Commentary from John Stamos on This Post regarding the new hippies.  Why yes John, I have read Doctor Seuss.  Let it be said that Seuss could get his point across in a few pages of a children’s book.  Rand on the other hand…  Well to paraphrase Mark Twain’s comment on the music of Richard Wagner, Ayn Rand’s novels are better then they read.

Meanwhile, back in Atlas Slouched…

You’re in the high rent district

Approximately 2% of the American households make more than $250,000 a year and (you may find this hard to believe) a very high percentage of these high-earning go-getting producers spend their days commenting over at Michelle Malkin’s place… when they’re not busy flying their Lear jets up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun.

Scenes from the Go Go Gaults:

• I’ve resigned from my job, and I’m selling my rental properties. After this, I’m moving to a rural little town and simplifying everything. I’ll be reading so many more books soon, if that sort of thing is still allowed.

• What motivation do we have to make more money? Only to have it confiscated by the Feds. Bad enough CA just increased a variety of taxes, including the income tax. That’s why I’m looking to move to NV. I was just there on Saturday. Won’t be too long now.

• I decided I will endeavor to take more business trips and continuing education classes at exotic places and try to reduce taxable income.

• Yep, it’s happening. Several friends are shutting down to sustaining levels. Partly due to housing and the rest due to the tax hikes.

• I shut down my online businesses in early November, I don’t remember why. I’m now a net user of Obama Cheese. I may even apply for food stamps.

• Small businesses will lay off employees, and I hope the first to go are the ones that voted for bho. They wanted ‘hope and change’, well you got it. These bho voters have NO idea how much more taxes they are going to be paying. I just hope those bho voters have their IRA, 401k and stocks cratered as much as those who DID not vote for bho. Such(sic) it up kids!

• I’m starting my victory garden this spring. My sister is expanding hers and in exchange for my helping with that I will be able to claim some of the produce. I’ve been couponing for over a year now and have a nice stockpile of food for when things get really, really bad. I can’t believe that my country is on this path. From Ronald Reagan to this Marxist in the span of one generation. Unbelievable.

• I have a friend who is planning to not work overtime this year to stay well below the dangerous benchmark that is 250k. His point was that he might as well take some time off and enjoy and relax rather than work and give every dollar above 250 away. I don’t blame his reasoning and the loss is, he spends his money.

You have to wonder if this guy ever paid taxes because here be basically admits he doesn’t understand how the income tax works:

ABC News reports on "upper-income taxpayers" who are trying to reduce their income so they avoid proposed tax increases on those earning more than $250,000. 

According to ABC, one attorney "plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law."  According to the attorney: "We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00."  ABC also quotes a dentist who is trying to figure out how to reduce her income.

This is stunningly wrong. 

The ABC article is based on the premise that an individual’s entire income is taxed at the same rate.  If that were the case, it would be possible for a family earning $249,999 to have a higher after-tax income than a family earning $255,000, because the family earning $249,999 would pay a lower tax rate.

But that isn’t actually how income tax works. 

In reality, a family earning $255,000 will pay the higher tax rate only on its last $5,001 in income; the first $249,999 will continue to be taxed at the old rate.  So intentionally lowering your income from $255,000 to $249,999 is counter-productive; it will result in a lower after-tax income. 

The people ABC quoted don’t seem to understand that.  Worse, ABC doesn’t seem to understand it, either.

Anyway…back to Atlas Slouched, and TBogg’s personal favorite:

• We also have “gone Galt”. Hubby decided to retire and start Medicare instead of our original plan of waiting two years.

Well that’s showing those looters a thing or two.  Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan has a note from a reader that explains it all for the dense of skull…

Downsized out of my career in my mid-50’s, after 20+ years of faithful service to a 150-year-old company that declared bankruptcy some months after my termination.  I got a decent severance – in the latest wave of layoffs, there were people with more years of service who got zilch.   I have found some freelance daily-hire work here and there – last year my after-tax/after-insurance net was about 25% of what I had been making. Still looking, still hoping.

 The 401(k) that I’d faithfully funded since the mid-80s lost a third of its value in just a few weeks.  I had bad vibes about the bankster/gangsters over a year ago (CDO’s and swaps? I’d read about them on internet message boards back in 2006, but gave more credence to my adviser since he’s an expert and the internet is notoriously unreliable.  Fat lot of good that did.)  I know he wasn’t trying to steer me in a wrong direction – he feels as badly as I do.  Thank God BushCo never got their filthy mitts on Social Security.
 
 I’ve always conducted my financial affairs in a conservative fashion, so I have a (dwindling) cushion to rely on and some equity in a home with a (for now) manageable mortgage.  I pay for my own health insurance (a lousy policy with high premiums and deductibles – please, dear God – help me stay healthy.)  The premiums are about four times more than I spend for food, all of which is prepared at home by me.  I haven’t been more than 15 miles from home in more than a year.  When cabin fever sets in, I go for a walk.
 
 I’m not complaining, really I’m not.  I am able to stay warm and dry and fed, and current on my bills.  I am fortunate – I know I am blessed.  I don’t take it for granted and don’t consider myself more worthy than others who find themselves in far more dire straits.  I could very well be in their shoes before this is all over.

This is exactly what woke me up from my libertarian delusion back during the big Reagan recession: seeing so many decent, hard working people who did everything the way they were supposed to get clobbered because the gods of finance and industry turned out to be fallible human beings too, and not Greek gods holding the world on their shoulders.  I was working as an architectural model maker back then, and watched appalled as developers and their financiers ran themselves off a cliff, knowing full well they were heading for the edge, knowing full well they were going to fall off eventually, knowing full well it would be a financial disaster, but utterly unable to stop themselves from chasing those last few dollars off that cliff.  When it was over, nearly all my clients, the businesses I sold my services to as a model maker, had gone belly up and I was mowing lawns to make ends meet.  But at least I didn’t have any mouths to feed.

When the brakes came off the savings and loans, the crooks moved right in and without oversight, there was nothing to stop them.  And even had they all been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the damage was done.  There’s the problem.  I saw families who had once owned nice homes, whose parents worked hard, made good money, saved responsibly and lived within their means, living in tents in campgrounds because everything they had vanished in the savings and loan scandals. What good would prosecuting the savings and loan crooks have done for them?  Their money is gone. 

That was the end of my libertarian years.  I saw that greed is not good after all.  I saw that wealth is not an indicator of either moral, or common sense.  I saw that to err is human, but to really screw things up you need a lot of money.  I saw that selfishness is not a virtue.  Pride is a virtue.  Ambition is a virtue.  Selfishness is a cancer on your soul.  It turns your neighbors in this life, and all their hopes, all their dreams, everything they ever made for themselves, their families, their kids, into play money.