ok, first of all as a progressive i wanted more. i was fine with raising the threshold from $250k to $450k to get a deal, i just wanted some concessions. extending unemployment was a good start, but i was pretty pissed that we didn't get one of either A) a stimulus/infrastructure package, or B) a continuation of the payroll tax cut. now i still think that we could have held out for a few days/week and let the republicans hang themselves publicly/politically defending rich people's taxes while refusing to budge on the payroll tax cut -- it's the same politics as them not cutting taxes on those making less than $250k. so while i agree with everyone who wants/thinks we can get a better deal, i also started to think about this deal in terms of inflation adjusted dollars, and guess what i found...?
ok, first see this for yourselves here http://data.bls.gov/...
what it says is that if you input 1993 dollars and 2012 dollars, $250k then is about $400k now (the site won't do 2013 dollars, so the numbers are slightly off since the clinton budget was signed in august of 1993 and we are, assumably, signing this in january 2013, but anyway, it's approximately $400k in today's dollars. think about that for a second. his could have been a big talking point for republicans, but they never went there (maybe they did in those smoke filled rooms and our uber-reasonable president agreed with them...?) but in any case, if you do take inflation into account, then all we've really given up is $50,000 of todays dollars for the small concessions garnered by this deal.
now, we don't know what might happen in the house -- perhaps nancy pelosi will extract something else before all this is over (go nancy!). perhaps the psychotic republican caucus will scuttle what is a pretty good deal for them, but if we put aside the politics of this and consider the deal in terms of 1993 dollars and 2013 dollars, if i were being honest i'd have to say that we are pretty close to that $250,000 threshold.
just another perspective on all this...