Wall St. Sets Off Controversy Claiming The Average American Household Makes $650,000

While Wall St. has been playing the victim, demanding bailouts and special treatment within the U.S. judicial system (too big to fail), they also seemed to have time to show exactly how disconnected they are to the average American. A post made January 4, 2013 on The Wall Street Journal seems to have riled up quite a few people because of it's obviously naive viewpoint on the income of the majority of Americans. Here's the infographic they posted while moaning about their unfair taxation.



The article itself has to be just sickening for someone struggling to make ends meet. I myself consider myself lucky with the job I have and yet this pic enrages me. The average American probably makes less than what this "Infographic" shows them paying in taxes, hell the average Americans income is probably closer to the "increase in taxes" than the actual income shown here.

Of course, the article in the Wall Street Journal plays it out as if the "1% of taxpayers" are the ones suffering.

In the nick of time, and amid much political drama, Congress passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act on New Year's Day—averting massive tax increases for nearly all earners that were slated to take effect Jan. 1.

Even so, millions of people soon will feel something less than relief from the new law.

The bill approved in Congress to avert the fiscal cliff would bring the first major tax increase on high earners in 20 years. Laura Saunders breaks down how new tax increases will impact across different tax brackets.

While the top 1% of taxpayers will bear the biggest burden, many other families, affluent and poor, will pay more as well.

The most immediate change affects nearly all workers: Congress allowed a two-percentage-point cut for the employee portion of the Social Security tax to expire. As a result, each will owe up to $2,425 more in payroll tax this year than in 2012.

Fortunately we have people out there like Matthew Gray [MIT] that are checking facts and calling bullshit on this.

I believe I was able to determine an answer from the 2011 American Community Survey microdata. First limiting to households composed exclusively of children and a single parent (as depicted), gets you down to 6.5 million households. (Sanity check: Wikipedia cites about 13 million single-parent households, but that includes those with other adults present, and the microdata shows an equal number of single-parent households with a single adult and multiple adults.)

Further restricting to single parent with 2 children, exactly, gets you down to 2.1 million households.

Limiting to those with an income of $260,000 or more, leaves you with 9,489 households total, or the top 0.4% of single-parent two-children household incomes. Median income for this demographic is $23,400. 90th percentile is $70k, and 95th percentile is $94k.

The internet has also been quite vocal about this spurious and offensive article

Huffington Post - The Wall Street Journal Doesn't Actually Know Any Middle-Class Americans


Esquire - LES INSUFFERABLES


American Livewire - Wall Street Journal Baffles Americans With Tax Graphic


Daily KOS - Revealed: The Wall Street Journal Has No Idea What is Happening in America