An unscripted moment with an Ohio plumber produced a startling confession from Barack Obama Sunday: The Democrat's "middle-class tax cut" is in fact a scheme to "spread the wealth around." Obama dropped the mask long enough to tell the truth to Toledo plumber Joe Wurzelbacher - who had asked the Democratic nominee why he wanted to jack up his taxes just for "fulfilling the American dream." "I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year," Wurzelbacher had told Obama. "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" "It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama replied. "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success, too . . . When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." At last! The truth outs! Obama's plan isn't about sinking hooks into Wall Street CEOs and other fat cats, as he usually says. Fact is, there's not enough of them to raise the cash necessary to finance his other grand plans. No, to do that, he'll have to go after ambitious working-class guys like Wurzelbacher - who's been a plumber for 15 years and is looking to better himself and his family while just maybe creating a few jobs. The American Dream? Wurzelbacher personifies it - but Barack Obama seems determined to tax it to death and be done with it, period. That's been the case all along, of course. What's different is that the Democrat finally said so. Heretofore, Obama has sought to paint himself as a tax-cutter - claiming he'll slash taxes for 95 percent of Americans. As we noted yesterday, that's a flat-out lie - not least because nearly half of all tax filers pay no income tax at all. So how can he "cut" their taxes if they don't pay any to begin with? Answer: tax "credits." To wit, in part: * A $1,000 "make work pay" credit. * A $4,000 college-tuition credit. * A $6,000 child-care credit. * A $1,100 bump in the earned-income tax credit. These aren't to be income-tax deductions - which would be worthless to those who pay no income taxes. These are to be checks from Washington - with the subsidies expected to grow to more than $1 trillion in 10 years. That's a massive transfer of wealth. How does Obama justify it? "Fairness," he says. But that's an absurdly radical view of what's "fair." Remember, Obama's tax hikes target folks who already bear the brunt of the burden: The top 20 percent of earners already pay 69 percent of all federal taxes - and 88 percent of income taxes. (Contrast that with John McCain's call yesterday for real tax cuts - halving the capital-gains levy, scrapping taxes on unemployment benefits altogether - designed to prime the economic pump.) Monday, Obama promised a tax policy that would restore "a sense of fairness and balance that will give every American a fair shot at the American dream." But just a day before, he told Joe Wurzelbacher the truth: No American dream for you, buddy! Nor anybody else, it seems. Source
It's really alarming how far the far left/socialist parties have infiltrated the democrat party. Sadly, it doesn't appear the "old" democrats have the huevos to take their party back. It's past the point of no return.
I intend on voting for McCain/Palin in a couple of weeks. But to be quite honest, I just don't see why so many people consider Obama's economic plan to be so bad. There is no doubt, it involves a redistribution of wealth. But I'm sure I fit into the blue-collar category, and I just think from an economic standpoint he is decent. To be quite honest, if I was one of McCain's advisors right now, I would tell him to steer clear of the economic situation right now. Whether it is right or not, people look at the Republicans as having control (a myth) for the last 8 years. Naturally, they are going to take the heat. McCain should focus more on his energy policy in my opinion, because I think that is where he might be able to win the election. He's not going to win it for his economic policies, thats for sure.
I'm wondering if you've been paying attention Caveman. Obama has loudly and clearly communicated on more occasions than I can count that his plan is about reversing trickle down economics and making this a bottom up economy. So..... what's new here again? Sure calling it "spread the wealth around" is a great battlecry to get some more conservatives to the voting booths. But I'm asking in all seriousness. I really want to know..... Why are you so afraid to give bottom up economics a try? I mean I could see if you were arguing from a position where we were enjoying economic prosperity thanks to trickle down economics. But that's not the case..... It seems to me that you don't want change, but instead would like more of the same? Maybe give trickle down economics another 4 years to work? You do realize that's what we did 4 years ago when we re-elected George Bush don't you? No? Trickle down economics doesn't work for one painfully simple reason.... human greed. Why on earth would those at the top let money trickle out of their business? Corporate CEOs get paid MILLIONS of dollars based on their ability to save the company money and stop trickles..... I mean is it really that hard to understand???
