From Reuters:
Obama told CNBC that he would raise taxes on Americans making $250,000 a year or more and raise the capital gains tax for those in higher income brackets while exempting small investors. He said the U.S. economy has been “out of balance for too long.”
“The general principle of raising taxes on higher income Americans, like myself, and providing relief to those who haven’t benefited as much from this new global economy, I think, is a sound one,” Obama said.
But Obama, 46, said he would consider deferring some of the tax increases, depending on the economic situation he inherits from President George W. Bush should he win the November election.
McCain says:
McCain, 71, vowed to maintain Bush’s tax cuts, lower corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent and allow companies to expense new equipment and technology in their first year.
He supported keeping capital gains taxes as they are now, doubling a tax exemption for children, and phasing out the Alternative Minimum Tax, which he said would save some 25 million middle-class families up to $2,000 in a year.
He said he could pay for the plan by cutting what he called wasteful government spending, including ethanol and sugar subsidies and weapons systems.
“We’re going to scrub every agency of government and we’re going to make them justify their existence. And if they can’t, they’re going to go out of existence,” he said on CNBC.
This is a good, substantive debate. Barack Obama is emerging as a Robin Hood. And finally we’re hearing limited government advocated by John McCain. In this debate there are a few things to remember. First, the status quo may be inherently unfair. That’s worth considering and we ought to hear Obama out. If his ideas are bad, that will become apparent. It may be that some Americans are paying more than their “fair share”. Of course defining “fair share” is an interesting debate in and of itself.
-Tom
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjuuyw2qreA[/youtube]
Okay, I’ll bite and start it off.
This is lame and typical of the dems. Complain about the rich and how the republican policies benefit them. They frequently forget that the rich already pay most of the taxes. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but the numbers are surprising. I remember something about the top 50% of wage earners pay 95% or so of the taxes. How is that fair to the rich?
It doesn’t seem very smart to bite the hand that feeds you.
The top 1% of earners pay 37% of the income tax. The bottom 50% of earners pay 3% of the income tax.
Oh, and Bush’s “tax cuts for the rich” isn’t really true either.
by cutting taxes on lower incomes you stimulate the economy. As ben bernanky has said about the economic stimulous package, the lower income families are expected to spend more of the stimulous than the higher income. This can be applied to tax policy by letting 95% of the population have more money they will spend more in our economy. This in turn will allow companies to have higher revenues and higher earnings also allowing for higher wages. By raising taxes on the wealthy you significantly increase the tax revenue to pay for the tax cuts for the “working class”.
-econ 101
By crying foul on the top earners paying “more” taxes you are very ignorantly placing everyone on the same playing field. To say it is unfair to pay more overall dollars in taxes, even though the percentage of your income being taxed is smaller, you very blatantly missing the point. It is by default unfair to assume that a person working two jobs, 60+ hours a week and only making 60k a year doesn’t deserve to be making the 5 million a year that many people make working 0 hours a week. Until you can prove that it is fair for someone to make 5 million dollars a year while another human who is just as smart and works just as hard or harder makes only 50k (1% of 5 million) a year, your argument is simply proven false. This, my friends, is called greed. Wealthy people could sacrifice an extra 10% of their income, still live lavish lifestyles, and the bottom 90% of taxpayers could pay no taxes and we’d still be putting in more money than we do currently. Everyone seems to pretend that we all have the same opportunities, and that its poor people’s fault for not being rich. That is just another excuse to be greedy and not feel bad about it. I don’t necessarily agree with welfare, but greed is ten times worse.
“making the 5 million a year that many people make working 0 hours a week.”
I don’t know anyone that makes even 1 million a year working 0 hours a week.
And if you look at my link from my previous comment, you’ll see that poor people pay 0% of their income in federal tax. Zero.
“Until you can prove that it is fair for someone to make 5 million dollars a year while another human who is just as smart and works just as hard or harder makes only 50k (1% of 5 million) a year, your argument is simply proven false. This, my friends, is called greed.”
And who then gets to be the arbiter of income fairness? Who gets to decide when someone has made more money than their fair share? What’s that called?