Obama wll lower your taxes

[pecunium]

Ok, not everyone's, but probably the taxes of every American who regularly reads this.

John McCain... not so much.

The simple fact Obama's tax plan takes simple economics into account. If I am running a business, or a home, I have to have income to keep spending. It's not a new concept, Dickens, in David Copperfield summed it up, Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

Which is what the Republicans have never seemed, in my lifetime; at least, to grasp. Grover Norquist has said fiscal irresponsibility is the goal, the famous, "Starve the gov't until it's small enough to drown in a bathtub," comment.

Spend and borrow is stupid. It's, at best, a short term solution to a short term problem. Reagaan shifted the tax burden around, and had a net-loss for gov't income (with what George Herbert Walker Bush termed, and rightly, "Voodoo Economics"). He then went on a massive spending spree, which Bush (pere) had to live with the results of (which included a tax increase; and a quick exit, stage left).

Tax and spend is a better way to go, but the present occupant of the White House thinks that's bad. Better to borrow from China to cover the bills. Want to buy a huge car (have a needless war), whip out the plastic. Don't worry, Capital One (China) will cover it, and the interest won't be too bad because you can pay it over over decades.

Obama seems to realise that a healthy nation needs (like a healthy family) to be self-sufficient. McCain, again, not so much. We, as a nation, pay the smallest taxes in the First World. We are getting what we pay for.

Bridges are collapsing, roads are decaying, New Orleans was damn near destroyed (and what, three years later we still have internal refugees? WTF?). Our healthcare system is a joke.

For what? So the truly rich can flaunt it, and the poor can be asked to bear a greater share of the burden. That's bullshit. To make another family analogy (and one with flaws), Dad doesn't ask the toddler to pay a fair share of the groceries, he doesn't even ask the teenager to.

Hell, in a well off family the kids get a new car, and the insurance is paid for.

The less well to do scrape the money for a decent used car, and the kid gets a job to cover the insurance.

After that, well cars are luxuries, and they borrow dads, or have to pay for it all themselves.

America is rich. We shouldn't be telling people we aren't. We can pay for all of the things we need to do (and most of the things we want to). We can do it with a fair tax plan.

We used to have one. Back in the '50s, under Eisenhower we had marginal rates in the 50-70 percent range. What people today would see as confiscatory. When LBJ cut taxes, Ike came out of retirement to lambaste the plan.

McCain, he want's to cut taxes across the board. The poorest, who most need the help, will see reductions in their taxes by as much as $20.00 a year.

His wife, on the other hand, will see savings estimated to be about $375,000. Maybe she can buy him a house he can remember (in case these aren't enough).

Obama, yes, he is talking about letting the Bush Tax Cuts lapse, and changing the tax structure to help the average guy (you know, the one who doesn't have so many houses it costs 270,000 a year to maintain them Yes, I am beating on this, because Obama isn't that rich, and I don't see anyone beating McCain up for his Sugar Mommy Wife, the way they whomped on Kerry, who wasn't cheating on his first wife when he married his second).

Ok, digression over, back to the Obama tax plan. That little guy (the one McCain is going to toss $20 to) gets about $550 from the Obama plan. That's groceries for a month. It's real money.

In fact, it's not until someones income gets above $220,000 that someone doesn't get a tax cut from Obama. It's not until someone is making more than $600,000 a year that they see an increase in their taxes.

I don't know about you, but if I were making almost 3 times what the average american home is worth.pdf (recall too, McCain and his wife own ten homes, which add up to about 13 million dollars, so that average isn't the median, not by a long shot), I think I can afford to budget an eight percent change in my taxes.

For a graphic display of the differences


Washington Post

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Bear with me and let em see if I got this right.

Under McCain, the rich will get richer, and the poor get poorer, and under Obama, the poor will at least slow the rate of increase of getting poorer, and the rich will get richer at a slightly slower rate than they would under McCain?

I think that sums it up neatly.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

No.

Under McCain's Plan the poor will get the shaft, the rich will get money, and the system will continue to suffer from postive feedback loops.

Under Obama's Plan the poor get a break, the rich pay a fairer share and a possibility to fix the system so it's not suffering a positive feedback loop is set in place.

If the poor are at the edge, the Obama plan might let them step back, and get established. The McCain plan does nothing for them.

