So you won’t get the bogus $300 tax rebate, John. I won’t, either. Somehow, I will manage to pick up the pieces of my shattered life and move on.
There are two main problems with Aravosis’ argument, such as it is: First, individuals making $75,001 and couples making $150,001 are not poor, even if they live in DC or San Francisco or NYC*. Second, considering that the deal was brokered only because Nancy Pelosi dropped her insistence that unemployment benefits be extended and food stamps temporarily increased as part of any stimulus package, the following rings a little hollow:
And rather than being geared towards helping the economy, they’re apparently geared towards redistributing wealth (that would be our wealth) to the poor. What a surprise. Folks in the middle (i.e, those who are not rich or poor) are screwed by the Democrats (and Republicans) yet again.
Does he imagine that people who make less than $75K a year don’t pay any taxes at all, such that they’re taking “his” money?
H/T: Air Pollution.
____________
* Yes, it does suck that the rebate is not indexed to the local cost of living. But the whining Aravosis does about the relative size of his friend’s house in Baltimore vs. what is presumably his studio in DC (I’m presuming because he goes on and fucking on about studios) is unseemly. Dude, you’re paying to live in DC, not for the square footage of your living space. Just like people pay through the nose to live in a shoebox in Manhattan because they want to live in Manhattan. And that’s their choice, because it’s not like there aren’t other options. The friend who lives in Baltimore has a house because he lives in Baltimore instead of DC. I live in NYC, and my housing costs, for a large apartment, are quite reasonable — but then, I live in central Brooklyn, in a neighborhood that was only discovered by hipsters a couple of years ago.
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[...] John Aravosis is crying over his exemption from the tax stimulus — Zuzu justly mocks him for it because John’s beef is that coastal elites are at a disadvantage to receive these subsidies [...]
Complete moron. Sorry, but 7 times the poverty level is not “middle class.” I’d point him to this interesting article about perception and the middle class. Sure I’d love to have some extra cash, but other people can put it to better use.
You know, the one and only time I’ve previously run into John Aravosis is when he wrote a really insulting and transphobic article about ENDA and why it’s totally acceptable to throw trans* people under the bus. I didn’t know anything else about him and didn’t really care to. But it has indeed now been confirmed: I really can’t stand the guy.
I’m kind of annoyed at the Dems, too, for throwing out the food stamps and unemployment benefits increases. Though I’m not sure how much of a choice they had. More than anything, I’m furious and appalled that Republicans openly acknowledge that we need a stimulus package because people’s money is being stretched thin and yet also openly oppose this plan and will face absolutely no consequences for it. How did we get to a point where it’s okay to say “so what if poor people go hungry, I want to buy some new clothes?”
Seeing as Mr Oro and I earned no income last year, clearly we are ineligible to get any money from the Gub’mint. $300 would be enough for a partial payment on one of my monthly medical bills…which would be nice. But hey, I don’t earn enough, so screw me!
That’s okay, I’m looking forward to seeing if I get Dr Dynasaur and WIC, I’m sure they’ll make a dent in my bills.
Aravosis can suck my ass.
Not to pick nits, but this is only true if you have transferable skills (like, presumably Aravosis). But if you don’t, and you were born and raised there and have all your family there, it would be really hard to move elsewhere. Which is why people who are actually poor who live in places like New York can’t just up and move. I know you weren’t saying that, but it’s an argument I hear sometimes about poor people in cities and how lazy/irresponsible they are that they don’t move elsewhere, and I don’t like it.
Congress will get to make another go at extending unemployment benefits when Bush unveils is budget. Maybe that’s why Pelosi dropped it so easily.
When I moved to NYC, I never even considered Manhattan – too small, too crowded, too expensive. It drives me crazy to hear people complain when they chose to live there in the first place!
Betsy, people who are poor or middle-class and live in cities like New York don’t live in the kinds of neighborhoods Aravosis is talking about. They live in neighborhoods like mine (or like mine used to be, since my neighborhood is gentrifying out of my own price range). So when I say people have options, I mean they have options that are a hell of a lot less expensive than where all the hipsters live.
What the hell, I was going to give away my rebate anyway. My only problem was making up my mind between a charity and a political/advocacy group. Maybe I’ll split it (if I get it).
Just wanted to thank you for the link, zuzu. I should really start commenting (fawning, a la americablog commentators, perhaps?), since you guys are great. And I’m really glad to see some others as annoyed at Aravosis as I am. And thanks, Cara, for that link regarding Aravosis and ENDA. The man encapsulates all the critiques of the gay rights movement as not only gay, white, male, and well-off, but unable to get past their gay-ness, whiteness, maleness, and well-off-ness.
