Michael Steele Thinks A Million-Dollar Income Is “Not A Lot” Of Money
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Sometimes Republicans and conservatives make a mistake and slip and tell you what they really think. Most times they’re pretty good about covering it up, speaking in the language of the every man as they live a Brooks Brothers lifestyle. But sometimes, the mask slips.
The two often traded jokes, especially when Steele panned President Barack Obama’s long-stated plan to let income tax rates return to higher levels for families making more than $250,000 a year.
“Trust me, after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money,” Steele said.
That’s how Republicans justify to themselves the skewed Bush era tax cuts – letting someone with a million dollars off the hook isn’t class warfare, because a millionaire is just another name for a pauper. It explains a lot of the mindset, about why they see no upside to an equitable tax system or common sense regulation of big business. They think that the Paris Hiltons and Jay-Zs of the world are just scraping by.
14 Responses to “Michael Steele Thinks A Million-Dollar Income Is “Not A Lot” Of Money”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Dear Mr. Steele:
Re: 1 million dollars
This is a lot of money. Perhaps, you think it is not, because you have more. But, the average American, they don’t make that much in 10 years. It will take 20 years before I earn this much, and I will have spent most of it just to do the stuff I do. So, you happen to be wrong, and I request that in future, regarding these topics, to be consulted, if only so these incidents will be less frequent. Otherwise, you will sound like a bit of a berk.
Yrs.
A.
Yet more from the party of ‘real’ Americans.
Yet more from the party of ‘real’ Americans.
Insincere complaint from a non-American.
The smell of xenophobia in the morning makes me nauseous.
dear papa steele,
can i please have “not allot of money”?
I’m sure his answer would be that he’d like you to earn it, rat-bastard, then see the taxes taken out, and then determine for yourself if what you have left over is a lot of money. If he just gave it to you, you’d be a lot more likely to say it was a lot of money, sure.
If a million dollars weren’t a lot of money, even after taxes, then nobody would go on game shows. They’d scoff at the idea of receiving a paltry sum like a million dollars.
Maybe we shouldn’t take his joke literally, though.
A party for the rich with some Christofascist window dressing to lure in the con blog commenters
I’m guessing that the after tax amount of a cool million is much more than the before tax of most Americans. And moreover, I’d wager it’s about a order of magnitude larger than the gross income of the average dude on the street. I’d easily trade with Mr. Steele, if he’s unconvinced.
Reasonable people can argue about whether progressive taxation is good public policy; I certainly think it is but people who disagree should not be dismissed as morons.
1 million dollars, even taxed at the proposed rates, would still leave in the neighborhood of $690,000 or more even after including state income taxes for most taxpayers. One can live modestly off of the income from such a corpus at 6% easily in most of the United States. If you work part time and earn another $400/week, you can live very well indeed except maybe in New York and San Francisco (and even in some neighborhoods in those cities.) Of course the stock market averages around 10% a year in the long term.
In the alternative, if you buy a house with that money for $200,000 (hard to do in DC but possible), you can live very well without paying a mortgage note on the rest and enjoy even lower taxation marginally on the rest of the money, since the U.S. does not impute the fair market value of rent on one’s own home as in-kind income. In other words, if you live in some else’s house, you have to earn taxable income to pay rent, which is then taxed to the landlord; buy and occupy the same house yourself and the Treasury gets burned out of one of those income tax streams.
Poor Steele. So wealthy and so persistently stupid.
Bruce, your argument uses a lot of words, combined into logical sentences that explain a simple truth about the buying power of a million income-taxed dollars.
It is therefore completely wrong and it is up to the conservative chattering class to tell you why.
Dennis. Take it away.
–“Trust me, after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money,” Steele said.–
Uhhhh, why the f$#k would anybody trust him?? Oh, maybe he didn’t mean that literally……
Great post, Bruce. However, Steele’s comment was about having a million dollars AFTER taxes, not before. If you still had that million after you’d paid all your taxes – then you’d be in even better shape that you outlined in your example of having $690,000 left.
Such numbers are staggering. When Oprah Winfrey’s name was first included in the Forbes list of billionaires – she was the first black woman ever to make it – I overheard someone ask, “Just exactly how much IS one billion dollars?” I turned to the questioner and said, “Look at this way – if tomorrow Oprah lost or gave away NINETY-NINE percent of her fortune – the ONE percent she had left would be $10-million. Do you think you could live comfortably for the rest of your life on $10-million?” The person of course said, “Absolutely!”
Dear Mr. Michael Steele
What is a enough, if a million dollar after taxes is not a lot?
I heard Republican national Committee Chairman, Michael Steele say that “After taxes, a million dollar is not a lot”. He might be right, a million dollar is never enough for those who make a million or more and/or have a million in the bank. If the average family in America earns $52,000 per year and only 2% earn over 250,000, how can a million not be an unbalanced lump of income in America? If a million is not a lot why is it that my husband, who has 2 careers, speaks 3 languages, worked 3 jobs last year, barely made 28,387 and 11 cents?
If a million is not a lot, why did I have to apply for unemployment? If a million is not a lot why have we been not making that amount? Why have we barely survived in America, the richest country of all? How can a family of 3 survive on less than $50,000 a year? How can a family of 5 make it with the average income?
Mr. Michael Steele, I will tell you what is not enough:
It is not enough to be taxed on $30,000 dollars and have to owe the IRS money. Instead of having money withheld we were using it to buy food, pay for shelter, pay for whatever our son’s insurance did not cover. And that is without counting that in 10 years my husband and I have not been able to afford Health insurance.
It is not enough that we, and many American residents have spent so much money on our education and the companies are failing to provide enough job openings. For a year we have been applying to so many professional jobs not necessarily in our field but jobs we believe we have the skills to perform. After interviewing with the employees, the answer has been: “You are overqualified”, or they ask, “How is it that with so much education you cannot get a job?”
How is it Mr. Michael Steele that some people, perhaps including yourself, are making a million dollars and we are barely surviving? Mr. Steele you can be sure that the answer to the question you ask the audience in Arkansas is “Yes!” Yes, many people in America who are struggling and barely surviving would like to make a million dollars a year. The reality is that with the salary that my husband made this year it would takes us over 30 years to make our first million.
So, if a million is not a lot for you Mr. Michael Steele, I invite you to make a contribution to the thousands of unemployed Americans that are willing and desperate to work, but are not being hired. I invite you to help your nation by helping our country, America, to end unemployment and homelessness. I invite you to speak less and look more; really look around to see that there is a need for a balance of wealth. America cannot be a great Nation if the land where so many immigrants dream of living is giving them worse economic conditions than what they had in their own country. Immigrants from all over the world hear about the American Dream and they are so willing to achieve it that they leave everything to pursue what is not real, what is only that, a Dream. Not only citizens of this country, but very qualified immigrants are not sure, if a million dollars is not a lot, why they are not making even a fourth of it?
As I was preparing my taxes I couldn’t conceive of the idea that middle class people–all of us who are not making the million dollars a year–will have to pay taxes.