Folks freak at size of tax hikes if fiscal cliff isn’t averted in the coming days is a story from Thursday’s NY Post.
Three reporters interviewed New Yorkers (most of whom, statistically, voted for Obama) of all income groups, asked them what they earn per year, and passed on how much extra they’ll be paying unless a comprehensive deal is worked out.
The story is a terrific primer on the impact of higher taxes on a consumer economy—how what Person A spends on goods and services from Person B affects what Person B can afford to buy from Person C, who in turn… You get the idea.
Unfortunately, the Post didn’t realize that it was publishing such a story and left unsaid the best stuff. So let’s fill in the picture.
“It’s that much higher?” asked IT worker Vikas Kataria, 34, who discovered that his combined household income of about $250,000 per year will cost him nearly $10,000 more in taxes.
“I thought it was a couple thousand — but that’s a lot,” said Kataria, who works at Merrill Lynch in Manhattan and is married to a systems analyst for a brokerage firm. “That’s huge!”
With higher taxes, the couple would have to cut out on traveling and family vacations.
Kataria represents tens of thousands of Americans who will each be cutting back on $10,000 worth of traveling, meaning hundreds of thousands fewer airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, souvenirs and other merchandise, restaurant meals, sightseeing tours, etc—all of them not bought from individuals and companies that would have otherwise paid income taxes (both federal and state), sales taxes, and excise taxes.
You’ve heard of the multiplier effect on every dollar spent at retail? Call this the divisive effect.
Clothing designer Peter Opie, of Canary Wharf Clothier, made about $2 million this year — and would see his tax bill spike by a staggering $100,000.
Even if we assume that Opie can handle the additional hundred grand—and that there are “only” about a couple hundred thousand such people (though of course the more they earn, the higher the tax hit)—there’s little question that the Opies and their cohort will cut back at least somewhat on spending. Which translates to billions in unspent dollars on travel and merchandise and meals, etc, with the concomitant impact on the economy all down the line.
Small-business owner Haim Hagon, 51, said it’ll be tough to afford college for his two high-school-aged children.
“Every dollar counts when the situation is tough,” said Hagon, who makes about $150,000 and already moved his son from a private school to a public school due to financial concerns.
Bad news for private schools’ staff and teachers. Good news for public schools…which generally get paid public monies according to the number of pupils.
He works 12 hours a day, six days a week to keep his children’s-clothing store in Forest Hills, Queens, afloat — and is now mulling staff and pay cuts.
Multiply those staff and pay cuts by millions, and keep in mind that the “staff” involved come disproportionately from the middle- and working-class.
If there’s any good news, it’s that more Americans will soon, if they don’t already, understand that nobody ever got a job from a poor person.
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Comments
Surprizibus, surprizibus…as my Looney-Toons Latin mentors of childhood would have it…
This is part of the “Let It Burn” paradigm. People CAN learn from their mistakes. You just have to let them eat the consequences.
Which is why sometimes “helping” isn’t helping at all…
AMEN, Rags!!
A-Mazing how New Yorkers and Californians–seeing the utter catastrophe of their states and more to come–vote/blather as if it doesn’t apply to THEM. Or, as whatchamacallit in ‘The Great Labowski’ said:”You pooooool theeeee treeeeger ’till the gun, she goes cleeeekity-cleeeek!!”
Oh , so sad, boo hoo.
well, when the dimocrats run out of the “evil” rich people to extract more monies from, who do you think they’ll come after next??
Middle income people. Anyone who works will be considered “rich”!
If 30 hours is the new “full-time”, then $50K can certainly become the new “rich”.
“Experience teaches only the unteachable.” -Aldous Huxley
how what Person A spends on goods and services from Person B affects what Person B can afford to buy from Person C, who in turn…
You’ve heard of the multiplier effect on every dollar spent at retail? Call this the divisive effect.
Even a choom-gang’er like Hussein can figure that out. This goes to prove that it’s not about revenue. It’s about beating the rich crackers down. That’s what “fair share” means.
Is it possible for “the rich” to raise a class-action suit under the takings clause?
Pretty sure John Roberts would fall right in line with the Obama regime on that one, too.
-Dividing people from their money is the whole point of the Obama/progressive regime. His/their ever growing bureaucracy is the leach that will demand ever more money from taxpayers.
Taking money from the rich takes the fuel out of the “economic engine” and away from those enterprises, jobs and investments that would drive benefits towards the middle class and the poor. In other words, our current government directed by Obama is destroying human flourishing in America – just ask the jobless black men and Hispanics on the streets of Chicago ready to kill you out of a sense of hopelessness and despair. No wonder so many people want to smoke pot and do drugs.
-On the brighter(?)side, as I see it, the black market concept will rapidly spread throughout this country simply because people will need to survive under Obama and the redistribute-to-my purpose progressives.
-Unbelievably Washington is again only talking about at what level income should be taxed higher and not about what limbs of bureaucracy should be amputated to save the economic life of our nation and its people.
And let’s don’t forget higher food and energy prices. But their biggest surprise is going to be when they need medical care and find out the ‘affordable health care act’ isn’t!
good.
let it burn.
vote present, record your objections and state exactly what will happen, and let the Dem party OWN it.
dmacleo, I agree, but based on experience, if the outcome is bad the Republicans are going to own it and it the outcome is good the Democrats are going to own it – in the minds of the people whose primary source of information is CNN.
If truth/facts/evidence/reality/the LAW mattered more than politics/sentiment/libido/opinion, Obama would never have been allowed to run for President.
