Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin

[PujolJunkie]

You might have to explain to me how the poor are currently paying more taxes than the rich, either by dollars or percentage.

Probably should have worded that a little different. My point on the whole is the fact that the rich are being handed out tax cuts by the Bush administration, while the middle class are left with a very marginal cut, and see no help in sight. Apologies for the misstatement.

[KyCardinalFan]

So when is McCain going to stand in front of all those retirees in Florida and tell them he is eliminating Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security? He has only a week to set the record straight and get rid of these socialist programs!

What? That would anger those retirees and risk losing their votes?

Be careful what you call socialist and socialism. What Obama plans isn't socialism, McCain wants you to think it's socialism. It's easier to throw around terms than to come up with an actual plan.

[Michael]

During one of the greatest economic expansions in our history, the rich's real wealth has grown considerably, while the middle class has been relatively flat, and the lower class's wealth has actually declined. Things haven't exactly trickled down. I have no problem reversing Bush's tax cut for the wealthy.

[Leroy]

You might have to explain to me how the poor are currently paying more taxes than the rich, either by dollars or percentage.

Probably should have worded that a little different. My point on the whole is the fact that the rich are being handed out tax cuts by the Bush administration, while the middle class are left with a very marginal cut, and see no help in sight. Apologies for the misstatement.

No problem. I just wanted to bust your chops for a minute.

[haltz]

So if Obama gets elected I can't just get potato soup and adidas shoes with four stripes from the state without really doing anything? He's lost my vote.

[Freed Roger]

You might have to explain to me how the poor are currently paying more taxes than the rich, either by dollars or percentage.

Its not always the case, but very possible from a percentage standpoint. tax on investment income is lower than income tax. Then you add in social security. then you add in the percentage of poor person's income they expend on sales and gas taxes.

[SHOW]

June 28, 2007

Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary
Tom Bawden in New York
Warren Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, has criticised the US tax system for allowing him to pay a lower rate than his secretary and his cleaner.

Speaking at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (£26 billion), said: “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent. Mr Buffett told his audience, which included John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Alan Patricof, the founder of the US branch of Apax Partners, that US government policy had accentuated a disparity of wealth that hurt the economy by stifling opportunity and motivation.

The comments are among the most signficant yet in a debate raging on both sides of the Atlantic about growing income inequality and how the super-wealthy are taxed.

They echo those made this month by Nicholas Ferguson, one of the leading figures in Britain’s private equity industry, when he criticised tax rates that left its multimillionaire venture capitalists “paying less tax than a cleaning lady”.

Last week senior members of the US Senate proposed to increase the rate of tax that private equity and hedge fund staff pay on their share of the profits, known as carried interest, from the 15 per cent capital gains rate to about 35 per cent.

Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, acknowledged in an interview yesterday that there were justified concerns about the huge profits generated by private equity firms and that he worried that income inequality was “poisoning democracy”. He also said that he would be voting for the Democrat candidate at the next election. Mr Blankfein is the highest-paid executive on Wall Street, earning $54 million last year.

Mr Buffett, who runs the investment group Berkshire Hathaway and is widely regarded as the world’s most successful investor, said that he was a Democrat because Republicans are more likely to think: “I’m making $80 million a year – God must have intended me to have a lower tax rate.”

Mr Buffett said that a Republican proposal to eliminate elements of inheritance tax, which raises about $30 billion a year from the assets of about 12,000 rich families, would broaden the disparity between rich and poor. He added that the Republicans would seek to recover lost revenue by increasing taxes for the less prosperous.

He said: “You could take that $30 billion and give $1,000 to 30 million poor families. Or should you favour the 12,000 estates and make 30 million families pay an extra $1,000?”

[maddash]

So any time you raise taxes on the wealthiest you are a socialist?

No, but his Robin Hood ideal is.

God forbid should anyone take money from people who are never going to miss it and give it to the people who are living from paycheck to paycheck.

Here's an idea: Earn more or spend less. Budgets are cool.

Frankly, trying to simplify a complex issue down into soundbites that paint everything as black and white are why McCain/Palin are losing. Ask the average Obama voter if his economic plans are socialist, and you'll likely hear "well, it's a lot more complicated than that".

I actually sympathize with a lot of conservative economic policies on an idealistic level. But I also understand that our economy doesn't operate in a vacuum, and that things are much more complex than "the more money rich people have the more jobs they'll create".

[KyCardinalFan]

The Case for Barack Obama
Obama is pushing to change the parameters of the country's comfort zone. That's leadership.

Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008
It has become fashionable to lament the state of presidential politics and decry the tenor of campaigns. But in fact, this election has been a pleasant surprise. In the last debate, as the candidates discussed their respective health-care plans in some detail, the danger was that the American people would be turned off not by negativity but by boredom.

Compare this election to the one in 1988—when the Pledge of Allegiance, Willie Horton, flag factories and Belgian endives dominated the campaign. Or contrast the relatively brief appearance of William Ayers with the barrage of Swift-Boat attacks on John Kerry. Some of this is because the American people have clearly tired of slash-and-burn campaigns. But much of it is because the two candidates are men of decency and honor.

John McCain is brave, and this courage has manifested itself not simply in the prisons of Vietnam. Over the past two decades he has broken with his party and president on global warming, campaign finance, government spending and the use of torture. He has chosen, for the most part, to forgo the racial coding that the Republican Party had used for decades in its campaigns. But despite these tremendous strengths, as a candidate for president in 2008, he is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time.

