The December 30 episode of Meet the Press was, of course, devoted to discussion of the “fiscal cliff.” And NBC veteran Tom Brokaw was on hand to recycle some of the most tiresome talking points about wealth and taxes.
Brokaw explained that “the middle class is going to have a date for the prom,” but that how we define that term is open for debate. And he thinks wealthy people should be counted as middle class too:
A lot of people don’t realize in large urban and suburban areas of America, $250,000 doesn’t make you rich. You have got two kids in college at $60,000. If you’re a boomer, you may have a dependent parent of some kind you’re spending another $20,000 or $25,000 on.
So we have to have a definition of what is the middle class.
Actually, “a lot of people” probably think that sounds like a lot of money– because it is. Atlantic blogger Elspeth Reeve (12/31/12) pointed out that, according to the New York City comptroller, less than 4 percent of individual filers in New York City make over $200,000. Responding to an earlier round of hey-that-only-sounds-like-a-lot-of-money chatter, Ezra Klein at the Washington Post (9/10/10) used Census Bureau data to show that about 6 percent of household (as opposed to individuals) in New York City made over $200,000.
And, of course, it’s worth stipulating that the marginal tax increases under discussion would have applied to only to income over $250,000–meaning that Brokaw’s middle-class wealthy family would have hardly felt the impact of the proposed tax increase. Media coverage doesn’t always do a good job of pointing this out, even though it’s one of the most basic facts about our income tax system.
This wasn’t enough, though. Brokaw weighed in later on in the show to complain that Obama “could help himself a lot if he were tougher on the AARP” and pushed for some Medicare and Social Security cuts. (“The fact of matter is that we’re all living longer as well. Social Security can go up if you give it some lead time to retire at 67 and probably 20 years from now to retire maybe at 70, because people are staying in the workplace longer.”)
To Brokaw, that’s what Obama should have been doing after winning re-election:
He ought to be able to raise those issues in a way that he can begin to… sell to the American people the idea that we have got fundamental reforms that we have to do… because we are going to bankrupt not just our children but our grandchildren.
Why should Obama get tough on old people and not, say, wealthy people? As Brokaw explained on a previous Meet the Press roundtable, the CEOs he talks to tell him that they’re willing to pay a little more in taxes–so long as government spending is cut to their liking.
Considering the smack Brokaw makes
I imagine a quarter mil does seem like middle income.
Or possibly pocket change.
So cut the guy some slack for being concerned about those less well off.
Well, at least those less well off than him.
But not in such dire straits as to be dependent on those horrid “entitlements”.
Parasytes …
In this day and age 250K isn’t that much scratch, and the fact that only 4 to 6 per cent are making that kind of money is the real story here. As CEO pay has skyrocketed, ordinary folks have seen theirs either stagnate or go down. All things being equal, a person making 45K should be making well over 100K, and so on. Alas that isn’t likely in a world of $10 million bonuses for CEO’s of marginal value. Think Brokaw will ever tell that story?
I wonder if he stopped to think about how those college and elder care bills are going to hit us people making median income around 50K. Like I am supposed to feel sorry for the 250K earner who at least has enough money to spend 60K on college for the kids.
I’ve been disappointed with Tom Brokaw for a while. This is a view of people out of touch with the reality of the rest of us working stiffs. Now at 66, living on less than $10,000. come visit me. I worked for over 50 yrs. for this.
When will we finally recognize the plight of this minority group, so oppressed by their recurring nightmares of socialism and high tax rates, losing slivers of wealth, and possibly their designer slippers?
Instead of barraging the 1%, shouldn’t we be providing free mental health care to help them cope with these imagined fears?
Aye. The Left must agree to give up something for the greater good. After all, we do not work hard enough. We are not paid little enough. We depend too much on the taxes paid by the wealthy, those brave patriotic souls who took the commons lawfully, by legally passing laws, through those legal means, fair and square. THEY were thinking of ALL of us when they did these things; all the jobs they have created have only benefited the workers. Shouldn’t we be returning that generosity when so many of the wealthy are facing impending doom?
We must all “come together.” We must “bridge the gap.” We must agree to disagree. And, most of all, we must “split the difference.” Remember, 99% + 1% = 100%, right? :D
And worse still is this idea that those of us making less don’t have similar conditions, only nowhere near the money. I you do some quick arithmetic $250K-$(2*60)k-$5k=$105, which is a lot of money around here, even if your two people with 4 jobs. That is more than most families I know of make.
So how can I feel sorry for someone making that much, even after those bills are subtracted. As I have said before, elsewhere, “if you can’t live on $250k a year, but demand that I live $30K a year, then I have no need of you as a leader. Please step down, and let us get some who can do the job for less money, like you people keep telling the rest of us to do.”
That includes those in the media.
Brokaw was always the dim intellectual bulb of network anchors in comparison to the likes of Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Tim Russert and especially Peter Jennings.
I used to like Brokaw, now not so much.