I also like making up words.
air
That’s pretty goddamn pathetic. “Poor people get all the breaks” my ass.
I think he’s wrong, anyway, but I could be mistaken. I’ve been following the tax rebate debate, and the earlier, Republican-supported bill would NOT have given to anyone who didn’t pay income tax (but still payed social security) and would have only given a partial rebate to anyone who earned less than 75K/150K combined. I think what the author of the article was trying to say (and poorly!) is what I’ve read in other articles: that now ANYONE who pays social security tax will get a rebate of 600/1200 combined with an additional 300 for children. Thus under the plan, even those with incomes under 75K/150K combined would get the same amount as those with incomes over 75K/150K, i.e. ALL TAXPAYERS GET THE SAME REBATE. That’s what I read earlier today, anyway.
I’d say I’d wait for John to swap places with one of those poor people who clearly have it so much better by getting a tax break, but honestly, nobody has that much time.
Betsy – she said Manhattan, not NYC. Even if your only viable job market is in Manhattan and all your family lives there, its not going to kill you to move to Queens. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper here.
Yep. That’s why I’m out here in Queens even though all my family and most of my friends are in Manhattan and Brooklyn. And I’m not poor.
she said Manhattan, not NYC. Even if your only viable job market is in Manhattan and all your family lives there, its not going to kill you to move to Queens. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper here.
Yeah…I live in the exorbitantly priced Santa Cruz county. When my boyfriend & I realized how much it was costing to live in Santa Cruz, we moved to a comparable place up in the mountains out of town. I commute to work now, but even with gas prices it is way less and we can save more money… We still won’t have enough money to make a move out of the county for a while, but at least it’ll be possible in a few more months of living here; we could barely save anything towards that end if we were still living in the city limits.
I’m kind of annoyed at the Dems, too, for throwing out the food stamps and unemployment benefits increases. Though I’m not sure how much of a choice they had.
House Democrats can pass the bill they wants. Senate Democrats have to worry about a filibuster. My read is Nancy Pelosi is worried about Congressal low approval ratings.
Is Aravosis’ post about helping the middle class or helping the middle class? I had trouble cutting through the whine. I remember Aravosis demanding readers send him money so he can blog. It must be expensive having a site hosted on Blogger.
Yes, terribly expensive. It costs me a grand total of $0.00 for Blogger to host my blog. How ever can I afford it. How shall I ever put food on the family?
Oh, this pisses me off enough to stop lurking.
I’m terribly sorry that it’s so damn rough being Aravosis. Here’s an idea — he can trade places with me in 2003 when I spent 4 months looking for work in my hometown and finally got a minimum wage job ($5.15, baby!). In theory, I was full time, but there were a lot of weeks when I was only scheduled for 4 days or was sent home early because it wasn’t busy. In 2004, they closed in October, so I sold everything I had worth selling and moved to CA.
For the record:
2003 income per tax return: $5872
2004 income per tax return: $7432
Now, I know Ft Wayne, IN is a lot cheaper than NYC, but not that much. This was the only job I could get (and yes, I kept looking) and I was the sole breadwinner in our house because my father was downsized in June of ’03 and didn’t find work again until August of ’04. He raided his retirement to pay the mortgage and I kept the lights on and bought the two of us groceries. As far as I can tell, I wouldn’t have qualified for the rebate those years either, since I didn’t earn enough.
Now, Aravosis, tell me $75K in NYC is worse than that. No, really, I can’t hear you over the sound of my hysterical laughter.
[I do feel dorky for having pulled my tax returns out to post them here, but it was that or figure out how to electrocute him via his internet connection. If anyone is wondering, the move to CA was a good call and I now earn enough to qualify for the rebate.]
OMGZ, god/dess/es forbid that my parents, who make less than $35000 combined before taxes, receive an additional break this year (and we all live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which rapidly is becoming disgustingly gentrified, thus f*ckin’ expensive)!
John whines too much. Someone please insult me and give me a $75,000.01 annual salary!
The point made about comparative salaries is a good one. It is true, even people in metro areas making 75k+, are well above a needy level, even if it is worth less there in terms of rent etc.
While I cannot sympathize with Aravosis’ point as he reminds me of too many overentitled upper/upper-middle class college classmates, I hear Betsy’s points about growing up and living in Manhattan.
