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If the class he's calling "Suckers", in between the Rich and the Majority, includes Scott Adams -- as he says it does -- then I can't help thinking that this is

by gjm11 16y ago

If the class he's calling "Suckers", in between the Rich and the Majority, includes Scott Adams -- as he says it does -- then I can't help thinking that this is just the old, familiar gambit where rich people try to redefine a term like "middle class" to include themselves, so that they can portray self-interest as looking out for the poor beleaguered middle classes.

bcrescimanno 16y ago
I don't think that's a fair assessment; it's completely absurd to categorize people simply into two categories (and I'd even argue that 3 is probably not enough but that's far too long-winded for a HN comment). A family with an income of $200,000 per year is certainly more well-off than a family with an income of $50,000 per year; but there's absolutely no parallel to a family with income of $5,000,000 per year. I'd contend that the family with the $200k income has far more in common with the $50k income than the $5m family. And then we look at the $5m per year family and the $500m per year family. There's still no comparison. I don't think this is a case of Adams trying to push himself into the "middle class," I think what he's getting at is that the "middle class" is really a myth.
jerf 16y ago
The interesting question isn't whether it's a "gambit", the question is whether it is true. Calling people with large incomes and large unavoidable outflows "rich" isn't necessarily right, and while the stuff Adams said about that guy may mostly not look like unavoidable outflows, we do saddle all our doctors with debt and a lot of small business owners do have a lot of unavoidable outflows like, say, other people's salaries. Just taxing everybody with a high income is not necessarily a good idea for anybody, however good it may feel. He is certainly right that not all rich is created equal and the language here is very impoverished. It's also worth pointing out that a lot of those outflows are avoidable only to the extent that they are picked up by taxpayers, like taking care of his parents or college grants. We don't win if we grab $10,000 more from that guy, he goes bankrupt, and we incur $30,000 more in liabilities picking up what he now can't carry. (And yeah, I think those numbers do work, as the government frequently picks things up inefficiently.)
- gnaritas 16y ago
  > and a lot of small business owners do have a lot of unavoidable outflows like, say, other people's salaries As if that matters. It's not like they are taxed before they pay salaries. Small business people pay taxes on the amount of money they have left over after all business expenses are deducted, i.e. profit, not revenue, so what point exactly are you trying to make here? > Just taxing everybody with a high income is not necessarily a good idea Small business people, if near broke after paying all outflows, wouldn't qualify as people with high incomes even if their business was pulling a billion dollars a year in revenue, and wouldn't be paying any additional taxes on the rich because they wouldn't qualify as rich. The whole small businesses would be hurt by taxes on the rich is a red herring, it's simply not true, and is just rhetoric from the right meant to distract from the real issues. It takes advantage of the fact that most people don't know how taxes work and don't separate gross income from net income. Businesses don't pay taxes on all they money they make, they for the most part, pay taxes on profit, which is by definition, extra money above and beyond operating expenses.
  - enjo 16y ago
    There is one coherent argument about large capital expenses for pass-through entities (LLC's, S-Corp, Sole Proprietorships). Bob the business owner needs a new gizmo for his lawn care operation. It costs $500k. Normally he would need to depreciate this gizmo over some period of time (it depends on what you are buying) spreading the expense out over those years. If he has a net-profit over $250k then whatever he makes over that rate will be taxed at that higher rate reducing his ability to afford the gizmo. Essentially the issue is that under normal accounting rules he would pay the higher tax rate today, but it would take 5 years for him to fully realize that expense from a tax perspective. That could, at least in theory, make small business owners a bit gun-shy about making large capital purchases as their take-home pay would take a hit even though they bought something for the business instead. Thankfully the legislation, as crafted by Obama, contains provisions allowing the cap on capital purchase deductions to be raised significantly (I think it would have put it over $1M). Thus you could take the entire expense in the year you bought the thing and avoid this particular tax issue.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
What tipped you off to this? The fact that he specifically said he was introducing a "loaded word" to "demonstrate the power of language"?
- gjm11 16y ago
  Two answers: 1. No, my point wasn't that there's something wrong with using the word "suckers" to describe people on $200k/year, but that I strongly suspect that he's substantially better off than a lot of the people he's labelling as "suckers". 2. Oh ho ho ho. Yes, indeed he said that. But the fact that someone says "I'm doing X to demonstrate the power of language" doesn't mean that's really why he's doing X. It may merely mean that he's hoping to deflect criticism of the sleazy rhetorical move he's pulling. Which, by an astonishing coincidence, moves in the same direction as the sleazy rhetorical move of saying "allow yourself to imagine" followed by this huge pile of problems our hypothetical doctor might have, each of them plausible enough but distinctly unlikely in the aggregate, and then "That's what the real world looks like for the so-called Sandwich Generation". No, it's what the real world looks like for a small fraction of the apparently-affluent, of any generation. Oh. And "gang-raped by the Rich and the Majority while they high-five each other and call it fairness"? I suppose that would be another example of a loaded word to demonstrate the power of language. The most that anyone's proposed is that his taxes should be returned to the level they were at before the so-called Bush tax cuts, which would put them at about the same level as they were under that egalitarian communitarian socialist, Ronald Reagan. And even that has just been put on hold for two years.