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one jumping off my chair when he started talking about the poor old upper middle class. It was time to change chanels!
Why do these talking heads all think President Obama lost?
Tom Brokaw has forgotten how to think about what he is going to say before speaking. He appears to be in full reactionary mode.
Well, Tom, maybe it’s time for the wealthy to tighten their belts too. If that plan is good enough for the low-income, it’s good enough for the $250K people.
Fat cats like Tom Brokaw who have made millions as talking heads on TV seem to look at Social Security as a vast single expenditure, rather than a government run pension of last resort for grandmas and grandpas living on a combined $20k.
But pity the poor $200k earners, who were below the $250k cutoff that turned into a 450k cutoff.
At best, “journalists” like Brokaw are ignorant. At worst, they care more about the wealthy than about fixed income retirees that paid into Social Security for their entire working lives.
US “boomer” Eternal Flamers ARE the true greatest generation, having supported our grandparents, parents, OUR$elves, our children AND grandchildren; AND on $40K, EXPONENTIALLY (i.e., 10 TIMES) LE$$ than Uncle Tom’s Obamanable Boner halfascist HalfMillionaire BENEFICIARIE$!
Brokaw’s ALSO absolutely bonkers (along with all his CEO friends) on raising the Medicare eligibility age. Not only would that change cost OTHER people (the unlucky 65- and 66-year-olds, their employers and coworkers, other health exchange participants, and the states) TWICE as much as it would save the federal government, but also our longevity increases are profoundly class-mediated. Brokaw himself and Goldman, Sachs’ CEO may have a good chance of living to 90 or 95, but most construction workers and waitresses and cabdrivers and retail clerks will be damn lucky if they make it to 80! So raising the Medicare eligibility age is simply yet another form of “voodoo economics”: shoveling money from the poor and middle class into the pockets of the richest among us. Does ANYONE still think THAT’s good public policy?
Many journalists on TV are in that one percent income bracket so it is natural for them to sympathize with other wealthy people.
This is all a function of income inequality. Brokaw and his top 6% friends probably spend little or no time in substantial interactions with the average middle-income American (in the realm of $50,000), let alone the lower middle income and the poor.
What can be done to convince these punditzes that Social Security is a self-supporting insurance program, and that cutting back on benefits/making people wait longer is theft? Medicare comes close to self-supporting. If all income, including dividends, interest, and total salaries were subject to FICA contributions, we’d have a few less things to worry about. (Isn’t it interesting that social security/medicare recipients have to sacrifice for future generations, but it’s okay to saddle those same generations with air and water pollution, global warming, underfunded education, and the bills for wars that never were paid for and shouldn’t have been fought in the first place?)
As usual, the reality is nowhere near what the Right – even Brokaw’s pity for the urban semi-rich – asserts. $250K is five times the average American’s income… FIVE TIMES! If that’s not rich, I don’t know what is. And only the income OVER $250K was to get the slight increase of about 4%. As the tax bill that passed has set the threshold at $400K, this has become a moot point. Damn, I wish I was making ONLY $250K!
This idiot from the “so called greatest generation”, likes to think he has the same status as Walter Cronkite, or Ed Morrow, he doesn’t. He is so pumped up with his perceived ego that he thinks he is relevant. He isn’t. As a so called “news man” he contributed nothing to news except the talent to read from a prompter.
Tom Brokaw is a drooling old prick that was never that smart of a person to begin with. Why NBC continues to have this useless douchebag on to drool on about shit he doesn’t know anything about is beyond me.
Wow, with Brokow leading the way saying $250,000 people are barely making it, I see a champion on the way for those of us earning under that, right? If they can’t make it surely the rest of us are drowning. Let’s hear it for the rest of us, Tom! We are waiting for an advocate.
His comments show how distorted the entire tax discussion really is, and it would appear that we (the nation)still don’t recognize our real economic disorder. The rich do get richer, and $60,000 in tuition is spent in hopes that the child will move into that category. If the best education was available to all qualified students there might be an equal chance at the golden ring.
That may have been the worst Meet the Press ever. WTF. Brokoaw completely distorts the economics of the middle class. Get him off the air. He doesn’t deserve the podium of a Meet the Press interview. He is an idiot.
This is a great example of how our class experience skews how we see the world. Brokaw spends no real time with families struggling from one week to the next to make ends meet. His group (class) all have disposable income and when the meet, they share stories of how their children are faring at schools like Harvard, Emory, Yale, etc.
If he had to live for six months on $50,000 while working for it, he would have a very different take on these things. I always tell people that I will vote for a millionaire when I see that person spend all their free time socializing with folks making between $30K and $40K instead of hanging out in the Hamptons and Palm Beach.
