Because one spouse isn’t working, there is no child care tax credit. There could be up to $2,500 in education credits per child—but let’s say the kids are younger and go with the lower $1,000 child tax credit for both of them. So that’s a $2,000 credit. To owe taxes at this point, you’d need $19,000 in taxable income—or $45,400 in total income. This still a hair below the EIC phaseout in this case. So to hit zero exactly you would need a few more dollars to bring your annual income to $45,750.
In a given year, you have about 260 work days. Let’s say you work a full day on all of them. This means that any vacation, sick days, or holidays you want had better be paid. To make your $45,750, you need to bring in $174.62 a day. Let’s round that down to $174 to make the math work out more smoothly.
You’re earning the federal minimum wage: $7.25 an hour. To get to $174 a day, you’ll need to work for … 24 hours. Congratulations. You can sleep on the weekends. If you want to get down to an 8 hour day, you’ll need to earn at least $21.75. (You still have to work every day.) Good luck finding an early-career job that pays that well.
[Or if we maintain the current trend in government… ever finding a job. Period. But none of this is really the problem. This is just the Romney haters, hating. And sure, he gave them plenty of material to work with… But Obama’s no different. There’s no surprise that people who have little in the US sense of the word want redistribution. Surprise! Not.
Years ago there was no such thing as a telephone. If you wanted a doctor to see your ailing child, you hitched your horse to a wagon and you drove to the doctor’s house (if you were lucky). Then you woke the now annoyed doctor, and, assuming you could convince him of your need, drove him in your wagon back to your home. After he was done, and told you that your kid will be fine despite how dire things look at the moment, you got to drive him home. BTW, while you were waiting you unhitched your horse, watered the poor beast and fed him a bit and hooked everything back together for the return trip. So why do we no longer have house calls now that you can shepherd a doctor in the comfort of modern vehicle with hot and cold running air and a cushy ride instead of a way too hot, way too cold open air buckboard? Because the telephone was invented. And once you could *call* the doctor and convince him to hitch up his own horse, to his own wagon, and get his butt over to your place the house call was history. It was only a matter of time.
So stop waiting for bed time stories that some guy who we call president for a few handful of years is going to fix your life. None of them are. None of them can. I believe that none of them actually even want to. But believe me, sure as the doctor visit went away, the answer to anything you actually need lies in yourself and no place else. Allez!]
turnings :: daniel berlinger 