It's not a panaceaea, but it's a start.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

If the poor are at the edge, the Obama plan might let them step back, and get established. The McCain plan does nothing for them.

But it does help the rich more, correct?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Define more?

Define rich.

The poorest get a 5.5 percent tax cut. The highest bracket to get a cut gets a 1.9 percent cut.

That's not helping the rich more. Yes, that 1.9 percent of 180,000 is more than the guy making 40,000 is going to save, but the effect on the budget of the folks at the bottom is going to be greater than the effect of the guys at the higher end.

So I have to disagree that the rich get more, if the question is who gets more help. All of these things are relative.

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. I keeping hearing people whine that their taxes will increase under Obama. These are not rich people. For some reason, they buy into this idea, and it's so frustrating because it's not true.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

They believe it because they hear it from the Republicans, and the press repeats it.

The storyline has been, for years, that the Dems raise taxes, and the Repubs lower them.

This is wrong. Reagan lowered some taxes, raised others and mostly just shifted the tax burden from the better off to the middle classes.

Then he spent like a sailor on leave, and left Bush pere with the bill. Clinton got it fixed, and Bush fils did it all over again (esp. with his, "prebate" checks, which the rich weren't going to have to worry about, but the poor could get bitten by).

Fiscal responsibility my ass.

Want to fight back? Write a post that says "obama will lower your taxes" right there in the header.

Or link to this, with those words. Push the truth up the search engine charts.

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

Done.

Though, to be honest, I wouldn't mind a small tax increase if I knew the money were going toward something really worthwhile, like universal healthcare. But I suppose ending tax cuts for the rich will help pay for things like that.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

For most who have healthcare, the cost of universal would be a saving of money. I forget what the average cost to the user is for healthcare, but with premiums, deductibles, co-pays and drug costs etc., it adds up.

If you don't get sick, it can be as much as 12,000 a year.

And it only goes up.

We also have waits, denials and the problem that, none of the delays people bitch about in other countries matters here if you can't get anything at all.

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

I'm so tired about hearing about "socialized" medicine, and how it's something to be feared. First of all - and I'm sure you know this, but I'm on a soapbox, and I can't shut up yet - Britain is the country with truly socialized medicine, and I don't hear very many British people complaining. What we, the Democrats, want is universal coverage. The doctors can do whatever they want, run their clinics however they see fit, but no one is denied health insurance.

I used to travel a lot. When I got sick or injured, I'd just go to a local clinic. The only things I ever had to pay for were my prescriptions, and those were cheap. It's ridiculous that this country can't take such good care of its own.

Now I'll get off my soapbox.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Britain is the country with truly socialized medicine, and I don't hear very many British people complaining.

I *do*. Refused medical treatments, from doctors who refuse to believe there's anything wrong but hysteria, and no easy way to change doctors. There are a lot of socialized medical programs in the world, and some work better than others. I have seen this from personal experience. This is excellent news for the US; all we need is to look around, see what works and what doesn't, apply a little common sense as to what would work in the US, and craft a really good system. We have the scientists and public health people to do that analysis, and we have all the data we need right out there in front of us. And as other commenters have said, we have the money. There's no reason we can't have a system much better than Britain's.

All we need is the will.

I'm with you on this. I'm rich, by any rational standard. (Not McCain's!) I don't worry about where the next meal is coming from or about losing my house. I can put money into savings. And there are people I care about who are being terribly hurt by lack of medical insurance. I would be *glad* to pay a little more, if I had confidence that my tax money was being used well and efficiently. And therein lies the rub.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I've not seen a level of complaint which is any worse than in the US, and that with everyone being covered (so the uninsureable are also in the mix).

There is, at present, a reason we can't have such a system, and it's in the halls of congress. It's the same reason the same drugs cost more here than they do in Canada.

It's the reason the Gov't isn't allowed to negotiate for lower rates for the bulk purchases Medicare makes.

And the funny thing... Medicare is the healthcare provider with the highest customer satisfaction rating in the US. If (and when) we can reduce the pernicious effects of money in the political mix, we can have national healthcare.

Until then the best we can hope for is probably some bastard hybrid of the sort Clinton and Obama are offering.

[mediumajaxwench.livejournal.com]

Here from commodorified's journal.

