Upper-Class Idiots

Media Matters and TNR have posts on the ABC story about idiotic rich people who plan to reduce their business profits below the $250k threshold, so as to avoid a slightly higher tax rate.  And that corresponds with these idiots that TBogg cites from Malkin's website, who insist they too will be cutting income to deal with this.  Apparently, the top 2% of earners have nothing better to do than congregate at rightwing websites and bitch about how little work they'll do once Obama repeals Bush's tax cuts.  With workers like these, it's no wonder we're in a recession.

And as MM and TNR point out, these people are idiots.  The only part of income subject to the higher rate is the amount over the $250k threshold; not the entire amount.  So the difference between taxes on $249k and $255k is very slim.  They'll pay the same amount for the portion under $249k, and the $6k over that will have a slightly higher rate; which my back of the envelope figure says couldn't be more than $300, and that's a generously high figure.  And this, we're told, is the government taking "all their money."  

So these people are talking about cutting $6000 in income to avoid less than $300 in extra taxes than what they're paying right now, and we're supposed to imagine they're clever businesspeople who actually know what they're talking about.  Dumb.

Here's some painful stupid:

Anonymous Lawyer
"We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00.  We have to find a way out where we can make just what we need to just under the line so we can benefit from Obama's tax plan.  Why kill yourself working if you're going to give it all away to people who aren't working as hard?  This means I'll have to tell some of my clients we can't help them and being more selective in general about who we help.  I hate to do it."

Dr. Poczatek - A Dentist
"I've put thought into how to get under $250,000.  It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off.  Generally it means being less productive.  The motivation for a lot of people like me – dentists, entrepreneurs, lawyers – is that the more you work the more money you make.  But if I'm going to be working just to give it back to the government -- it's de-motivating and demoralizing."

Or hey, I've got another solution: Hire MORE employees.  Upgrade your equipment and computers.  Or better yet, hire a fucking accountant who can explain all this to you.  Because none of this is based upon any business sense.  These are just morons who listen to talk radio spew garbage about how Obama's socialist policies are destroying the greed motive.  

So even if they were right about needing to get under $250k, and they're not, then it would make more sense to invest it in their business, rather than cut back on services.  They could use this as an opportunity to expand their businesses, but instead imagine that they'll need to cut back.  And all based on lies they were fed.

Conservative Class Warfare

And let's not forget, the group of people the lawyer said "Aren't working so hard" includes you and me and her employees and probably some of her clients.  Essentially, she's attacking everyone who doesn't make as much money as she does and uses that as an excuse for making less money.  And they dare accuse us of class warfare.

And I myself have debated briefly with some dude claiming that he was already cutting back on clients to avoid losing all his hard-earned money, and insisted he'd have to fire lots of employees.  I explained to him how firing employees would make his profits go UP and that hiring more employees would give him the lower profits he desired.  But he absolutely refused to understand that logic and insisted that I didn't understand how his business worked.  And based upon the jumbled explanation he gave for his supposed business, I'd say he didn't understand it either.

And again, the biggest outrage for him wasn't just that he'd be paying more, but the bitter realization that lazy people who earned less would benefit more than he would.  Honestly, these people are accusing people who make $100k of being "lazy" and undeserving of money.  As if they'd be perfectly happy paying more taxes, if only it wasn't going to lazy people.  And again, this is class warfare.  Rightwing talkers are stoking moral outrage at 98% of the country, demonizing them as lazy and undeserving.  By contrast, all Obama is doing is repealing some of Bush's tax cuts.

Even the ABC article quoted a dude saying Obama's plan pitted the rich against the poor, as if someone making $50k a year is poor.  And that's just how skewed the debate has become.  The media is so intent at finding class warfare that even full-time professionals are akin to welfare queens.  But while the media believes it, most Americans surely have a better concept of their place in society.  Oddly, I suspect that a large majority of those outraged at lazy folks taking their money actually fit into the lazy category they deride.

Implied Obama Support

And it's interesting that so many of these people need to believe absurdist lies in order to oppose Obama's plans.  It's all about how he's stealing all your hardwork and destroying small businesses, and insist that Obama's tax plans will go far deeper than he says they will.  Similarly, their opposition to Obama during the election were lies about him being a Muslim extremist and worries about his associations with terrorists and socialists.

And what's sad is that, it seems fairly obviously that these people don't actually oppose Obama.  Not the real Obama, anyway.  I'm sure that if they could set their partisan fears aside, they'd agree that his tax proposal isn't bad.  And it's quite obvious that Republican politicians understand the stimulating effects of government spending.  And if the reason they fear Obama is because they think he's some radical extremist, then they don't fear the real Obama.

And so by relying upon bogus rhetoric to oppose an invented Obama, it's obvious that they implicitly support the real Obama.  Because he HASN'T proposed any plan to take all their money.  He's NOT going to take all their guns or books away.  He's got them all hysterical because he's repealing Bush's tax cuts for those making over $250k.  And so by getting hysterical over obviously bogus rhetoric, he's making them all look like fools, which only makes our job easier.  For as much as Republicans require outrage to stoke their hatred of evil liberals, it just turns off everyone else.

And that's the odd thing about Obama's strategy: For as radical as the far-righties imagine it is, all he's doing is going back to some of the old ways of doing things, before the radical righties screwed everything up. And their only response to this is to rant about how this isn't what's happening.  Not because they have any evidence that Obama's a radical, but merely because their opposition to him makes no sense if he wasn't one.  And because he's not one, their opposition doesn't make any sense.