250k is a good chunk of change and puts you squarely in the top quintile anywhere in the known universe in ameria. even manhattan. so fuck you. as has been stated everywhere pretty much, as here at digby's place, worrying about the upper class's income tax marginal rates is a game designed to confuse and distract the great unwashed, a job the new york times is happy to do. (there are nothing if not eager secretaries.) we're talking 250,000 dollars of income per year, each and every year, and not net worth or invest portfolios or anything else. most middle- and lower-class earners would be thrilled to make 1/4 of a million dollars a year instead of $15,500 (the wal-mart yearly average) or $30,000 or $50,000 (just above the median income in the usa), and they probably wouldn't really give a shit if they didn't drive the same car as some cocknozzle making $5 million dollars because they would remember what it was like living on that much smaller income.
the wealthiest people in this country--top 10%, top 1%, top 0.1%, whatever--would be happy to enlist the $250,000-$400,000 or so earners in this country as the cannon fodder in their class war. they believe those fools will throw themselves against the barricades to resist the waves of the great unwashed. those sad bastards will probably even be surprised when their masters toss them to the wolves. they shouldn't be, but they will. as far as the times is concerned, those in the quarter-million club will choose to fight with the times's own masters on the wrong side. envy and fear rule and the folks in charge know how to feed it.
the sad truth is that taxes for the top quintile in the united states are at all-time lows, and the tax burden has been shifted to the middle- and lower-class earners over the past 40 years. this is the real class war, and it already has a huge casualty list. the nyt is an organ of the upper class, not be trusted when it comes to the class war.
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