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The prospect of middle-class multimillionaire athletes having a slightly higher tax burden does not, in fact, make my grasp at my wallet in fear. I will, however, cross over to the other side of the street when I see Obama coming, but only because I really did want to go to the defunct Starbucks that used to be there. Three years ago.
The New York Yankees have a 2008 payroll of approximately $208 million. Under the twin Obama tax proposals, the 24 Yankee players would be hit with an aggregate increase in federal income taxes of just over $22 million, with slugger Alex Rodriguez single-handedly getting dunned with $2.6 million in additional federal taxes.
The owner of the Yankees would owe an additional $7.5 million of federal taxes. Ticket prices would need to be increased by about $65 million so that the owner and players could have the same after-tax income as before. The increase in ticket prices would amount to an average $16 per ticket. Given that the least-expensive ticket in Yankee Stadium currently is $14, this would more than double the cost of a seat in the bleachers.
There is perhaps no less sympathetic team in all of professional sports than the Yankees. Perhaps if the NFL’s now-defunct Milwaukee Granny Slappers were still in action, but alas, they’re now the Raiders.
Yes, any alteration in taxes that increases taxes on top earners will, in fact, result in increases that seem to be exorbitant amounts. If A-Rod’s tax increase was a fiftieth of what it’s alleged to be in this article, it would still be more than the median American income. This is because Alex Rodriguez earns enough money choking in the playoffs to buy you and the place where you work and put in a vending machine that doesn’t dent the cans.
Lastly, I hereby start a nonprofit organization designed to prevent the systematic abuse and degredation of averages. Yes, the average cost to recoup lost salary due to the revamping of the tax system, if done through tickets, and applied exactly equally to every ticket in Yankee Stadium, would result in more than doubling of the lowest price ticket. Because apparently, marginally higher taxes result in renowned capitalists turning into gibbering idiots and destroying everything around them like rage victims in 28 Days Later.
It explains the Great Zombie War of 1939 so much better, doesn’t it?
The Yankees are not going to double the price of nosebleed seats. If it becomes so important that one of our most profitable sports franchises, in a year where they’re opening a new stadium and once again busing in the AL Central’s finest, need to make more money each year to stay the proper level of gazillionaire, they’ll probably just add the cost to the forty-four new luxury boxes they’re building. You know, if Jorge Posada isn’t driven mad by the Lacoste shirt he didn’t get to buy and doesn’t start biting the faces off of the folks on the third base line.
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Jesse Taylor on 06:18 PM •
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We’re supposed to believe that none of the New York Yankees have tax accountants who have found them enough loopholes and tax shelters that they probably all got refunds last year?
Ticket prices would need to be increased by about $65 million so that the owner and players could have the same after-tax income as before.
This is a definition of “need” which I do not think I am familiar with.
It’s also a tax revolt argument I don’t think I’ve ever heard made before, at least not quite this way. “Don’t you dare raise my taxes, I’ll just find some way to make you pay for it!”
Do you suppose that the line about “Democrat candidate’s proposals would hammer the self-employed, like [Tiger] Woods” was meant to be some sort of joke?
I believe A-Fraud is “making” something along the lines of $25M to $29M per for his choke. Pardon me if I’m not too awfully sympathetic towards him.
We’re supposed to believe that none of the New York Yankees have tax accountants who have found them enough loopholes and tax shelters that they probably all got refunds last year?
Prezackly. And even if they were having to bear the full amount of the tax increase, is that supposed to make me feel bad, me with my full-time job in my profession still qualifying for economic hardship deferrals for my student loan payments? Give me a freaking break.
Because athletes play in a variety of states they actually get hit pretty hard with taxes. Not saying they deserve pity, but they in general have to pay state income taxes in every state they play in. And since its earned income, it much harder to hide than the owner crying poverty while waiting in Barbados for the state to build him a new stadium.
All that said, supply and demand determines ticket prices not the cost of inputs. Unless of course Professor Adler is a Marxist who believes in the labor theory of value that is.
I just think it’s kind of ridiculous that I’m supposed to feel sorry for Tiger Woods. You know, the guy that’s about to be the first billion dollar athlete, is married to a swedish supermodel, and owns a yacht bigger than the high school I went to. He’ll somehow be able to make due. Take his tax cut yesterday, I want the health care, cheap bleacher seats be damned.
