What would you do with $1,000 A Day?

[no limit]

Tea party congressman John Fleming apparently thinks that raising taxes on him is class warfare because after he pays all his business expenses, taxes, and pays to take care of his family he only has a tiny $400,000 left over at the end of the year to "invest". That amounts to about $1,000 a day of disposable cash. Somebody needs to get this man the worlds smallest violin.

The ironic thing is that in this statement about how this money is for "investing" Fleming actually demonstrates why raising taxes on people like him is a good thing. If he chooses to sit on this money as most rich business owners today are doing then that money is taxed, it goes to the government. If he chooses to use that money to actually invest in his business then that money is not taxable as it becomes a business expense. Therefore the higher the tax rate on people like him the more incentive he has to invest this money instead of simply sitting on it. This could mean hiring more workers, opening new business locations and upgrading equipment.

With the current system instead of investing the money in to his business Fleming could decide to sit on the money and end up paying a smaller tax rate on that income than the cashiers at his various Subway and UPS store franchises do.

After paying all his bills and taking care of his family John Fleming clearly doesn't think $30,000 a month of leisure money is good enough for him. But if you had that kind of cash what would you do with it? I have a hard time answering that question myself as I simply cannot imagine after paying all my bills having $1,000 left over at the end of the day. If you consider an average person needing $10 a day to feed themselves 100 people that currently don't have enough money to eat could be fed each and every single day on this one person's expendable income. Yet John Fleming is just one person in a sea of millionaires that probably have the same exact greedy attitude as he does about it not being good enough and as a result nobody has the right to raise taxes on him even a couple percentage points.

[AngryAmish]

1. I would do two chicks

[no limit]

2. at the same time?

[AngryAmish]

6. Damn straight.

[Whiskeytide]

36. Two Amish chicks?

Are you sure?

[Fumesucker]

3. Yeah...

But what about the _other_ twenty three hours and fifty minutes a day?

;)

[DrDan]

20. gotta love Lawrence

[JustAnotherGen]

4. Save $500

Give a LOT of money to the food banks I volunteer at. Give money to the UNCF. Give money to some of the non-faith based shelters around here.

[Lucian]

5. I seriously wouldn't know what to do with $1,000/day.

I don't see that in a month. :(

[itsallhappening]

7. Strippers would get most of it.

The rest would be on a new car and a bigger place to live (4 BR).

[sinkingfeeling]

8. I doubt he means 'investing' in his own company. I image he wants to invest the extra money in Wall

Street so he can make more money and only be taxed 15% on the profits.

[Boojatta]

9. I would send $900 to the family of Congressman John Fleming ...

to help them survive the oncoming onslaught of class warfare against high-income earners.

With the remaining $100, I would be safely inside the category of people who aren't high income earners and who are therefore immune to the moist class warfare hands that are beginning to slap the daylights out of all their targets.

[David Sky]

40. Ha Ha HA ! You are very clever and very funny, too. I like you!

Those poor starving millionaires, we must help them all out with more tax breaks!! If we give them enough tax breaks, maybe someday they will create one job!

[Boojatta]

41. Welcome to DU, David Sky.

[Indydem]

10. I am always amazed by the business ignorance of DU members.

He made 400K on 6 million in income - a profit margin of 6%. That is relatively low as far as businesses go. Conventional wisdom is that anything less than 10 isn't worth doing.

Thats the entire profit from his number of businesses. If he has to put a new roof on one of his buildings, or wants to open another location and make some more jobs (and some more money) he'll have to do that out of that 400k.

I have no idea why the people on this board disparage someone who started a bunch of businesses and found success at it. This isn't a hedge fund manager who made money out of nothing, or a bankster who stole someone's home. This is a guy who made sacrifices and built a bunch of businesses.

Call me a puke if you want to, but I've got a lot more anger towards banksters and hedge fund assholes than a guy who makes real jobs and ends up "making" $400k.

[sinkingfeeling]

13. Wrong. He made a higher profit margin. He took something like another $200,000 for

his living expenses (feeding his family, he said). The question is what kind of taxes should the person making $400K pay on that income? Most people on this board live on about 1/10th of that.

[Tsiyu]

14. The dude is clueless

Calling Class Warfare when you are sitting pretty is epic ignorance.

Your math is really impressive.

But there are millions of people struggling to even eat anything decent in this nation. One in five or six is on Food Stamps. And you know why? Because schmucks like him have created a bunch of low-wage, crap jobs with no benefits. People have to work three of these jobs just to keep THEIR families fed.

This guy is a tool.

[Boojatta]

15. If I have long been in the habit of taking a city bus to the airport ...

but a little online venture begins to earn money for me, then I can change my routine and travel via limousine and deduct it as a business expense, but a new roof for a business comes out of after-tax profits?

