Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

The NY Times fails at financial math.

Whatever the policy debates, households at President Obama’s dividing line might be wealthy, but that doesn’t mean they feel wealthy.

On a Yahoo message board, a poster named Mason, who lives in Manhattan with two young children, said his household income was $262,000. “I understand the need to raise taxes,” he wrote, “but I don’t understand why people like us are lumped in with millionaires and billionaires.” 

Andrew Ross Sorkin spends the entire article shaming you for thinking we can raise taxes on the rich.  People making $250,000 a year aren't rich.  Not at all.  We can't increase their tax burden!   Mean old Obama would make Mason pay higher taxes.  That's theft!  Throw the bum ou...oh wait.

The poster child for this story is a person named Mason, who live in Manhattan with 2 young children and reportedly makes $262,000 a year. Since the 3 percentage point increase in the tax rate would only apply to income above $250,000, or $12,000 of his income, Mason would have to pay an additional $400 a year in taxes.

This comes to approximately 0.16 percent of Mason's income. If he gets his entire income from working a 2000 hour year, then Mason will have to work about 3 more hours a year to cover this tax increase.

This is the equivalent of somebody making $25,000 a year having to pay an extra $40 a year in taxes.  We're told under no circumstances can we do this.  Oh, and PS:  President Obama slashed payroll taxes for all Americans...including Mason here.

The tax cut extension means big bucks for the super-rich. LeBron James, who makes $14.5 million each year, will save more than $600,000 in taxes for this year. A family making $100,000 per year will pay about $6,000 less in taxes than if the tax cuts had expired. The average savings for all Americans, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, is about $2,800. 

But if we make Mason pay $400 more after we cut his taxes by over $10,000, Mason will go Galt and withhold his productivity and America will disintegrate overnight. As a financial reporter, Sorkin should know better.  But that's not the point of the article, now is it?