Reply #49: "In Context" would be helpful. $80,000 can be called "working class poor

[Tigress DEM]

$100,000.00 a year could be a call for a "living wage" versus the "poverty line".

Most people's wages have stayed stagnant while inflation has risen terribly. So $80,000.00 ain't what it used to be. Except the top 1% (all those billionaires created by *ush) the rest of US have seen costs rise exorbitantly.

The mark where the tax incentives tip you into that "privileged" bracket is about $336,000.00.

The high cost of gasoline has rippled through the economy making everything cost more. While the rich get to pay only .01 cent a gallon for their corporate jets after tax rebates or $100,000.00 credits for buying gas guzzling hummers, the rest of us pay $3.00 a gallon (except at election time) and if we buy the hybrids only a $2,000.00 rebate or credit.

So, rather than take offense, and I have lived on $40 expendable monthly income after rent and bills with diapers to buy and food stamps in my pocket that made me sick to my stomach to use.... so I KNOW what YOU mean by REAL poverty...

BUT rather than take offense, realize that by raising that bar and point out that in America where we have so much, that it still is a TRUE Poverty that people making $80,000.00 a year are a paycheck or two away from crashing and burning because the cost of day to day living has gone up so much and the increasing tax burden on those in the $40,000.00 to $80,000.00 has gotten so heavy that it is crushing the American family's ability to stay afloat.

Rather than take offense I wonder if the person proposing this isn't wondering why CEOs make sure they have billions in pensions set aside even as they cut their workers pensions afloat in bankruptcies? When the CEOs & high level execs pensions and various payments are up-wards of 30-40% of the pension fund, wouldn't it make more sense to limit the most expensive end and be able to give more to the people that actually do the day to day work?

The rethug way of cost cutting has been always to target the expense of paying the workers, whether it's shipping jobs overseas, using temps instead of full time employees, or allowing companies to renege on their obligations to their workers while sending their CEOs out in golden parachutes.

Asking for a living wage is a way to address that fatal flaw in the rethug way of doing things. If companies pay their workers a living wage, they can't create high paid aristocratic dynasties. It causes their agenda to be put up to scrutiny.