Wait, where are the nannies?

That poor, poor married couple with four kids. Instead of a net annual income of almost half a million dollars, they have to settle for a net annual income of almost half a million dollars.

What’s up with the lazy black couple only pulling down $180K? Are they on welfare?

Note how the artist makes the people more miserable-looking the higher they are up the one-percent food chain?

That AmAsian chick looks pretty dissatisfied. Bet she’d trade some of them big bucks for a few hours with me. But I never do cold chicks.

I have to ask: a single parent with two children and an income of $260,000? Whose fantasy world is this, and where can I find it? Has NYT looked at reality anytime lately?

Dude, you really need to get out more. New York City, where the Wall Street Journal lives and breeds, is chock full of twenty something finance ‘analysts’ pulling in over 250k. The rest of America – not so much.

Also, notice that the retired couple pulling in 180k annually and who will NOT see their taxes go up one red cent are still looking like they have lost a child at Sandy Hook.

Clearly, the WSJ knows its audience well.

A retired couple making 180,000 a year?

Wut?

I’d kill for a cookie.

Has nothing to do with this post and really has nothing to do with anything.

Replying to bardic @ 8

Well, $25,000 in deductions and $52,000 in investments, so obviously the other 103K comes from Social Security, the luxury hammock for old people.

What single parent with 2 kids makes $260,000 a year? My niece, a widow at 25 (husband died of cancer) with one child makes $29,000 a year and is lucky her mother-in-law babysits for free. I thought those extra zeroes were misprints.

My only comment as an accountant is that they took the marriage penalty to new levels (new max tax rate kicks in at $400k for a single person v. $450k for married couple? So if you’re just living together with equal incomes you can earn $800k before paying higher rates as opposed to $450K?)

My only comment as a person living and working in the real world is “get lives you privileged assholes!” Practically WEEPING over paying 4% more on your top bracket? Yes, I realize that these are cartoon characterizations but I have clients who are already singing that same song. Where are the damn knitting needles when you need them. . . .

Knitting needles? Fuck, get the guillotine. So, the WSJ is going to prove the point for the 1% just as the NRA and the gun nuts are proving the point for gun control. I’ll say it first: Please proceed.

You know, it just fries me when I see a teacher, fireman or cop making all that money, PLUS benefits. Fucking nerve of some people.

Where are the open wounds and bruises?

None of these people have yet sold their teeth for money – I don’t feel bad for them one whit!

No wonder Emperor Obama wants to take our guns away. If those bad asses ever start exercising their Second Amendment rights it will be brutal. The old couple is weeping for their country gone wrong, but that little girl in the soccer shirt has “sniper” written all over her.

Must I be the first to say it? Thanks Obama.

That is just astounding. The illustrator has to have done that with acid reflux shooting out his/her nose. They must have done it in the way U.S. POW’s in North Vietnam managed shoot the finger while being photographed, knowing the powers that be at WSJ wouldn’t catch the irony.

Nice touch making the only group to not have a tax increase be colored folks.

This week’s Weekend WSJ cover story was a defense of the CEO.

The sad single mother with two children (named Ignorance and Want no doubt) making $260,000 is obviously a welfare queen. It’s the only way she could make that kind of money, at least in Limbaugh/Hannity world.

Bottom left: wait, is that Michelle Malkin out of cheerleader garb defiantly staring us in the eye while the moochers and welfare cheats steal almost three thousand of her hard-earned dollars? Oh, the humanity.

Wait!1!!1 What about the millionaires? Where are the millionaires? Why has the WSJ forsaken the millionaires?

I guess those retirees are so peeved because their taxes are holding steady instead of going down.

First, the Irish Potato Famine, now this.

HOW LONG WILL THE SUFFERING BE IGNORED????

It’s nice to see the WSJ describe the impact on such a wide range of the 1% American Experience.

By far the funniest thing, and what I wanna know is: where did the illustrator find a black guy willing to adopt the Lame White Man Wardrobe for this portrait?

