{"id":180515,"date":"2017-03-27T18:19:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T23:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/27\/not-enough-bullets-33\/"},"modified":"2017-03-27T18:19:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T23:19:00","slug":"not-enough-bullets-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/27\/not-enough-bullets-33\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Enough Bullets\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/WKmeC3C.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/WKmeC3C.png\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a>I don&#8217;t mean the fictitious family<sup>*<\/sup> profiled, I am <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/hiltzik\/la-fi-hiltzik-500k-20170324-story.html\">reserving my opprobrium for the reporter who has asked us to feel the pain and deprivation of a family getting by on just $\u00bd <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">million<\/span><\/b> a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You see, they only have about 7\u00bd grand a year free and clear after:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Putting $36,000 a year in their 401(K) plans.<\/li>\n<li>Contributing $18,000 a year to charity.<\/li>\n<li>Spending $5000\/month on a mortgage in the City.<\/li>\n<li>Spending $18,000\/year on 3 vacations.<\/li>\n<li>Spending $42,000\/year on childcare.<\/li>\n<li>Spending $9,500\/year on two cars \u2026\u2026\u2026 In New York City.<\/li>\n<li>Spending $23,000\/year on food, including regular jaunts to New York restaurants.<\/li>\n<li>$10,000\/year for &#8220;stuff that comes up&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Let&#8217;s also note that the reporter ignores The deductiblity of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Charitable donations.<\/li>\n<li>Mortgage interest<\/li>\n<li>Child care<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Which would lower their tax burden by something on the order of $40K\/year.<\/p>\n<p>Also, their biggest expense, the mortgage would likely be half that if we  stopped letting mobsters and corrupt politicians launder their money  through real estate deals, which inflates real estate prices.<\/p>\n<p>Still, even after all that fiscal incompetence, this fictional family has $140 a week mad money. <\/p>\n<p>Not so bad. <\/p>\n<p>To quote Marie Antoinette&#8217;s last words, &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry operator, I&#8217;ve been cut off.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">We need to have sympathy for this family, because they are fictitious, a condition effecting thousands of families around the world.<\/span><sup>\u2020<\/sup><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">Please give generously to the Fictitious Family Relief Fund.  They are funding research on making the sufferers of this condition real.<\/span><sup>\u2021<\/sup><br \/><sup>\u2021<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">At this point, they can only exist in virtual reality.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t mean the fictitious family* profiled, I am reserving my opprobrium for the reporter who has asked us to feel the pain and deprivation of a family getting by on just $\u00bd million a year. You see, they only have about 7\u00bd grand a year free and clear after: Putting $36,000 a year in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[364,490,597,406],"class_list":["post-180515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-evil","tag-hack-journalism","tag-inequality","tag-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}