The Poor Rich
by digby
Here’s a very sad story of a financial planner in pain:
A Message from ‘Henry’
We’re high earners not yet rich, and now the government wants us to pay more?
I’m in the 32% federal and 10% state income tax brackets. I pay a 1.2% property tax on very expensive California real estate. I am subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax. I am self-employed and subject to a 15% payroll tax on the first $100,000 in income and an 8.75% state sales tax. If I have a gain from investing, I pay a minimum of 15% federal and 10% state tax but can only write off $3,000 per year if I lose.
And now the government wants me to pay more?
As a child I mowed lawns, shoveled snow, had a paper route, sold sandwiches at school, and cut up dead trees and split them for firewood to sell during spring break. I have worked every summer since I turned 14. I took out student loans for college and worked 35 hours a week, at night, to pay for the rest.
Since I graduated in 1983, I have been in straight commission sales and have had many 60- to 70-hour work weeks. No secure salary, no big promotions, no pension—just me profiting though helping others while being subject to the swings of the economic cycle. The first 20 years were tough, but it’s finally starting to pay off.
I drive a nicer car (bought used), live in a better neighborhood, have more retirement savings than many. But I am certainly not rich, and every month I find my ever increasing bills (and taxes) tend to match my income. I have more than most only because I’ve worked harder than most and because I am a saver. It was not easy.
Why then does the government feel so entitled to take my money and give it to others? Why should I have to carry so many people on my back? Call me cruel. I don’t care. I give to whom I choose—but since so much is confiscated (and wasted in the process) I have little left I wish to give.
This guy makes more that 250k a year and it’s not because he works so much harder than the rest of us, it’s because he’s lucky enough to be a member of a privileged class working in a job that pays him very well for the hours he works. I don’t begrudge him his success, but the fact that he thinks his success is solely due to his work ethic is very telling. The fact is that the vast majority of people in this country, many of whom don’t happen to be white males like him, don’t get the breaks this fellow got and work in equally valuable fields for far less money. (Like the teachers who taught him, for instance.) That assumed superiority is what gives him away as a Randian asshole.
I happen to know financial planners and they are not all like this. One of my best friends is a financial planner and she feels an obligation as a decent human being to pay taxes and believes that giving back is a responsibility of those who do well. There are more like her. And believe me, you’d do much better trusting your nest egg to someone who has some empathy and a sense of social responsibility than to a greed head who considers himself poor because he has to pay a little more in taxes on what he earns over 250k. He’s a spoiled idiot with no imagination or integrity who doesn’t live in the real world and shouldn’t be trusted with other people’s money.
He’s like this student at Syracuse who said this to an MSNBC reporter today when asked what he thought about Chase CEO Jamie Dimond as commencement speaker:
“He’s one of the finest financial minds in the nation right now and especially, for the most part, that he’s really going to end up leading us out of this crisis with everything that he’s doing.”
These Baby Galts aren’t rugged individualistic entrepreneurs. They are idol worshipers shilling for their heroes. In fact, John Galt has another word for them.
.