Those tax cuts that some here complain about, Obama is screwing our kids with more of the same.



Tax us, pay our bills and let our kids have a decent life. This is unfair to them. Where is the outrage?

With all due respect, you are at your best when you tell us what you think, and try to convince us that you're right.

You are at your worst when you temporarily adopt a view 180° from your own, ("some" call that trolling) simply to find a reason to be critical of democrats. It's also an insult, because the "some" of whom you speak are not cheerleaders, and have been remarkably consistent on matters of principle.

I am not pleased at stimulus which relies disproportionately on tax cuts. To have a positive effect on the economy, stimulus must be meaningful, immediate and targeted to those who will spend it on job-creating goods and services.

Capital gains tax cuts fail all those tests. Preferential treatment for unearned income has only resulted in a series of ever-more-destructive investment bubbles. Tax rates on unearned income should immediately be returned to the same rate as earned income.

No one likes taxes, but we've come to see them as an unnecessary burden from which we should be "relieved". Giving someone an extra $10 a week might be nice, but it doesn't have any meaningful effect on the macroeconomy except a chronic deficit.

Sorry but I am on record numerous times for raising gas to five bucks and start taxing to pay debt now, immediately. This is the business side of me and you do not let interest grow and grow and consume everything you make.

Do I like taxes? No. Do I like wasteful spending? No, but since that is what our congress folks do then let's get the taxes rolling and WE pay, not our children. This is good in two respects. The first is, as stated, for our children. The second is that the pressure against spending would be extreme IF we paid as we went.

We have had this discussion before. I say tax and spend Democrats. You say at least we tax. But now Democrats don't tax. They are becoming Republicans.

I kid you on being spendaholics, yes, but I do no advocate leaving debts to our children and never have.

Check back on my posts. That is consistent.

Before elections I expressed my beliefs that only the name changes when Democrats and Republicans change places. I see this story as vindication of that belief. Obama is, in many crucial ways, GW Bush II. Look at the complaints over the unconstitutional power grabs the Bush and Cheney instituted. Obama has increased and kept those going.

Your reply sounds crabby but understandable. If I thought there were going to be changes in all those things I hated about the Bush administration and it only got worse.....well my question was: Where is the outrage?

I would be very interested to hear how things have changed for the better this last year? Reassure me that things are fine.

A good point to start with that reassuring would be: Obama could accomplish that goal simply by letting the Bush tax cuts expire and paying for changes to the alternative minimum tax.


Tell how things are better. Please.

Try this for a bit of perspective:

http://sz0126.ev.mail.comcast.net/service/home/~/TAXES.jpg?auth=co&loc=en_US&id=131165&part=2

I can't get the link to work. I takes me to a Comcast 404 error message.

Can you post a link to the graphic that doesn't include going through Comcast mail?

I can't tell you that things are fine. I can only show that things are better, if for no other reason than the guy who said "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" is no longer running things.

Personally, I think the worldwide economy is still in immediate peril, so much so that the prospects of a big deficit next year are comparatively trivial.

I had severe misgivings about Obama based on his choice of Austan Goolsbee as economic adviser. He's little different than all the other University of Chicago charlatans.

The main difference between the parties is that the Republicans think government is the problem. As such, they don't even pretend that they're trying to help.

Couldn't retrace the path to get that url to work but here's something as interesting:


Reagan Was A Socialist: Even More Socialisty Than Obama!

Be Like Reagan And Thatcher! Soak The Rich!
by hilzoy

Possibly because of my immersion in posts about going Galt, I've read altogether too many blog posts and newspaper columns about the horrid, wealth-destroying, class-warfare-waging, socialist nightmare that is Barack Obama's tax policy. So I thought it might be a good idea to get a few basic facts on the table.

Obama is not proposing to raise the personal income tax. He is proposing to allow the Bush tax cuts on families making over $250,000 a year to expire. The Republicans wrote that expiration into law to conceal to hide thecosts of their tax cuts. Under the law they wrote, the top marginal tax rate will go up from 35% to 39.6% in 2011.

If a top marginal tax rate of 39.6% is socialism, then there are a lot of socialists in the world. For instance, Japan, South Korea, Australia, along with a lot of the OECD: all have rates higher than Obama is proposing. (Note: I just chose some countries at random. I'm sure I could have found more.) No wonder the world economy is in trouble! There's socialism and class warfare everywhere you look!

But it's even stranger than that. Did you know that Margaret Thatcher (pdf) declared war on the wealthy, a war so extreme it makes Obama's seem meek by comparison? The top tax rate in the UK was 60% for most of her term in office, and 40% for the last year or so. At no point was it lower than what Obama proposes -- and that's without taking into account the VAT.

Likewise, Ronald Reagan was apparently a Class Warrior: for six of the eight years during which Reagan was President, the top tax bracket was 50%. It's a wonder anyone worked at all! In Reagan's defense, though, he was just carrying on a long tradition of wealth expropriation carried out by socialists like Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.

All in all, it seems as though we've been suffering through an awful lot of socialism and class warfare all over the world, much of it at the hands of people conservatives claim to admire. If a top marginal rate of 39.6% is enough to make society's producers and creators go on strike, then Galt's Gulch must be getting pretty crowded.

Soak the rich, nationalize the banks, close tax loopholes, and put some greedy bastards in prison. Then all will be right with the world. Well, better anyway.

To be fair, BB has been pretty consistent in railing against running a national deficit, and running up the debt for future generations. Far more so than against taxation. When Bush was pushing through his tax cuts earlier this decade, many people, including Republicans, thought that such a strategy was unhealthy for our long term economic health.