He is the ‘alleged’ son of a foreign national, went to school as a foreign national adopted son of a foreign national.
His ideology and loyalties are foreign as well.
His presidency is illegal and invalid.
His actions have been consistently destructive to national defense, the economy and to the destruction of American lives.
Unless Obama could prove by DNA tests, that he is the son of Frank Marshall Davis or as is rumored, Malcolm X, he is illegally acting as the US President.
But, in a bizarre world where Elizabeth Warren is a native American person of color, and Ted Kennedy was a Senator, and the statistics, science and evidence in fiscal and social matters is ignored for political correctness, and the media is a propaganda tool, sane people have no chance of impeaching Obama.
Addendum: If truth/facts/evidence/reality/the LAW mattered more than politics/sentiment/libido/opinion/*MONETARY gain and power*, Obama would never have been allowed to run for President.
I can tell you all about the multiplier effect, because my business suffers from it. We are dependent on tourist traffic to make ends meet, and with the added deterrent to travel in the form of high has prices, it has been a terrible four years, with far fewer visitors to our region. It’s an understatement to say that it is disheartening to consider that every wage-earning American will have a smaller budget to manage while the federal government confiscates more of our money to mismanage.
The people who suffer the most are, of course, the ones nearer the bottom of the wage/economic scale. The ones that Champ professes to care the most about, but we all know better, don’t we.
But perhaps one good point of education will be to demonstrate to the blue staters what is going to happen to them personally when we go over the fiscal cliff.
In that vein, perhaps we should help with their education —
— do away with the federal 1040 schedule A exemption for state and local taxes
— limit the schedule A mortgage interest deduction
I think Vikas Kataria will then discover what it really means to pay full freight.
Meanwhile, on the welfare estate…
“Taxes? Taxes went up today? Sheeeeeeeeeeeee-yit… What ev’s.”
Whats even funnier is that for years liberals told me the evil Bush tax cuts only helped the evil rich …. * GRIN * ….seems they were wrong …. as usual
It’s time people stop with the “tax the rich/eat the rich/kill the rich” meme, and understand what’s really going on.
Confused why all the rich liberals are all in for destroying the rich?
This is about confiscation of private property.
All property belongs to the King, and His Graciousness will bestow upon His most loyal subjects rewards of land and treasure….
Not to worry. Obama only has 4 more years in office. What possible harm could he do?
[…] (Via Prof Jacobson) […]
I drink their delicious, salty tears.
Now add in new taxes from Obummercare. No one is taking about those tax hikes.
[…] Joel Engel at Legal Insurrection notes reactions from New Yorkers: […]
The blue states continue to tax and spend.
Could it be tHat the “blue states” have been secretly assured that the surpluses of the “Red states” will be plundered to bail them out?
No sympathy for Blue States and their Leftist inhabitants. Minimal sympathy for those not Leftist who stay. For generations they have voted for this, let them get it good and hard.
It is incumbent for us to rub their noses in it at every opportunity. We need to mock them every time they complain. “I told you so’s.” are both mandatory and just the beginning at every sudden exposure to reality they receive.
That and an absolute refusal to help them and if possible make their situation worse. Fight bailouts until Obama does it by executive order and/or directs the Fed to start printing fiat money to buy state and local bonds on demand. Direct your activities to avoid paying taxes at all levels as best you can. Barter and a black market undercuts the Left. If you can avoid buying goods and services produced in Leftist states, do so.
There is a report that McConnell and Reid are putting together a deal to be announced Sunday or Monday. McConnell will capitulate on tax increases and get exactly nothing in return. Boehner cannot pull it off himself without being challenged for Speaker, so it is McConnell’s turn to surrender. Enough Institutional Republicans will vote for it alongside the Democrats to pass it in the House. Boehner and McConnell and the other Institutionals will make the usual false pro forma promise to really, really, REALLY fight the next time. With the usual result.
If our TEA Party/Patriot Movement representatives roll over and vote for it; take them down in the primaries as a matter of vengeance. If they vote against the surrender, or vote “present”, use them as the core of a new movement. It may not win many elections, but then again the rule of law and the Constitution do not seem to be operative right now anyway, and a resistance movement is more important than collaboration with Boehner.
Subotai Bahadur
Just another example to add to your list, Joel. And to those who think the rich have more money than they know what to do with and think the rich’s behavior thus won’t change.
My sister has worked for a luxury cruise line for a few years. After joining, she promoted fast, and now deals directly with wealthy, long-time clients who do not want to go through a travel agent.
She said that bookings have dropped off drastically (and her quarterly bonuses have dropped drastically along with business).
She said her wealthy clients all tell her they are afraid of what’s coming and she said the floor just fell out after Obama was re-elected (after having been bad enough for months).
They’re rich, they’re wealthy, they’re the 1% … whatever you want to call them.
And as my sister has seen first hand, at least when it comes to luxury cruises, they are changing their behavior drastically.
This is clearly what the majority of Americans voted for.
I say, give it to them. All of it.
Let it burn.
There’s an old saying- “Be careful for what you ask for, you may just get it”..
They deserve to get all of it.. Liberals will in the end get their own eventual just rewards of wealth confiscation of poverty and assets, via govt tax laws, and whatever other legal govt authority they wish impose upon the people without restraint/impunity, resulting in economic and social misery and oppression- ie; tyranny..
The Liberal Pyramid Scheme of Borrow then Tax comes with an eventual bill.
Time to pay up.
Don’t Like IT? Stop voting for Liberal Asshats.