Many of you will have seen this graphic from the Wall Street Journal that made the rounds of the Internet mid-last week, but many of you won’t have seen it — and, really, you just gotta. If you’ve had the slightest lack of sympathy for people in the top 3% or so of income earners, this will test your icy lack of empathy. Behold what the new federal income tax hike will do (according to the WSJ, and I haven’t verified any of it) to these suffering taxpaying specimens of humanity — and to their kids! First off, don’t look at the words for now, just look at the pictures.
When a graphic artist wants to depict true misery, there’s no better choice than a woodcut.
Holy multicultural, multiple age, single and beleaguered joint parenthood hell! The adults, at least, may try to hide it. (Well, at least the Asian woman in the lower left may be trying to hide it, but I remember that expression from an ex-girlfriend and I know that the only course of action when you see aimed at you that is to start apologizing profusely and at great length for whatever it is you may have done — and if you don’t know then you’d better guess.) But look at the kids! What are we monsters doing to them? Do we need to pull out the famous Depression Era Dorothea Lange photos before the message gets through! We’re cutting their net income post-federal income tax down from — let’s go clockwise from the upper left:
Miserable single parent with two miserable children: down from $189,647 to $186,291 — that is, by almost 1.78%!
Miserable African-American and/or Latino retirees: down from $157,155 to, uh, $157,155. … Well, moving on!
Miserable married parents of miserable four kids: down from $475,325 to $453,727 — that is, cut by 4.54%
My disapproving ex-girlfriend, had she’ been a lawyer: down from $168,317 to $165,410 — a cut of the same 1.78% as above!
Don’t make fun (at least not unmitigated fun) of the Wall Street Journal — these are their readers and subscribers. That’s who they know; that’s to whom they’re catering. They get to bemoan the fate of those in the mid-$200K and mid-$600K income ranges if they want. The people facing these tax rates generally do feel the loss of 1/56 of their income and they may well be upset about it, rightly or wrongly.
But — misery? No. Look, these are my people from a decade or so ago, before I went reverse-Galt, and I promise you — they may feel angry at their tax increases, they may feel acute sadness, and those in hock to loan sharks may even feel fear — but misery? No. Misery applies elsewhere. You take away 1.78% of the income of someone making $16,000 per year and chances are you’ll see misery. The increases in the bus fares in OC from $1.50 to $2 is likely to cause more serious misery than the effect of all of the federal tax hikes on all of the residents of Newport Beach, Newport Coast, Yorba Linda, Anaheim Hills, Rancho Santa Margarita, and Coto de Caza combined. Less anger, I’ll bet — most poorer people seem resigned to the inequities of contemporary American life — but more misery.
Had the artist behind this graphic — who I suspect may have been slipping an intentional exaggeration by his or her editors as a joke just to see if anyone noticed — wanted to depict the people in the various panels as burning with rage at the temerity of the government for tapping into their pockets, I could not argue with it. (I could argue with the sentiment itself, but not with the depiction of it as representing something real.) But depicting these people as miserable? Please, for the sake of all that’s right and holy in the world, whatever else you take from them, leave the poor and working class their experience of greater misery than those earning dozens of times their own income. Please leave them at least that, Wall Street Journal — or we will make enormous amounts of fun of you.
(P.S. — Note that those who earn income by investment rather than labor aren’t depicted in this graphic. Just saying.)
This graphic should come with a soundtrack.
Nominees?
Obvious choice; Taxman by The Beatles
Too angry. An old, miserable spiritual. “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”
If we’re going with the Beatles, I’d choose “Misery.”
Why is the couple who did not suffer the agony of a minimal tax increase depicted as so obvously ethnic? I chafe at the often played race card, but there’s something fishy going on here.
Excuse me? Is there something unusual or notable about a retired racial or ethnic minority couple pulling down $180,000/year, $128,000 of it not from investments? Oh, there is? Never mind, then.
I think that they’re there to keep the Asian woman company.
No, you missed my point. All the whites and the token Asian are paying more in taxes, and suffering greviously. The ethnic couple are not paying more taxes–so why are they here? To show the horror perpretrated on the long suffering white folks? Or to highlight the obviously ethnic connection between the president and those who pay no more in taxes–this couple just doesn’t fit except to be a subliminal cautionary tale.
Um, excuse me, but shouldn’t the first question be what the hell are they doing with the money they already have? I haven’t seen any govt other than the cities, say that we have a crisis in revenue that forces us to spend more wisely and a lot less. It’s the very same folks who claim they need more of MY hard earned money (and I don’t make nearly what any of the folks above do) so they can give it to some upstart solar company, some major bank or some other chump who happens to be hanging out in the hall ways in Sacratomato or the great fever swap we now call DC. I am mad as hell that those who promised to be the most transparent administration ever keep ramming more and more crap down out throats all the while saying it’s ok as long as we can get the Chi-Coms to finance it. WTF have you all gone insane?
We don’t have a revenue problem we have a spending problem, BIG difference!
