American Morning
Bush-era tax cuts: What's really at stake?
Those tax cuts – should they expire for everyone? Or just the rich? And if that's the case - is that fair? It depends on your perspective.
What if you're married, with two kids and make $70,000 a year? Right now you pay $2,300 dollars in taxes. If the Bush tax cuts expire, you'll pay $4,900 dollars. That's $2,600 dollars more per year...or $7 a day. Put another way: That's roughly three gallons of gas.
Salary: $70,350
You Pay = $2,300
Expire You Pay = $4,900
$2,600 More Annually = $7 a day = 3 gal. of Gas
If you're married, with two kids and make $325,000 a year, you now pay $63,000 in taxes. If the tax cuts expire, you pay $71,000 - that's $7,400 extra. Or $20 a day. Two movie tickets and a small popcorn.
Salary: $325,000
You Pay = $63,600
Expire You Pay = $71,000
$7,400 More Annually = $20.00 a day = 2 movie tickets & Small Popcorn
If you make $5 million? You pay $1.3 million in taxes right now. If the tax cuts expire you'll pay $1.6 million. That's $276,000 more or $757 dollars a day. Or a 32-gig IPad with WI-FI.
Salary: $5 Million
You Pay = $1,320,200
Expire you pay – $1,596,600
$276,400 More Annually = $757 a day = 32 gig IPad with WI-FI
The information comes from Deloitte Development. They put this together using a “composite tax payer” based on IRS data for 2010. These figures are based on a married couple with two kids and includes wages, capital gains, dividend income, and common deductions.
We want to hear from you. After seeing a breakdown of these figures, what do you think should happen with the Bush-era tax cuts?
Should President Obama...
* let them expire across the board?
* extend them only for the wealthy?
* extend them for a year and reevaluate?
Sound off in the comments section below.
Cruise passenger: 'I'm just thankful to be alive'
The crippled Carnival Cruise Line ship finally pulled into San Diego Thursday. A fire that knocked out power Monday left some 3,500 passengers without air conditioning, hot showers or decent meals for four days of their vacation.
Two female passengers, one who was on a girls' getaway and another who was on a religious retreat, talk to American Morning today about the conditions inside.
Watch the video below to hear them talk about the smelly toilets, lackluster meals and how things gradually got better. Also, check out this interview with Kiran Chetry, where passengers say warm beer and wine helped ease the tension on board.
Protesting airport body scanners, privacy group sues TSA
Flying the day before Thanksgiving?
Better be prepared to wait. Airport security lines may be getting even longer.
Outcries over the full-body security scanners continue with passengers, pilots and flight attendants choosing to opt out of the revealing scans for pat downs instead. One group calls for a day of protest against the scanners on Weds. Nov. 24, the busiest travel day of the year.
Another group says the Transportation Security Administration should remove the scanners from all airports. The group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a non-profit privacy advocacy group, is taking legal action against the TSA.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC, says the TSA should be required to conduct a public rule-making to evaluate the privacy, security and health risks caused by the body scanners. He talks with AM’s John Roberts today.
“The agency doesn’t have the legal authority to put these device in the airports," Rotenberg tells Roberts. "It was a very big step they took when they decided to make the body scanners the primary screening technique, and that’s what we’re objecting to."
In the full video, Rotenberg explains why freedom of religion and the Fourth Amendment should be examined in this case.
Jet pack in to work? With TIME’s Best 50 Inventions of the Year, you can
Ever dream of trading your car in for a jet pack?
Battling bad guys with the super powers of an action figure?
Dream no longer. The inventions exist, and they’re here on the American Morning set today.
Radhika Jones, assistant managing editor of TIME Magazine, presents some of the magazine’s "Best 50 Inventions of the Year."
They include the Iron Man Suit, the Martin Jetpack, prescription 3-D glasses, the Looxcie ear camera, X-Flex Blast Protection wall covering, and the eLegs Exoskeleton that lets paralyzed people walk.
And, we talk to Carl Dietrich, the mind behind the flying car, which made TIME's list.
Coach whips teen basketball players, parents fight back with suit
A shocking cell phone video shows a high school basketball coach using a weightlifting belt to whip one of his players.
More players at the school, Murrah High School in Jackson, Miss., say they have been whipped too. The coach, asst. coach Marlon Dorsey, admitted to paddling the boys and is now reportedly on leave. Some of the parents have filed a lawsuit against the school district.
This morning, one of the fathers, Jason Hubbard, Sr., tells Ali Velshi what happened to his 15-year-old son, who is not the player in the video but was allegedly hit.
Also, Lisa Ross, the attorney representing the parents of three players in the suit against coach Dorsey, Principal Frederick Murray and the Jackson School District, details the laws at play in the case.
Lifting gay ban during war poses little risk to troops, study finds
There's new evidence on the effects of lifting the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that bans gays from openly serving in uniform.
The military can lift the ban with only minimal and isolated incidents of risk to the current war efforts, according to a Pentagon study group, which will deliver a final report to President Obama on Dec. 1.
The study worked off results of the surveys 400,000 active-duty and reserve troops took over the summer. About 70 percent of the respondents said the effect of repealing DADT would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, according to Washington Post reporter Ed O’Keefe, who has read the draft report.
He gives a more detailed look of what’s inside the report today on American Morning.
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