Due to the effects of gentrification, a lot of formerly “undesirable” neighborhoods no longer have as cohesive of a neighborhood community with longtime residents and families. I’ve witnessed some of this dynamic in Boston’s Chinatown and in the Roxbury/Fenway area as developers and universities effectively forced many working-class and low-income families out in order to cash in on the burgeoning housing demand from relatively wealthier university students and young professionals. The effects of gentrification and the psychological effects of being uprooted and separated from longtime former neighbors is quite traumatic and devastating. It is pretty sad when one needs to make a minimum of $60,000/year just to be able to afford to live in the city of Boston due to the high housing costs of the late ’90s early ’00s according to the statistic provided by a Boston area newspaper from several years back.
What an asshole. According to the Census, the median income in Washington DC is $40,127 and 20% lived below poverty level. (2000 census)
I’m sure they’d all be willing to trade places with Aravosis if his life is so bad.
Seriously. $75k single-income in NYC is by no means “wealthy” as it would be in some more rural areas of the country, but it isn’t “poor”, either. The cost of living is outrageous, but not that ridiculous…. yet.
What the hell? I’ve lived and worked in Manhattan for the last ten years and I’ve NEVER made $75,000. I’ve been lucky to make half of that some years. And I have what would generally be considered a “professional white-collar job,” I sit at a desk and have to wear a business suit when I go to meetings with clients in big boardrooms where they serve you white wine before the meeting. And like a lot of people in the tax bracket or two below $75k, I still pay almost half of my paycheck in federal, state, and local taxes. I’m sorry, but unless you live in a big apartment or in a fancy, fancy neighborhood and dine out every night and take taxicabs everywhere, $75k is a really nice paycheck. Heck I don’t even have very many friends who make that much. Most of the people I know make around $40k.
And even if you were raised here in Manhattan, and I know plenty of people who were, there are always plenty of neighborhoods either in Manhattan or in the other boroughs, less than a half-hour further away from the center of town, that are far cheaper. This isn’t to say that people should have to move out because rents get higher — gentrification has been tearing neighborhoods and communities apart for decades around here. But it’s certainly possible to survive and work in NYC for far less than what Aravoisis is complaining about. What the hell, how does he think all the people waiting on him and busing his tables and ringing his purchases up make ends meet? Not by making $75k.
We do make right around 75k. You know what? We’re not poor. Haven’t been for ages. Are we strapped financially – oh yeah – due to prior employers going bankrupt and resultant frequent moving, we’re ass-deep in debt, but we still have more assets than most. We’re incredibly lucky and we know it. We don’t need $300. It would be nice, yes. But we don’t need it.
Yeah, poor people get all the breaks. Like the “break” they’ll have to take from eating now that the Food Stamps program has been cut in order to “stimulate the economy.”
As the recurring series in the Salon cartoon Tom the Dancing Bug says, LUCKY DUCKY!
Oh, give me a break. I live in DC, making less than $75K/yr, and I am definitely not huddled in a 300sqft studio living hand to mouth. Sure, my paycheck doesn’t go as far as it would in some parts of the country, but I’m not poor in any sense of the word – I have a reasonably-sized apartment in a fun neighborhood, my paycheck covers all my bills with some left over for savings and entertainment, etc. DC is expensive, but it’s not that frigging expensive. He needs to get over himself.
I earn much, much less than $75,000 a year, and I bet I won’t get a tax rebate.
Aravosis has finally scuttled the last bits of credibility. He’s racist, he’s transphobic, and now he’s a classist whiner who complains that people who make less than him get his money. So … AFAICT his actual agenda is that educated, affluent masculine-acting white gay men get an equally privileged status in the injustice hierarchy to educated, affluent masculine-acting white het men.
That’s not an agenda I’m on board with.
I live on Cape Cod, not exactly an area where one finds low property values or expenses. I make less than $75000.
I do not need a $600 check.
If Mr. Threwmeunderthebus needs it, then he needs to reevaluate his spending priorities.
This thread makes me laugh…it reminds me of conversations with my father. Back before retirement he was a cardiologist earning 350K a year and considered himself “middle class.” At times I attempted to disabuse him of his conviction that he was just an “ordinary Joe” and that, indeed, he was in the upper tier, but no amount of logic or argument could convince him otherwise. It’s very common that social consciousness reflects upwards – you see those better off than yourself and ratchet yourself down on some mental scale. It’s also a truism for many Americans that as their income increases their spending increases so that they remain perpetually stretched for funds.
