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Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Manedwolf on September 18, 2007, 10:15:11 AM

Title: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Manedwolf on September 18, 2007, 10:15:11 AM
Can we say "investors bailing to foreign markets and crashing recession"?
Quote

Obama offers plan for middle-class tax cuts
Democratic contender wants burden shifted from labor to capital
By William L. Watts, MarketWatch
Last Update: 2:34 PM ET Sep 18, 2007
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Charging that the tax code places too heavy a burden on wage earners in order to make breaks for investment income, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama outlined a plan Tuesday designed to provide tax cuts to middle-income Americans while closing corporate tax loopholes and boosting taxes on capital gains and dividends.

"For decades, we've seen a successful strategy to ride anti-tax sentiment in this country toward tax cuts that favor wealth, not work. And for decades, we've seen the gaps in wealth in this country grow wider, while the costs to working people are greater," Obama said in a speech hosted by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

Obama said his plan would provide a tax credit of up to $1,000 per family to offset the payroll tax on the first $8,100 of earnings, provide a universal mortgage credit that can be used by homeowners who don't itemize their deductions, eliminate income tax for seniors making less than $50,000 a year, and simplify the tax-filing system.

The Illinois senator said the measures would reduce revenues by $80 billion to $85 billion, and would be offset by closing a variety of corporate tax loopholes and raising taxes on capital gains and dividends, which are now taxed at a top rate of 15%.

Obama didn't say at what level he would seek to tax investment income, but said the top rates for dividends and capital gains would return to levels "closer to but no greater than" the top 28% rates signed into law by President Reagan in the 1986 tax overhaul.


Obama: Hey, that looks like an interesting coral reef! Let's turn the ship around and sail towards it at full speed!
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: The Rabbi on September 18, 2007, 10:38:28 AM
With today's actions by the Fed I don't think there will be any economic growth for him to destroy.
But since the top 20% of wage earners already pay 80% of all taxes while the bottom 60% pay no taxes I don't know where he's going to go.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Manedwolf on September 18, 2007, 10:42:05 AM
Ah, yes. I can't wait to see what the fed's rate cut does to inflation.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: charby on September 18, 2007, 10:46:06 AM
Ah, yes. I can't wait to see what the fed's rate cut does to inflation.

1/2 percent cut I just read... be interesting to see

I've been telling my wife that before long we are going to have less free money because of the price of basic necessities are going to shoot through the roof.

Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Paddy on September 18, 2007, 10:47:09 AM
What makes this chucklehead presidential material?
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Manedwolf on September 18, 2007, 10:51:59 AM
Ah, yes. I can't wait to see what the fed's rate cut does to inflation.

1/2 percent cut I just read... be interesting to see

I've been telling my wife that before long we aren't going to have less free money because of the price of basic necessities are going to shoot through the roof.

Yes. Compensate for the stupidity of home buyers who bought beyond their means by punishing everyone, especially all the people who bought within their means or didn't buy a house yet at all because they knew they couldn't afford it.

Fiscal responsibility as a virtue? Nahh...live it up! Be a grasshopper, the government will make the ants pay more to cover for you!

Enjoy that yummy $5 a gallon milk!
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Waitone on September 18, 2007, 11:19:35 AM
Shocking, just shocking that a marxist would favor labor over capital.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: El Tejon on September 18, 2007, 11:27:50 AM
What if the top 20% just gave up and told Obama that we want to be grasshoppers too?

Badger shrugged. grin
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: The Rabbi on September 18, 2007, 12:26:11 PM
What makes this chucklehead presidential material?

He's over 36 and was born here.
What other qualifications are there?
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Monkeyleg on September 18, 2007, 01:41:23 PM
When the folks in the middle class realize that capital gains taxes on their investments are going to go up with Obama's plan, he won't be so popular.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Jamisjockey on September 18, 2007, 01:53:56 PM
What makes this chucklehead presidential material?

He's a smooth talker.  And the Democraps think that the last election was a mandate on Left wing idiotology, not on the war. 
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Brad Johnson on September 18, 2007, 01:57:52 PM
Quote from: Rabbi
With today's actions by the Fed I don't think there will be any economic growth for him to destroy.
But since the top 20% of wage earners already pay 80% of all taxes while the bottom 60% pay no taxes I don't know where he's going to go.

Source:  The Tax Foundation
Compiled September 2006 (2004 tax year data).  The 2007 report (2005 tax year data) should be out shortly.

Top 50% (all wage earners above $30,122 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 96.70%

Top 25% (all wage earners above $60,041 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 84.86%

Top 10% (all wage earners above $99,112 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 68.19%

Top 5% (all wage earners above $137,056 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 57.13%

Top 1% (all wage earners above $328,049 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 36.89%
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Angel Eyes on September 19, 2007, 11:40:36 AM

Source:  The Tax Foundation
Compiled September 2006 (2004 tax year data).  The 2007 report (2005 tax year data) should be out shortly.

