Dude, seriously. You need to move out of SoCal. It really doesn't seem to be your thing and the social climate is salt in your most tender area.

Go to Seattle, or someplace where you don't have to have your face rubbed in gross excess. It's making you bitter.

Either that or get a nice sugar mama.

 

Hard to argue with your logic: "Giving the governement a no-interest loan isn't stupid, it's smart".... Are you serious? We are talking about people WHO HAVE NO TAX LIABILITY, remember? If they claim exemption, they WON'T owe taxes at the end of the year, get it?! In any case, if we WERE talking about people who owe taxes, you can adjust your witholdings to accurately reflect your tax liability with relatively high precision; most people don't, but should. You can even play it conservative, so you expect to get a $100 refund instead of $1,000.

 

Gladly. I was replying to a post that said military people were the ones making no money. I argued that servicement do just fine, considering the benefits they receive (or costs that are paid to them).

And now I'll back up what I said with research, at your request:
As you can see from the table at http://usmilitary.about.com/od/2007paychar...enlbasepay1.htm , the lowest you can be paid monthly is $1,204 a month ($14,448) per year. That is bottom of the totem pole, with less than 4 months of service. The average is significantly higher on a percentage basis. I don't know the exact distribution of experience and rank in the military, but I'd guess it is more like $1,750 ($21,000/yr) a month for the young kids that have been there a few years, based on these tables. If you make a career out of it, you could get into the 40k range no problem, 60s and 70s if you really do well.

Then you take the housing. Either it is free, or you get a housing allowance TAX FREE if authorized to live off the base. Here's the table for enlisted, bottom of the totem pole people: http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinf...enldep/blca.htm Since it varies by location, let's say $1,000 a month.

And then we have the free food. It's either free, or if authorized to live off the base, $280 a month. http://usmilitary.about.com/od/2007paycharts/a/bas.htm

Ok, you get the point. There is jump pay, family separation pay, child support allowance, sea pay, enlistment bonuses, and a whole slew of other monetary benefits that pick up every day expenses. Even without these, you can assume that each officer is being compensated (in cash or required expenses such as housing and food) a minimum of $1204+1000+280 = 2,484 a month. That is $29,808, and this is the WORST CASE scenario. Stick around a few more years and you'll be making a lot more than this.

In 2005, the median annual household income according to the US Census Bureau was determined to be $46,326 (wikipedia). That's for a household! And the average household has 2.65 people...(some are kids, etc - but the point here is that the average individual income is way less than 46k). Given the distribution of income in the US, this "median" number of 46k is probably much higher than the mean.

Bottom line here is that my "ridiculous assertions" don't seem so ridiculous, do they?

 

Man I wish I got in this thread sooner.
I love it when people talk about the disproportionate amount of taxes the wealthy pay and how people say that they should pay their fair share. Basic econ: all tax brackets and therefore taxing rates are public knowledge. When a person considers a job and its wage, all costs are considered, like transportation costs (gas, time commuting, parking, etc), wardrobe cost (can't exactly wear a tshirt and shorts to the chairman's room can you?), cost of living in that city, career building cost, etc. So it's really simple (in theory), Doc has to pay more in taxes, doc is going to charge more for his work, his industry will probably follow suit. Simply put, if a doctor feels that he's worth X amount a year in take home pay for his efforts, he will price his services accordingly factoring in his cost of practice. If he cant make his mark, he may change his profession, and future potential docots will realize that the money isn't there and will opt to choose another profession.
In summary, if taxes were lowered dramatically on the higher end, I believe that future wages will adjust accordingly (drop) because in the end the only wage that truly is considered is real wage (the actual take home).
In those high paying, specialized occupations, you could tax them 10% more becaues their earning ability can accomodate it. Try raising taxes on people who make under 30K... how could you raise their tax without raising minimum wage... and therefore inflation?

In theory you could argue that the rich should pay more of the taxes since they need the government more than anybody since they do have the most to lose, I mean the government did keep the Big 3 afloat with their import laws... but that's another can of worms.

 

Oh yeah, and yes I do feel guilty, but I replace that guilt with a total sense of appreciation. And I forgot who said it earlier, but most of the world is not living no where near the standard of Americans, or Europeans. Remember, the majority of the world's population is in India and China and most of those countries aren't exaclty booming like Hong Kong...

 

[QUOTE=dombey,Jul 21 2007, 08:18 PM] Gladly.

 

Or, perhaps, a sense of duty, honor, and country? You'd have to be pretty retarded to join the military to get experience to make more money in the outside world. You could do dramatically better by going to college and getting advanced degrees in booming fields.

My dad was Marine Corps, flew jets, before joining Delta back in the heyday. He did alright.

My brother is currently in the Air National Guard flying F-16's. He's a first lieutenant and he told me his total comp was somewhere in the 50's. Not bad to fly fighter jets for a living.

I make many times more than my brother, but I'd rather have his job. I'm not envious, but there is much more to life than money.

 

If that was the point being made, I don't really understand the point. I'm with you; if you take poor people and give them a job that makes them not poor, how can you claim they are poor? It's like he's saying that once poor, always poor, which we all know is BS.

I agree that few people stay in the military for the money (although some I'm sure do, if their alternatives are limited). However, I do think that if you look at the compensation from a "total compensation" standpoint, they probably do make as much or more than average. I don't have any data source to back this up, but here is what I think: a lot of servicemen are able to save a significant amount of money while in the military, because nearly 100% of their cost of living is paid for by the military. So any pay they receive is really unnecessary to get by. So if they are saving even $3,000 per year, that puts them WAY ahead of your median person in the US. And I've known servicemen personally that were able to save 3-4x that, even in their first few years.

 

sure. But how do you pay for college? Perhaps on the GI Bill? Or does everybody have parents able to foot the bill? And getting out of the army with a degree and management experience is far better than graduating from college alone.

I don't know why the hell you are arguing about this. Your own father got the training and experience he needed for Delta while in the military. Seems like you are just backing up what I wrote in a previous post.

 

Scholarships and working...that's how I paid for mine.