As a Manhattanite (yes, it is my own fault I live in Manhattan) with a, ahem, middle class by Congressional standards income, the thing that strikes me as strange is that Aravosis cares so much about a lousy little $300. $300 won’t buy dinner in Manhattan*, who cares if you get it or not? Maybe I’ve got a warped view of things, but I’d MUCH rather see the $300 go to someone who needs it and to whom it is a meaningful amount of money than to someone who probably isn’t going to even get her sh!t together enough to deposit the check for months after it arrives**. Give the tax break to people making under the median income. Not to people who only notice its absence because they want to feel oh-so deprived. If Aravosis had gotten the check he hardly would have noticed. As it is, he’s like a toddler who only wants to play with a toy because another kid has it. If he got it it wouldn’t mean anything to him, but he can’t stand someone else having it and him not.
*An exaggeration, but not by as much as I’d like.
**Yes, that is a non-random example. My Bush income tax “refund” check got buried and I only reexcavated it months after it arrived…I gave up and donated it to charity, deciding that if I’d lived without it for that long I didn’t need it.
This isn’t about helping poor people, it’s about stimulating the economy. I think I recall one of the news stories saying that people earning over 75/year might SAVE the $, and therefore wouldn’t help stimulate the economy, and that’s why they weren’t getting anything.
I know that’s not everyone’s thought on the matter, but I also fear its kind of true. Maybe it will help some people, especially those who are running a little short on rent right now, but this is not meant to help, its meant to make people buy some more expensive groceries, or pay the mortgage for another month instead of foreclosing this month (but still foreclose next month, probably)… these things may help non-rich americans as a side effect, but that’s not what they’re for…
I would rather we have a small recession than delay and get a bigger one :( . It would be nice if this worked though.
Word. He’s also got a fair amount of the “I can’t be a misogynist, I’m gay!” thing going on.
As long as we’re talking about our income: I live in Detroit. I make just under $40,000 a year and feel incredibly wealthy.
Even if we’re not talking about ethics and decency and just talking about stimulating the economy: shouldn’t places where the cost of living is low because the local economy is in the toilet be getting more money in tax breaks anyway?
It’s similarily logical to give more money in food stamps, unemployment, SSI, TANF because people getting their money from those programs spending a whole lot more of it on consumer goods and are much bigger risk of foreclosing on their homes and dragging down the real estate market even more.
G. and I live in the Los Angeles metro area (just a few miles north of downtown, in fact), and together we make just under $75K a year. And you know what? We’re not starving. In fact, we’re living pretty well, especially since it’s just the two of us. If I could just get my yarn habit under control, I could probably buy a new laptop in a few months. We’re holding off on trying to buy a house until the market settles because I ain’t paying $700,000 for an 800-square-foot house that’s next to the freeway in a crappy industrial part of town.
Now I find out that we’re actually the dregs of the lower classes who are dragging poor middle-class earners like Aravosis down with us. Geez.
At least the Democrats didn’t let the Republicans get away with making Bush’s tax cuts permanent as part of the “Stimulus” like they wanted. As it is, a little check is going to help some people but is a pretty pathetic response. “An X-Box for Every American” Stimulus Plan is what Lee Rayborn was calling it this morning on Air America.
I’m not familiar with Aravosis, but the fact that he turns the serious issue of how to improve our economy into a chance to whine that he won’t get his little check doesn’t impress me.
I should say, in case this wasn’t clear, that I was IN NO WAY defending this whiny moron. I live in Boston, hardly an “affordable” city, and my partner and I make just over $20,000 each (we’re grad students, who don’t get help from our parents beyond the occasional sweater or dinner out). And we do fine. The idea that you can’t live comfortably on $75,000 (PER PERSON!! Not even per family!!!) is ludicrous, even if you do live in Manhattan. For Pete’s sake.
But I still think that poverty levels, welfare benefits, food stamps, etc., should be set according to cost of living in various cities, as much as possible.
Give me a break John! I live comfortably in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan on my $63K yearly salary. I’ll trade you my salary and rebate for your $75K. Sheesh, what an asshole!
Tax rebates piss me off in general, and I was born working-class.
I remember a while back, a few years, getting a check from a Rethuglican gubmint fo something like $177 and thinking tom yself, “And they think I’m stupid enough to be bought for this piddly, pathetic thing? $177? What, they’re really on a shoestring here.” Seriously — what the hell is $177 to the goddamned government when they’re throwing zillions around? It felt to me like I’d been handed a pacifier as if I were stupid enough to shut up once they threw a crumb at me.
So I got a check for $177. Now look at the state of things — the economy is teetering, I have no hope of owning a house ever, we’ve been at war for how long now, and my civil rights have been eroded to the architecutral integrity of a sand castle. But hey! They gave me $177 a couple years back, so I’m happy!
