The New York Times has a long article online and in print headlined "The Middle Class-Crunch: A Look at 4 Family Budgets."
There are "Lauren and Trevor Koch," whose "Monthly take-home pay" is $4,000, and whose monthly expenses, according to the Times, total $3,232 including:
Rent on a two-bedroom house, $600
Groceries and dining out, $800
Student loans, $550
Transportation, $484
Credit card debt, $340
Utilities, $212
T-Mobile cellphone service, $100
YMCA family membership, $63
Diapers, $60
Savings, $25
and there are "Mike and Lindsey Schluckebier," whose "Monthly take-home pay" is $8,500,
and whose expenses, according to the Times, total $7,047 a month, including:
Mortgage on a three-bedroom house, $2,060
Retirement savings, $1,000
Groceries and dining out, $700
Afterschool care, $360
Health insurance, $265
College savings, $200
Utilities, including internet, $178
One car, $125
"Discretionary," including vacations and kids activities, $2,000
Charitable donations, $400
Out of pocket health care, $125
Tello mobile phone service, $12
And two other families, too.
What do all these families have in common? By some miracle, none of them appear to pay any taxes. No property taxes. No sales or use taxes. No quarterly estimated income taxes. No cellphone taxes. No excise taxes. Or if they do pay taxes, the Times doesn't find them worth mentioning in an article that details just about every other cent that is paid. For an article that dwells on how middle class families feel stressed and pinched by rising costs, it's just strange to not consider the costs of taxes. Even the Times' decision to use "take home pay" rather than total income as the starting point for its budget decision is misleading, because it ignores the payroll and income taxes that are withheld from paychecks.
The article carries the bylines of two reporters and must have been touched or looked at by at least an editor or two before making its way into the paper. It says a lot about the ideological blinders operating at the Times that no one along the way in an article about middle class family financial stress even thought to mention or include taxes as a factor, or if they did think about it, they were overruled. Do the people who publish this stuff think readers don't look at cellphone bills, don't look at restaurant receipts, don't look at paystubs, don't pay property tax bills?
The other humorous—or sad, depending on how you look at it—thing about this detailed Times look at four middle class family budget is that the other expense not listed for any family is that of a newspaper subscription. And who can blame the families? Why would they pay money for news that comes with such a blatant ideological tilt? Maybe some people would pay to indulge in a fantasy of a zero-tax existence, but the Times is marketing itself not as some kind of escapist fiction but as "truth."