people are spending an extra $100 a year on beauty products and services!

Guess beauticians gotta eat too.

I fell into this trap, Mrs. mck414 convinced me to try a pedicure, damn if I'm not hooked.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

Is it okay to call these folks Peter?

Who the hell spends $1,800 on clothes a year??? It would be interesting to see the male vs female breakout on that. I feel bad for women, their styles change more frequently, cheaper quality and more expensive then men's clothes.

I wear a suit 4 days a week and maybe spend $500 on average a year. That is including bike/running clothes, work clothes, casual stuff, shoes etc.

It would be better to see median numbers rather than average since most income growth has been in the upper quarter. I think median income has been fairly flat as opposed to the average in the chart which shows a 17% increase over 3 years. Over same time frame increase in average taxes is 40% which points to most of the increase in income being taxed at the highest bracket, i.e. 39.6%.

I don't know anyone -- including my wife -- who spends that kind of money on clothes annually. Maybe there are a lot of families in that figure? I know I don't spend much on clothes, given I pop tags at the local Goodwill whenever I can. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I'm more of a median person myself, but I think they give the average only in most cases. Of course, 50% of Americans pay less than that figure (and many pay far less) while 50% pay more, but how much more, even at the Top 1% income bracket? Some of these numbers are relative, as well. We may pay more in taxes, but we're also making more in income. "A rising economic tide lifts all boats," in other words. And maybe it all evens out in the wash?

I'm not against income taxes per se. I just want the taxes I'm paying to be efficiently utilized, is all.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

It's when you fall in love with a mani-pedi that you should abandon all hope of recovering your manliness, sir. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Of course, 50% of Americans pay less than that figure (and many pay far less) while 50% pay more, but how much more, even at the Top 1% income bracket?

You are describing the median, not the average and the chart shows the average.

We may pay more in taxes, but we're also making more in income.

This is true for the average, but not the median. Look at the difference between how much income grew (17%) and how much taxes grew (40%). This tells you that most of the income increase came from high earners who pay higher % in taxes. The median person increased little in both income and taxes.

I guess that makes sense, one consumer unit. Still I don't mind my kids getting 90% of their clothes from garage sales until their 10-12.

It's maybe a bit high for me, but I don't think that's an outrageous number. I spend close to $500/year on running shoes alone.

ETA: this reminds me of the thread a few years back where people were boasting about feeding a family of 4 on $20/week or something, and other threads about people who have never carried any debt, ever, except a small mortgage which they paid off in 3 years.

According to CNN Money, the cost to raise a child to age 18, in the USA, is $233,610 as of 2015. YOW!

"Families can expect to spend between $12,350 and nearly $14,000 a year, on average, to raise a child."

Cost of raising a child: $233,610 - Jan. 9, 2017

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

How much are your suits? How often do you replace them? Shoes? Ties? What about Christmas gifts? I'm sure some years you're over 1800 bucks without thinking about it.

Seems like quite a good deal.
In California for house, food, healthcare, and clothing of a prisoner it cost us a whopping $75,560 a year. And Libs. here want these same people to run our healthcare.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-prison-costs-20170604-htmlstory.html

As alluded to in a different thread I'm looking to buy a house. Property taxes are usually more than the mortgage would be. 'Nuff said

Yes, we love our politician that tax and spend.

This year I will pay 9K in property taxes on a house worth about 500K. I don't know what they spend it all on. The road in front of my house is a real bone shaker when I am on my bike.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Food is the cheapest it has ever been in human history.

And that tax burden isn't accurate. It isn't capturing sales, gas, tolls, licenses, ...

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Just the pedi, I'll retain half my maniless thank you.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

It's good to see both median and average numbers. Either one alone obscures the way in which policies are affecting different groups. Are SS and Medicare taxes included? Why not, and why are SS benefits included?

A consumer unit includes families. We probably pay slightly more than that (wife, two teenage daughters). I was nowhere near that amount when I was single. As someone else said, food and clothing are the cheapest that they have ever been.

That's the spirit, sir. Hold out for as long as you can. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I not sure the median or average makes sense since the bulk of the taxes are paid by the top 20%. I think you have to look at this stuff in income groups.

It's true that high-income Americans pay most income taxes. Below, how the government is funded:



Who pays taxes? The rich, mostly?

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

These always have weird math in them. They usually assume if you don't have kids you live in a 1br aptm and then have to move to a house once you have a kid.

There's still a bias toward the family unit, no doubt, when it comes to these things. My wife and I never had kids so sometimes we wonder what all the fuss is about, and then we remember. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Um, so your first graph shows a substantial portion of total revenue coming from payroll taxes (~33 vs 47%, paid moreso by blue-collar wage earners since it gets capped beyond a certain income, as opposed to those w/ more investment income and the like), and then you try to follow it up with a graph of just income taxes to show that it's mostly the rich paying it all? I thought you were smarter than that.

