Fox News asked last week if Warren Buffet was a socialist in the wake of his op-ed calling for more taxes on the “mega-rich.”
Much of Fox's News cycle that week went on to cry about the “class warfare” being waged by the Obama administration and the left on the rich, the corporate-jet-owning class.
They then go on to rail on the bottom 50 percent of Americans that the U.S. census classifies as poor — a family of four making less than $22,350 a year.
Now, lets qualify those numbers a little, because 20 grand a year seems like a lot.
If you have a family of four, and you are making $22,350 per year, each individual—assuming you are spending all of that money equally on all of them — would get $5,587.50.
That is less than the cost of one semester's out-of-state tuition at ASU.
Now, I have done the math. Including only the absolute basics, which are a landline telephone, water and sewage, property tax, gas, car insurance, food, and a mortgage, my family spends about $38,200 annually.
We do not live in the lap of luxury; our numbers are fairly typical of middle to upper-middle class families.
A census-defined poor family's income for an entire year would not cover what my family spends annually on the bare minimum. Those calculations do not include doctor visits, new clothes, school supplies, field trips, house repair, car repair or anything extra.
The Kaiser Family Foundation did a study on Medicare and the uninsured, and included the average expenditure of those participating in the study.
Sara and Oscar, featured in the study, live in Oakland, Calif. They make $24,000 per year, which is slightly above the current poverty line. They have about $2,200 per month to spend on everything — gas, bills, any repairs on cars or their home — and 54 percent of that goes to transportation and housing costs alone.
They spend 2 percent of their income on non-essential items, things like movies or a meal in a restaurant.
It is shocking that Fox News, the right or anyone can demand a broader tax base, which would mean Sara and Oscar lose even more of their tiny disposable income to taxes, while the very wealthy and corporations feel a comparatively tiny loss because of the raise.
What is even more shocking is that Fox News and the right have the guts to lampoon these people for spending what fractional disposable income they have on things that help them to feel normal.
It boggles my mind, absolutely stumps me, how can anyone in their right mind demand any more of these people? How can anyone claim it is unfair if this family pays less in taxes than multimillionaires and billionaires?
Fox, in their lambasting of the poor, cited a study by the Heritage Foundation titled “Examining the 'Plague' of Poverty in America.” In this study, it brought to light such shocking revelations such as 99 percent of these so-called poor families have a refrigerator.
Almost 80 percent of them have the gall to have air conditioning. How can they call themselves poor? Those mooching layabouts.
To think that anyone can claim these people are not poor, or do not deserve help, just because, once in a while, they take their family out to dinner or they have a TV to watch, is revolting and reprehensible.
Instead of demanding that these people spend even less money on their families, why not close a few corporate tax loopholes? We would raise the same amount of money, and my guess is that corporations wouldn't even notice.
Reach the columnist at omcquarr@asu.edu
