BLOGGYDOOMY
Saturday March 29th 2008, 5:14 pmWAR OF THE TAXMAN…
Well we picked up our tax papers the other day from the accountant and got the wonderful news, he says sarcastically, that we would have to pay additional taxes this year of a significant amount. We were quite shocked at this because our income was only slightly more than the previous year. The previous year we had overpaid and got a reimbursement. So we figured it would break even this year after all the quarter payments had been made. Nope. We pay. We thought this rather peculiar because our income was only slightly better in 2007. We went and looked at the tax brackets online and were quite pissed at what we found. As it turns out, we barely bumped into the next tax bracket, one of the middle class ones. So we moved from lower middle class to middle middle class. The next up would be upper middle class. So here is the rub. We literally have to pay 10% ADDITIONAL tax over what we paid the year before because of that little bump up. And it turns out that it is the ONLY bracket that increases the amount of tax by that much. If we had made it to the upper middle class the increase would not have been 20% but only 13% additional tax. And if we had made it even farther than that the percentage would be even less of an increase exponentially. So in essence the actual middle class get chopped heavily by the taxman more than any other category. Which leads to the title of this section. I had seen something not too long ago on one of political shows we watch about there being war waged on the middle class by the government in terms of the financial aspects of our country. This entails everything from affordable insurance to taxes. Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining about our financial status. It could be far worse. We do pretty well. However the poor in our country are treated terribly in many ways. So the plight of the middle class pales in comparison on lot of levels. But after discovering that huge difference in the tax system percentages it causes one to pause and consider what actually is going on here. It is absolutely ridiculous to me that if you reach the upper levels of our society the exponential increase percentages in taxes get really small. Proving that the more money you have the better you are treated by the government. What boggles my mind, and I have yet to determine, is what the gain would be, to get such an increase of 10% when moved up slightly into a higher bracket is beyond me. What is the point of that other than just to keep the middle class down a bit and what purpose would that serve? The amount of money we would need to make to reach the next level in the tax system is literally almost $80,000 more to reach the upper middle class. So by bumping up just a little bit we moved into a bracket that raises the taxes an additional 10%. We are paying the same percentage of tax that someone who makes $79,000 more than we do. Doesn’t make much sense. So in essence after paying taxes this year we actually will have LESS money in our pocket than if I hadn’t had an increase in income. Bizarre. I can only imagine what it must feel like for someone who lives in poverty and then suddenly finds themselves making enough money to be considered middle class.
(and now for something fun) DOOMSDAY…
The movie. Went saw this today. Read many reviews from various sources before going. It seemed that people either hated it or loved it. I ended up in the loved it camp. I think some might not be getting what they are seeing. Is it an unabashed literal homage to post apocalyptic movies from the 70’s and 80’s such as Road Warrior or Escape From New York? Absolutely yes! But it doesn’t do it in a way that makes you feel the director is rehashing that stuff. It feels like he was truly wanting to make a movie that harkened to those absurd ideas. Now when I say absurd I mean it in the best possible sense. A lot of scenes in this film are truly over the top absurd and laugh out loud funny. But not funny because it’s absurd but funny because you/we are sort of in on the joke but without making us feel like we are watching a parody. A fine line to walk but this film does it beautifully. The entire car battle sequence is just amazingly entertaining in a very sadistically brutally funny way because it’s absurd in the most fun sense of the word. There is even a blatant product placement scene that is just laugh out funny. It plays as if the film makers know that since they have to have product placement to help pay for the movie that they’re gonna make you laugh about it. So if you are a fan of those previously mentioned films, and others of that older generation of B movie fun, I highly recommend this movie. It was obviously made with love for this genre. So ignore the nay sayers out there, who most likely like to piss in other people’s frosted flakes.