They took a fictional couple that makes $250k a year and showed that at the end of the year they’re somewhere $27,000 in the hole and a meager $1,963 ahead. Of course, you might think to yourself “my wife and I make half that much and manage to save up a lot more than $2k, and our cost of living is at least as high as Plano Texas.”

First of all, a lot of these numbers don’t make any sense. In every locale the family is spending $9k in medical and dental expenses out of pocket (in addition to their insurance premiums). This is a young couple, still paying student loans, with two young kids. They’re paying between $24k and $36k in mortgage interest, which they’re apparently not deducting or their tax burden would be a decent amount lighter. They’re spending $10k on maintenance and cleaning, which is probably 10x what anyone with a decent home actually spends. Hell I have maids and I pay half their cleaning bill. 

They’re spending $7,500 a year in car loan payments on one car, meaning they’re driving a Lexus, and a nice one too. They’re somehow spending $6-7k in gas, plus another $2k in gas taxes, meaning they’re spending $9k in gas per year, so they’re driving somewhere around 75,000 miles between them.  The average American drives less than half that, so they must be driving an hour to and from work each day, though judging by the mortgages they’re paying, they’re not living that far from the city. They’re spending $5k in parking, despite the fact that at most one or two of these cities probably require you to pay for it. Maybe they valet their car every day on the way into work.

They spend $3,000 on clothing every year, so you know they’re shopping at Banana Republic with occasional trips to Saks. They’re taking an annual vacation for $4,000 (once nice cruise to the Bahamas a year, not bad) and spending $2,693 on movies and sports. Guess they have season tickets to the local NFL team. That’s not counting home entertainment of $1,500 (new 50” plasma every year) which, by the way, doesn’t count the $200/mo they’re spending on cable and internet. They have a dog that’s costing them $1,571/year. I have two dogs and don’t think I spend 1/2 of that on average, and I take good care of them, but maybe theirs has doggy cancer or something.

Then, on top of all that, they’re putting $33,000 into a 401(k) and $8,000 into their kids college fund. So they’re saving $41k/year. They’re making a few thousand off of investment income (which will snowball quickly since they’re socking away more than most Americans earn) and in all but three locations their negative cash flow is still less than they spend on parking.

I’m not sure in what universe I’m supposed to feel sorry for these people, but it isn’t this one. Despite the article’s protestations that they’re not living the high life, the numbers shown indicate they’re living in an expensive house, enjoying an expensive cleaning service, feeding their dogs steak, eating steak for lunch themselves, going on nice vacations, driving a brand new Lexus, and still increasing their net worth by somewhere between what the average American family makes in 6 months to what they make in 1.5 years, depending on where they live.

That’s not even counting the fact that they’re young and the future looks even rosier. Their incomes will increase. Their student loans will be paid off. Their home equity will build. That $40k they sock away every year alone will make them millionaires at retirement. They’ll have put away $72,000 per kid for college, which, with only 5% interest will turn into $128k per child by the time they hit 18, so unless they raise future Harvard grads they’re going to be getting a big chunk of that back. They themselves got by on $20k and $40k respectively for two undergrad degrees and one masters.

Please don’t mistake me for one of those people who feel antipathy toward people who make way more than them. I’m not, in fact I hope to be one of them some day and I work hard toward that. This fictional family appears to have gotten where they were through hard work and doing what we as a society want citizens to do. More power to them.

But these numbers are ridiculous, and it’s bad journalism. A good journalist would say “what is the financial picture really like for a family that makes $250,000 a year?” A partisan hack would ask “how can we paint a picture that shows that people who make $250,000 a year really can’t afford to pay any more in taxes?” The Fiscal Times, in this instance, clearly chose the latter.

And it’s ineffectual. It’s ludicrous to use partisan monkey math to try to convince average Americans that people who make twice as much as I do can’t be in a bit higher of a tax bracket than they are now because they already have it so rough. Even with their steak-eating dogs and season tickets to the Jets, these people are saving a ton, and they’re not even remotely trying to live frugally. I know people whose household income is around half of what these people make who are still able to both live comfortably and save up for a decent retirement.

If we want to talk about the impact of taxes on high earners, let’s use honest numbers. These numbers are only going to make rich people smile and everyone else laugh.