[ale] Defeated by the offshoring of America....

[Joe]

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey at proteus-tech.com> writes:

> 4/14/2003 4:38:37 PM, "James P. Kinney III" <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, 2003-04-14 at 14:14, Drag0n wrote:
> >
> >> 	Sigh, its a shame that we had a revolution over a 5% tea tax, and no
> >> one gets upset over 66% of everything you earn going to ther government.
> >> (if you make over $50,000, own a home and have a car, you get to keep
> >> only 33% of what you earn today)
> >
> >??? Two years+ ago when I was in that income bracket and higher, I was
> >able to keep much more than 1/3 of what I earned. In fact, I was able to
> >keep much more than 60%.
> 
> 	You obviously were not purely a W2 income employee where just about every deduction 
> except mortage interest and children has been stripped away. Consider fed + state + ssn + 
> medicare and the typical two-income earner family and losing over 60% is not at all difficult.

I don't think so. I am a pure W2 income employee, with a single
income, renting my home, and making in the $60K neighborhood (and mind
you, I feel very lucky about that today). I have my latest 1040 right
in front of me, and in 2002 I paid about 14% of my income to the
federal govt in income, SS, and Medicare taxes. That number was offset
a bit by the fact that I have three children eligible for the child
tax credit, but still, that only reduced my tax burden by about
3%. Also, Texas has no income tax, but when I lived in Georgia my
state tax burden was something like 7% IIRC. So I think your 60%
number is seriously inflated.

Even so, personally, I'd love to see the Fairtax adopted.  I figure I
could take about a 20% pay cut under the Fairtax, and still maintain
my current standard of living (if I understand the Fairtax proposal
properly).

Cheers,

-- Joe Knapka
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