Posted on 12/02/2011 8:14:22 AM PST by Retro Llama
A year ago, the Bush tax cuts were set to expire. Barack Obama insisted that only those for people making less than $250,000 per year should be extended. Even though Democrats still controlled both the House and Senate, Republicans had enough clout to delay action until the last minute. At that point, they held all the high cards because they knew that Obama couldn't risk a large de facto tax increase on every taxpayer at a time when the economy was weak. He caved and agreed to extension of all the Bush tax cuts, including those for the rich.
Today the situation is largely reversed. The temporary cut in the Social Security payroll tax is due to expire at year's end, but this time Obama holds the better hand. Republicans are lukewarm to extending the payroll tax cut, but are caving to public pressure to extend it. Also, Republicans have never articulated a coherent reason for opposing extension of the payroll tax cut. But they insist that the tax cut be paid for—something they have never demanded for any Republican-sponsored tax cut that I am aware of....
Republicans respond that it would be folly to raise taxes on the "job creators." But the idea that all rich people are job creators merely by virtue of being rich is complete nonsense. According to the Tax Policy Center, only about 3 percent of people reporting business income are in the top two tax brackets, and according to the Treasury Department, only one fifth of small businesses have any employees at all.
....Moreover, there is no evidence that the tax cuts of the George W. Bush administration created any jobs, so even if they were fully repealed there is no reason to think any jobs would be lost....
(Excerpt) Read more at thefiscaltimes.com ...
Hierarchy of spending:
Person 1
Person 2
Given the same income, both persons have $20 a month left to spend on the last two items on their list. Which one is wealthy?
IMHO, wealthy starts where you have enough in passive investments to throw off enough interest each year to live just above the poverty level, plus the price of health insurance, without depleting capital- call it $1.5mil for right now.
As long as you depend on an employer or the government for subsistence living, you can’t be called wealthy.
I might even go farther than you did. I don’t want to pin it down too much though.
A person making a meager income and barely getting by, is obviously going to see someone with a big home and two cars in the garage as more wealthy.
There’s a real problem with that mentality too.
I have a friend that complains about how much taxes they pay, but still wants the “rich” to pay more. I cautioned them to be careful, because with both adults in the family making decent incomes, they actually make more than 92.5 to 95% of the people in this nation.
Most folks would think of the family as quite well to do, or perhaps loosely ‘wealthy’. Taxing the rich would raise their taxes. (If we go by Obama’s and the Left’s promised, it actually wouldn’t, but you and I both know these people are lying their asses off.)
They have a big mortgage. They have lots of bills. They’re just living the “American Dream”. This class warfare stuff is very dangerous.
You and I probably wouldn’t see them as wealthy at all, but when you start lining people up to tax more, I’m sure many of the 92.5 to 95% of the people making less than them, would be just fine with them being taxed more.
I wouldn’t.
Thanks sickoflibs.
Tax the currently untaxed.
you mean, Repeal the Reagan tax cuts? It was Reagan’s tax cuts that dropped the lowest incomes from the income tax.
When the income tax was established, in 1913, it was only supposed to hit the very top income level. It was applied to the general population until WW II. I’d rather have more people taken off the income tax, than more people added.
I’m for tax cuts, not more taxes.
People need to realize that every dime the employee does not pay into SS is money they will never get paid to them when they retire.
No, people need to realize that every dollar you’re not forced to pay into the Social Security ponzi scheme, is another dollar of your own money that you can invest on your own, in a real, honest-to-goodness retirement/investment plan, instead of a federal scam.
Everyone needs to have skin in the game.
Maybe that is why they were trying to “dumb us down”, so we can’t do the math! The same math they use to come up with the jobs numbers that have to be revised every week. That’s the best I can come up with as a response. You can bet that after these guys are gone we will find out a lot about the goings on in the admin. (unless they shread it)
Perhaps it's because if they do Obama will respond by pointing out that several of the major Republican candidates have been running on plans to do away with FICA and Social Security altogether?
Democrats look like they are going half-way to just get rid of the FICA taxes and keep SS, but not really.
Think about the Obama poll tested proposal : Cut FICA taxes of voters for another year to get him through the election but 'to pay for it' impose the sur-tax on the rich over the next 10 years would could span another two POTUS administrations.
Republicans should be screaming that this phony cynical proposal justs adds to the debt (or defunds SS) and Democrats are outright lying about it paying for itself. But they wont. They have their own talking points.
That will just create a bogeyman that will never go away. Every week, it will be another reason for the GOP to not oppose an Obama initiative, for fear that "he could win" if they do so.
-PJ
The canned political pseudo-economic theories of both parties are wearing thin on me. Handing out more money to voters will not create sustainable jobs (if any here) and cutting the riches taxes doesnt not mean they will hire any (or many) Americans with new jobs here.
There are a few good Republican ideas floating around like some tax reform ideas and developing domestic (traditional) energy here but that is about it. I am still waiting for a Republican candidate focus seriously on making the US more competitive for job creation, maybe reform our trade policies so we can export.
IF they could really cut spending substantially and preserve the Bush tax cuts at the same time, that might be enough to counteract the Obama regulations, but I really don't think that is politically possible. Ironically, Obama might pick a strategic time to allow the Bush tax cuts to continue, to temporarily boost the markets before the election. That may depend on how strong or weak the eventual GOP nominee looks.
But I don't expect any real spending cuts until the debt crises appears alarming to voters.
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