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Posted on 01/21/2012 6:06:51 AM PST by Kaslin
Ever since the First Couple entered the White House, their social life has swirled around the very rich. Hollywood actors, pop star singers, Wall Street hedge fund managers, billionaire investors — these are the fabled "top 1 percent" in terms of income and wealth.
The Obamas invite them to White House dinners. They vacation with them on Martha’s Vineyard. They party with them. They sup with them at $35,000-a-plate fundraisers.
(Have these affairs ever included an auto worker? A mine worker? How about someone who is unemployed and looking for a job? What about someone who has lost his home? As far as I can tell, the bottom 99 percent never seems to make the cut.)
Here is what we are being asked to believe. During his three years in office, the president has come to realize that all of the people he plays golf with, has dinner with and collects millions of dollars from have too much. All of the people he never sees, never talks to and never socializes with have too little. So the president’s campaign-for-re-election theme will be: take from his friends and give to all those strangers.
Is any of this believable?
If you are inclined to take it seriously, let me remind you that you have heard it all before. Remember the 2008 presidential campaign? Health care was the number one issue. Remember the Democratic primary mantra? It was "universal coverage." And how was it to be paid for? Almost every serious candidate for the Democratic nomination gave the same answer: taxes on the rich. Barack Obama was explicit: "If you make less than $200,000 your taxes will not go up at all."
So what happened? We got Obama Care, at a cost of almost $1 trillion over the next ten years. And who is going to pay for all that? You are. And so is everybody else. My best estimate is that only about one-fifth of the cost of this measure will fall on the shoulders of the "rich." The vast bulk of the burden will fall on everyone else.
According to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, about 73 million Americans earning less than $200,000 a year will see their direct taxes rise as a result of ObamaCare.In addition there are indirect taxes that no one will be able to avoid. These include:
-A "medical devices" tax that will reach everything from bedpans to wheelchairs and crutches will raise $20 billion over the next ten years; it will hit pacemakers and artificial hips and knees, as well.
-A tax on health insurance plans will raise about $60 billion.
-A tax on prescription drugs will raise another $27 billion.
The Republican staff of the Senate Finance committee estimates that these three taxes alone will ultimately push up health insurance premiums for a typical family of four by about $1,000 a year.
A tax on tanning salons is already collecting revenues from ordinary folks. Because of new restrictions on the use of medical accounts (Health Savings Accounts, Health Reimbursement Arrangements, and Flexible Spending Accounts), people are now paying more for such over-the-counter items as Claritin, aspirin and Advil. All told, "medicine cabinet" taxes are expected to raise about $45 billion over the next ten years.
Then there is the tax on sickness. Right now, people can deduct medical expenses in excess of 7.5 percent of their income. That figure will soon rise to 10 percent. Families who have the misfortune of incurring high medical bills will have to pay more to Uncle Sam as a result.
Pity the elderly and the disabled. More than half the cost of the health reform bill will be paid for by reduced spending on Medicare — a whopping $523 billion reduction over the next ten years. Although this is technically a spending reduction rather than a tax increase, the economic impact is the same.
Medicare’s chief Actuary predicts that in eight more years, Medicare will be paying doctors and hospitals less than what Medicaid (for poor people) pays. If so, senior citizens will be lined up behind welfare mothers, seeking care at community health centers and at the emergency rooms of safety net hospitals.
Will seniors be able to survive by paying more out of pocket to offset the reduction in Medicare spending? Maybe. But if they do so, it’s going to them 10 percent of their Social Security checks within eight years.
Here’s the bottom line: when President Obama talks taxes on the rich, expect even more taxes on the middle class.
But what about the rich? Is the president really going to sock it to his friends and golfing buddies?
Would you believe that under the president’s higher-taxes-on-the-rich proposals most of Warren Buffett’s income won’t be taxed at all. More on that in a future column.
Most politicians are, but he is The One.
Socialists believe that only other socialists should be rich.......opponents of the state must have their wealth confiscated because they are enemies of all that is good -— government.
Every socialists regime concentrated wealth and power into the hands of a few while the rest of the nation was relegated into poverty.
Every socialists regime concentrated wealth and power into the hands of a few while the rest of the nation was relegated into poverty.
That`s kinda anti-social of them..lol
Modern day liberalism is phoney. Its a bunch control freak
hipocrites who have wormed their way into government and now they misuse the authority of government to tell everyone else what to do. Creating yet another costly Barackratic(bureacratic) mess that is nearly impossible to stop once it is started.
Obama was a joke when he was elected, but he isn’t funny any more.
Alexrod will start a campaign with it making him the target of future occupy wall street agitation.
Can John Kings look into liar Kenyans eligibility, school records, commie past first?
20 billion in revenue.
60 billion.
27 billion.
45 billion.
523 billion, all “projected” over 10 years.
The National Debt is racing up on 16 Trillion dollars and we’re running Trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see.
Gonna be a bumpy ride, for sure.
he is one of the rich elite, he is not going to be against himself or tax himself.
They support the rich like John Kerry, the Kennedy clan, the Hollywood crowd, and the sports stars, because these types of people represent a kind of rich that isn't generally accessible to most of society. The left, social elites, and many democrat voters resent those who did well because they worked hard and did what others could do, but didn't.
For separate but congruent reasons the left supports a societal structure that consists of an aristocracy and the homogeneous dependent masses.
0bama is counting on idiots to reelect him
They may very well re-elect him. I was speaking to one last night who actually believed Obama could bring back the economy.
I said You cann really believe that, and he said he did, I told him flat out he was an idiot.
A lot of these lefitsts think that life is just about luck, not about a process that leads from one thing to another and so forth. The bricklayer, as you mentioned, starts small and through study and a series of good choices (plus admittedly some luck), ends up with this own business and makes a tidy profit. Success is a process, not just taht one lucky break. It isn’t, it is learning the right skills, thinking things through, and also being self dsiciplined and not carrying a chip on your shoulder against the rest of society. I am so sick of how so many of these idiots don’t mind making gobs of cash, but would prefer it that they ‘stay in their place’ and not make their own living.
When the govt. depends on taxation of the top 10% income for most of its revenue, the only way to get more revenue is to increase the income of the top earners.
Raise taxes on the rich, the rich raise their prices for the goods and services they provide.
The people that actually have to pay for the goods and services out of their own pockets, the middle class, have to pay more.
You can call it “trickle up economics” or “taxation through inflation” it's one and the same. The dems welfare state doesn't redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, it redistribute the wealth from the middle class to the rich and creates poverty. Once the middle class is destroyed, the only option left is to confiscate the actual accumulated wealth, not just income, of the rich.
1. How fast the community organizer forgot about the legions of victims who he used to get where he is and...
2. The fact that the victim class doesn't mind being forgeotten.
I guess it's a quirk of the liberal down trodden that they don't mind their own plight if they have a royal couple to admire.
Btt
Btt
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