There’s a bigger story here, and that’s how often conservatives tend to throw out the entire reason why have a free market every time someone might make a little less. Be it the minimum wage, or tax increases, or CAFE increases or whatever. Costs go up, and they just HAVE to raise prices in order to maintain current profit levels.
No, they don’t. They’re not entitled to them. If the market allows them to, great. But if it’s something where they can actually do that and get away with it, the market is broken, and the government needs to come in and regulate its ass.
Or maybe not. Honestly, I don’t care if the price of baseball tickets go up. People can go and see a movie instead for entertainment, or watch the ballgame at home, or whatever. It’s a replaceable good. At least to me. But I’m not going to be held economic hostage by these asswipes
Interesting...I don’t get a raise every time *my* taxes go up. I’m just expected to suck it up and take the hit, just like most of America.
Why would millionaires who play a childrens game get a bump in salary so their after-tax income isn’t impacted?
I want to know one reason that professional athletes like baseball players *need* to have the same after-tax income as before. If my rent goes up or my property taxes go up I don’t get a raise. These guys get all kinds of gov’t subsidies with stadia and promotional materials, they can survive with a mere (presuming they pay 50% of their income in taxes after all this, and taking Rodriguez as the example) $32,000 a day. I get verklempt just thinking about these poor guys. Why, they’ll just *have* to raise ticket prices if their daily salary goes down to anywhere near the median yearly income.
Uh Rob? Part of the deal is, they get to write off the state level taxes on the Federal level I believe. And they also get to off-set their home state taxes with the taxes they pay to other states for the games played as the “visiting team.”
Which is also what they pay the tax accountants to figure out.
So the burden isn’t all that great after all.
Fuck the fucking Yankees.
Many live in Florida so they don’t have state income taxes to begin with. Again, athletesa can’t really avoid taxes like other really rich people can. It can’t be hid in say transfering ownership of jet like how many movie stars are paid or pretending its capital income for CEOs.
The thing is, if the owners know what they are doing, they have already set ticket prices to roughly maximize their income (charging what the traffic will bear). The reason the cheapest seat at Yankee Stadium is $14 isn’t because Steinbrenner is feeling particularly charitable to the poor fans - it’s because he has already figured out that he will make less money if he charges much more than that, because fewer people will come to the games. So if his taxes go up, he’ll just have to suck it up and pay them - if he could make up the difference by raising those prices to $30, he would already be doing that now, and pocketing the extra cash.
The Yankees already make enough money from television deals and licensing agreements to more than cover their payroll. They could sell zero tickets all year and still make a profit. Their ticket prices won’t go up, but you’ll have to pay double for a cheap jersey with A-Rod’s name on the back.
Anybody who wears an A-Rod jersey deserves to be fleeced.
And what’s up with the cheap-ass Yankees tickets? I can get into the ballpark in Cincy for less than $20, and I’d have to sell a kidney to buy a beer. All that for the right to watch Griffey strike out three times and the bullpen to pitch batting practice for the Cubs and Cards. What the hell?
CAN’T get into the ballpark for less than $20.
That is all.
um.. point of oder, and a vocab discussion.
if someone is a “multimillionare” then, BUT DEFINITION, s/he is NOT MIDDLE CLASS.
thank you, and fuck off sports stars. fuckers. why do they get paid so much?
So using the same logic, the Yankees must have cut their players salaries and ticket prices back in 2001 and 2003 when they were granted their big tax cuts. After all, their pre-tax income had to be adjusted so that their after-tax income wasn’t changed.
What? That didn’t happen? Then why the fuck must their salaries be increased to cover the extra income tax they’ll face when their tax rates increase?
The article’s claim that Obama’s tax plan is the biggest increase SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION is complete nonsense. The willingness of conservatives to simply lie about obvious, easily-checked facts drives me nuts. Then again, the guy has written articles on Townhall, so I guess expectations should be set low.
A lot of the people I talk to at work, people generall making between 75k-200k, would be for higher taxes if they had at least a little bit of faith in that money being well spent. A lot of them move into certain towns/counties with much higher property taxes in order to make use of superior schools, they can see the tangible benefit of those higher taxes and actually enjoy or at the least dont mind paying them. Of course things cant always turn out this cheerily and I do have a lot of friends who are quite classist but if we could reform congress and our state governments to stop being so wasteful a lot of people I know wouldnt mind paying higher taxes. They dont want to screw the poor as a lot of them were poor growing up, they just dont want their money to be wasted and neither of the candidates is talking about a great plan to cut waste to the bone.
middle-class multimillionaire[s]
WTF?
