what's middle class to you?

[walkitout]

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/the-home-front/2009/02/26/mortgage-interest-deduction-on-the-chopping-block.html

The budget proposal phases out (may not be the right terminology) the mortgage interest deduction. As far as I'm concerned, there should not _be_ a mortgage interest deduction. There should be a _rent_ deduction. The current set up is heinously regressive. The commentary in the above URL is truly appalling, in that it quotes a guy from NAR saying:

"this proposal will increase the cost of housing for many middle-class families" in places with expensive housing.

There is also a quote from this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123559630127675581.html

The WSJ is careful to note that this proposal affects "Upper-Income Americans" -- after all, the brackets affected in TY2009 _start_ with an AGI of $208K+.

What do you think -- does the "middle" class include couples making $208,000 AGI?

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

"Households paying income taxes at the 33% and 35% rates can currently claim deductions at those rates. Under the Obama proposal, they could deduct only 28% of the value of those payments."

Either Laura Meckler or the WSJ copy editor was asleep on the job over those sentences. They don't mean what she meant to say at all.

The median household income in 2007 was about $51K. It takes a pretty broad definition of "middle class" to include couples making over four times as much (especially since the $51K isn't AGI as far as I know). But people want to believe that the middle class is more economically diverse than the upper class. It makes sense that it should be so, but it just ain't so. Even confining the range of the rich to those who make six-figure incomes, leaving out all above, there is obviously a much bigger range between 100,000 and 999,999 than there is between, say, 40,000 and 99,999.

Meckler/WSJ didn't use the term "middle class"

[walkitout]

Other than to note that Obama is extended tax _cuts_ to them; they are quite clear that the change to the mortgage interest deduction affects "upper income" Americans.

It's the idiots at NAR and/or The Home Front blog at US News that I'm aiming at.

Re: Meckler/WSJ didn't use the term "middle class"

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, I didn't mean to imply that they did. It's just that Meckler got the terminology all catawampus. If you're in the 33% bracket, you don't get to deduct 33% of mortgage interest. You deduct 100% of your mortgage interest, and therefore don't have to pay income tax on any of it, saving you 33%. So I was going, wow, in the WSJ she got away with being that sloppy? But it really wasn't related to the points you were making at all.

Re: Meckler/WSJ didn't use the term "middle class"

[walkitout]

Yeah -- I still haven't been able to figure out what Obama's change is in the mind of Meckler/WSJ. It is horrendously sloppily worded.