Stupid fuckers. I wrote out a $177 check to Planned Parenthood. Screw them.
I just felt angry and insulted that they thought I was stupid enough to be bought off for a pissy C-note when they were going to fuck the country up six ways from Sunday. It really felt like a pacifier — like I was an unruly monkey who was being made to stop squawking by throwing me a peanut. Bastards.
Dianne, I felt similarly to the old rebate check I got. I was living in San Diego at the time, white collar. $177 was a zillionth of my effing rent — I wish I could have told them to keep their goddamned stinking $177 and give me back my reproductive rights and how about some pay parity while I’m at it, thanks.
Which is why PP got it.
Did he take down that posting? ‘Cuz the first link doesn’t work anymore.
Maybe he was shamed into retracting.
I think there’s other reasons why people tend to assume they are middle-class at work, too. I can give two examples frmo my own life:
1) I was raised firmly working-class. Very firmly. Classic, blue-collar east-coast Italian-American upbringing. I’m the first four-year college graduate in my family; Im’ also not doing the best financially. That is my oldest brother, who is an airplane mechanic — and recall that almost anyone who is a mechanic, a craftsman of some sort, or works with their hands is assumed to be working-class. He’s most definitely not; he outearns me handily. But nevertheless, I was raised working-class without a lot of things that I could have used. Dental care, a back brace, etc. Both parents were Depression-era working-class blue-collar kids; my dad was one of five kids, and it was inconceivable that he would ever go to college. So that is where my loyalties lie and where my sentiments lie as well — with the blue-collars and not the white-collars. My heart is with the working class, so that’s what I feel I am, even though I’ve got a Master’s degree and am closing on a six-figure salary.
2) I know VERY WELL how easily it can all vanish. It reminds me of what the movie “Sicko” illustrated to people: we are all effectively uninsured, even those of us with insurance. The second things get bumpy, you are on the street and on your ass. Regardless of how much I make now, having been out of work for 2.5 years and having had dental bills to pay off meant that I would literalyl have been on the street were it not for my current roommate picking up the rent tab for a YEAR while I looked for work. I got it — but I still have almost nothing to fall back on at the moment. I’m making more money in salary, but it woudl take one economic downturn to put me flat on my ass, and I know it. I entertain no illusions at all as to how well I’m doing. I ain’t no Rockefeller.
It seems as if you can nail a white-collar worker from either direction — if we insist we’re middle-class, we’re sneered at as pathetic posers who don’t know how well off we really are. If we insist we’re doing fairly well, then we’re clueless about how precarious our financial positions are. (I do think that Aravosis is just whining because he doesn’t get the toy, but the topic seems to be turning to the conclusion that there is no acceptable way to talk about money unless you are verified as the poorest person on the planet, or the richest.)
FWIW, I know I’m better off than most. I also know that it can vanish overnight, literally.
I know that the class in which I was raised is not the same as the class in which most people would place me now. And I admit that that pisses me off — I got through college on grants and my parents busting their living asses for me, because of the classic working-class belief that education is everything. And now that I’ve made something of it, I get told that I have no business considering myself a member of the working-class. Yet, if I accept that I am not, I’m turning my back on my past.
And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the difference between SALARY and accumulated family wealth. I’m prepared to believe that family savings and not salary should determine one’s financial class, personally. As someone who is closing on a 6-fig salary, I can assure you that my position is far less stable than someone making HALf that but with a wealthier family behind them. Family wealth is EVERYTHING.
Another thing, because I can’t STFU today evidently:
Myself, I think it’s classic middle-class behavior to equate one’s class status ONLY with salary. I just wanted to underline how narrow and inaccurate this is. There are MANY things that contribute to one’s class status, and when you start thinking about them, you realize just how hazy and ill-defined this whole “class” label is.
It’s salary, okay. That’s part of it — but not even the biggest. How much money do your parents have? What kind of work do you do — work with your hands or work behind a desk? How much management duties do you have at work? How much strategic decision-making power do you have? What is the path of advancement at your career — do you have a path of advancement, or are you as high up as you’re going to get unless you make a major career-path change?
Do you expect to inherit money? How much? From whom? What are you planning to do with it? What does your Rolodex look like — how many very wealthy people do you know? If you wanted to start a business, would you talk to your friends for capital or would your only recourse be to apply for a loan at the bank?
How many kids do you have? Do you have any? Do you have a spouse who can carry the house while you are out of work or starting a company or going back to school? How much schooling do you have? Two-year vocational? Four-year? Graduate?
