Ezra Klein responds to the report that said that 47% of Americans will pay no federal income tax this year. Klein points out that most pay state, local, and payroll taxes.
Marc Ambinder writes about the obesity epidemic. I'll probably come back to this one, because I love public health policy.
Taking a cue from Sarah Palin, Dan Drezner writes his own speaker contract. What's on your diva list? How about foot rubs by a tall Scandinavian man named Sven?
Apt. 11d 
Come on, stick in the words “federal income” before taxes. As the folks you link to point out, it makes a big difference. But not everyone who scans your feed is going to click through, so make sure they don’t take the totally false factoid away…
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Fair enough, Elizabeth. Let me hit the edit button.
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If I ever have access to a set of speaker demands like that one, I’m so making it public. I’d like to see what bill clinton’s and al gore’s look like. I actually get that some of these busy, stressed folks have special needs — traveling first class, when you’re traveling a lot, water at the podium. But, ugh. Can people really identify with who plain has become?
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Some years ago I saw a list of dressing room demands from various rock bands- mostly ones that were popular but not really super-stars. I can’t remember who they were, but I think most are now not around. (Think groups like Hootie and the Blowfish or something.) It was full of things like “Two bowls of M&Ms, one normal, one only with blue M&Ms. 8 bottles of poland spring water, 12oz, set in the table in the shape of a square, etc.” The M&M one is one I distinctly remember. With certain things I think, “who cares?”- it’s not hard to get two bottles of water and a bendy straw, after all, and I suspect it’s unfun to be mobbed by people, so private travel or first class can be important for that reason, too. (I was nearly trampled this weekend by photographers chasing, I think, Katie Holmes down the street. I’m not sure the money would be worth that all the time.) So for many of these things, I don’t think it’s a huge deal or objectionable, except insofar as it conflicts with the “common touch” persona. But I’m sure it’s easy to go over the top on demands, too.
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Smoking Gun has a whole page of dressing room demands from rock bands etc.
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47% of Americans will pay no federal income tax this year.
So what? Do you know how low your income has to be for this to be true? The people complaining about Americans whose income is too low to pay federal taxes would not get out of bed for what those people are making. Also? Feel free to quit your damn job, take a low-income job like these folks have, and see if you can manage the scramble to have the rent paid, food on the table, and the utilities on simultaneously. It’s not easy, but hey! at least you don’t have to pay federal income taxes, right? Grumble, grumble.
FWIW, my federal income tax obligation was over $4,200 this year (translation: that’s the final tally of what they’re keeping. Yes, I’m getting a refund). In 2005, I was unemployed for the first eight months. I received Earned Income Credit that year. But…I still had a federal tax obligation that year. They kept money that year. (Unemployment benefits are taxable. Yep, that whopping $400 a week was taxable. And I only received six months—for two months, I was living on air, crossed fingers, and a credit card.)
So, all this, “Waahhh! Poor people aren’t paying enough taxes!” bullshit really chaps my ass. And I’m not poor. (well, not right now, anyway. *cross fingers*)
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“But, ugh. Can people really identify with who plain has become?”
I didn’t read the list, but Michelle Obama and recent First Ladies have had staffs of about two to three dozen people (MO has about 2 dozen and Jackie Kennedy had about 40 admittedly while she was redecorating the White House).
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/firstlady.asp
I’m pretty sure that these two dozen staffers take care of exactly this sort of minutiae, and yet lots of people manage to identify with MO.
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I’ve always found the equating of Michelle Obama and Palin a bit bizarre. Is Todd planning on running for something?
Obama is the first lady. Do people really identify with her? I might have when she was the working wife of a very busy man. But I certainly don’t identify with the first lady who is touring Haiti on private plains with scads of security.
The rock star lists are enlightening–to a great extent I can see such lists as being helpful shopping lists, that allow a busy person to be appropriately hosted. But, if so, there’s no reason why they should be secret (well, unless there are security concerns.)
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What I find particulary annoying about the tax factoid is the exclusion of federal payroll taxes.