When’s the last time you saw a black guy walking around with a sweater tied around his neck? For me, that would be….NEVER!

While I have no doubt that these salaries seem “reasonable” to the higher ups at the WSJ, my mind turns to the people who actually did the work for this, the writer, and illustrator. My guess is that they make closer to 1/10th the average salary depicted here.

It reminds me of my first post-collegiate job where I earned ~$30k and my boss (who made about 10x that) would get these newsletters from financial advisers with headlines like, “Why living of $300,000 is harder than living off $30,000.” They would go into excruciating detail about the extra expenses the “poors” didn’t have to worry about, like private school tuition, and fancy jewelry and clothes for the charity galas one was socially obligated to attend.

What single parent with 2 kids makes $260,000 a year?

Umm….one of The Donald’s ex-wives?

The 1 mother-2 children illustration packs more despair than Dorthea Lange.

First, what black couple? I see an Indian couple (you can tell they’re Indian and not Pakistani because of their colorful native garb).
Second, that single parent of two children is apparently a CEO’s ex-wife, now desperately scraping by hand-to-mouth by renting out the summer home and one of the mansions to make ends meet.
Jesus Christ – Is there not even a flicker of sense of irony in that whole establishment? It’s time to nuke the WSJ from orbit and let the site recover over eons; it’s too far gone to save.

Let them eat caviar.

This is what happens when Aussie Asshole in Chief (my Aussie mates would chime in now to shriek: He’s YOURS, mate, and doncha fergit it), Rupert the Morlock, buys the WSJ.

The WSJ was always biased towards the 1%, but it used to be worth reading for the real info about the “business world.” Now it’s really only People Magazine (with apologies to People Mag) for the ever-so-martyred upper 1%. In other words: not worth the paper it’s printed on. I wouldn’t line my bird’s cage with it; might cause the poor dear to die from terminal constipation.

heh…

Well that shows how the high & mighty mucky mucks have no real truck with teh dreaded & dreadful minorities… even those allegedly pulling down $180k in retirement (and there probably are some out there, but I doubt they dress like that!).

Have some sympathy here. How is the couple in the lower right now supposed to afford the $25,000 elementary school tuition for all of their kids? They’re probably going to have to let the $15,000/year nanny go. Obamma’s tax increase just cost someone else their job

I’m guessing they used incomes that were actually the rate increase the 1% would be paying. Pretty subtle…..

I was sad because I had no shoes until I met a married couple with four kids living on a mere $650,000 a year with only $180,000 in investment income.

Wow, that’s seriously fucked up. How do they manage? Selling apples Bentleys over a heating grate cocktails at The Waldorf Towers?

A little back-of-the-envelopin’ suggests that, at a 3% return (a bit high these days, I know) the married couple’s investment income comes from a principle somewhere in the $6 million range. Every family with 4 kids obviously has at least $10 million stashed somewhere, so I call bullshit on the whole illustration.

I think the parents of four kids are unhappy because they’re still in work suits. Quit your jobs, live off the $180k a year investment income, and take the kids to the damn park. You’ll be much happier, really you will.

And why is the black couple sad because their taxes stayed the same? Help, I can’t find the door to the wingnut logic room!

Investment income of $35,000 requires an investment of $350,000 if one earns a 10% return, which is unheard of these days, unless you’re “investing” in narcotics transactions. A more realistic 4% return requires $875,000. I guess the single mom’s late husband carried a lot of life insurance.

That doesn’t explain the single woman, whose $25,000 investment income, at 4%, means she’s socked away $625,000. That might be realistic for a single woman in her late 50′s.

You want a haiku?
Fuck them. Yes, go fuck yourselves.
Fuck all those people.

I commend Ms. Joad for being able to raise her two kids on a sharecropper’s salary of two hundred sixty thousand a year. Stupid Obama, saying Ms. Joad was rich!

When’s the last time you saw a black guy walking around with a sweater tied around his neck?

In college, but it was the ’70s.