My favorite quote was Obamas chief analyst saying the one thing he hated about the deal is it locks in a lot of middle class tax holds.And Obama indicating he aint done by a lone shot.Oh and no discernible cuts to anything.Ha ha ha ha ha.Don’t want to say we told ya so.Look all they did was kick the can.They cut the mess into three or four parts to be dealt with at some later time.Like my dad telling me to sweep the barn, and all i do is make 8 neat piles.Now what my fine feathered Libs.You got most of what you wanted.Wont fund the government for more than a few days.Never was a fiduciary problem.You take in 400 bill and spend 800 you still got a problem.
So I wonder who still calls Tom Brokaw a “Liberal” when he sounds like every Conservative no matter the party. This is the mean average for a news person. If you weren’t it would be very hard to find a job at any of the corporate owned right wing news bureaus.
Save the rich, let the poor eat dust. No better than any Republican. And Brokaw is a multi millionaire too so he’s got some skin in this game. Not the +80% rest of us.
Michael-e has the Reich Wing fantasy version of a “Liberal Leftist” so of course he has no idea what he is talking about. And the rest of us who don’t fit under that moniker are swept along with it. Pay him of little mind.
Meet the Press is a joke. It’s like watching “Fox & Friends”; right-wing talking points and no substance. Progressives are not represented at all.
Can’t blame Brokaw for being a corporate sell-out. He’d be out of a job if he didn’t. Sure, he’s lost all integrity amongst the non-sheeple, but hey, he’s got kids to send to college at $60K a pop.
Night gaunt you say I have a fantasy concerning what/who IS a liberal leftist?No fantasy here.Real life nightmare.I see him every day on the Telly.His name is Barrack Obama.A lot of nuts voted for him and still believe in him.
Michael E…I just read a very good article that seems to apply to you, written by an Ex-Rep., on AlterNet.org. You might want to read it
‘America’s White Male Problem’
“Our country is lurching from manufactured crisis to crisis and it isn’t about politics; it’s about pathology.”
AlterNet by Frank Schaeffer 01/07/13
What part of the word MIDDLE do you people not understand?! The 98th percentile (or the 96th or 94th if Klein is right) is not part of the “middle.” A liberal interpretation of “middle” might range from the 30th to the 70th percentile. Most people are imbeciles when it comes to numbers.
Michael e – You seem to have forgotten that it was the Bush administration, with its unfunded wars, tax cuts, and lax regulatory posture that dug the hole that got us into this fiscal mess. The uber-Right’s effort to ‘Starve the Beast,’ in full swing during the Bush/Cheney years nearly succeeded in completely wrecking the American economy. No wonder we’ve gone into even greater debt as we slowly crawl our way out of the hole with NO help from the Right in creating jobs, jobs that drive the economy. That they failed to hold the President to one term speaks volumes on what the average American thinks of the Right.
Will if you believe that is what got us here of course you start off from a perspective that is warped.The wars were very expensive.The tax cuts helped massively.The regulatory posture is a straw man.No the reason our economy is wrecked is because our government both right and left has spent us into oblivion.Fanny and freddy (a liberal nightmare)collapsed us…..then things happened in a domino effect.Totally expected.No surprise to many of us.Did our government learn?Nope…Just increased spending,borrowing,and printing under Obama to insurmountable levels.
Terri Ok I read the article.What do you want me to say about it?Silly distortions of political maps and breakdowns.Yes Im a tea party member.What that means is simple.We expect both right and left to abide by the constitution.If they dont we will try to give an alternative to that.What is there to understand about that that leads the left to demonize the movement?Answer….if you think the constitution is a rag you better paint the tea party as the devil.Because they are no friend of yours.Look the sister article to your piece would be “we have a black problem.’Im sure you could come up with data to prove it.That is a Dem game.Divide divide divide
Michael E–you say “The tax cuts helped massively.” It would help a lot if you could tell us how they helped, what they produced. Thanks
Will first ….tax cuts have always brought money in.It ignites the economy.During Bush the money coming in always grew(this was never a fiduciary problem).Just not in line with spending.I was no Bush fan.He spent far too much.But even through the wars his economy was robust.Right up until the fanny and freddy led collapse.The money dumped on this economy did not create even one job.Trillions spent.More than every president from washington to Bush…not one job created.We paid off union coffers for their pensions.Most went down a rat hole.We see we were actually coming out of it after the first infusion Okd by Bush.Then the decent began in earnest.The recovery is what failed.How could it not?Obama had no idea how to run an economy.He was a complete amateur. I would say look to Ford.No government help and they did it.America in a sense did it IN SPITE of government.But the rot was deep.Government spent the future.Wrecked the future.And now our government is out of control.Growing everyday.Pushing money about the room ,but nothing is being created.
But lets talk tea party.You say we hold people hostage.How so?We have core values in line with the constitution.If you step over that line we react.We react by withdrawing support.The left does it as their religion.The left believes in spending,printing,and borrowing money.If you accept that then that is compromise.What the left compromises on has never really been shown.If Obama moves beyond the constitution we will try to thwart him.We are open and honest about our motives.And that makes you enemy number one in Washington.