by gjm11 16y ago

bcrescimanno 16y ago

I don't think that's a fair assessment; it's completely absurd to categorize people simply into two categories (and I'd even argue that 3 is probably not enough but that's far too long-winded for a HN comment). A family with an income of $200,000 per year is certainly more well-off than a family with an income of $50,000 per year; but there's absolutely no parallel to a family with income of $5,000,000 per year. I'd contend that the family with the $200k income has far more in common with the $50k income than the $5m family. And then we look at the $5m per year family and the $500m per year family. There's still no comparison. I don't think this is a case of Adams trying to push himself into the "middle class," I think what he's getting at is that the "middle class" is really a myth.

jerf 16y ago

The interesting question isn't whether it's a "gambit", the question is whether it is true. Calling people with large incomes and large unavoidable outflows "rich" isn't necessarily right, and while the stuff Adams said about that guy may mostly not look like unavoidable outflows, we do saddle all our doctors with debt and a lot of small business owners do have a lot of unavoidable outflows like, say, other people's salaries. Just taxing everybody with a high income is not necessarily a good idea for anybody, however good it may feel. He is certainly right that not all rich is created equal and the language here is very impoverished. It's also worth pointing out that a lot of those outflows are avoidable only to the extent that they are picked up by taxpayers, like taking care of his parents or college grants. We don't win if we grab $10,000 more from that guy, he goes bankrupt, and we incur $30,000 more in liabilities picking up what he now can't carry. (And yeah, I think those numbers do work, as the government frequently picks things up inefficiently.)

gnaritas 16y ago
> and a lot of small business owners do have a lot of unavoidable outflows like, say, other people's salaries As if that matters. It's not like they are taxed before they pay salaries. Small business people pay taxes on the amount of money they have left over after all business expenses are deducted, i.e. profit, not revenue, so what point exactly are you trying to make here? > Just taxing everybody with a high income is not necessarily a good idea Small business people, if near broke after paying all outflows, wouldn't qualify as people with high incomes even if their business was pulling a billion dollars a year in revenue, and wouldn't be paying any additional taxes on the rich because they wouldn't qualify as rich. The whole small businesses would be hurt by taxes on the rich is a red herring, it's simply not true, and is just rhetoric from the right meant to distract from the real issues. It takes advantage of the fact that most people don't know how taxes work and don't separate gross income from net income. Businesses don't pay taxes on all they money they make, they for the most part, pay taxes on profit, which is by definition, extra money above and beyond operating expenses.
- enjo 16y ago
  There is one coherent argument about large capital expenses for pass-through entities (LLC's, S-Corp, Sole Proprietorships). Bob the business owner needs a new gizmo for his lawn care operation. It costs $500k. Normally he would need to depreciate this gizmo over some period of time (it depends on what you are buying) spreading the expense out over those years. If he has a net-profit over $250k then whatever he makes over that rate will be taxed at that higher rate reducing his ability to afford the gizmo. Essentially the issue is that under normal accounting rules he would pay the higher tax rate today, but it would take 5 years for him to fully realize that expense from a tax perspective. That could, at least in theory, make small business owners a bit gun-shy about making large capital purchases as their take-home pay would take a hit even though they bought something for the business instead. Thankfully the legislation, as crafted by Obama, contains provisions allowing the cap on capital purchase deductions to be raised significantly (I think it would have put it over $1M). Thus you could take the entire expense in the year you bought the thing and avoid this particular tax issue.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

What tipped you off to this? The fact that he specifically said he was introducing a "loaded word" to "demonstrate the power of language"?

gjm11 16y ago
Two answers: 1. No, my point wasn't that there's something wrong with using the word "suckers" to describe people on $200k/year, but that I strongly suspect that he's substantially better off than a lot of the people he's labelling as "suckers". 2. Oh ho ho ho. Yes, indeed he said that. But the fact that someone says "I'm doing X to demonstrate the power of language" doesn't mean that's really why he's doing X. It may merely mean that he's hoping to deflect criticism of the sleazy rhetorical move he's pulling. Which, by an astonishing coincidence, moves in the same direction as the sleazy rhetorical move of saying "allow yourself to imagine" followed by this huge pile of problems our hypothetical doctor might have, each of them plausible enough but distinctly unlikely in the aggregate, and then "That's what the real world looks like for the so-called Sandwich Generation". No, it's what the real world looks like for a small fraction of the apparently-affluent, of any generation. Oh. And "gang-raped by the Rich and the Majority while they high-five each other and call it fairness"? I suppose that would be another example of a loaded word to demonstrate the power of language. The most that anyone's proposed is that his taxes should be returned to the level they were at before the so-called Bush tax cuts, which would put them at about the same level as they were under that egalitarian communitarian socialist, Ronald Reagan. And even that has just been put on hold for two years.