[jere]

>The bottom line is taxes are going up from what people paid two weeks ago. Calling that a hike is not disingenuous to me.

I'm not so sure. If a company has a huge sale for 1 month and everything is temporarily 50% off, we don't call it a 100% "price hike" the next month. Maybe it's just me, but hike has a very specific connotation that isn't appropriate here.

[Steko]

There's a subtle difference between a companies prices and taxes. If I only bought from one store every week and for 10 years I paid $1 for a loaf of bread and one day the bread cost $2 I would still feel justified in calling that a 100% price hike regardless of whether they had announced that the $1 price was temporary 10 years ago. I'll admit there's some wiggle room to argue price hike or not but I don't feel as if I'm the one jumping through all the hoops to make my case.

Full disclosure: I normally pay around $4 for a loaf of bread.

[smsm42]

Of course it is. "50% off this month only" is exactly the same, in money terms, as "we intend to raise price of it 100% next month". Of course, the former sounds much better, which is why you never see the latter, even though it is exactly the same thing. People have very hard time applying logic to money, for some reason.

[chimeracoder]

> If a company has a huge sale for 1 month and everything is temporarily 50% off, we don't call it a 100% "price hike" the next month.

No, but if they had that "sale" for over 10 years, rather than one month, then you might call it a price increase.

[jere]

You do realize the payroll tax cut only lasted 2 years, right? Not only that, but I'm fairly certain it was enacted partly to counteract the recession, which by definition should only be temporary.

In the context of historically low taxes (the top rate used to be 94% and is now 35%), I think the sale analogy is much more apt.