This weekend the New York Times (6/13/10) reminded me once again that I am not the paper’s target audience.
While supporters say the estate tax affects only the richest members of society and helps counteract the concentration of wealth, that million-dollar limit would seem to ensnare many people who consider themselves decidedly middle class–especially in the Northeast and California where home values are high.
What is the dividing line between wealthy and upper middle class? Or between someone who owns an estate and someone lucky enough to have bought a home decades ago and watched its value grow to seven figures?
Since the next paragraph acknowledges that less than 2 percent of estates would be affected next year (United for a Fair Economy says it’s less than 1 percent), how can the Times publish this stuff with a straight face? If some two-year-olds don’t consider themselves to be young, would the New York Times write about that seriously?
I wonder how many Times editors have homes worth more than a million bucks. I’m guessing more than one.
You know the old joke, Julie?
“These taxes are killing me.
I may have to sell my home.
That leaves me with only five.
Hold on … make that six.”
Considering what this economic meltdown has done to widen the Class Divide in this country, it seems to me (from personal experience) that I might be better able to keep my inherited estate were it worth over a million dollars. That’s making the assumption that it follows, more estate, more liquidity.
In my case, I am at risk of losing both my estate home and my current home which I still am paying a mortgage on. Both together are worth nowhere near a million dollars, and folks like those who write for the NYT would likely have less concern for predicaments like mine than those for whom they favor to write in support of.
deeper in the article they point out that obama wants the tax bite to start where it was in 09, $3.5 mil for an individual, $7 mil for a couple…the story also doesn’t make it clear that it is the amount ABOVE the threshold that gets taxed…
The key words in the quotation are “people who consider themselves decidedly middle class.”
I feel that the story is accurate. The problem, as I see it, is that people that I might consider decidedly upper class consider themselves decidedly middle class.
For a “solution,” I suggest defining upper class as those whose income is in the top 20%, lower class as the bottom 20%, and middle class everyone else.
Definitions help.
“I wonder how many Times editors have homes worth more than a million bucks. I’m guessing more than one.”
You don’t have to guess; go to the county clerks’ offices in the burgs where NYTimes management & senior staffers have put down roots. Then do the title search, check the assessors’ rolls, and then search the “comps”–comparable sales in the neighborhood (remember, it’s location, location, The Hamptons in NYC real estate (and Columbia County, and Vermont, and other vacation spots.) You can’t have a big Manhattan co-op (or Park Slope or Tenafly, NJ home) without it’s paired/concomitant “weekend getaway:”
Or as the song/dialog/song/chorus “A weekend in the country” in the musical “A little night music” has it: (just a soupçon here):
We’re off on our way,
What a beautiful day
For a weekend in the country,
How amusing,
How delightfully droll.
A weekend in the country,
While we’re losing
Our control.
A weekend in the country,
How enchanting,
On the manicured lawns.
A weekend in the country,
With the panting
And the yawns.
With the crickets and the pheasants
And the orchards and the hay,
With the servants and the peasants,
We’ll be laying our plans while we’re playing croquet
For a weekend in the country,
So inactive
That one has to lie down.
A weekend in the country
Where–
D.C. al fine, ‘n’ like that.
Anyway, you don’t have to guess, is my point. And with many/most of county clerks having scanned and webicized their title documents, you can do your research from Cancun or Aruba (but find an ‘otel with a fiber optic link to the mainland(s) nearby. Satellite & dial-up can get pricey.