I hear people complain about no easy way to change doctor's being a major problem under socialized medicine, but when I went to college and got on an extension of my Dad's insurance in a new state there was *one* primary care physician in the city that my college is in that was both covered by my insurance and willing to accept new patients at the time that I moved there. Luckily I have a car, because she was not located within walking distance of the college (note that using my Dad's rather than buying the school's was a choice that we made because it would save us money. God help the person on my insurance who made that choice because they had to and didn't have a car.) The earliest appointment that I could get with her was three weeks out because she required special "get to know the patient visits" for first timers and those had to be at least a half-hour long.

This is not to say that lack of flexibility in changing doctors isn't a flaw of socialized medicine, just that it's one that the current US healthcare system already has.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

My point, actually, was that you can't talk about " a flaw of socialized medicine" - there is a plethora of *different* socialized systems, each with their own flaws and virtues. And the US is in the enviable position of being able to look around and use all this data to borrow what works and leave what doesn't. We could have the best nationwide system ever, if we'd only agree to have one at all.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm Canadian, so I have socialised medical coverage. Not medicine itself, just the insurance. Thanks to that, my basic medical insurance is covered in my taxes. My supplementary health coverage (including travel medical, prescriptions, 80% dental, and some other stuff) costs ~$30/month; $25 of that is covered by my company as a taxable benefit. I get to pick my doctor (if I can find one... alas there's a shortage in my area) or clinic, and I'm welcome to get a second opinion and have fully as much latitude to choose course of treatment as anyone else... though I may have to wait for big-ticket or specialty stuff.

This is the heinous burden of "socialised medicine" that HMOs are saving hard-working Americans from.

-- Steve knows the system ain't perfect, but it ain't as busted as it's painted to be.

Gordon Brown, you're doing it wrong

[sethb.livejournal.com]

Britain is the country with truly socialized medicine, and I don't hear very many British people complaining.

Avleen Vig <avleen@gmail.com> posted:

I know some of us have discussed the poor state of national healthcare in the UK before. Last night it became personal.

Two months ago my mother complained of some abdominal pain, which she thought might have been a hernia. She was almost correct.

Two months after talking to her GP, the specialist at the local hospital saw her. Then a month after that, they met to discuss the results.

She has, in fact, three hernias. But something was amiss! The specialist asked her to have an ultrasound done. Wait time? One month. This was done yesterday. They found that she also has a 6 inch wide tumor in her abdomen.

What's the earliest time the specialist can see her? In another month when he gets back from vacation. Is there anyone else who can see her? No, the results will be sent directly to him.

After he gets back he will order blood tests (these only take a week), and an MRI - which has a wait time of two months for anything other than an ER-requested scan.

After that it would be another month before she saw anyone, and who know how long after that to get treated (if it's even possible by then).

6 months from initial complaint to accurate diagnosis? And people wonde why the UK has the lowest survival rate in the EU.

She flies to Atlanta on Saturday. I expect she'll be fully diagnosed within 24 hours of landing (at some cost which is minor compared to being able to live).

Re: Gordon Brown, you're doing it wrong

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

That is worth hollering about under any system.

It doesn't match with my family's experience, but that's not so complicated, medically.

Make a fuss about this. Embarrass the bastards. Yes, the doctors need their time off, but this is selfish arrogance.

Re: Gordon Brown, you're doing it wrong

[sethb.livejournal.com]

It's not my story, it's Avleen's. And he does intend to promulgate it widely. (It was only written a couple of days ago; feel free to repost elsewhere to give it wider distribution.)

[clownburner.livejournal.com]

The real question that needs to be asked here is "what is the long-term effect of making the tax burden so heavy on the top 0.1%, and is that a sustainable tax system?"

This is a narrow cut of the bigger picture. BOTH tax plans still balloon the deficit because they don't address the root problem of the government overspending on entitlement programs.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

We had the largest expansion the nation's history under a tax plan which went to a ninety percent bracket.

Can we afford a system which is moving the money from the poor to the rich. The French had a system like that? Worked really well up to 1798.

The British had various set-ups of like sort, they also had intermittent rebellions. The "talking-point' of, "entitlement" programs is a nice trick for making it seem that people are getting things for nothing, which is poppycock.

