The slippery slope to Marxist socialism

Obama has pledged not to raise income taxes for people making over $250,000 per year. This would suggest that he will keep the 33% tax bracket the same up to that figure, and he has disclosed publicly an intention to increase the top marginal income rate from the current 35% to 39.6% -- i.e., the same rate for the wealthy in those terrible Clinton years when such socialism caused the wealthy segment of the population to shrivel to a fraction of its former fat Reagan-era self.

Extrapolating a bit from those numbers, by my calculations the married couple filing jointly with an Adjusted growth Income of $600,000 – no doubt, a figure most of us can easily relate to – will face about the following increase in monthly tax burden from Obama’s proposed new tax brackets: out of a gross paycheck of about $50,000 PER MONTH – make sure that registers, $50,000 PER MONTH -- the tax take will increase from about 12,200 to 13,000. That’s an $800 dollar increase, taking the aggregate IRS obligation from 24.6% of gross income to 26.1%. OK, OK, that’s $800 worth of a slippery slope towards total income confiscation by the state. One can never be too careful.

We forget: what Obama is proposing is to raise the marginal rates on incomes above $250,000. No increase is felt until that figure is reached, and applies only to the amounts in excess of that figure. That means the real effect will be smaller than we first imagine without thinking very hard. If your income is $250,001, your tax burden does not suddenly jump to 39.6% of the whole thing; everything's the same, except now you will also pay 39.6 cents on that extra dollar instead of 35 cents.

For the couple more squarely in the middle class with an annual gross income in the more reasonable neighborhood of $450,000, which means taking it in at a rate of a mere $30,000 PER MONTH or so, the Federal tax burden on that paycheck, such as it is, should go from about $7900 to $8100, or an increase of about $200 per month.

Cry me a river!!!