"Finding it Harder to Make Ends Meet"

[XanaDUer]

OCEANSIDE, Calif., July 8 — As a single woman in her early 60s living near San Diego, Calif. and making less than $40,000 a year, Nancy Ross is finding it harder to make ends meet these days. So she was hoping the recent federal income tax cut would make life a little easier. But with state and local tax increases more than offsetting her federal tax break, she’s slipping further behind...


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http://www.msnbc.com/news/931172.asp?0si=-

[RobertSeattle]

1. She should get married

Perhaps a phoney "practical" marriage. When the Repub "fixed" the "marriage penalty" they turned it into a marriage bonus.

I'm no tax pro, but if you look at the tax schedule and all else is the same:

Single - 40K Earnings: Federal Tax: $4860 (Avg Tax Rate 12.1%)
Married - 40K Earnings: Federal Tax: $2960 (Avg Tax Rate 7.4%)

It's really a shame. I bet there are many sham marriages out there just for the tax dodge.

I'm married - but the unfair treatment of singles is really a peversion of the tax code.

[Skittles]

2. yet married people think they're the ones getting stiffed

utter bullshit

[Sick of Bullshit]

3. Just remember, though

$40K shared by one person goes a lot farther than $40K shared by two.

[DocSavage]

4. California?

Could it be that the cost of living in California may have somthing to do with it. Real Estate prices are sky high, state taxes take a big bite. High car insurance rates. 40K a year in CA is not a lot of money. Federal taxes are not the issue. Just find a realator page for the Oceanside are and look at house prices compared to what you live in now. Can you say sticker shock?

I am in Kansas and 40K a year is plenty to live on here.

[shrike]

5. Same here in Indiana

Indiana is not the sexiest place to live, but it's affordable, taxes are reasonable compared to the West and East coasts (for now) and Chicago and the Great Lakes are at our backdoor. The job market is poor here, which is another story.

I'm not knocking either coast; love 'em both.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[cap]

7. SDK33 please consider this...

you don't get something for nothing. Either you cut services or you cut taxes. People come together in government to solve problems that affect the community and to obtain services that they can not afford by themselves.

You benefit from entitlements more than you are willing to acknowledge. Government support for the mortgage industry makes it possible for someone making 30K even in Oceanside to aspire to owning a house someday. Countries that do not support their mortgage industry do not have high rates of home ownership. In other countries, people pay for their house in cash -- their are no mortgages. Remember about 1/3 of this country are not homeowners and never will be. All these renters will be helping you out when you buy your house. You are planning on owning a home someday, arent you? Even if it's not in CA, you are probably going to buy a house somewhere.

Your college education was an entitlement paid with the help of many people who will never go to college. Only 42% of the people in the US have a college degree. There are a lot of people who paid for your school loans and grants as well as all the state and federal funding for community colleges and universities.

So you've got yours and you don't want other people to get theirs. Remember this is a democracy and you are in the minority of people who use these above benefits. So in order to give you yours you must convince most other people who aren't getting any of this to pay for it without getting anything from the government. It's an awfully hard sell. That's why there are entitlement programs.

I question your motives in cutting entitlement programs. I find much of this is really closet racism. In your mind, the beneficieries (sp) of these programs are poor brown-skinned people who are trying to get over on the rest of us. These people are cheating the system. The entitlement programs are mostly frauds to help non-white cheaters. Unfortunately, the facts are quite different -- nationwide, welfare recipients are poor white women with children. But you do not wish to deprive poor white women with kids -- you really want to get at the non-whites. You want poor non-whites to pay for middle class and corporate entitlements without getting a slice of the pie.

Bush and his cronies screwed this state. Davis was left holding the bag. Bush is not helping out the states by sending federal money like every administration has (both republicans and democratic) during times of recession in order to help states balance their budget.

So you don't want to raise taxes. Good. Cut services. There's not much to cut from the government these days. (BTW, you obviously have no qualms with RIFS during times of high unemployment. Adding government workers to the bread lines doesn't bother you in the slightest. There are no jobs for those who get RIF'd. ) We are cutting programs.

Unemployment will rise in the next couple years. The Bush tax cuts are set to go into effect in '05 and '06. More layoffs of government workers and government contractors will occur without any increase in industry employment to help soak them up. Manufacturing and software going overseas regardless of the tax burden. We can't give enough tax breaks to compensate for an 80% cost advantage. As a result, government revenue is set to further decrease.

Somehow the budget gap must be closed. The solution is unfortunately the worst of both worlds: increased taxes and decreased services. The average American is not willing to face this. He also does not want to live like TX or Mississippi -- low tax, low service states. It'll be interesting to watch the cutting of middle class services under Arnold and people's reaction to this when they realize that even an extra 5-10K decrease in taxes will not allow them to purchase the services they are accustomed to on the free market. My fiance and I calculated that it would take us a 300K income in PA to totally "privatize".

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[freeamerica]

9. Can't live on wages

We are given a gift every one of us to use. You need to find it and start a new way to make money. You have to have a talent in something that you can make money to live beyond survival.

[KayLaw]

10. That's a nice thought

But what about severely disabled people, or people who are very elderly, and babies? I'm not willing to let such people starve in the streets. I'm happy to pay my share of taxes to do the right thing.

[wetbandit2003]

11. I think.

we need to scrap the current tax code,
Implement a fair tax doctrine, like charging only an income tax, Auto liscense tag tax ( Low flat rate everyone can afford and not based on your car's value, thank you),property tax (again, low flat rate everyone can afford and not base on your propery value, thank you.) and cut out the taxes on necessary items like gas, food, and utilities. Also, put a cap on medical insurance premiums. If insurance companies have to raise their rates, they must submit all
of their financial numbers and reasons why to an elected board, who will decide if they are allowed to raise their premiums above the adjusted rate of inflation.