ALL of these things contribute to your “class” status and how precarious or stable it is. It’s a peculiarly middle-class belief that you can boil the whole thing down to “I make X dollar a year and I live in Y.” The one woman I know who owns a home in soCal makes far less than I — but her parents are very well-off. They helped her with the house, and she bought it when she was married and had two incomes. Another woman I know is currently out of work in Jersey and has a two-year digital art degree; her parents own several homes, and she’s staying in one for over a year rent-free, living a lifestyle that I have no hope in hell of attaining. Another friend left work (and I’m not saying her money’s not tight and that she doesn’t have to budget) to return to school; her health insurance is being paid for her by a very, very wealthy elder relative who believes in education and in supporting his family.
ALL of these things define one’s class status, much more than “X thousand dollars a year.” I have no hope of buying a house not because I’m “stupid” enough to live in southern California, but because I’m “stupid” enough not to have parents I can hit up for twenty grand. I haven’t returned to school for a degree in history not because I “lack drive” but because I lack an older relative who can keep my afloat while I do so. Class status means so much more than just one’s monthly salary, and again it’s a peculiarity of the middle-class to believe it does. It’s also a fundamentally conservative belief — that you can determine your financial fate all on your lonesome and that no one else has anything to do with it.
I think he took the post down – or someone did. Can’t get to it right now.
The link has been changed. The post can be read here. However, all the comments are gone (which were about 600).
Excellent point, Janis. I’ve been engaged in some discussions of class recently and you have hit it right on the head.
(p.s. I might add that even ‘how much you make’ means little to me without knowing how many hours you work/MUST work each week to get it.)
Janis, I think that “access to $$$” is pretty clearly the delimiter of “class” in the US, whether it be salary or what…. I guess you’re just saying that salary per se is a middle-class fixation. Well yes: don’t we all know trust-fund babies?
An interesting aside on the issue of class, gleaned from my study of pre-Nazi Weimar politics: regardless of economic status (raw earning power, portable wealth, or real estate) individuals identifed with the class to which they aspire or previously belonged. The National Socialists were able to mobilize thousands of people whose economic status had severely declined during the early Depression years because they appealed to the Buergerlich values of those individuals – who still self-identified with the petty bourgeoisie, despite having “declined,” if you choose to use that phrase, into the economic status of “working class.”
As a parallel, in the United States the “ideal” is the stereotypical “Middle Class” lifestyle, which is the white-picket-fence-two-point-five children ideal, no matter how much it deviates from reality. Therefore individuals objectively wealthy, like our 75K+-per-year commentator, still place themselves on a lower tier because Americans disdain the appearance of being upper class (look at the placement of Bush as a “common guy I’d like to have a beer with” in the last election versus Kerry-the-Rich-Elitist, even though Bush comes from a family of as much – or more – privilege as Kerry.) In America it’s a sin to not be “Middle Class,” either too rich or too poor.
We have the links to the olds comments in our post here. Also, John always pulls this changing link titles, taking posts down thing everytime he poops himself by opening his mouth. You can see some more of his shenanigans at our place. Obviously my love for zuzu laying the smack is only seconded by the Lauren shorterizing: “Suck my ass.” Such incivility! Perhaps the entire world is just being a big girl, Cheif Illiniwek hating, transperson loving, emotional liarpants!
Well, I am a professional in NYC, and I am single and make more than $75000 a year. I live in Manhattan. I would never be so myopic as to label myself poor or even middle class. My money is plenty to live on, and I put a big chunk of my paycheck into savings. I work very hard and I find the stimulus plan frustrating, because I paid a substantial portion of my income as taxes and yet I’m exempted from the rebates, while people who pay no taxes will get checks in the mail.
I am supportive of social programs that protect hardworking Americans that fall on difficult times, but when the government starts mailing out checks and directing people to buy shit with it, it seems like the people who paid in should get some back first. It especially annoys me that the cap seems to have been put in place to fund extra credits for having kids. My distaste for kids starving dictates that I must support benefits for poor children, but I don’t support cash bonuses for being a parent.
You all know those checks are going to be spent, in a lot of cases, on sneakers and televisions and ipods and stereos and drugs. That’s fine, because it stimulates the economy. I just don’t think the qualification for stimulus-check eligibility should be procreative fecundity. I was planning to buy a Blu-Ray player with my stimulus check, which was an expense I don’t otherwise see as justifiable. I don’t see why somebody else should get my home theater as a reward for being poor and having a kid.
I’m sure many people would swap places with me as an “east coast elite,” but I wasn’t born an elite, and my success is the product of years of hard work and sacrifice, plus, at the risk of sounding egotistical, most people can’t do my job.