We get something for those programs. If all the really rich get is a buch of poor people who aren't so poor as to be burning them out of their mansions and wheeling them to the guillotine, it's a cheap price to pay.

[clownburner.livejournal.com]

I think you're missing the point that emphasizing individual taxes sounds like a wonderful progressive idea, but if we're still spending billions of dollars a year on subsidies that go to large agribusiness farmers, oil companies seeing record profits, and broken social security programs, we're looking in all the wrong places.

Should the super-rich pay more taxes than they do? Yes. But expecting them to foot the bill while still giving huge breaks to corporate welfare is a bad long-term move.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If you wanted to change the subject to taxes on corporations, and to subsidies and "stimulation" packages (which aren't what the dog-whistle of "entitlement" brings to mind), you should have done that.

Because what I am discussing is how the personal income tax is to be apportioned.

I thought about expanding this to talk about taxes on corporations (and it's a huge problem) but the political debate, the meme to be quenched, is that Obama is going to stick it to the little guy, and McCain is going to cut your taxes. So padding this post, to try and cover all bases, to all readers, was ruled out. No one would care, and the point of the excercise would be lost.

Simple fact, we, as a nation, don't pay enough in taxes; esp given what we expect/allow our gov't to do.

We need to better address that, across the board. But lying about the tax proposals being discussed ain't helping.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

You may wish to look into finding another purveyor of bumper stickers political analysis.

Have you actually read a US Federal Budget this decade?

Go look at what you're spending on military, policing, and prisons.

Then go look at what you're spending on interest.

Then go look at what you're spending on social services, which I assume, admittedly without hard evidence, is what you mean by "entitlement programs".

"what is the long-term effect of making the tax burden so heavy on the top 0.1%, and is that a sustainable tax system?"

"Excellent" and "Yes".

Stipulating that the proposed increase constitutes a 'heavy' tax burden, which is the funniest damned thing I have heard all week.

[clownburner.livejournal.com]

If you want to be taken seriously, avoid argumentum ad hominem.

Yes, I've read the federal budget. At least the summary version; the full version is several thousand pages. I'm wondering how you think that social services are the bulk of the entitlement programs the government has.

BOTH candidates are proposing UNSUSTAINABLE tax programs that increase the deficit by only dealing with one side of the balance sheet. Saying one is better than the other to me is irrational; it's like saying cutting off your hand hurts less than cutting off your arm. Yeah, maybe, but isn't that missing the point?

And if you're taking more than 50% of someone's personal income, how does that not count as 'heavy' taxes? Obama's 39.6% federal rate combines nicely with the social security tax (which is seperate) and state taxes to make a gross tax rate well over 50% in the highest brackets. I know, believe me, I've paid them. Meanwhile, we have the lowest corporate taxes of any industrialized country, and Exxon/Mobil made more than 10 billion dollars last quarter alone in pure profits.

And how much of that, exactly, (http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/sectorall.php?cycle=2008) do you expect Obama to 'change?'

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

She didn't make an agrumentum ad hominem. She didn't say your arguments fail because of some failing of yours. She was dismissive, and snarky, and then addressed the actual points you made. You, in response, are changing the subject to something you didn't say; and making as if she has somehow erred in not answering those points. In fact concern trolling her with an erroneous assertion (in what looks to be an attempt to gain some moral high ground) is a different form of ad hominem.

I don't think the taxes are that punitive. First, you are mistaken in the way Social Security works. There is a cap (at present, $98,000) on what is taxed for SS/FICA. So it's a regressive tax. Don't like the income tax where you live... move. Texas doesn't have one. On the other hand, places with no (or nominal) income taxes tend to have higher fees for services (there's no such thing as a free lunch) which is, again, regressive.

I don't really have a problem with someone who's making a couple of million bucks a year, paying 40-50 percent of that in taxes, when all is said and done (though the progressive nature of the tax code, the actual percentage paid by someone earning $300,000 is actually $84,751 i.e. is $20,249 less than a pure tax of 35 percent. The actual rate ends up being about 28 percent. (you can do the work, and see the reasons at MoneyChimp or go to The IRS and look it up directly.

When we actually had rates you think are "heavy" (back in the fifties, under Eisenhower) corporations weren't paying 10-12 percent of their profits as salary to top-level execs. They were investing it into corporate infratructure, pensions, and the like. Which made the company stronger. Which made the economy stronger.

