Monday, December 6, 2010

Let's Do A Little Math

On several occasions in the past week or two, President Obama has declared that this nation needs to tighten its belt and that all of us need to share in the sacrifices. If he genuinely meant what he says, I would be okay with that -- not happy, mind you -- but I could live with it. The problem is that his idea of "sharing the sacrifice" is terribly one-sided. It seems that this sharing must be borne solely by the middle class and poor.

It looks very likely that, sometime this week, the Bush tax cuts are going to be renewed. This means that the people who are suffering LEAST (or not at all) from the economic downtown will receive the lion's share of the benefit. At the same time, extending unemployment insurance is up in the air. If it does get extended, chances are that it will be at the expense of some other program the poor and middle class depend on...You know, robbing Peter to pay Paul!

Defense spending -- at least in terms of the military-industrial complex -- is not being slashed, so the wealthy will benefit from this too.

On the other hand, federal employees will see their salaries frozen for two years and those of us on some form of Social Security again will not receive a meager 2.5% cost of living increase.

One of the ways my wife and I barely get by is via my SSI disability check. The top amount a person on SSI receives monthly is $674.00. I say the "top amount" because a portion of my wife's income as a caregiver is considered "deemed income" and, through a formula, a portion is subtracted from the amount I am eligible for. Over the past year, my SSI check has been for $350 - $600 per month.

As part of the sacrifice the president says I must make for the good of the nation, for the second consecutive year, my SSI check won't increase by 2.5% which equals about $204 yr/$17 mo. Yes, $17 is chump change, but when you are poor, every penny counts.

On the other hand, while I'm sacrificing an extra $17 per month, a family with $500,000 in taxable income will soon get to keep an additional $23,000 yr/$1917 mo. How fair is that?

While my wife and I will continue to visit the local food bank to help us get by from month to month, families with incomes of $500,000, $1 million, $10 million and more will have extra money to buy expensive doodads and trips to Europe or the Bahamas.

Is this what you mean Mr. President about "shared sacrifice"?

5 comments:

  1. we need a revolution, like, yesterday.

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  2. Who pays your SSI? Perhaps the taxes of people who work?

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  3. Then why would you complain about people who make more money than you do? Without their taxes, where would your ssi money come from? People who make $100,000plus per year are taxed to death.

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  4. I didn't complain about people making more than I do. My complaint is that the middle class and poor bear the majority of the sacrifice.

    I would beg to differ that folks making more the $250K (that's the figure I quoted, not $100K) are taxed to death. For one thing, they can itemize and thus shield a lot of their earnings. A poor person can't itemize and so we pay the full amount of our tax bracket.

    For another, conservatives like to talk about those wonder years of the 1950s. Do you know what the top tax rate was then? 91%! Today it's only 35%.

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