If the Democrats can't win this election they may as well give up on politics and become a lawn tennis association. What the US needs is some serious wealth distribution that tackles head on the plutocracy, but Obama's not going to do that. Maybe he is about 3% better than the alternative, which may or may not enthuse you enough to get out and vote in November.
First of all here are two professionally developed analyses of the alternative tax plans from Obama and McCain; http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/06/comparison-of-t.html and... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/09/ST2008060900950.html The second one is easier to read. The Obama tax plan provides a larger tax cut to more folks. Its the folks on the bottom rungs of the income stream. But it provides more tax breaks to ....get this....60% of tax payers in America. By far it is more generous to more folks in America. The two plans are dramatically similar for people earning up to $226,981 which I'm sure is based on taxable income. That means income after write-offs. How aggressive are you with write-offs? I've been very aggressive. People at the $226,981 level are writing off tens of thousands of dollars. Its amazing how much you can write off. Own a business? Wow, that is the world's best tax break. Up to $600,000 in taxable income the average advantage on the McCain plan seems to be about 2% on income (I'm assuming an average $7,000 advantage on an average income between the $226,000 and $600,000 figure. If you are making that kind of money and not blowing that $7,000 on some kind of expenditures....you are wierd. If you aren't living deeply well off...you have expenses through the roof, maybe 12 or more kids, maybe living high off the hog in the couple of most expensive parts of the nation. Maybe you took 2nd's on your house like the other fools to play with maximum debt. Crap...If you can't afford it, you probably made the same mistake as so many folks who are deep in debt. Who here is making more than the $600,000 taxable income basis. I bet very very few...IF ANY. Hmmm. I've made it. You know when? During the 1990's before a divorce, but more relevantly while my effective marginal tax rate was 50%. That is just under 40% fed and about 10% state. While I was doing that I had 0....that is ZERO disincentive not to make every last dollar I was making. Now frankly if the tax rate had been higher than 50%....the disincentive might have been there. I understand it used to be in the 70% high tax basis. That was before I started making big money...and I don't have experience with it, certainly my middle class parents didn't have experience with it....and I never spoke with anyone who did experience it...about the topic. I probably could have....since I worked with enough super wealthy folks....its just that the focus on taxes really didn't start gaining mainstream treatment until first the Reagon period and more recently during the Bush administration. I need to source the exact words from the book about Paul O'Neill while he was Treasury Secretary concerning the inside workings from the Bush administration prior to the 2nd big tax cut. This is from memory, but I'll source the exact words from the book about O'Neill. Having been Treasury Secretary one would think that tax policy would derive out of his department. It didn't happen that way. It was developed out of the inside group of folks within the Bush administration, significantly led by Karl Rove. As a general meeting was being held and the policies were seeing light within the relevant folks in the Cabinet including O'Neill....Bush asked a question that (paraphrased) was something like this..... "Won't they be concerned that we are helping the rich too much." Then Rove took Bush in hand and said something to the effect of "Stay on message". Bingo....the administration began to move forward on this second proposal without involvement from the Treasury Department. It was totally political....No substance or meat to that proposal. O'Neill was against it...as an obvious budget breaker that was going to drive the government balances into debt. Boy oh boy...wasn't he accurate. The 2 arguments, first by Reagon, and then by Bush were that tax cuts would do 2 things. They would drive the economy creating more income...thus more revenues and taxes and as a result these 2 things would occur.... 1. New revenues would increase profits and incomes so much....it would pay for itself and remove the budget deficity.....The Laffer Curve theory. 2. The tax cuts would spur business investment and grow the economy. Well here it is....2008....and we have the COMPLETE 100% reverse. The economy is in shambles, we are facing a recession, if we haven't already been in it for months, possibly staring at a depression.....and the federal budget deficits have exploded into never before seen territory. The Laffer Curve theory never worked. Ultimately Laffer himself disavowed it. The 2nd part needs to be looked at more closely. The argument is that the more money you gave to the people who create jobs....