Obama’s tax plan doesn’t match rhetoric
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. It’s called, ”Obama’s tax plan doesn’t match rhetoric.” Here’s some meat:
The second problem with Obama’s class warfare rhetoric to punish only those families who earn more than $250,000 with higher taxes is that it isn’t true.
To start with, Obama’s $250,000 threshold only applies to married couples who file jointly. Married couples who file separately don’t count. Single filers’ threshold is about $200,000 in Obama’s plan. At least that’s what Obama’s campaign is saying.
Unfortunately, Obama’s thresholds don’t align with his actual plan. Obama’s actual plan is to increase the top two income tax brackets to their pre-2001 levels. The 33 percent bracket would increase to 36 increase while the 35 increase bracket would increase to 39.6 increase.
In 2008, the 33 percent tax bracket begins at $200,300 for a married couple filing jointly. Under Obama’s plan, a family making $201,000 would see their taxes increase. In other words, when Obama says, “if you are a family making less than $250,000, my plan will not raise your taxes,” he is misstating (to put it generously) his own plan.
The other tax that Obama wants to increase is the Social Security tax on people earning over $250,000 per year. Currently, Americans pay Social Security taxes on the first $102,000 of their wages. Once one passes $102,000, no additional Social Security taxes are paid.
I also take a look at his Social Security tax donut and a couple of other things.
Which candidate is going to give me a larger tax break.
Posted by scott on July 08, 2008 at 0941 hrsThat’s a good question Scott, but the better question in my opinion is - which candidate’s tax plan is going to be the best for the economy?
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1009 hrsGood heavens! Why is it when rich white guys are threatened with paying a fair share of the taxes it’s class warfare, but when rich white guys change the tax code to force middle and working class Americans to carry a larger percentage of the tax burden its not?
There’s no ducking this one. The spin doctors of both parties have been muddying it up for 30 years now. The changes to the tax code begun under Mr Reagan have concentrated wealth in the hands of fewer people, today, than was the case during the era of Robber Barons. That would be fine with me, by the way, if it had actually improved the lives of the rest of us at the bottom. It hasn’t. The end.
So here’s the meat on who will give you the better tax break.
If you’re making under $200k a year, Obama.
If you’re making over $200k a year—vote for McCain.Who’s class are you in, in this bit of warfare Owen? Isn’t your family in the oil business? (said another Lutheran white guy.)
Me, I’m siding with the guys who worked 3rd shift until they were sold out to our new friends in China.
Class warfare… right.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1035 hrs
If you’re making under $200k a year, Obama.
If you’re making over $200k a year—vote for McCain.That’s roughly my understanding as well. Here’s CNN’s take.
Think about that when you listen to the sound byte of McCain saying “The choice in this election is stark and simple. Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won’t.
Who is he talking to? The top 3% of income earners in America?
Posted by scott on July 08, 2008 at 1100 hrsMcCain has a much bigger problem with his rhetoric not matching his tax plan.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1118 hrsI don’t believe either of them. As for Obama, when has any Democrat (sans Kennedy) proposed a tax cut rather than a tax hike? Comparing the tax tables under the Bush years vs. the Clinton years, we paid way less under Bush (our combined income is just under 100k).
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1333 hrsThat would be fine with me, by the way, if it had actually improved the lives of the rest of us at the bottom. It hasn’t. The end.
This is just baseless story-telling.
“the rest of us at the bottom” You must be kidding me.
You act like a greedy little 2 year old that wants a new toy because he saw his friend get one.
Every man woman and child in american now (damn near) has a cell phone. A LUXURY in the 1990’s. That is but one example of how standard of living has improved for people but they still play the jealous envious “peole on tv have more than I do” games so they consider themselves “poor” and the people on tv “rich”
I grew up in a single parent family that didn’t have a car, a microwave, and only ONE tv. No cable, not a single video game.
The opportunity that existed for me is the same opportunity that existed for everyone.
I never asked for a damn thing from the government. Never a penny of financial aid, never a hand-out, never preferential standards to get into college ahead of others with better grades.
Now I make a far above average income. And you want more of my money? Why?
Who’s greedy? I want nothing from the government? Nothing handed to me. No freebies.
You liberals want to pay less taxes (as a percentage) while those who’ve made the sacrifices to reach the income level they have pay more (as a percentage) Who’s greedy here?
I don’t want more government programs. No entitlements, No help from anyone? I accept paying an exponentially larger dollar amount of my income every year than you, but seeing the percentages climb as my income did.... Its thievery.
