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Sunday, September 20, 2020

A FACT

The centerpiece of Biden’s economic plan is the assurance he has given us all that if our family income is less than $400,000 a year we will pay no additional taxes. I am sure we are all comforted by this news. Out of curiosity, I wandered around the Internet for a while until I found this interactive table that tells me that 98% of American households have annual incomes of $400,000 or less. I think Biden imagines that $400,000 a year is the top of the middle class.  By the way, half of all households in America take in one eighth of that amount or less. No doubt things are different in Scranton from what they are in Washington.  Joe has been away for a long time.

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3 comments:

David Palmeter said...

It's important to keep in mind that Biden is trying to win the election, and keeping 98% of the people assured about taxes is helpful. There have been some enormous tax cuts for the top 2% thanks to Bush Jr. and Trump. Further, what Biden favors or would propose is only part of the picture. What Congress passes is the other, more crucial part, unless Biden would veto. I can't imagine him vetoing any tax cut that could get through a Democratic Congress. One of his faults, in the eyes of many, is his willingness to compromise. That can also be a virtue.

September 20, 2020 at 11:32 AM
Marc Susselman said...

I wish to make a personal plea to those who believe voting in this election is a meaningless exercise because you don’t particularly like Joe Biden. I harbor an intense hatred of authoritarianism, both right & left, which fuels my disgust w/ & apprehension of Trump (whom I unaffectionately refer to as “Il Duce.”) I have a rather unique personal perspective on fascism, informed by my rather singular marital experience. Through my 2 marriages, I have witnessed the toll WWII took on 3 of the war’s principal victims – Jews, Germans & Poles.

My 1st wife’s father, a Jewish Czech, was a Holocaust survivor. He was never bar mitzvahed - at the age of 13 he was struggling to survive as a guest of the Nazis in Auschwitz. After the war, he emigrated to the U.S. & married my 1st wife’s mother. When she & their children attended High Holy Day services, he refused to step foot in a synagogue, convinced he could never find God there. For many Jews, &, I assume non-Jews, the Holocaust is the best argument for atheism, notwithstanding St. Augustine’s argument that the existence of evil is attributable to God’s gift of free will, an argument I never found convincing. My 1st father-in-law’s tragic experience as a survivor inspired my then wife’s dedication to social causes & union organizing.

While my 1st wife’s father was struggling to survive at Auschwitz, my 2nd wife’s father, approximately the same age, was a young Lutheran German growing up in Lodz, Poland. Her mother was a Catholic girl growing up in Katowice, Poland. When I began dating her, w/ some trepidation given her German heritage, I was warmly welcomed into their home. I learned her father was a mere boy during the war, that he had an older brother who had served in the Wehrmacht, but that none of his family had been members of the Nazi party. If they had been, I do not believe I could have continued dating his daughter. After the Russians defeated the Germans, my 2nd father-in-law, by then a teenager, was apprehended & sent to one of Stalin’s prison camps in Siberia, where he, like my 1st father-in-law, suffered extreme deprivation & hardship. Her mother, whose father was killed fighting in the Polish resistance, refused to talk about the war, having witnessed the ravages the Russians committed against the Polish people as they marched to Berlin. After her father was released from the camp, he returned to East Germany, attended college in Leipzig, & became an electrical engineer. He emigrated to Michigan, & was employed as an engineer for Detroit Edison.

I remember a particular birthday party for my father-in-law, attended by his younger brother, during which his brother tearfully recounted his experience as a starving boy roaming the countryside, being pillaged by the Russians, begging for food.

Through my marriages I have witnessed the trauma & pain Hitler’s & Stalin’s fascism caused innumerable citizens of all religions & ethnicities, & which informs my disgust w/ Trump & my hostility towards fascist tendencies, whether on the right or on the left. These experiences inform my deep-seated fear that Trump may be re-elected. I do not believe I am exaggerating when I state that he presents a genuine threat to the survival of this country as a constitutional republic and why I believe it is imperative, whatever your opinion of Joe Biden, that those who regard themselves as progressives, and prefer a different presidential candidate on the left, whether you supported Sanders or Stein, or believe there is no point in voting because things will not change, that you make an earnest effort to vote, and persuade your relatives and friends to vote – because things can change, and they can change in ways far worse than you can imagine.

MS

September 20, 2020 at 6:45 PM
Brian W. Ogilvie said...

While I hesitate to add this after Unknown's moving personal stories, I do think that Biden's remark is strategic. Given the quotation often attributed to John Steinbeck, but probably a paraphrase, that "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires," I think it's canny for Biden to set the bar really high. That sends the message that his additional taxes won't affect us even if we somehow make it into the job that we aspire to (or at least, might aspire to if our ambition was to be rich). $400K per year is enough to exclude not just most American workers, but also even what most American workers can imagine. And increasing the marginal tax rate on those incomes could generate a lot of revenue.

September 20, 2020 at 10:23 PM

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