Thoughts About Household Incomes, Peggy Noonan and Hillary Clinton

Peggy Noonan had a column in the Wall Street Journal attacking Hillary Clinton. That, of course, is nothing new. There are two recurring themes that dominate Noonan's work. The first is the deification of Ronald Reagan and the second is how evil the Clintons are, especially as compared to the sainted, aforementioned Ronnie.

This column, though, has the following quote about how Hillary Clinton can be defeated in her quest for the presidency:

For a few years now I've thought the problem for the Democrats in general but for Mrs. Clinton in particular is not that America is against tax increases. They've seen eight years of big spending, of wars, of spiraling entitlements. They've driven by the mansions of the megarich and have no sympathy for hedge fund/movie producer/cosmetics empire heirs. They sense the system is rigged toward the heavily protected. They sense this because they're not stupid.

The problem for Mrs. Clinton is not that people sense she will raise taxes. It's that they don't think she'll raise them on the real and truly rich. The rich are her friends. They contribute to her, dine with her, have access to her. They have an army of accountants. They're protected even from her.

But she can stick it to others, and in the way of modern liberalism for roughly half a century now, one suspects she'll define affluence down. That she would hike taxes on people who make $150,000 a year.

But those "rich" -- people who make $200,000 and have two kids and a mortgage and pay local and state taxes in, say, New Jersey -- they don't see themselves as rich. Because they're not. They're already carrying too much of the freight.

The interesting thing about the above quote is that people who make $200,000 a year are actually in the top 2.67% of all households in the United States, according to this article in Wikipedia. In fact, households with annual income up to $75,000 make up over 73% of the total households in the United States.

If you look at the dynamics of where Clinton draws a lot of her support, it is from voters who live in households making less than $75,000 a year. This is one reason why she is making "income inequality" a theme of her campaign. So while Noonan make not agree with her approach, our guess is that voters who back Clinton don't really care if she raises taxes on families making $200,000 a year or more.