And you greedy fucking liberals are going to cry because my tax percent which is already double most peoples (and my tax burden is probably quintuple) isn’t paying my “fair share”
You must be kidding me?
Who’s greedy here?
You guys need your heads examined. Greedy fuckers.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1350 hrsHow much gross income did you have last year, xxpilot?
Posted by scott on July 08, 2008 at 1355 hrsxxpilot is absolutely right.and I congratulate him/her on his/her success! I say bring on the flat tax. Why punish those who have made it? I’m currently starting production on a recently patented invention. The hoops one has to go through and the fees one has to pay are incredilous...and I’m just beginning. In the long run, I hope to be damn successful and feel I should not have to pay one percentage point more have than the moochers and leachers who sit on their ass and suck off the system.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1503 hrslol xxpilot.
You’ve never gotten anything from your government? You’ve been subsidized your whole life, just like me. You never attended a public school or drove on the interstates or had electricity delivered to your home or drove across a bridge? You’ve never enjoyed the benefits of foreign oil (you think Exxon Mobil does that without the help of the US military?)? You’ve never been to a doctor who attended a public university or seen a fire engine head off to save someone’s home? You don’t know anyone in the armed services or anyone who’s been horribly wounded defending you and your neighbors so that you could argue about it online?
Huh. Amazing. And yet you did everything on your own? Sorry, but [voice of Andre the Giant in Princess Bride] I don’t think you’ve really thought about this carefully.
Personally, I don’t mind being in the bottom 90%. We’re very comfortable, we’re debt free, and we don’t even have cell phones. But to confuse cell phones and a color TV with luxury is a sign your assent in this economic disparity has been paid for with shiny little trinkets. Every time our taxes went down by a little, here in the bottom 90%, the top 10%’s went down by a lot.
In the first year of the Bush tax cuts his cabinet members, on average, saved more on taxes than I make in a year.
So I have a very different understanding of who the greedy fuckers are in this country. All I need to do is follow the money and there they are. How can you call people who make less than them greedy fuckers? I don’t even own my own Senator.
And sacrifices? Are you naive? What sacrifices did the President make growing up? Connections bought him an entire country to play with. Nobody makes it on their own, or without some luck: if they did we’d all be millionaires. Like my brother, say. :^)
Again, concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer people is perfectly okay (as Carnegie and Rawls note) so long as the benefits accrue to the entire society. Concentration of wealth is actually required by our economic system, but then there has to be a compensation that benefits society as a whole and that’s my complaint.
Look at our infrastructure, look at underfunding of veterans services and the underfunding of education in our cities and give me an example of any of that having improved over the past 30 years as a result of neo-cons cutting the funding.
Cutting inspectors has made life easier for the people who own meat packing companies, oil platforms, mines, oh and Wall Street Banks—but not for the people who work in them.
And how does it happen that asking people to pay a fair share of infrastructure, education, and military costs—the very things that made their wealth possible in the first place—is suddenly the same as punishing them?
Curiouser and curiouser.
Anyway, as usual, I’m probably wrong about all of this.
Let’s test it: Tell you what xxp, if you can go without a single bit of government assistance for 10 minutes tomorrow afternoon, I’ll pick up your taxes for 2008.
hiho
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1529 hrs
MpMP
You miss the point. Why should xxp pay a greater share than anyone else just because he/she is successful?
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1533 hrsHey Bajaskier,
Because it’s fair. I mean, I don’t think it’s fair that Wm Buffett is in a lower tax bracket than his secretary. I also don’t see why it’s fair that he should pay exactly the same percentage as she does.
Am I being a greedy fucker, as xxp suggests, for asking that people who make 800 times my income pay a few percentage points more of it in taxes?
I think this is really about people wanting to avoid their civic responsibilities. The way most of us satisfy those is through taxation—or though direct service.
Anyway, that’s why. You don’t think it’s fair to ask people earning 800 times more than you do to pay for a few more of the tanks and stealth fighters we need?
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1541 hrsHe is paying more! Let’s say the flat tax is 5%.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1550 hrs
5% of $1,000,000 is $50,000. 5% of $100,000 is $5,000. There is nothing more fair than the flat tax.It always does come down to this, with the radical right-wingers here: They demand that we all justify the very concept of progressive taxation, forget about this or that proposal or this or that candidate. They want to know why we don’t have a fee-for-service method of paying for government services, or a flat tax.
