UPDATE, THU JAN 26, 2012, EARLY AM:
My goodness but we have lots of cranky libs! This is not a surprise, per se, but a bit of a surprise that they are so free flowing with their crankitude on my itty-bitty corner of cyberspace. PLEASE see my SOURCED replies in comments below, in my years long effort to correct lib myths.
Help me, some wicked smaht lib, will ya?
How do you reconcile these seemingly opposing memes from Our Dear Leader:
We don’t want to “punish” success. We simply want to see to it that everyone gets a “fair opportunity at the American Dream” which we describe, in part, as being able to “pay for your children to go to college” and to have the “dignity” of a “secure retirement.”
BUT, this will cost boatloads of money, which, if you “hoard” it, makes you a selfish pr*ck and I will tax your ass back to the stone age… which sounds an awful lot like “punishing” you, right?
So how to make the math work with the rhetoric? Let’s give it a whack:
Okay – Let’s use the Obamas as an example, since it is a President with the last name Obama who is setting the standard. After all, he wouldn’t be so kingly as to presume that others have less of a dreamy dream than him, right?
Tuition for Malia and Sasha to attend what they regard as the best possible school for them (something the President has said, repeatedly, publicly, is every American child’s “right.”) is $40k per year.
Four years for 2 kids at Sidwell Friends will be $320,000.
If they want to go to Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard like Mom & Dad, all the way, for a J.D. or M.D., that’s another $1,000,000. (Just trust me on this. I’ve done the math.)
Let’s just round that up to $1.5M because you know that by the time your children actually get there, it’s going to be at least that much. Now, maybe you aren’t the kind of parent who would pay for your child to go all the way to an M.D. or J.D. I know in my own case, my father was not willing to pay for a Masters’ degree for me (I degreed in Professional Writing & Film. Why not become an expert in bat snot on the bottom of Ugg boots in Manhattan in the springtime when the wind blows from the west and go make a living, right?), so not on a professional track and I was just so friggin’ grateful he paid for me to get my B.F.A. it never occurred to me then, nor since, to ever be unhappy about that, but, hey… If you’ve got a kid who can go all the way to be a Harvard M.D. or lawyer, who WOULDN’T want to see that happen, right? So let’s go with it.
Median income in this country is about $60k, give or take, depending on who you talk to or what metric you consult, but let’s just go with it, because it’s a nice easy number to work with.
That’s $5k per month, gross. In order to save $1.5M from the time your little snowflakes are born (let’s say they are twins) until the day they turn 18, you would – EVERY MONTH – have to save (absent compound interest, obviously):
$6,950
($1.5M / 18 years = $83 333.33 / 12 months = $6,944.44)
Oops.
I’m just a knucke-dragging neanderthal conservative, but last time I checked, $7k is more than $5k.
Okay. Let’s say you earn that much. Let’s say you earn TWICE that so you can do something other than live in a box while you save for college.
$14k per month is your income, let’s say.
That’s $168,000 per year. You would have to meticulously save 1/2 your income every month for 18 consecutive years to do that. This is not realistic, eh, mon chere?
So, let’s double THAT to $336,000 so we can get your required monthly savings down to a more reasonable 25% of your income. This is still hard, but at least it’s approaching earth.
Ooops.
That would put you WELL over the magic, evil $250k per couple threshold.
Obama wants to tax you Satans-among-us much, Much, MUCH more.
How we gonna send our little snowflakes to Harvard without having to go to the federal government for a handout like Oliver Twist asking “Please sir, may I have some more” unless we get to keep our money without getting it up the wazoo in taxes? Because, remember, the President was kind enough to criminalize private sector school loans when he got the health care bill passed.
And we haven’t even TOUCHED retirement yet. JUST TUITION.
Libs?
Bueller?
Anyone?
How does this work?