Only if she inherited most of it. Or had a job with a 6-figure income for several years.

Via a comment at LGM (posted despite the last entrant)*

*For various permutations of the meaning of “despite”**

**think Buckingham Palace

Even then, I question that $35,000 per year in “investment income.” Just doesn’t sound right to me. I think it would have to be more than $800k in investments, even with a six figure salary for several years… from some level of personal experience, let’s just say that I’m finding it tough to figure out how that “computes” at what is suggested in this CARTOONish, uh, rendering.

None of the CARTOONish rendering makes any sense, of course, except to continue the obscene martyrdom of our economic “betters,” who are just so, so, so, so, soooo victimized by Taxes!

Little girl in the upper left corner is all, “I asked for a palomino pony and got a strawberry roan, WTF is this shit?”

Still, I can understand the depression of the lower right family, it’s going to take more that $650K a year to deal with little Chuckie there.

You know who fit that bill though…Adam Lanza’s mom. Without that extra $3,000 each year, how in the world was she expected to buy her next assault rifle to add to her collection, and the addition to the bomb shelter?!?

Oh, and the retired guy…Eric Holder, anyone? Just co-incidence I’m sure, in the Rupert Murdoch-owned WSJ.

Die Yuppie Die

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvBcVS16_XM

Shhhhh, he stole it off Theo Huxtable!!!

Meanwhiles, the single mom and the single lady DESERVE to be sad and stuff, cause you know, no man to define them and stuff. Not to mention the single mom did the sexytime (twice, no less), so she should be punished.

Let’s all pray or soemthing for their new impoverished status.

Oh, well done!!

one of the problems we face, we shoot ourselves in the foot by calling them “tax increases for the wealthy” we should never do that, we should be calling it ‘tax equalization’ or something similar, they took our money through reagan/bush redistribution schemes that were marketed as “tax cuts” when in fact they were a greater theft then the great train robbery

Pierce gave you a nice shoutout, T.

The lowest paid people on that scale, the retirees, make six times what I do. If I could afford it, I’d shed crocodile tears for them. The wall Street Journal sure has some stupid ideas about the middle class. All those people are doing great and will keep on doing great even under this new tax rate.

It has become impossible to parody conservatives. Now the WSJ is trying to put The Onion out of business.

How soon before these sad children are forced to sell iPhones, iPads, beluga caviar and orchids on the street?

I want to know who the investment advisors are for these “example” folks; they’re producing TREMENDOUS “investment income.”

Perhaps these mysterious individuals could be drafted to manage the Social Security Trust Fund.

What I want to know is when did the WSJ hire away Highlights magazine’s graphics department? Or maybe it was My Weekly Reader…

Oh, also, too—-maybe they wouldn’t be so “poor” if they’d get their maids to iron their clothes once in awhile….

The writers of the WSJ article and some of the 6 figure earners profiled would be quick to point out that the “poor” people in the USA don’t know what “poor” is and point to some 3rd world country for comparison.

But the problem in the world is not comparative poverty.
We’ve got people who don’t know what the word “ENOUGH” means. That’s the plight of the world.

OT:
Well Mr. Bogg, not that you need any further fuel for your dislike of Notre Dame, but if you do, this’ll halp.

ETA: Fruit basket on way to Te’o from Lance, with a ‘Thank You’ card.

As a commenter over at the linked site said, “More like Nosuch Dame, amirite???”

Folks over at Cole’s place think the extra sympathy garnered from this death-of-nonexistent-girlfriend thing cinched the Heisman for Te’o. Not a sports dude myself, so WDIK? But wow, what a weird story!

Can you say “trust baby”?

Another Haiku

They fucked your future.
Eat the criminal elite.
Get your future back.

Probably, but I was trying to avoid using actual numbers, on account of getting them way too low.

Yes. Reagan killed satire. Dubya fucked the corpse.