(through big tax cuts to the wealthy) the more they'll invest and create jobs....and the more the economy will grow. That hasn't worked the way we thought it would. We have the shambles of an economy to prove that. What went wrong. Here is the catch....the more money you give to the wealthy through tax cuts........THE MORE MONEY YOU GIVE TO THE WEALTHY. It doesn't necessarily convey into effective investment that spurs the economy. Investment is a long term concept. Its not day trading or the one year result of business. It is creating value over a long term. Its fortune telling as much as anything else that involves future endeavors. Investment that works creates value. Who is the American with the greatest track record in this regard? Warren Buffett. He didn't spend much investment money during the 2000's. You want to know why? He said everything cost to much. He is spending like a banshee now. He is buying the same type of quality companies that he bought in the past....and buying them cheap. Ever hear of Buy Low....sell High? He studies industries, studies businesses within those industries and buys the management, expertise, and ability to implement those strategies. He buys stuff low. I create value hands on.....or try to. I have a couple of small businesses that I know pretty well....but I don't know everything. We (I and partners) have a relatively new one that we bought cheap. We are slowly growing it. We bought one that sounds like its sort of in the realm of the guy quoted above with regard to the Obama comment...except we expect about double the revenues he is talking about. We will have a lot of expenses with it...so who knows exactly where the profits will lie if and when we get it to that revenue level. The tax policies of the this administration led to an overabundance of spending and an underabundance of investing. It led to a recent historical record for mortgages at 100% of LTV, crappy unsubstantiated loans and institutions leveraging their debt to equity at thoroughly unsustainable risk full levels that have exploded to take the economy down. And when I say economy, I mean world wide economy. There was far more spending and far less value creation. Now I would spark income where it will create business growth from the demand side rather than the supply side. Put substantially more money...where it makes a big difference in the vast amount of Americans...create more demand for goods and services....while we are cutting jobs....and it will create more demand for jobs...from the demand side. I think that is a worthwhile policy to follow for the time being to see how things work. Now, I believe that Obama could have answered that guy a lot of ways. That way was acceptable. He could have suggested the guy meet with one of his tax pros and see how the tax plans would have affected the plumber. It might have made an impact on the plumber. He could have explained that putting more money in vastly more Ohioan's pockets could spur significantly more demand and willingness to spend money on plumbers...and possibly boost the guy's business from the demand side. It wasn't the best or worst answer...it was one answer. Meanwhile, after suffering from a dismal economy that has depended on one type of economic philosophy that has contributed to the potentially biggest economic disaster since the depression of the 1930's I think it is high time that we look at a different philosophy.
Whats new is that wealth redistribution is putting lipstick on the pig of socialism. It just doesn't work. "Bottom up economics" is nothing more than a new welfare system. If you think about it, approx 40% of people in the U.S. currently don't pay any taxes at all. How are you going to give a tax break to someone that doesn't pay taxes? Oh yeah, you give them a govt. handout that comes from the other 60% that do pay taxes. I have a question of my own for you, now. How many welfare recipients do you know that have created a single job, contributed or created anything of value? None? Really? I'm all for change. 8 years of Bush spending like a drunken liberal is enough for anyone. I'm just not for the kind of change that will, IMO, turn our country into a 3rd world, socialistic heaven. In other words, Obamas kind of change. For some, it must be really hard to understand. Those CEO's and their companies employ millions of people that produce and contribute to the economy. They pay their taxes and take care of their families. The government in general and obama in particular needs to understand that the money people earn is not theirs to redistribute. I guess it really isn't that hard to understand, huh???
