, but it is reality. You might be able to stave it off if you speculate correctly in the market, but maybe not as well. Hard choices.

I'm not going to be specific, but I make coin.

I live in a 1700 sf house, and drive a four year old Toyota - one of the baser models. Works great. Wife started clipping coupons again the other day - not that she really needs to, but we are going to stick to our budget. I see prices increasing and see my investment additions declining as I increase other fixed costs.

And the main thing I wonder about is if I can notice the increases in prices, what the heck is it doing to the rest of the folks, the vast majority of whom lie below me in the earnings parameters?

They are either in denial or have given up, expecting an alternative. That's the only conclusion I can come to. Sad state of affairs, really.