Economic stimulus is not an entitlement and I think I deserve to get a tax rebate check to go out and spend as much as or more than anyone else. The problem is that I am not rich enough to be a core Republican constituency, and I am not poor enough to be a core Democratic constituency, so hedge fund managers will continue to pay taxes on their fees as capital gains instead of income, and I’ll continue to get sucker-punched by the AMT.
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Gee, Crawford, nice to know how much you resent the rest of us who don’t quite make it into your income bracket. Or am I one of the ones who “deserves” the rebate because I’m white and middle-class, unlike those “other” people who will just spend it on drugs?
Crawford, that passage from your comment speaks volumes. Forget the inhumanity for a second—the level of immaturity alone is enough to make me really embarrassed for you. Please tell me that your comment was satirical.
These rebates are all bullshit anyway, since they just come out of your taxes next year. Remember the last one?
Absolutely not. The point of the stimulus is to pump money into the economy to boost consumer spending. That’s why it’s paid in cash. Whether you spend it on milk and bread or Nike Airs and Xboxes, or cigarettes and booze it achieves the goal. It’s not a poverty relief program, or it would be paid, like food stamps, in a form that was restricted to poverty-relief necessities.
If people actually used this money sensibly, many who will receive it would use it to pay down existing consumer debt, which would not server the purpose of stimulating the economy. The government wants people to take these checks and go to the mall, and to that end, its as good for the economy for me to go shopping as it is for someone poorer.
The Republicans wanted to structure stimulus as a tax cut and the Democrats wanted to structure it as an entitlement and each party was concerned that the other party would try to use the urgent economic condition as a means to push its version through as a long-term policy rather than a short-term, temporary economic boost. I understand how this compromise was reached, I just feel a little shafted personally. If Bush’s plan had passed, I would have got a check for $800, and I could have had some fun with that.
Ahem…..overentitled much?? Moreover, I doubt the increased benefit for each child would be enough to offset childrearing expenses for the parents concerned. I very much doubt they would have anything left over…..much less enough to purchase a home theater system.
It makes no difference how you spend it. I am sure whites will comprise a plurality of the recipients. I just don’t think that people who do not pay federal income taxes should get a federal income tax rebate, while people who do pay federal income tax are excluded from the program. It’s just a flat-out wealth redistribution. I disagree with it philosophically, and I want a cash windfall to go shopping with.
I am completely in tune with the fact that some people need it more than me, but economic stimulus has nothing to do with that, and, to the extent that I want to put my money to work fighting the world’s ills, I’d rather send it to Darfur than fund a liquor-stor run for some guy in Missouri.
I completely support public education and subsidized innoculations and free school lunches and credits for milk and cheese and baby formula. In fact, I completely support funding for health care for every poor child, even though I oppose it for poor old people. No child should be deprived of a necessity because his parents can’t afford it.
Now, I think people who have kids when they can’t afford to have kids are horribly negligent, inconsiderate and selfish. I just don’t believe in punishing children for their parents’ bad choices. I don’t like seeing parents rewarded for them, though.
Giving additional money per child doesn’t ensure that a single dime of that money will be spent on the children. A single mother with three kids may get a $1200 check and go out and buy a flat panel television. And if anyone is going to spend my tax dollars on a flat panel television, it should be me. I would have preferred the stimulus for child credits to have been given to states to use to fund improvements to poor schools.
Okay Crawford—I could go into all the reasons why your assumptions about working poor people are inaccurate and bigoted but I don’t think that would be a productive use of my time.
But I only ask you this—please don’t pretend as if anybody is stopping you from buying whatever toys and gadgets you want. The poor are not your enemy, understand?
Shorter Crawford: How dare poor people fuck when I want an Xbox!
They can fuck all they want. I would actually support subsidized birth control because I believe poor women should have the same right as wealthier women to decouple the decision to have sex and the decision to have children.
But you don’t want poor people having kids, which is just all kinds of creepy.
I see you’d already been put in moderation, so I shouldn’t have been approving your comments. I think we’re done here talking to you.
Crawford,
You have no clue as to how low-income and working class families actually live if that’s what you believe. Nearly every family in my old urban working class neighborhood who were collecting welfare/food stamps were doing so in order to do their utmost to ensure their children had as much to eat as they were able to provide. If it wasn’t for welfare/food stamps, most of my classmates would have been worse off than they already were.