Is that correct? Perhaps limousine drivers have way too much power to influence the tax code.

That's the entire profit from his number of businesses. If he has to put a new roof on one of his buildings, or wants to open another location and make some more jobs (and some more money) he'll have to do that out of that 400k.

[Exilednight]

16. He's blowing smoke up your ass. He also stated that he had 500 employees. Do the math, how

much money does each employee make with his $6 million income?

[Turbineguy]

28. $10,800

each based on a net to him of $600,000.

I bet those employees are living high off the hog on that kinda dough!:sarcasm:

[Exilednight]

34. And if you do the math, even based on paying them minimum wage, none of those employees

would be working full time hours. It averages out to just slightly over 28 hours per week.

[fishwax]

37. and that's if his food, equipment, rent, etc. costs are nil

[unblock]

32. they could be part-timers.

he's clearly blowing smoke around; tossing in family living expenses is completely bogus in this context, and i rather suspect his numbers are off in several ways. but top-line revenue and the number of employees are among the few numbers he's most likely to get in the right ballpark.

allowing that his numbers are no doubt inaccurate, part of the issue is that the average employee may only work 15-20 hours a week.

[no limit]

22. I'm not going to call you a puke, just someone that has a bad reading comprehension

since you totally missed the point.

He said on 6 million he makes around $600,000 after expenses. 10% might not be a good marging in your eyes, whatever, that is not the point.

The point is that after feeding his family he sits on $1,000 a day or $30,000 a month. This is more money than most of us could imagine having. And the even bigger point is that by taxing this income at a higher rate you actually give him incentive to invest this money since if he invests it in his business that money cannot be taxed. If he puts it in his pocket then it is taxed.

[CoffeeCat]

25. I don't think he's telling the truth...

I mentioned this in another post.

I grew up in a family that owned franchised fast-food restaurants.

If his sales were $6 million, how on earth is it that his net sales were only $600,000?

Those numbers don't add up to me. I bet he made much, much more. I think he fudged
the numbers during that interview, when he realized what he was saying. I think he purposely
low-balled his net sales, as he realized that he would sound like the whiny cry baby that
he is.

I remember how high the return was on food sales. It's pretty high. Some items have
a larger profit-to-cost margin (such as sodas).

Like you said, why even bother with numbers like that?

And I don't begrudge this man for having $6 million in sales and whatever net sales
he's actually getting. But for Pete's sake--don't lie about the actual numbers.

And also, don't whine and cry about being forced to live off of $400,000 after paying
all business expenses and paying for food, shelter and expenses for the family. When he
said "feed" his family--it's obvious he was referring to all living expenses. He said
that his net sales were $600,000 and after he "feeds" his family he has $400,000
remaining. If this guy spent $1,000 per week on food (which is horrendously high), that's only
$50,000 annually, leaving him $150,000 for rent, car payments, insurance, etc--AND the $400,000
left over for investing, etc.

He's suggesting that he has $400,000 left over after ALL business expenses and taxes are paid--and
also after his family is completely housed, clothed, fed and entertained.

That's not a situation that makes the case for lowering taxes. Seriously.

[unblock]

30. anything less than 10% isn't worth doing? well, shut down wal-mart, their margin is 3.48%.

http://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin

only a few billion each for the wal-brats, hardly worth doing.



i don't disagree that there's a fair amount of ignorance as to business on du, and in particularly a tendency to lump all businesses into the same bucket of evil; but IF you're going to call it out, you should really work through the numbers first.

this guy is comparing his not giving you his ebitda, he's giving you his completely clear month AFTER taxes AND after personal living expenses for his entire family.

plus, he's not telling you if his "expenses" include only minimal maintenance or if it includes (and i'm sure it does) the occassional new store roof or new entire store or whatever.

in short, he took the biggest possible difference between top line revenue and what he calls his bottom line net to exxagerate his situation and he STILL wound up with a number that anyone with any sense of perspective would know not to whine about on national television.

[Exilednight]

35. There Sam's Clubs produce even less. The average Sam's Club breaks even based

on their sales reports. They make their money by selling memberships.

[Bluenorthwest]

31. That is not correct. He said he made 600,000 on 6 million income

And that's your 10% right there. The 400K is left after the 200K it costs to keep his family in Ramen noodles.
And about that new roof. That would come out of the 6 million, and there is nothing to indicate that this year's figures did not include maintaining the current stores and facilities. After running the businesses, he personally cleared 600K, which is 'just' 400K more than his already lavish expenses.
And obviously it is not anger about his 600K profit you are seeing, it is mockery of his framing of 400K after all expenses being a pittance. And that deserves to be mocked.