The fact that it’s the cornerstone of every developed democracy on earth doesn’t impress them. The rationales about how wealthy people may actually be using and benefitting from the social order our tax dollars create doesn’t make sense to them. The moral argument about easing the taxes of the lower end of the income scale--just because we can--won’t wash with them. Even the very practical matter of keeping the proletariat from the gates so they can continue to be wealthy and unmolested doesn’t work for ‘em.
What works for them is: Everyone deserves what they have. If you’re wealthy, you can thank your own hard work, ingenuity and strength of character for it--nothing else. And if you’re poor, well, it’s because you’re lazy, stupid and morally weak. Anything involving redistribution of wealth is immoral, as it interferes with this cosmic justice.
Frankly, it bores me. It’s much more interesting to discuss tax policies with people who are at least within two standard deviations of average opinion rather than always having to go back to fundamentals with the flat-earthers.
Posted by scott on July 08, 2008 at 1558 hrsxxpilot is an angry unhinged bee-atch!
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1559 hrsI’d still like to know what his reported income was last year. If he wants to keep it to himself, fine--I didn’t bring it up. But inquiring minds do want to know.
Posted by scott on July 08, 2008 at 1600 hrsGrow up Darryl.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1609 hrsI don’t understand how supporting progressive taxation to pay for things like public education or debt reduction equates greed. These threads about tax policy take place every couple of weeks and we have never heard from any greedy motherfuckers demanding redistribution of xxpilots untold wealth to pay for their flat screens and cell phones.
The voice of opposition commentting on this blog are realists that strive for a society where the kid born into poverty with an incarcerated father and teenage mother has the same opportunity for success as my child does. You can kid yourself and claim that the kid does have the same opprotunity, but it simply isn’t true.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1621 hrsIncome taxes don’t redistrubute the true wealth in this country. The “real” wealthy don’t make their income off a W-2
Income taxes put the burden on the working class.
The voice of opposition commentting on this blog are realists that strive for a society where the kid born into poverty with an incarcerated father and teenage mother has the same opportunity for success as my child does.
The opportunity for success is the same for everyone. The odds of success are not but thats by the choices people make.
As a child of a single mother living in low-income housing I’m quite certain people wouldn’t have bet on me compared to my wealthy friends. But that didn’t stop me.
Scott, I don’t have a problem sharing, but for some reason I think on the internet might not be a wise idea. I’ll be happy to tell you in an email.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1646 hrsTaxes aren’t Barack Hussein Obama’s only problem.
-> Barack Hussein Obama spent 20 years in a “church” where the pastor spewed hatred against America every Sunday.
-> Barack Hussein Obama cheated his way into the state Senate in Illinois by getting his opponents removed from the ballot.
-> Barack Hussein Obama is well connected to the Chicago political machine, the same machine that is known around the world for their “creative electoral tactics”. Remember, if you want to continue voting after you die, get yourself buried in Chicago.
-> Barack Hussein Obama is friends with, and has campaigned with, known domestic terrorist William Ayers.
-> Barack Hussein Obama has several other connections that call into question his judgement.
-> Barack Hussein Obama has shown contempt and disregard for people of faith, calling them bitter and comparing them to those who hate.
-> Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim.
-> Barack Hussein Obama hates guns and gun owners and America and the NRA and all the things that the Second Amendment stands for. DON"T BE FOOLED!
And this is just the “tip” of the iceberg.
Thank goodness for organizations like America’s Hope Foundation, which will be put out of business if BHO gets in.
According to a radio ad now running by the patriots at Americ’s Hope Foundation, B Hussein O was involved with a homosexual named Larry Sinclair and smoked crack cocaine, which is about what can be expected.
Go to
http://www.americashopefoundation.com/
to hear the ad and get more information on this clear and present danger being foisted upon us. Please be aware that the second ad, which features Larry Sinclair’s OWN VOICE, is unsuitable for children to hear.
Wake up, America!
There ain’t no way the Lame Scream ME-dia is gonna be able to ignore this very incredible story!
The AHF website is even organizing a protest of B Hussein O’s nomination at the DemoncRAT convention in Denver, although I support a boycott of Denver AKA Sin City, period.
I have a friend that is going to a Promise Keepers meeting to get more details on what can be done to stop BJO, I mean BHO. But after you hear the Larry Sinclair statement, you will understand why my finger slipped on the keyboard.
Posted by on July 08, 2008 at 1931 hrscrankycon/darryl,
You’re engaging in sockpuppetry and needless personal attacks of fellow commenters. Knock it off or you’ll be banned. You’ve been warned.
Posted by Owen on July 08, 2008 at 1946 hrs
Ol' Army
