Middle Class is a million a year in NY City?

I understand that Senators Menendez of New Jersey and Schumer of New York, Democrats both, are saying that in the New york City metropolitan area, the upper end of the income "bracket" for Middle Class families should be a million dollars a year rather than the $250,000 proposed by BHO.

And today on "Morning Joe,"  Dan Senor, the neocon mouthpiece, solemnly agreed that this was the case.  "After all," he said,. (paraphrasing) "a fireman and a schoolteacher" (sniff) "make that much in the tri-state area."

So, someone who lives in "flyover America" who lives on much less than $250,000/year is just not to be taken seriously as, what?  A political adult? 

This, of course, reduces to rhetorical penury everyone who serves the US Government.  soldiers, generals, IRS agents, postmen, Border Patrol agents, etc.

So, people really think that we are one people?  pl

Comments

[confusedponderer]

What a splendid opportunity!

I propose to leave government to the adults finally, and re-introduce formally, what campaign finance already does informally, and that is census suffrage.

The Ayn Rand crowd will just love this.

Only the performers in the society really do have a stake, and as evidenced by their success, they know best. The moochers deserve their fate. And that is only fair! Who would they be without the performers? Anybody can be anything in America! There is no glass ceiling, as indicated by Mr. Senors fine sentiments.

And probably David Barton can be called to testify that the sainted founding fathers wanted it that way, after all, when ratified in 1787 iirc the US Constitution had men only census suffrage. And who are we to second guess the founding fathers.

/snark

[Fred]

I think the Morning Joe folks (Joe, his bobbleheads and Senatorial guest, etc) are 'one people', just not my people.

[SAC Brat]

Whoever decided to call the media and political classes "The Villagers" and "The Very Serious People" hit the nail on the head. It's time to dress them in janitor uniforms, give them ten bucks only and tell them they can't come back until they ate scrapple at a diner in South Philly.

Can we outsource these positions? Make them follow little people laws?

[Matthew]

Do firemen and school teachers makes $125,000 per year in NYC? Maybe Leuitenants and higher, i.e., management firefighers. See http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/community/ff_salary_benefits_080106.shtml

Notice a beginning fireman makes $43,074. To conflate the two is intellectually dishonest.

Mark Twain and Benjamin Disraeli knew what to make of this type of rhetoric. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

[The Moar You Know]

I'm normally a lot more diplomatic than I'm about to be here:

This:

"And today on "Morning Joe," Dan Senor, the neocon mouthpiece, solemnly agreed that this was the case. "After all," he said,. (paraphrasing) "a fireman and a schoolteacher" (sniff) "make that much in the tri-state area.""

IS A LIE.

My wife's a teacher, I've got friends who are firefighters (and computer programmers and cops and IT security folk...we aren't any of us poor). We live in the wealthiest part of the world, coastal Southern California. You could grab ten of us, stick us all in a room, and we wouldn't have a million in income between all ten.

[Medicine Man]

The latest efforts of the media weasels to pretend that they're not over compensated for what they do.

Off topic, some trench art: http://observatory.designobserver.com/accidental-mysteries-062412/34848/index.html Not news to you gents, but I felt a chill in my spine.

[Peter]

Thanks for watching Morning Joe and reporting on the daily subject. I can't stand to watch these Buffoons, but I do want to know what they are saying.

[jonst]

Other than marketing, self promotion, and networking, in the modern use of those terms, why should we expect this crowd to know any more about the realities of most people's lives, than they know about the numerous and varied, other subjects they opine on each weekday morning?

[different clue]

I suspect a member of the Firefighter or Police Officer class in NYC will feel himself/herself to have more in common with a member of the Firefigher or Police Officer class here in Flownover Country than they would feel themselves to have with a million-dollar-person in NYC. (Flownover Country because we get "Flownover" by the Flyover people who fly over us.)

Some of the divisions in this country may be social class divisions, and those social class divisions may well afford some measure of shared-interest-unity across and between culturally-divided regions. I don't know that, but I suspect it may be so.

As to creatures like Shumer and Menendez, they are just talking their political campaign big-donors' book. (And as
to tax rates, I would prefer to see the Bush tax cuts sunset altogether and the Clinton tax rates re-emerge. I didn't mind paying the higher taxes, and the country was on a better budget track to being better off.)

[Phil Cattar]

Not trying to nitpick too much here but coastal Southern Ca is NOT the wealthiest place in the world.Also if you move your above mentioned friends to the SF Bay area and include their benefit packages including early and handsome retirements benefits.I believe you will pass that million dollar mark,especially if a number of them have worked their way up the ladder a few rungs.

