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Feedback: Your ideas on what rich is
Mmmmmoney. Counting money.
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Next week on Marketplace Money, the show will concentrate on one number: $250,000. It's the current line in the sand in the debate on whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts. An income of $250,000 makes you wealthy, says one side. Oh no it doesn't, says the other.
We'll hear from people like you across the nation on the topic. Some say, "A household of $250,000 is not wealthy." Others say, "Yes, in many places in the country its." What do you think?
We'll also hear from people like Robert Frank, whose book "Richistan" chronicled a dozen or so folks worth millions of dollars who say they don't feel rich.
"I had a couple, they're worth $200 million. They said to me, 'Wow, I love reading that book about those people. I couldn't believe those people in your books.' So the wealthy they don't see themselves as wealthy," says Frank. "There was a billionaire I talked to who said, 'I'm not rich. Now let me tell you about this guy who is rich.' And he genuinely meant it because, again, we're always looking at those above us and comparing ourselves to the people that we'd like to be rather than looking down at the reality."
We want your feedback: What is rich to you? Leave a comment here or at our Facebook page.
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Social Security set the "Rich" mark at $106,800 for 2009, 2010, and 2011
http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)#Taxation
It you make more then that, more of it will get into your pocket (see taxation).
P.S. Let hope we will all be rich some day.
Social Security set the "Rich" mark at $106,800 for 2009, 2010, and 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)#Taxation
If you make more then this, more of it get's into your pocket.
Income. Cost of living. Real Estate. They are all inextricably linked. It's all about location, location, location. $250,000 goes a lot further in Wharton, Texas than it does in Houston--an hour's drive away. And it goes a *helluva* lot further in Houston (where there are no state income taxes) than it does in New York City or San Francisco. And I doubt $250,000 a year could even buy you a one room log cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Having compared housing and other costs in Seattle, San Francisco, Knoxville, and Boise for similar homes in the same year, I can tell you that $250,000 will afford you wildly different standards of living in different parts of the country.
How many children you have, what sort of school they're in, and if they have special needs (medical or otherwise) also makes a big difference.
The short answer is "it depends where".
"The Tax Policy Center, run by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, recently studied payroll and income taxes paid by each income group. The richest 1 percent pay 27.5 percent of the combined burden, the top 20 percent pay 72 percent, and the bottom 20 percent pay just 0.4 percent."
Source: http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents...
"In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.7%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2010)."
Our current tax system is regressive, not progressive
Discover how rich you are, you may be surprised.
http://www.globalrichlist.com/
Being rich isn't how much you consume as much as it is how much you have. Beside there is only so much you can consume.
If you have 10 times as much as your neighbor, you are 10 times richer.
So arbitrarily, let's say being a rich American is when you have 100 times more than the average American.
Or maybe if we looked at it this way: Being rich is when you use less than 1% of your income on consumables, and you take 99% of your income and buy things that last and even increase in value.
CORRECTION TO MY PREVIOUS COMMENT:
Wouldn't it be fair to tax people based on their net-worth instead of their income? Taxes could be much lower. If you had 20 times as much stocks, bonds, gold, real estate, and business ownership as another person shouldn't you pay 20 times as much in taxes? That isn't how it works today. Instead of paying 20 times as much, you probably will pay less than 5 times as much.
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