If athletes have to pay taxes in each state inw hich they earn, they only have to pay taxes on money paid in each of those states, so no, they aren’t being hit very hard with taxes compared to someone who pays taxes in one state. They are probably being hit with higher accounting bills because all those taxes have to be tracked, but not higher taxes.
I live in Minnesota. I pay Minnesota state taxes. If I earned my money in New Jersey part of the year, I would only have to pay NJ taxes for that part of the year and not NJ AND MN taxes. It isn’t like these guys have to pay state taxes X 30 (or however many teams there are...I don’t follow sports).
This is a definition of “need” which I do not think I am familiar with.
My thoughts exactly.
This sort of thing just proves how out-of-touch conservatives are with real people. While they cry about Baseball and how “poor people” won’t be able to afford going to see the Yankees, the rest of us real ‘Mericans are more worried about Mother and Apple Pie rather than Baseball. As in, Mother’s social security is not looking too solid, and apples are costing $20 a pound. Not to mention the gasoline it costs to cart the apples home.
Raise the Yankees’ taxes. I’m a dirty hippie, I know, but I have confidence that they will survive. And capitalism will take good care of the ticket prices - they’ll price them low enough to get visitors or they won’t get visitors at all. And - either way - we poor people will actually get some proper health care for momma. Everyone wins. Except the players. And they are winners too, since they aren’t as poor as us. So there.
The counter-argument is that Major League Baseball has a salary cap and revenue sharing. Isn’t it funny how people who cry “Socialism” at everything are the same who praise the very institutions that actually use it!
Can you imagine how much prices would “need” to increase if the salaries of the “bottom” 80% of the income distribution had to be increased to keep up with productivity improvements?
“The counter-argument is that Major League Baseball has a salary cap and revenue sharing. Isn’t it funny how people who cry “Socialism” at everything are the same who praise the very institutions that actually use it!”
Better yet, the NFL which is more so than MLB. And has the Green Bay Commies/Packers who are owned by the city and not a rich family. The horrors!
I’ll vote for any Michigan politician who runs on a platform of nationalizing the Lions.
And, wow, impressive musclature on Mrs. Clemens. I wonder what her secret is?
Of course, since my salary hasn’t increased in five years while my medical costs have gone up and gas prices have tripled, I’ve had to cut back on frivolous luxury items…
...like baseball tickets.
So if I already can’t afford tickets at $14 (plus parking and food and gas and travel time), increasing the prices to $28 hurts me exactly how?
Ticket prices would need to be increased by about $65 million so that the owner and players could have the same after-tax income as before. The increase in ticket prices would amount to an average $16 per ticket.
Well, that sure explains why the prices for everything spontaneously dropped every time Bush cut taxes.
24 Yankee players would be hit with an aggregate increase in federal income taxes of just over $22 million, with slugger Alex Rodriguez single-handedly getting dunned with $2.6 million in additional federal taxes.
Good.
Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.
Hey! Don’t slam my Raiders!
Broce asked:
Why would millionaires who play a childrens game get a bump in salary so their after-tax income isn’t impacted?
Because they can.
oh yeah, cry me a fucking river about the multi-millionaires still having more money than they can spend.
The witless chum wrote:
I’ll vote for any Michigan politician who runs on a platform of nationalizing the Lions.
Well, you wouldn’t think the Lions could get any worse, but let the government take them over, and yeah, they probably wopuld get worse.
I get the sense that conservatives very much believe that a dollar is equal to an as yet unnamed unit of effort, meaning that millionaires put in millions of effort units per year, whereas people who earn minimum wage do not put in (should it be exert?) millions of effort units to per year by choice, which is why they aren’t millionaires.
How they reconcile this to inheritance, I have not yet figured out.
Any Cheesehead could tell you the Granny Slappers never played in Wisconsin. I have it on good authority they were a Chicago team.
smartalek, sarcasm works only with context. So context is, I guess, that either these guys are habitually called middle-class in some circles, or that middle-class is habitually meant to include multi-millionaires by some people?
And that is not WTF-worthy how exactly?
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We’re supposed to believe that none of the New York Yankees have tax accountants who have found them enough loopholes and tax shelters that they probably all got refunds last year?