Lately, the pundits at FOX have been telling us Wisconsin teachers are overpaid. These teachers have an average salary of $51,000, $75,000 if you include benefits; and the FOX folks tell us this is a lot of money. Too much. Although the teachers have agreed to a 7% cut overall to help with a $3.6 billion deficit over two years, the FOX pundits say this is not enough; the teachers must give up collective bargaining and take bigger cuts.
Rewind to the debate last year over ending the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000. These same FOX pundits told us $250,000 was not that much money, hardly enough to pay a mortgage and send the kids to college! It was way too much to ask for a 3.9% tax tax increase on income over $250,000 to deal with a federal deficit of $1,400 billion.
So when is 51,000 (or 75,000) more than 250,000, 3.9 more than 7, and 3.6 billion more than 1,400 billion? When you are a FOX pundit!
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3 comments:
Al,
This is spot on. I had a rather unpleasant debate with my accountant yesterday. His argument is that those teacher's pay comes out of his pocket. Whereas the rich guys made their money in the market, and shouldn't have to pay more percentage in taxes than the less rich.
Despite the fact that I disagree with him, and see how our middle class is evaporating along with the prosperous way of life we all grew up with, I don't have a come back argument to that.
The problem is that someone has to pay for government. The government can be smaller and cheaper, but it still needs to be paid for. The poor cannot pay for government, they have no money. Thus, the middle class and rich will. The more the rich pay, the less it costs the middle class. Over the last few decades, the amount the rich pay has drastically fallen (top income rate from 90% to 36%). The difference has been made up by the middle class and borrowing. That's why the middle class is weak and we are drowning in debt.
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