I'm sorry, but if people honestly believe there is no incentive to go from making $10 an hour to $15 an hour or any other job that offers a higher salary, then those people are predisposed to failing at life and complaining no matter what. Honestly, all I hear is excuses and a reason just to blame the government.
I've scraped by as little as $200 a month to now making six figures. At no point in my life have I ever felt "penalized" for making more money or felt that the jump into the next tax bracket ever halted me from progressing financially or created a decline in my standard of living. If anything, my progress has made me want to do more and make more money, not less. Not because .Gov is stealing from me and I feel that I have to "make up" for the higher taxes, but because I enjoy success and the fruits that it brings and more money offers me more opportunities for growth.
In the last 5 years of my life, I've been able to raise my salary an average of $10k a year. I went from living in an apartment to buying a house in uptown in a historic district. When I jumped from $37k to $54k, I utilized the extra money to invest and learned what extra money affords me to do like lowering my tax bracket through retirement accounts and various other ways of savings. The fact that I was a new home owner resulted in higher tax returns back and allowed me to adjust so I can have less taxes taken out. With each additional increase, it allowed me more freedom to expand my entrepreneurial interests and also start a technology / entrepreneurial community organization and coworking space in downtown OKC. I've worked in small companies, large corporations and have been involved as an owner or officer in smaller LLC's and have made payroll to employees, even sometimes out of pocket. .Gov or taxes had little to do with the failures or successes of each.
I'm now to the point where I'm nearing the red zone of "butthurt" if I continue to increase my income. Bitching about being moved to a higher tax bracket is one thing, but to actually halt from progressing forward and declining more income is outright stupid.
I've scraped by as little as $200 a month to now making six figures. At no point in my life have I ever felt "penalized" for making more money or felt that the jump into the next tax bracket ever halted me from progressing financially or created a decline in my standard of living. If anything, my progress has made me want to do more and make more money, not less. Not because .Gov is stealing from me and I feel that I have to "make up" for the higher taxes, but because I enjoy success and the fruits that it brings and more money offers me more opportunities for growth.
In the last 5 years of my life, I've been able to raise my salary an average of $10k a year. I went from living in an apartment to buying a house in uptown in a historic district. When I jumped from $37k to $54k, I utilized the extra money to invest and learned what extra money affords me to do like lowering my tax bracket through retirement accounts and various other ways of savings. The fact that I was a new home owner resulted in higher tax returns back and allowed me to adjust so I can have less taxes taken out. With each additional increase, it allowed me more freedom to expand my entrepreneurial interests and also start a technology / entrepreneurial community organization and coworking space in downtown OKC. I've worked in small companies, large corporations and have been involved as an owner or officer in smaller LLC's and have made payroll to employees, even sometimes out of pocket. .Gov or taxes had little to do with the failures or successes of each.
I'm now to the point where I'm nearing the red zone of "butthurt" if I continue to increase my income. Bitching about being moved to a higher tax bracket is one thing, but to actually halt from progressing forward and declining more income is outright stupid.
Not really. Short answer is its relative.
A longer answer is; at $15,000 (assuming they work)a person is going to struggle but they usually have food and shelter, maybe a car, and other "normal" bills.
At $30,000, assuming they work, people still struggle because they eat a little better, might have a little better house, prolly a more reliable car and other "normal" bills.
If you add the cost of children to either of them its gonna be more of a struggle.
Theres no reason Citizens should be struggleing so much. Corporations that have shipped jobs overseas, only to reimport goods have broken the back of the middle class and have made the poor class struggle even more.
The small business man relies on the middle class and poor class to stay afloat. If the middle class becomes broke and the poor cant afford to buy, whats the small business guy going to do? Work harder, longer and become broke as well.
The answer is to tax the hell out of every US company that uses overseas labor and then imports goods back into the US. Let China or India buy theyre crap or bring the jobs back.
This Economics Lesson may help illustrate the original post and where we are headed:
Here are the thoughts of David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, University of Georgia on taxes, etc….
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.!
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. ‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’ ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’ ‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’ ‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’ The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
Here are the thoughts of David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, University of Georgia on taxes, etc….
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.!
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. ‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’ ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’ ‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’ ‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’ The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
In the scheme of things our civilization depends on haveing different classes. We need the low skilled to perform certain jobs, we need semi skilled workers, we need laborors, we need craftsmen and tradesmen and we need semi professionals and professionals.
We need uneducated, semi educated, educated and people to educate them.
We need poor, semi poor, lower middle, middle, upper middle, right on up.
We have gotten out of balance, we have educated the poor and gave most people a skill set that doesnt reflect the pay scales.
And that approach worked beautifully, when the world shipped cargo on wooden sailing ships and it took two months to get a letter. We're in a global economy now and there's no turning back. Isolate and you'll get left behind.
Instead, how about we take a look at those countries that are attracting corporate headquarters (not poverty level labor) and look at two things. Is it improving their economy and what causes them to attract the moneymakers? If a lower tax rate is one of the reasons, why not lure them all back (and more from other countries) with a competitive rate? By increasing the number of profitable companies based on US soil, we increase tax revenues twofold. With a much greater number of corporate tax earners and their corresponding US employees. Win, win.
What we're doing now is a losing strategy. Doubling down on a loser is twice as foolish.
Granted that the labor issue is a much tougher nut to crack. We don't want to lower the average wage and subsequently, the standard of living and the buying power of the worker. We'll have to find a balance where we can stay competitive and still have a top shelf standard of living. No one said it was easy, but driving big employers overseas is not the way to do it.
Good analogy. Heres another one. A Rich guy picks up my tab. Tells me Im fired because he found a way to get to get richer by moving his company overseas. He then says he'll be importing a new watered down beer that i'll be forced to buy, if i want beer or could afford it.
I kick him in the nuts and beat the crap out of him. Take all of his money and put him on a boat to China. And that ladies and gentlemen is how ya teach a rich company to do business.
Businesses were not driven overseas. Look at Wrangler, every small town had a sewing factory, NAFTA made it easy for them to move to Mexico where labor was cheaper.
In 1987 a pair of Wranglers cost about $14-17 bucks. After NAFTA the cost went up although labor went down. Then what, they get Chinese to make them even cheaper, yet the cost of a pair of Wranglers went up even more.
We dont have the natural resources to supply the entire world with products to buy, yet we need to provide some meaningfull jobs for our citizens.
The scales of the free global market and unchecked capitolism need to be brought to balance. We're not going to stop the global economy from growing but we do need to reign in US capitolism a little. Thats within our control.
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