$250,000 per Year Counts as Rich

Slate’s Moneybox column is mostly home to Dan Gross, but occasionally other people write for it too. Back in May, it was fine for Sam Grobart and Tara Siegel Bernard to write that "for a family of four living in high-cost Chicago, $200K isn’t exactly rolling in it" — but obviously enough time has passed at this point that it’s now safe for Gross to note that, sorry, people making that kind of money really are rich.

Cheers, Dan! It’s good to have you on board, especially now that the presidential election campaign is going to put a lot of attention on whether tax hikes for people making $250,000 or more count as tax hikes on the rich.

And to answer some of the responses I got last time round, yes, I know that "rich" is more a function of wealth than of income. But as far as fiscal politics are concerned, this debate centers on income taxes. If you’re going to set an income cut-off for what counts as rich, then $250k is high, not low.

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