Top 50% (all wage earners above $30,122 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 96.70%

Top 25% (all wage earners above $60,041 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 84.86%

Top 10% (all wage earners above $99,112 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 68.19%

Top 5% (all wage earners above $137,056 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 57.13%

Top 1% (all wage earners above $328,049 AGI)
Share of total taxes paid: 36.89%


Are these AGI figures for total household income or individual?  Just curious.

-Jack
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: wooderson on September 19, 2007, 11:44:32 AM
The tax numbers are rather misleading - note that they never say what percentage of income "the top 1%" take home - it isn't 36.89%, but it sure as hell isn't 1% either.

Payroll taxes account for 40-50% of yearly federal tax revenue, and the majority of households pay more in payroll taxes (that wind up capped for the top 25-30%, severely capped for the top 15%) than they do in income taxes - payroll taxes are never figured into the stated amounts or percentages.

And the elephant in the room is the percentage of wealth held by each bracket.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: The Rabbi on September 19, 2007, 12:24:29 PM
The tax numbers are rather misleading - note that they never say what percentage of income "the top 1%" take home - it isn't 36.89%, but it sure as hell isn't 1% either.

Payroll taxes account for 40-50% of yearly federal tax revenue, and the majority of households pay more in payroll taxes (that wind up capped for the top 25-30%, severely capped for the top 15%) than they do in income taxes - payroll taxes are never figured into the stated amounts or percentages.

And the elephant in the room is the percentage of wealth held by each bracket.
I dont understand any of this comment, except perhaps as some vague attempt to profer the idea that the rich (whoever they are) are not paying enough in taxes.
Actually the elephant in the room is the fact that the top 10% of taxpayers arent a static group by change wildly year by year.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: wooderson on September 19, 2007, 04:15:36 PM
Quote
I dont understand any of this comment, except perhaps as some vague attempt to profer the idea that the rich (whoever they are) are not paying enough in taxes.
Think of it as a longer version of "lies, damn lies and statistics," then. Or perhaps the old one about the drunk and lamppost.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Tuco on September 19, 2007, 05:43:53 PM
Quote
Compiled September 2006 (2004 tax year data).

Holy shnikies, I'm in the top 25%!?!?!?!
I guess I'd better start acting like it.

Bourgeois Soakers
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: charby on September 19, 2007, 05:47:21 PM
Quote
Compiled September 2006 (2004 tax year data).

Holy shnikies, I'm in the top 25%!?!?!?!
I guess I'd better start acting like it.

Bourgeois Soakers

Kind of what I thought also.. sure doesn't seem like though. Since my wife and I are in the top 25% why the hell can't we afford one of those big houses and a matching set of Escalades to go with it.

Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Manedwolf on September 19, 2007, 06:09:23 PM
Likewise. I'm in the "top 25%", why don't I have a massive McMansion yet?

Oh, yeah, right. I keep doing that "not in over my head" thing. Silly me. I should, Big Government will bail me out, since it did to all the stupid people. Tongue
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: roo_ster on September 20, 2007, 02:38:14 AM
I'm so happy the Fed cut rates 0.05%.  Now, I can get less from my inflated dollars without a commensurate increase in my income.



wooderson:

Get over it and deal with reality: The folks who make the money in this country pay the cost to keep Leviathan rolling.  The poor just don't have much worth stealing to make it worthwhile, which is why the lower 50% of income earners pay diddly & squat.  I wish my greatest exposure was just payroll taxes.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: The Rabbi on September 20, 2007, 02:40:37 AM
It was actually .5%.

I guess people are discovering that when gov't rails against "the wealthy" they're talking about them.  Yikes.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Brad Johnson on September 20, 2007, 09:50:20 AM

Quote
Think of it as a longer version of "lies, damn lies and statistics," then. Or perhaps the old one about the drunk and lamppost.

It's a straight breakout of total income.  No analysis necessary, especially not the "their 1 percent is different than my 1%" class warefare crap. 1% of the total tax burden is the same amount whether you make a thousand bucks or a hundred thousand.

By the way, it's www.taxfoundation.org if you want to dig any deeper.  They have all the information you are looking for.  All the way from raw data to analyses of every kind.

Brad
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Paddy on September 20, 2007, 05:34:37 PM
Obama's the darling of the egocentric Hollywood elite and he has a good command of the English language.  Other than that, he's just another mushy headed liberal.  And nobody named 'Barak Hussein is gonna be  elected POTUS.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Sindawe on September 20, 2007, 06:17:30 PM
Quote
Enjoy that yummy $5 a gallon milk!

No biggie to me, I don't drink the stuff and already pay better than $6.00/gallon for the soy based fake to put on my morning granola and bananas.  grin

Quote
Holy shnikies, I'm in the top 25%!?!?!?!

I KNEW there was a reason I enjoy fine cigars and 18 y/o Scotch Whiskey.  I'm in the top echelon of society despite driving an econobox and living in a crackerbox.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: sumpnz on September 20, 2007, 10:03:00 PM
Quote
Enjoy that yummy $5 a gallon milk!

No biggie to me, I don't drink the stuff and already pay better than $6.00/gallon for the soy based fake to put on my morning granola and bananas.  grin

Quote
Holy shnikies, I'm in the top 25%!?!?!?!