[fishwax]

38. lol n/t

[glowing]

39. Actually, he says that he has $600,000 left over.

$200K goes to feeding his family. Which is a bit ludicrous because his 4 adult children are gone from the nest. Its just him and the wife.

2nd we are taking him on face value that these numbers are actually factual. He's not looking at a spread sheet or sitting next to his accountant. 6 million is his taxable income. Isn't that what's made after running the business? I'm assuming his businesses are insulated under some sort of corporation. I assuming all of his payroll and tax stuff is handled by a professional. I'm assuming, also, that his "stores" are running on the big corp model of part-timers and limited staff at minim wage. It doesn't take too much staff to run one of those UPS stores. My local one is a husband/ wife business. They even have their pet pitt bull behind the counter... Anyway, its usually one of them running the store with maybe one extra staff person during the day. Subway is a sad which shop... I'm not sure if he bothers to open for breakfast at his locations or not. But the main time that they are busy will be in the afternoon... Perhaps a little rush around dinner time, but most don't choose that as their dinner. And they close around 8 or 9 at the latest. They are run with the least amount of staff they can get away with. Many times I only see 2 or 3 behind our local counter; and its a really busy location.

On top of that, unless the franchise makes him purchase a new item, he's not going to upgrade shit at any of these locations. He's probably not worrying too much about salary increases, these places have a lot of teen/ young adult turnover.

AND if he is losing so much money or not making enough, why doesn't he sell and cut his losses? Most families make less than $50,000.00 per year. No one is feeling to bad for him making his claims $600K every year. AND no one thinks he should pay less, so what, Grandma can get kicked out of the nursing home. Let's be real. Would he be so bad off at the end of the day if he only had $400k of profit? NOPE. He's probably investing more than a little bit in various stocks that he knows will do better than others because he's in congress and they get the best tips in the world working where they do.

[durablend]

11. But but but!

You socialist libs JUST-DON'T-UNDERSTAND! :sarcasm:

[HopeHoops]

12. Probably eat out too much and get overweight again, but other than that...

I'd start saving what I need for myself and family for future concerns and give a shitload of it to the homeless shelters and foodbanks.

[frazzled]

17. I think amassing money is a kind of illness

Honestly, for several decades I've been asking myself the question: why are these wealthy people compelled to amass more and more and more money? What can they possibly spend it all on? They can't is the answer: they just want it to continue to pile up. If hoarding is considered an illness, I think hoarding money is a subset of that illness.

Sure, you can build the $6 million dollar mansion and buy a second home in Aspen; and set up an account at Tiffany's; and travel and buy fine things. But after a while there's just so much junk to be had.

I have been acquainted with a number of members of an older generation of wealthy individuals, the scions of great industrial or business families of the past. They saw themselves as owing something back to society and their communities. They were big patrons of the arts and even social causes. They gave a lot of money away. They did not flaunt wealth. I remember, when we first moved to the city in question, someone pointing out to me a notable wealthy individual. "Do you know who that is?" he said. I didn't. Nodding towards this man wearing an old plaid jacket and scruffy shoes, he told me the name, and added, "You have to be as rich as him to dress like that." The gentleman was an extremely generous donor to the community.

[durablend]

19. It's a game to them

They can already buy whatever they want, now it's just a competition to see who can amass most (if not all) of it.

[MorningGlow]

18. Be able to sleep at night, for one thing n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

21. +1!

:thumbsup:

[PADemD]

23. I'd donate to the local food bank.

Then I'd hire some unemployed people to make repairs to my house.

[Abin Sur]

24. Enjoy it.

Buy property for myself and my family...travel the world...invest it so it (hopefully) grows.

Nothing else springs to mind off-hand.

[1monster]

26. Pay off all medical, credit, and other bills the first week. The next

thirty-five days would pay off my mortgage. After that, fix up my house (it's getting old and ragged), start trust funds form my kids -- one day each week for a while. Make my incredibly anemic (almost nonexistant anymore) retirement fund healthy.

After that, three days a month would allow us to live comfortably -- four or five days a month would allow for a lot of luxuries.

Then, I'd prioritize my favorite causes and charities and perhaps start a cause dear to my heart... a health and dental care clinic where fees are low or nothing, and/or a service that helps find housing and jobs for the homeless...

[ehrnst]

27. Unless his grown kids and grandkids are living with him - WHAT FAMILY? (nt)

[Vinca]

29. After the bills were paid off, I'd probably donate most of it.

Liberals don't seem to have the greed gene.

[BarbaRosa]

33. Drink a better class of beer

to start with.