You can always tell when it going to be real BS too, they try to do it so fast that nobody could read, understand and mount any kind of rational defense. It’s gone way too far and BOTH parties are the friggin problem.
Of course the voters aren’t off the hook either, they keep voting the bastards in!
We can’t afford a sound track, because we can’t afford to pay the musician, and I believe they still need to eat too…Right Vern?
Stay away from the talk radio–as Carlin said, it’s bullshit and it’s bad for ya.
What are you going to do about the 80 billion dollars in refunds the bottom 3 percent should have got in January?
Your benevolent big government who is demonizing the top X percent have turned on the little people with a vengeance .
*All Dividends added as regular income. No carried forward interest tax write-off…all Hedge Fund and Derivative profits taxed at 51%…..no tax write-off for Corporations with Overseas Operations. No transfer of funds from US Banking Accounts to the Cayman Islands, Swiss Bank Accounts or Bermuda Banks….. All funds brought in from those banks shall be taxed at 51%….
Boeing…..just leave dudes…move everything to China….after all the 787 is built by
70% Foreign Manufacturers. High Speed Rail……NO out of country Manufacturing.
Everything Made in the USA.. All new bridges and US infrastructure…..including all
components….100% Made in the USA.
That should get those lovely International Globists moving all our jobs off-shore or to out sourcing centers around the world – attention – to start.
finally, someone is starting to feel my pain
I think I am empathetic enough though, Willie, to commiserate: I got a paper cut this morning!
No matter the income level, few people like to take a cut in their take home pay- that is why those depicted in the illustration appear mad (or more likely, the illustrator is mad too!)- anger can easily turn to misery if one dwells long enough on it.. Maybe they are mad because they know that there are likely more tax increases that will be proposed in the next budget battle.
Regardless, most everyone’s taxes will be going up in 2013 (individuals that is). The expiration of the Soc Sec tax cut will impact every wage earner and self-employed individual…regardless of income level. Those at the highest end will see higher marginal rates (fed and CA) and healthcare surcharges which can easily push them up over a 50% combined marginal rate. Those at the lower end of the income spectrum will feel it harder than those at the higher end of the spectrum- however, again, few people like taking home less money for the same (or more) amount of work.
They don’t appear mad. They appear pained, like the Depression-era woman in Dorothea Lange’s famous photo.
Lower left looks mad to me more than miserable. Upper left adult does not really look miserable as much as she is modeling and trying to look like she is trying to have the face to get in a magazine; almost like she is pouting. Her daughter looks miserable. The upper right adults look indifferent or annoyed to me. Lower right parents look worn out and tired- likely from trying to handle the 4 little ones (I can certainly relate as I am sure many parents of little ones can also).
I wonder where all these mad/sad people were 10 years ago (not the kids of course)? You know, BEFORE their country embarked on the TRILLION dollar (and counting) disaster and unnecessary war that was Iraq.
If they’re any thing like my friends, they’ll deny that they ever supported it or that they even voted for Bush. Now, I can chalk these lies up to selective memory or even wishful thinking, but the fact remains; a majority of Americans supported bombing the shit out of Iraq. We should have been asked to pay for this war (and our other war) as we waged it, but that would’ve been a buzz kill. It was a lot more fun to pretend that bombing people back-to-the-stone-age (remember that phrase? good times, good times) was free.
Yep, too bad all these poor, poor, folks didn’t have a Boutwell in their lives, I’m sure he would’ve told them to plan ahead, because when you’re having fun spending trillions on a war, someday … the bill is going to come due. Maybe then they would’ve paid attention and gotten their asses out into the streets and stopped the madness (ironic, huh?) before it started.
We had a Boutwell.
Lawrence B. Lindsey was director of the National Economic Council (2001–2002), and the assistant to the president on economic policy for the U.S. President George W. Bush. When he predicted that the war would cost $200 billion per year, Bush fired him.
Nobody likes a party pooper.
$200B…in retrospect, he was not the right person because he so underestimated it instead of just bring attention to it and projecting it to be so high. Although, I am unsure if he was predicting $200B per year or total.
We should have been following Gov Browns suggestion back years ago: “Let us follow the wisdom of Joseph, pay down our debts and store up reserves against the leaner times that will surely come.”
I for one try my best to be hyper saver…yet, still disappointed in paying more in taxes. Don’t spend today what you earn tomorrow because you don’t know what tomorrow will hold. Earn, save, spend. Gov’t obviously can be a little bit different in financing certain items, just as a household generally finances a house (pretty much the only household debt I am fine with).
I am British but live in Sweden, if I earn $10000 this year – unlikely – $5500 goes straight to the tax man. The myth of a glorious welfare state is just that. The money shuffles between the huge army of feckless bureaucrats. I have grown to be envious of the American – and British – taxation system and sadly feel myself becoming more ‘republican’ as I age. Swedes believe the hype they spread across the world and think themselves gloriously lucky to be fleeced at every opportunity. Most of them get paid by the tax so its hardly surprising.