skippy the bush kangaroo

Saturday, September 20, 2008

a modest proposal

mr. paulson's first offer is that congress should give him $700 billion and make him dictator for life. we suggest that the democrats respond with the following counter offer:

everyone who makes more than $250k/yr should pay their share of the $700 billion mr. paulson wants. [progressives and patriots might want a more just distribution of this burden between the wealthy and the unimaginably wealthy - but we understand that mr. paulson does not consider himself a socialist.]

wikipedia says that there are 1,699,000 households that draw down this much every year. if you divide 700b by 1,699k you get $412,000 per household.

now for recent executives of lehmans, aig, merrill, etc. covering this tab won't break a sweat. but even among the top 1.5% of households (economically speaking) there might be more than a few for whom that's a big chunk of change. so we say - let them pay it out over 30 years (interest free!). if someone croaks, mr. paulson gets his share before the trophy wife.

if you "only" made $250K/yr, the 13K a year you'd have to pay in extra taxes would represent about 5% of your annual income. we think you can swing it. after all, most of us in the lower tax brackets have found that our fuel, heating, electricity, education and health insurance bills have gone up 5% or more per year for more than a few of the past couple of years - and we haven't had the pay raises and bonuses you guys get. and somehow we manage.

the dictator for life stuff may not lend itself to such an obvious solution.
posted by Pudentilla at 8:13 PM |

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