What I see as wrong with the McCain plan is he is taking a larger bite from those least able to pay. Which is bad for the country (lots of growth since the Shrub's tax cuts went into effect. It's been such a success we have to cut some more taxes to get out of the hole we're now in.... what do they call that in business... oh yeah, good money after bad).

Like I said, this post isn't about corporate taxes. It's about how the two candidates are dealing with pesonal taxes, and the way McCain's supporters are lying about both what Obama wants to do, and what McCain's plan (if he were to get it enacted) would do.

McCain will give 20 bucks to the poorest, and hundreds of thousands to the richest. Obama will give $550 to the poorest, and tax the richer by an extra 8 percent (which, for the same reason they get more when taxes are cut, means they pay more when they are raised).

McCain wants to cut his own tax-bill.

Obama to raise his.

Oddly enough, it's the sort of plan Warren Buffet (who stands to pay a lot more than Obama) approves of too. I think he has some grasp of economics, and the incentive of income.

So it's clear to me which is the plan which makes more sense.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

you are mistaken in the way Social Security...

I think you meant "gravely mistaken", my dear. In the strict Parliamentary sense.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

pecunium has left me remarkably little to reply to, here.

But I'll note that you seem to be assuming I was taking you seriously.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I lived in a country that once had a marginal total tax rate of over 100%. That is, there were some people who, when they earned more money, paid more extra tax than the extra income.

That is stupid. It needed a whole bunch of taxes in combination, so it could happen in the USA, but it also needed extremely high tax rates.

And if you have that sort of ultra-high income, you can arrange your life to avoid, quite legally, a lot of that tax. You don't have to live in New York State to work on Wall Street. Check the life of Howard Hughes. But if the tax rates are a bit lower, they might think it worth living within easy reach of the social benefits of your city, and paying the taxes.

Still, there's so few people at this level that the effect may be almost lost in the noise. The big problem is in how you handle the people in the middle. You want a Doctor? A teacher for your kids? A lawyer?

They're the sort of people who start revolutions.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

"Obama will lower your taxes" only gets 21 hits right now.

Nowhere to go but up!

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

And half of those are people saying that's only something deluded people believe.

[kateyule.livejournal.com]

I haven't been following the "so many homes he can't remember" flap. But is it HOMES, or HOUSES? People are using these interchangeably and I see a real difference. One could own many houses, as investment/rental properties, and be unclear on the current count. Not at all the same as losing track of your personal residences.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The impression I get (from all the commentary) is these are house they own, maintain (hence the $270,000 in staffing and maintenance fees), and spend time in. I suspect several are visited seldom, and honestly I am not surprised he can't recall how many he has. If I had eight to ten places I was visiting (some of the properties belong to his wife alone) I might lose track of how many there are.

If some of them weren't mine/ours it would be easier.

But I do think "Mr. Maverick" being so bloody rich he can own so many houses that losing track of them is possible says something about him.

What's Being Ignored...

[gazmik.livejournal.com]

What I'm not hearing much about are capital gains taxes. The wealthier that people are, the less of their income is "earned income" and more of their income is taxed at only the 15% capital gains tax rate. At 15%, they are paying at the same tax rate as somebody making less than about $30,000/year. And they aren't paying Social Security on that income while somebody making less than $30,000 is paying Social Security on their entire income.

[mediumajaxwench.livejournal.com]

Here from commodorified's journal.

$319 in tax cuts probably couldn't cover a month's worth of childcare or health insurance for most Americans and only the wealthiest 20% of Americans would get more than that. I'm shocked that the Republicans are getting away with claiming that raising taxes for the wealthiest Americans equates raising taxes for all Americans. It's yet another reminder that only certain people count in the minds of a lot of people.

[nenya_kanadka]

Thanks for this. I'm bookmarking it for a list of talking points I'm putting together for a local Obama group.

Also, LJ-friending you, years late, as I've often admired your comments both at ML and on LJ. Hope you don't mind. :-)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I don't mind. I write to be read.

Are you a poster at ML, or do you lurk in pleasant company?

In any case, welcome.

[nenya_kanadka]

Thanks!

I do post, rarely and diffidently, at ML under the handle of Nenya. But mostly I lurk. It's in my top three on the bookmarked blogroll, though.