[Tyler]

For a 'middle class' New Yorker immigration enforcement means they have to pay a decent wage for thier domesticas since they can't blood suck the illegals anymore.

For a middle class Arizona rancher, it means (just maybe!) they don't have to worry about running into armed dope mules crossing thier land.

Just one example out of many.

[linda]

SAC Brat -- the 'Villager' term took on life after an infamous column by ex-queen bee of wdc cocktail circuit, sally quinn. her most recent one bemoaning the death of that circuit, is perfect in illustrating the continuing isolation of that population.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/quinn110298.htm

and, re dan senor -- how fortunate for the romney campaign to have an embed; where senor is a foreign policy advisor. and one with a proven track record of having no qualms whatsoever lying to the american people.

[Cronin]

We are clearly not one people, though I suspect that different clue is quite correct above -- cops in Queens probably do see more eye to eye with firefighters in Kalamazoo than either do with oligarchs, whether the latter 'summer' at Traverse Bay or Montauk Pt.
The problem is that our Constitutional arrangements are increasingly unsuited to the reality of our fractiousness; parts of the country seem to think that elements of political life that are quite literally essential to other sections are diametrically opposed to the existence of a free society. For me, a New Englander, "government" is no bugbear -- we are, after all, a people for whom "the Town" occupies a similar position as the polis did for the ancient Greeks, and it's hard to get too bent out of shape about the idea of myself, my family, friends, and neighbors forming a tiny democratic polity. But the idea of any kind of government whatsoever seems to be anathema to large portions of the GOP and their firebreathing Congressmen. This is a hard difference to reconcile.

Similarly, to flip political perspectives, many urbanites the whole country over (though with concentrations in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and West Coast) view gun control as essential to the running of an ordered and civilized society. They thus view as inimical the very thing that men not a hundred miles from their home view as one of the central pillars of their liberty. Each grows suspicious of the other, and though they live close together in relative terms, see little of one another's lives and worlds.

Under these conditions, it is hard to have a unified national state, when members of a polity differ over first political principles. More importantly, maybe, in a time of increasing decentralization, we no longer need centralized structures of government, finance, media, education, and industry; this centralization was good for certain things, like running industrial wars, bad at others, like preventing wealthy corporations blowing up the homes of mountain people for the coal below. But it's not clear that we need a centralized state to the extent that we did in say, 1945, to do many of the same things today. I'm neither an anarchist nor a libertarian, but I do see a role for increasingly regional/sectional scale political economy in this century (e.g., the Great Lakes states and Ontario forming a protective compact, the New England states plus Calif. and a few others with carbon emissions, etc.).

[mbrenner]

This of course is all about social invitations from friends & relatives - some of whom also make campaign contributions. As to earnings of salaried workers, especially governmentemployees, Senor is full of bs. Those salaries in NYC and New Jersey are not even near the top of the league standings for US cities. When adjusted for cost of living, no higher than Cuzad, Nebraska.

I guess these are the virtues of unfettered free speech a la America of today that Hillary is implanting in Monogolia and Laos.

[DW]

Schumer depends heavily on Wall Street for money so he has to make excuses. Let's keep in mind a couple of important points.

1. The tax is on income above $250k. So if you're making $260k the increase only applies to the last $10k. Nobody likes a tax increase but you need to have a taxable income much higher than $250k to take a significant hit.

2. The tax is on taxable income. That's after you subtract mortgage interest, state income tax (substantial in NY), property tax (also substantial), and possibly deductions for children. Our hypothetical senior teacher/NYFD Captain would need income of a lot more than $250k to have a taxable income of over $250k. These are not exactly esoteric deductions.

So in short, it's a bs argument. If your taxable income is well above $250k you're doing well even in New York.

[Harry]

So I live in NYC and I feel poor. My feeling of poverty is caused by the rents I have to pay to live and work here. If I had a rent controlled apartment, or bought in the City 20 years ago, I would feel very rich.

A very large proportion of the income in New York goes to landlords. It is the nature of economic rent - it can be thought of as a levy on economic activity paid to incumbant rentiers. How you feel about that statement probably defines how you feel about politics. I dont say it is or isnt justified. I just note that it is true that a lot of the cash made in NYC ends up in the pockets of families who own a lot of real estate.

So what I am really saying is that people on 250k in NYC might be very well off. They might be struggling to get by. Depends. But it isnt just about incomes - its just as much about cost of living.

[Fred]

Lets not forgot most of these $250K folks are making income off capital gains, which is taxed at 15%. Working families don't get any real income from capital gains.