As for your stereotyped example of a single mother who spent her money on a flat-panel, I am not convinced. From my experience, that behavior tends to be far more reflective of overentitled young adults from upper/upper-middle class homes who feel they “deserve” the latest and greatest electronics, furniture, etc…personal finances be damned. And these overentitled young adult college classmates and co-workers wondered why I was not terribly sympathetic to their pining over the next “gotta have it” item….or their financial problems. Do understand this type of whining is quite unseemly to say the least.
Crawford,
You havee the $. Stimulate the economy some instead of responsibly saving!
The truth is that the “poor” are more likely to spend the money. I’m not sure how the heck someone making 74K qualifies as “poor” except maybe to Crawford. And, if you want to stimulate the economy a lot, it is good to give the most money to the people most likely to spend it.
Think about it – if you got $1200, would you be likely to spend it all? I wouldn’t. But someone with kids would be more likely to buy them presents or something. Or maybe nicer food, or extra diapers, or whatever.
I still think its dumb. We aren’t giving money to the poor, we are giving it to the middle class and poor who are likely to spend it. This is delaying the inevitable recession, IMO, and probably making it worse in the long run.
It is very strange that anyone thinks this is really about helping “the poor”. *hahahha 75k/yr is poor*
Crawford’s not in the thread anymore and can’t respond to anyone’s points.
John must live in the gay getto of Dupont Circle, which is expensive. For what he probably pays for his studio apartment, I pay for an entire house and huge yard just 10 minutes away from Dupont (across the state line) in Maryland. My office is a few blocks from the Capitol, and I can get to work in 10-15 minutes depending on traffic. John is paying for atmosphere and convenience. He could keep more of his income if he would just move.
BAC
…don’t we all know trust-fund babies?
Not to hear anyone in this comments thread talk … It’s all “So and so makes N dollars a year” or “I and my husband make N dollars a year and blah blah blah.” I haven’t seen much acknowledgment of the complexity of class status, finances, or class identification.
I’ve preserved the original post by Aravosis for posterity at my blog, for whoever is interested.
The first comment thread is still on the internet tubes here. The second comment thread is available here.
I won’t speak for New York because I have never lived there. I live outside of Baltimore and work in DC, and have lived in the Baltimore-Washington area my entire life except for college.
Baltimore has something that DC does not have. Both cities have a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, though DC less so now than in recent years. But Baltimore and the Baltimore region have something that DC does not: impoverished Euro-Americans, white trash, crackers, rednecks, pick your favorite euphemism or dysphemism.
You can go to a redneck bar in Baltimore or in any suburban county thereof and meet hardscrabble white people. You cannot do so in Washington DC or within 7 miles of the Washington Beltway. The closest element of rednecks, aka my family’s demographic, is Randy’s California Inn in North Laurel, about halfway between the White House and Baltimore’s Camden Yards on Route 1. I think they still have the Hank Williams Jr. Confederate Battle Jack on the Wall with those immortal, infamous words, “If the South woulda won the War, we woulda had it made.” But this joint is technically suburban Baltimore, not suburban Washington, proving the case.
Back to Aravosis. I don’t know him or what DC neighborhood he lives in. But he might want to be a little more self-reflective about these things. Perhaps he should get away from DC’s wealth, away from Dupont Circle and the hordes of 6-figure-earning twinks with iPhones bopping around Kramerbooks and get 40 miles up the road to Baltimore to visit that friend of his again, but this time not just his friend. He can pay a visit Baltimore’s equivalent to Dupont Circle, Mt. Vernon, a much more hardscrabble, rougher gay village than its opulent cousin, where male sex workers run a scary, dangerous trade, where you can see needles on the ground sometimes, where you can definitely get hurt, get mugged and sadly get gay-bashed literally.
He can go to East Baltimore, where rust belt economics have turned old Polish, Ukrainian, Czech and German neighborhoods into wastelands.
He can go into West Baltimore and see the real version of The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Streets. Dear God, don’t do it alone unarmed even during the day. It’s not nice like some of Anacostia is. The narrow streets and decrepit rowhouse construction are bad for policing, bad for rats, bad for transit infrastructure but GREAT for dope dealers and drive-bys.
We don’t need to be building infrastructure in Baghdad; Baltimore needs billions of dollars worth of transit, rail, road, bridge upgrades that DC can get so much more easily. They’re talking about extending Metrorail out 30 miles away from DC when the entire eastern half of Baltimore has no rail transit at all, save one station at Hopkins Hospital.
Get out of the village, John. You live in a wealthy ghetto, a paradise and you don’t even know it.
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[...] by elizabethnolanbrown on February 13, 2008 Oh boy. It is one thing for people making over $75,000 to whine about not receiving a stimulus-package rebate and how it’s so unfair that poor people [...]