I KNEW there was a reason I enjoy fine cigars and 18 y/o Scotch Whiskey.  I'm in the top echelon of society despite driving an econobox and living in a crackerbox.

Sindawe - Good, I'm not the only one  cheesy
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: RevDisk on September 21, 2007, 04:25:58 PM

I KNEW there was a reason I enjoy fine cigars and 18 y/o Scotch Whiskey.  I'm in the top echelon of society despite driving an econobox and living in a crackerbox.

Only for tax purposes, my dear Sindawe, only for tax purposes. 

I do find it ironic that the only time I could legally smoke Cubans in my lifetime was when the government was paying me to blow things up in Europe.  Something about it just makes me giggle.   I do miss my ol Irish and Norwegian/Finnish/Swedish connection for the good booze.  Sigh...  20 euros for a large bottle of 21 y/o Glenfiddich.  15EUR for 3L of Bacardi
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: wooderson on September 21, 2007, 05:00:28 PM
Quote
Get over it and deal with reality: The folks who make the money in this country pay the cost to keep Leviathan rolling.  The poor just don't have much worth stealing to make it worthwhile, which is why the lower 50% of income earners pay diddly & squat.  I wish my greatest exposure was just payroll taxes.

Y'all don't seem to grasp the point. The numbers cited are nonsense. That the top 1% pay 39.2727272% of income taxes doesn't sound so awful if they earn 42.8838383% of the income, right? (they don't - it's more like 15% or something - maybe even in the 20% range) That's why the percentage of income earned by each of those divisions is so important - and why the wackjobs who throw the numbers out never bring it.

If you include payroll taxes - again, ~45% of the personal federal tax burden - that waters down the percentages even further, perhaps even to the point where those who earn 30% of total income are paying 30% of personal taxes! But we wouldn't want to explore those numbers to find out if that's true, because it doesn't reinforce the point we wanted to make about the burdens of being upper-middle class (if not upper-class, period).

As I said: a drunk leaning on a lamp-post.

But we don't really need to run those numbers, because of course the progressive income tax levies a greater burden on "the folks who make the money" - that's kinda the concept behind progressive taxation, fellas.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: MechAg94 on September 21, 2007, 07:22:41 PM
You say that like you think progressive taxation is a good thing or something.  Smiley
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Paddy on September 21, 2007, 08:25:58 PM
You say that like you think progressive taxation is a good thing or something.  Smiley

It's the next best thing, although light years behind, a national sales tax.  That's the way to go.  Eliminate income tax and disband the IRS.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: RevDisk on September 21, 2007, 09:01:08 PM
It's the next best thing, although light years behind, a national sales tax.  That's the way to go.  Eliminate income tax and disband the IRS.

Lot of folks think a flat tax would be the best way to go.  Most of the econ geeks I've spoken to say VAT can discourage spending.  Which is good individually, but not so much so across the entire economy.  Ipso facto, it'll significantly drive up prices on everything.  That'll hit a lot of people very hard unless basic necessities were exempted.  (Food, gas, etc)   

Progressive taxes stiffle economic growth and punish the successful.  Regressive taxes push the tax burden onto those that can least afford it. 

Biggest reason I'm distrustful of a NST/VAT is that more than likely, it would not replace income tax.  Oh sure, that'd be the promise.  But more than likely, we'd just end up with both.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Monkeyleg on September 21, 2007, 09:20:50 PM
"Biggest reason I'm distrustful of a NST/VAT is that more than likely, it would not replace income tax.  Oh sure, that'd be the promise.  But more than likely, we'd just end up with both."

Touche'.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Manedwolf on September 22, 2007, 08:23:12 AM
I thought national sales taxes and VAT taxes also encouraged the black market.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: MechAg94 on September 22, 2007, 02:57:14 PM
The black market is what I would be concerned about.  You already have a little bit of that with the state sales taxes.  Add on another 15 or 20% and you would get a whole lot of it. 

The end result would be the IRS would not be disbanded.  It would switch from handling income taxes and audits to handling sales taxes and auditing of that end.  No way the Congress critters will leave all that tax collection to the states for very long. 

Personally, i thought the flat tax idea was the easiest thing to do and wouldn't require wiping out all the current systems.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: MechAg94 on September 22, 2007, 02:59:26 PM
The best thing to do would be to find a way to eliminate the bulk of the entitlement spending that currently eats up so much of the govt budget.
Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Manedwolf on September 22, 2007, 04:02:19 PM
The end result would be the IRS would not be disbanded.  It would switch from handling income taxes and audits to handling sales taxes and auditing of that end.

Auditors roaming street bazaars and seedy electronics shops looking for backroom blackmarket deals, coupled with a rising industry of refitting and modding older technologies, reselling secondhand gear instead of paying the sales tax on new things. How cyberpunk.

Title: Re: Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...
Post by: Brad Johnson on September 24, 2007, 07:44:22 AM
To tax anything is to discourage it, or to encourage corrupt ways around it.  A VAT or sales tax would be a poison pill for the economy.  You are penalizing the one thing that keeps the economy in motion.

Brad