How Much Is It Going to Hurt, Rich Person?


It Actually Comes Down to This...

*I assume none of these folks is rich
I don't think $250,000 a year is really "rich," but it's where progressive taxation starts to nibble.  Here is a comment from a guy with income in that range. He is delightfully named Ned Friend.

AUGUST 2, 2017  SEATTLE—Ned Friend has high hopes for what Seattle’s new income tax could mean for his city.
The measure, passed by the city council in July, would impose a 2.25 percent tax on high-income – those who make above $250,000 a year, or twice that for couples.
Mr. Friend, a software engineer whose annual income is above the threshold, sees the new cash source as a way to help ease the affordability crisis that is the dark side to Seattle’s booming tech industry. He says he’s happy to pay a little extra each year if it means more revenue for the city to address homelessness and fund public education, make taxes more fair, and defend liberal Seattle against strikes from a conservative federal government.
“It shaves a little bit off my long-term investments,” Friend says, “but it makes a better city.”
                        From a great article in The Christian Science Monitor
 by Christina Mendoza about Seattle raising taxes
on the rich and the minimum wage for the not-rich.
Nearly Rich
I hit my best earning years in San Francisco and Dallas, two places with radically different taxation schemes.  I (surprise!) prefer San Francisco.  I was way too busy working and living the S.F. life to worry about "shaves a little bit off my long-term investments."  My 19 years in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego may have shaved and sculpted my views on things a bit too. California collects quite a lot of taxes. Dallas - Texas altogether - collects a good deal less. I could never "feel" the difference in my income. Do you think the actually rich do?

[Someday I'll expound on how the wealthier folks get, the more strange and exotic their urge to accumulate more and more comes about. It's an evolution thing, IMHO.]

Last week's New Yorker has a nifty piece about Bernie Sanders. The statistic Bernie quoted in a London speech staggers me every time I hear it:
"Eight individuals in the world are as wealthy as 3.6 billion people, about half of humanity."
Hooray for Seattle! Yay for a progressive tax system.

 I guess that makes me a "Redistributionist." That's a really nasty word to my conservative pals.

Check out "Tax Me."



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