Now, that’s a slur on those good graphics departments. Neither Highlights nor My Weekly Reader ever made its people look like they’re suffering from Bell’s Palsy at best, stroke at worst.

dayum, a twenty-something girl with downs syndrome paying more in taxes than my total income. I feels like such a lucky ducky.

In … vest … ment … income?

Stop using big words I can’t understand.

Money changes everything…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z5PkpVAjEM

What this graphic says is simple: “Hey, advertisers! We don’t sell our paper to poors! Sell your expensive shit through us!”

Sad when the investment income of these Sad Americans is larger than the total income of the majority of Working-Class Americans (see what I did there?).

My obvious response to these very sad stories is: “Are there no poorhouses? Are there no Sweatshops?”

Awesome display of First-World problems here…

Ah, I was kinda wondering if there wasn’t a bit of Goya Paints The Spanish Royal Family going on here.

Beautiful.

Yeah. Or, the style looks very Japanese cartoonish. It may have been Holbein (not knowing a shilling from a brick) paints the Tudor court.

The Journal is just fucking with us with that graphic, right? If not, the existence of the Romney Bubble has just been confirmed.

Not that I was in any doubt…

The Black guy is packing.

Don’t think Holbein did it. You could use his portraits for identification purposes.

Maybe not quite that bad, but definitely Crohn’s Disease.

It’s probably an encoded cry for help.

DO U PIBBELS NOT NOES WHAT KIND OF CRAPPY DAY IVE HAD????/

I WANT BASSETS AND I WANT THEM NAOW!

if the weather where they are is like the weather where I am, they’re wearing lead blankies to keep from blowing away. (Srsly: 20 gusting to 35 at least. Since yesterday evening.)

GWPDA, tell us about your crappy day while we wait. Shoulders available to listen, you know. Is it the snow and ice?
How is Arthur doing?

Federal hiring freeze, which prevents me moving to another location. Term employees are to be terminated at conclusion of their contracts. 1 furlough day per week until end of FY. That’s a straight 20% cut in pay. Also? Teh Jeep’s transmission is slipping because of teh gdamned COLD WEATHER

Arthur and I iz going HOME.

AND I WANT FENWAY AND WEMBLEY

NAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOW NAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOW NAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOW NAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOW NAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOW NAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOW NAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOWNAOW NAOWNAOW

Ohhh, so sorry to hear that. Is it because of planning for the debt ceiling shutdown? Or just (just!) general cutting “spending?” So sorry.

So you’re getting ready to pack up and go home without a new job? We wish you the best of luck. At least you won’t be freezing. ; )

I haz a job thru 4 October…. This is the guidance from DA as a result of the various federal funding issues. I am the person that these antics affect.

But at least? I will be home and safe. Also – Arthur will be able to stand in the pool again.

Lots to be said for home. And standing in the pool! So I guess you’re staying put in the frozen north (Iowa, right?) until October. But home is in sight. I’m glad for you. Sorry today was horrible.

Do we have bassets yet? (I’ve been attending to my four-footed overlords)
Oh, yes, I see the header below!

GWPA – sorry to hear about your troubles…

On the other hand, you could be in as bad a shape as that poor retired couple, who retired, STILL earn 180,000 Simoleons in INCOME. As RETIREES. NICE.

The other day I was walking on a popular local hiking trail and I overheard a woman talking on her cell phone. She was telling someone about a mutual friend who was just about to retire. She mentioned that the retiree was looking forward to it and that she had a pretty good pension plan that was going to pay her about $5,000 a month. Then the caller paused, listening, then she said, “No, that’s actually a good amount. It’s a good pension. I mean, it’s just her, and she owns her house outright….”

It almost made me laugh. The caller was having to talk someone into believing that $60K a year didn’t represent a economic disaster, especially without having to put kids through college or pay a mortgage. I myself would totally thrive on $60K per year, not that I expect to have the opportunity, ever. So that WSJ illustration? No. No. And no. I have to think that the illustrator was being all sneaky and subversive. But Poe’s Law, so what do I know.

Hi, GWPDA!

WSJ, you mean…