Why? As of 2004 1 out of every 125 Americans were millionaires. That's like 2.5 million people. And I believe, although I don't have a source to prove it right now, that most billionaires and millionaires in the U.S. come from the middle class. Here's the 100 wealthiest people in the world. I did a quick count(so I could be off by a couple either way) and found that 31 out of 100 are U.S. citizens. Click on their names and read their biographies and you'll probably find in most cases that they are mostly self made. Our richest often come from stable middle-class families. I won't contest that the wealthy have a lot of influence in this country. But something that a lot of people don't understand or try to twist, is the fact that the wealthy in the U.S., for the most part aren't endowed with it or given their wealth through some special right. They usually attain their wealth because they are good at what they do and they work their asses off. So, even if it's true that the wealthy have disproportionate influence in this country, it's not as nefarious as it might sound on the surface. Because many of those wealthy people once were not. And soon there will be a new batch of wealthy to join the club of the "ruling elite". I personally like our system and I still believe in the American dream. The ability to attain great wealth isn't a bad thing. It maybe would be a bad thing if the rest of the country were poor, but the U.S. is like third in per capita annual income. and second for median income(median in this case may give a clearer picture than the average as it's not vulnerable to skewing on account of the really rich). The truth is, life in America is pretty fucking good. Even poor people have a shot if they start believing it and doing the things it takes to achieve success.
Actually it's factually correct. "Spreading the wealth around." It's literally Obama's solution and he made no reservations about letting an average America worker know about it.
Let me get this straight..35% of all Americans do not work. Obama wants to send them more money to help the economy? By giving Americans that do not work more money the economy will improve? It sounds like we all need to work more....its our patriotic duty.
It might work. Those unemployed and poor Americans will probably spend every penny they get as soon as they get it. That is good for business's especially ones that sell necessities.
I thought your unemployment rate was in the region of 5% - so where does the other 30% come from. Are you including school children and pensioners? And as for it being your patriotic duty to work more? Yeah, work harder so that the rich become even richer... The national interest and patriot duty is a lie put out by the wealthy to make them even more so
Traditionally, socialism will tax the middle class to support the lower class. do you REALLY want that?
Traditionally, socialism is a lot of things that don't relate to Obama's plan, to include the notion he's screwing the middle class and creating a revolution of sorts in fostering the ascendancy of the lower classes. Independent assessments of his plan have shown that he will aid the middle class and screw the wealthy. Those same assessments state that McCain will aid the wealthy and do nothing for the rest. No denying - redistribution, and yep, an element of socialism. You may not like the notion of redistribution, but your statement is false.
Your statement is True. Socialism will hit the middle class the hardest. Obama's plan(that means talk and talk only) will hit the "evil rich first". You can garner more votes by saying you are gonna stick to a class that makes up 5% of the population. But wait, what happens when you stick it to the people that control the majority of all cost of products and services? They pass the Obama tax along. Wow, a novel approach. Wait it gets better. If you increase the cost to the rich let's say 5%, they in return will increase the cost of goods more than 5%. It may increase everything across the United States 5.1 to 10%. Thanks Obama you created a great way to hit the rich by increasing the goods for everyone. Take road fuel for example. Diesel skyrocketed after Katrina. What type of fuel do the truckers drive? You guessed it. Diesel. What happened to the cost of goods? They went up to compensate for the increase in fuel cost. Yeah, Obama stick it to the rich they need more money. This comes back to the middle class. you know the class that does most of the work. Give them a tax break then increase all their cost 10%. yea you guessed it. Working hard and bringing home less money due to the increase of all goods. "Stick it to the rich", or "Obama Socialist Economics 101" ,redistribution of the wealth. I guessed he learned that from his mother or Ayers.
Hah! I actually cooked for Miguel Ferrer once. Nice, very humble guy (some may not know that his dad, José Ferrer, was one of the preeminent actors of our time; BIG shoes to fill, I would think). Yep, it's a shame, class warfare. Between the two candidates, choose your class.