This is merely a place where I can express myself. I will post news articles, points of faith, stories, fellow blogger posts (with due credit of course), and generally anything I feel is worthwhile.
In a previous post, I quoted Patrick Henry, who said:
“[I]t is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts.”
That quote is inspired by a bible verse: Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not. – Jeremiah 5:21 (ESV)
Now the siren’s scream is being muffled by the truth of change. Barack Obama just can’t seem to exclude “change” when it comes to his tax policy.
CHANGE!
$250,000
CHANGE!
$200,000
CHANGE!
$150,000
CHANGE!
$120,000
CHANGE!
$50,000 - $60,000 - $70,000
CHANGE!
How low will he go?
CHANGE…POCKET CHANGE!!!
CHANGE!
Will he change on abortion to 3-5 years? Will he change on military spending cuts to a buck a day? Will he change on gun control to jail anyone who owns a gun?
I just can’t take this so called “Change we need” anymore.
SPREAD THE WEALTH, SPREAD THE WEALTH, SPREAD THE WEALTH
What Obama and the Democrats are going to do is make it even worse than the current so-called barstool economics tax plan:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay NOTHING. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
'Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."
Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still pay NOTHING.
But what about the other six current paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay!
And so: The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing--(100%savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 ----- (33%savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 ----- (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 ----- (25%savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ----- (22%savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 ----- (16%savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that's right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved two dollars. It's unfair that he got five times more than I!”
“That's true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
No, Democratic Tax strategies aren’t socialism, they’re economic treason….And yes, they actually are socialism.
On the issue of whose tax plan would provide more relief to middle-income taxpayers, Barack Obama once again brought out this line:
“And 95 percent of working families, 95 percent of you out there, will get a tax cut. In fact, independent studies have looked at our respective plans and have concluded that I provide three times the amount of tax relief to middle-class families than Sen. McCain does.”
The "95 percent" figure is correct. Even though many conservatives have argued that you can't cut taxes for people who pay no income taxes, most of those who are receiving refundable tax credits on the income tax side are still net taxpayers given that they do pay payroll taxes, corporate income tax, excise taxes, etc. (And even that assumes the fact that a person is a net taxpayer even matters, versus the net fiscal incidence of the person, and once we go down that road, at least we are actually getting somewhere on the core questions of public finance and the role of government in distributional outcomes.)
The independent study that Sen. Obama is referring to comes from the Tax Policy Center, which does indeed verify this fact for middle-income tax units when you exclude the effects of the two candidates' health care plans. What Sen. Obama doesn't tell us is that Sen. McCain's health care tax plan (which he criticizes on many occasions, and in his ubiquitous TV ads) would actually provide more savings to middle-income tax units (as a group) than Sen. Obama's health care plan. And when you include the effects of these health care plans, the "three-times as much tax relief" claim no longer holds. When TPC ran the tax plans, they analyzed the health care plans separately from the other parts of the candidates' tax plans.
Speaking of Sen. McCain's health care plan, Sen. Obama once again made this invalid comparison:
“By the way, the average policy costs about $12,000. So if you've got $5,000 and it's going to cost you $12,000, that's a loss for you.”
Sen. Obama's saying outright that Sen. McCain's plan is a loss for you is nonsense.
The $12,000 cost and $5,000 credit are not comparable unless one assumes two facts for McCain's health care tax plan: (1) the worker will be dropped by his employer, and (2) the worker's wages will not increase to offset the lost health care. For most workers, this isn't going to happen. If somebody is receiving $12,000 in health insurance that is now taxed as ordinary income (and there is no dropping of coverage), a $5,000 credit is going to more than offset the additional tax a person must pay on his/her employer-provided health insurance. Eventually, since the credit is indexed for inflation and not health-care costs, the credit's value would diminish. But over the next ten years, the Tax Policy Center has estimated that McCain's health care tax plan is a $1.3 trillion tax cut for American taxpayers, and they have shown that the average middle-income tax unit would be better off under McCain's health care tax plan than Obama's in that time period. Now it is true that the average doesn't hold for everyone in the middle, and some will gain a lot in the middle and some could lose a lot in the middle (such as those whose coverage is dropped), but the reality is that the health care tax plan is the most progressive part of Sen. McCain's plan. It would make the federal income tax more progressive.
Finally, on the issue of small businesses, Sen. Obama said this in defense of his tax plan's impact on small businesses: “The last point I'll make about small businesses. Not only do 98 percent of small businesses make less than $250,000, but I also want to give them additional tax breaks, because they are the drivers of the economy. They produce the most jobs.”
That "98 percent" figure is technically correct under certain assumptions, but it's basically irrelevant given the latter point he wanted to make. Under Sen. Obama's metric where the mere number of tax returns affected by his tax plan is what matters (2 percent), a small business that earned $100 in business income and had only one employee would have the same "drive" of the economy as a small business that earned $500,000 in net income and had 50 employees. Obviously, that's ridiculous, but it fits with the theme of this campaign: if it sounds good, say it, even if it's misleading (or not true).
Even though it’s totally irrelevant to you now… If you are successful, you should be grateful because if I were president when you were struggling, you would have had a tax cut. Then you could have saved so that I would be able to tax your frugalness and hard work.
I appreciate that you have worked hard and saved, BUT… You need to be taxed more because you have worked hard.
I don’t WANT to punish your success, BUT… I want everyone to have that same opportunity at success so I can say I don’t want to punish their success as well.
I like the flat tax, BUT… The problem is that it seems too fair and doesn’t punish the wealthy.
And here’s the ABSOLUTELY ASTONISHING SOCIALIST zinger!
“I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” – Barack Obama, October 14, 2008
Who won?
Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher is the winner. But not just him.
Now there are a ton of everyday, regular people who are starting to realize they won as well. It is great that the election has finally become about Joe the Plumber AND:
Mikey the Electrician Suzy the Beautician Leo the Cable Guy Janey the Diner Cook Petey the Cabbie Kelly the Daycare Worker Jackie the Butcher Donna the Realtor Johnny the Enbalmer
And when these folks get into the voting booth, who are they going to think about when it comes to the best person to be the leader of the free world?
It ain’t the guy who is going to tax hard word and success.
It ain’t the guy who believes that America is a mediocre place.
It ain’t the guy who wants to take the rewards of your hard word and share it with everyone else.
It ain’t the guy who doesn’t believe that life begins at conception.
It ain’t the guy who believes that small town Americans CLING to bibles and guns.
It ain’t the guy who was raised and mentored by Marxists and Muslims, and atheists.
It ain’t the guy who thinks we should follow the world rather than lead it.
It ain’t the guy who doesn’t understand that your associations are a part of what defines you.
And it ain’t the guy who throws those associations and friendships away when they can hurt his political career.