To watch McCain address the current economic crisis is to see a man out of step with his time. His responses have been a recitation of old slogans—cut taxes, limit the government, cut spending—that are largely irrelevant to today's problems. Does anyone really believe that tackling earmarks will get credit markets functioning? In some ways, McCain's intellectual fatigue reflects the exhaustion of the ideological revolution begun by Reagan and Thatcher. The country needs fresh thinking that is ready to accept new facts and new ideas. It's a new world out there.

On foreign policy, John McCain is a fighter. In fact, his bellicosity has increased over the past few years as he has discovered his inner neoconservative. He wants to keep the battle going in Iraq, speaks casually of bombing Iran and is skeptical of the Bush administration's diplomacy with North Korea. He wants to kick Russia out of the G8 and humiliate China by excluding it from that body as well. He sees a "league of democracies" locked in conflict with an alliance of autocracies. This is cold-war nostalgia, not a strategy for the 21st century.

McCain's problem is not only one of substance but perhaps more crucially of temperament. Throughout the campaign, he has been volatile and impulsive. He moves suddenly and unpredictably—one day suspending his campaign, the next urging that the chairman of the SEC be fired, the third blaming Democrats for the economic crisis. He apparently wanted to name as his vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, a pro-choice semi-Democrat with decades of experience, but then instead picked someone close to the opposite—Sarah Palin, a rabble-rousing ultraconservative with limited experience and knowledge of the issues.

By contrast, Barack Obama has been steady and reasoned throughout his campaign. After careful deliberation, he endorsed the administration's decision to intervene in the financial industry but with caveats—not to score campaign points but to make the program work better. These modifications were adopted by the administration and employed last week by Secretary Paulson.

Obama's broader economic agenda—health-care reform, infrastructure investments and a major push for alternative energy—are large solutions to the growing problems of our times. They are not radical, but neither are they overly constrained by the fear of seeming liberal. Bill and Hillary Clinton were always careful not to stray too far from the country's comfort zone. Obama is pushing to change the parameters of that zone. That's leadership.

On foreign policy, Obama is cool to McCain's hot, discriminating about the fights he wants to pick. He argues for greater international cooperation and the aggressive use of diplomacy. He sees a world in which America doesn't have to get adversarial with everyone and tries instead to work with other countries—of whatever hue—to solve the common problems we face.

Let's be honest: neither candidate has past experience that is relevant to being president, except that they have now both run large, multiyear, multimillion-dollar, 50-state campaigns. By common consent, McCain's has been chaotic and ineffective, while Obama has run a superb operation, and done so with little of the drama and discord that usually plague political machines.

This is the case for Obama on substance, which is the most important criterion. But symbolism is also a powerful force in human affairs. Imagine what people around the world would think if they saw America once again inventing the future. And imagine how Americans would feel if they saw their country once again fulfilling its founding creed of equal opportunity, if they saw that there really were no barriers in their country, not even to the highest office in the land, not even for a man with a brown face and a strange name.

I admit to a personal interest. I have a 9-year-old son named Omar. I firmly believe that he will be able to do absolutely anything he wants in this country when he grows up. But I admit that I will feel more confident about his future if a man named Barack Obama became president of the United States.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/164498

[PujolJunkie]

You might have to explain to me how the poor are currently paying more taxes than the rich, either by dollars or percentage.

Probably should have worded that a little different. My point on the whole is the fact that the rich are being handed out tax cuts by the Bush administration, while the middle class are left with a very marginal cut, and see no help in sight. Apologies for the misstatement.

No problem. I just wanted to bust your chops for a minute.

Of all the people I'd expect....

[Leroy]

You might have to explain to me how the poor are currently paying more taxes than the rich, either by dollars or percentage.

Its not always the case, but very possible from a percentage standpoint. tax on investment income is lower than income tax. Then you add in social security. then you add in the percentage of poor person's income they expend on sales and gas taxes.

[SHOW]

June 28, 2007

Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary
Tom Bawden in New York
Warren Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, has criticised the US tax system for allowing him to pay a lower rate than his secretary and his cleaner.

Speaking at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (£26 billion), said: “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent. Mr Buffett told his audience, which included John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Alan Patricof, the founder of the US branch of Apax Partners, that US government policy had accentuated a disparity of wealth that hurt the economy by stifling opportunity and motivation.

The comments are among the most signficant yet in a debate raging on both sides of the Atlantic about growing income inequality and how the super-wealthy are taxed.

They echo those made this month by Nicholas Ferguson, one of the leading figures in Britain’s private equity industry, when he criticised tax rates that left its multimillionaire venture capitalists “paying less tax than a cleaning lady”.

Last week senior members of the US Senate proposed to increase the rate of tax that private equity and hedge fund staff pay on their share of the profits, known as carried interest, from the 15 per cent capital gains rate to about 35 per cent.

Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, acknowledged in an interview yesterday that there were justified concerns about the huge profits generated by private equity firms and that he worried that income inequality was “poisoning democracy”. He also said that he would be voting for the Democrat candidate at the next election. Mr Blankfein is the highest-paid executive on Wall Street, earning $54 million last year.

Mr Buffett, who runs the investment group Berkshire Hathaway and is widely regarded as the world’s most successful investor, said that he was a Democrat because Republicans are more likely to think: “I’m making $80 million a year – God must have intended me to have a lower tax rate.”

Mr Buffett said that a Republican proposal to eliminate elements of inheritance tax, which raises about $30 billion a year from the assets of about 12,000 rich families, would broaden the disparity between rich and poor. He added that the Republicans would seek to recover lost revenue by increasing taxes for the less prosperous.

He said: “You could take that $30 billion and give $1,000 to 30 million poor families. Or should you favour the 12,000 estates and make 30 million families pay an extra $1,000?”

I guess by the word 'poor' I was assuming poor enough for the EIC, which would result in getting back more than paid in.