I don't have a kid, but a friend who does says he costs less than a dog.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

Holy hell, how much are property taxes there? I pay under $4000 a year. That would be just over 4 months mortgage.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Of course the rich pay most of the taxes because they make most of the money and income tax is progressive.



On top of that, the past 30 years of income increases have mostly benefited the upper income brackets

Sorry, took a while to get back but:

I own 5 suits, each about $200-$300 (good quality too, I know a guy). Never replaced them (all about 5 years old). Dress shoes, maybe once every 2 years. Ties....I have a collection from over the years plus hand downs from my father, but I never spend more than $15 for a tie.

This graph is kind of weird because, from what I understand, the top 0.1% is really driving inequality. And that group is part of both the "Top 5%" line and part of the "Top Quintile" line. In other words, that's not a good graph for understanding the data. Of course, your point still stands either way.

Don't the lower income groups get more back in retirement(SSI) than paid in compared to higher income groups. I would also bet disability payments go disproportionately to lower income folk. Lastly, keep in mind, more higher income folks are self employed than lower income folks so they are paying both sides to the payroll tax vs. an employer covering it.

Income taxes are a bit more "pure". Just so you know Medicare isn't capped anymore.

There are a few places in the US have really high property taxes: NY/NJ and IL are some.
Example: An assessed house @ $250k here in a Mass town is taxed at $4200
A house priced at $250k on Long Island is taxed at $8200
A house priced at $215k in a southern exburb of Chicago is taxed at $6400

That house on Long Island, with a decent down payment, would be pretty equal PI_I vs. T.

With a big enough down payment anybody's tax would be higher than their mortgage payment.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

BK, during your first iteration here you cut and pasted from right wing sites to begin threads. you've fallen into that pattern again. i don't mind you being right wing. or left wing. what i mind is hosting a landfill where secondhand propaganda gets dumped.

i don't mind hosting a landfill. i don't mind propaganda getting dumped. what i mind is when it's someone else's propaganda. it needs to be your propaganda, from your brain.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Sure, but with that LI house, that point is only about 30% down. Bigger than usual, but not huge.

Leaving aside Mr. Slowman's judgment that my "propaganda" is both second-hand and possibly right-wing, ideologically speaking ;-), I think that "payroll taxes" are those paid for by both employers and employees (FICA, etc.) as well as a portion of income taxes. That's what the first chart illustrates (and I saw the "payroll tax" section right off the bat). My thoughts on that:

If you're self-employed, you pay both sides of the payroll tax equation, though, and many of the so-called "rich" are self-employed, it seems to me, or are high-earner/highly taxed persons. (Also, in parts of the country, especially the coastal Northeast cities and out in California, in the coastal enclaves, $250K to $500K yearly isn't really "rich rich," if you know what I mean.)

As someone here (Mr. Schroeder I think) pointed out: we have a progressive tax system, so of course the rich would pay more in taxes (which the second Pew chart illustrates), both as a flat figure and in terms of percentage, at least in the U.S. Being fair-minded, I would ask whether or not they're paying a share proportionate to what they're earning in the aggregate. They might not be, actually.

Also, there seem to be a wide swath of taxpayers today either not paying anything or paying very little. This is another reason why I'm in favor of a vastly more simplified tax code, or even a flat tax

Honestly, I think the two charts complement each other. I get the sense that the group here is evenly divided, though. Half maybe feel threatened by the proposition that perhaps we're paying more in taxes, as a "consumer unit," especially over the last three years (2013 to 2016) - and why the plain fact that we're paying more taxes, generally speaking, over the last several years is somehow an "ideological" statement is beyond me, and it's certainly not a criticism of previous tax policy on the part of any president or Congress -- and half maybe want to batten on the data contained in the OP to support their position that the "rich" are paying too much in tax.

Here's my position on this issue:

Every person, or "consumer unit," has to have some skin in the taxpaying game, even if it's just paying $1 in tax annually. No more mortgage interest deduction or property tax deduction. No real personal deductions at all (except for maybe the charitable deduction). No more tax credits, no more massive tax refunds (because a fairer, flatter tax would eliminate such a thing), no more any of that.

To do the above requires a comprehensive reconfiguration of our tax system to make it both fairer and more equitable. But the fact is, we have far too many people not paying enough in tax, and too few of the higher earners paying too much (and that's not a contradiction of what I wrote above). Corporate-tax-wise, business may not be paying enough tax, either.

None of the above, to me, is equitable whether or not the higher-earning cohort can afford it or not. But I suppose all those filled-with-white-guilt rich liberals won't support such a thing, right up until a modern-day version of the French Revolution's "Terror" is upon them, n'cest ce pas? ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."