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My husband figured out what percent of our income we paid in federal income taxes, and the amount was 8%. So add on the 7-8% payroll taxes, and we’re paying about 15-16% total income to the federal government.
I don’t begrudge Palin her speaking engagement perks. There’s nothing too crazy in there.
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Wendy, your employer kicks in another 8% on the payroll taxes.
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“I’ve always found the equating of Michelle Obama and Palin a bit bizarre. Is Todd planning on running for something?”
Here’s the logic: if Michelle Obama can be a salt-of-the-earth everymom with a personal staff of two dozen people, then Sarah Palin can be viewed as ditto with considerably less. Does that make sense?
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Does that make sense?
Not really. Outside the president and family, I’ve usually found politicians to be pretty accessible people. I’ve crossed paths with governors and congressmen on several occasions, especially when in small states. It suggests that Palin decided to go “star” instead of politician and I cannot say I’m unhappy that she did not choose the latter.
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“It suggests that Palin decided to go “star” instead of politician and I cannot say I’m unhappy that she did not choose the latter.”
There do seem to be a number of serving Republican governors (like Christie) who are better positioned to run in 2012, since they have a record of fiscal responsibility in tough times. I think it would be fun to see Christie debate Obama.
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I’m going to see if I can drink enough that Ron Paul makes sense and still be able to walk to the polling place.
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I’m no Palin fan but her list actually seemed pretty reasonable to me. Or maybe I’ve just spent too much time in Hollywood. But it is more than a little ridiculous to pull the “I’m just an average soccer mom” when you can distinguish between different varity of private jet.
The infamous no brown m&m’s concert rider originated with Van Halen I believe. Apparently it started after they realized that the event promoters weren’t reading the entire rider, which specified a lot of technical requirements in addition to their dressing room demands. So they added the no brown m&m’s clause to insure that they were reading the entire rider. If they walked into a dressing room and saw brown m&m’s they would know that they needed to double check all of the other requirements for the show since someone at the venue hadn’t read the entire rider in detail. I’m sure there are a lot of demands that are just divaish though. But bendy straws and water seem pretty reasonable when you are giving a speech.
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So what? Do you know how low your income has to be for this to be true?
This is where regional differences have a strong effect on people’s perception of fairness. According to the Deloitte report, a family of four making $59k with a vanilla tax situation will most likely pay no federal income tax. In the New York metro area that might seem like “So what?”, but here in southwestern PA, that’s a pretty nice living to be making while having no skin in the federal deficit spending game.
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Given the local income tax (3% of wages — off the top with no deductions) and property taxes (3%), a home-owning family with kids who lives in Pittsburgh is usually hit more by local taxes. Depending on the assessment of the house and the number of kids, in some cases, you could be making close to six figures before you paid more federal tax than local.
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Given the huge Medicare/SS payments caused by our relatively elderly population, Pittsburgh must be a huge loss for the Feds.
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I’m going to see if I can drink enough that Ron Paul makes sense and still be able to walk to the polling place.
Please do not do this. You will end up in an alcoholic coma.
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If they didn’t want heavy drinking, why do they put elections on Tuesdays.
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Well, by Tuesday you’re supposed to be sober. Unless you’re a member of a blues club. “Blue Mondays” have a way of putting the kibosh to that.
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Well, by Tuesday you’re supposed to be sober.
I always vote on the way into the office, so not so much.
(Apparently, just mentioning Ron Paul in the comments is enough to get ads from the “buy gold” people.)
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I’ve read that the “crazy” parts of speaker contracts are often there for a reason — verification of the important parts.
Maybe you really care about making sure that the sauce doesn’t have any shellfish because of a major allergy, and the soap has no artificial dyes because you break out easily.
But that’s really hard to verify, and the people at the venue are just going to “yes” you if you ask. So, you throw in a few crazies — “pick out all of the green M & M’s, and have three bottles of Zima next to the M & M bowl.” If they did that stupid stuff, you can be more sure they checked the label on the dip. If you’ve still got green M & M’s, then steer clear.
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you’re ruining my image of pretentious rock stars, ragtime.
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