Posted on 02/25/2009 8:25:14 PM PST by St. Louis Conservative
President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."
This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.
Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I like the sound of that.
The news pages are pretty typical for a mainstream newspaper, however the editorial page is fantastic. They have great conservative writers over there.
Not only is the Obambi administration fiscally irresponsible it is only financially insane. The Obambi administration is making the spending by the previous republican majority Congress look like a bunch of misers by comparison! Don’t they know our country is financially bankrupt. Can’t they get that simple fact through their thick skulls? By driving the country deeper into debt is prolonging the agony. These are irresponsible dangerous people and they should all be impeached immediately.
A second front could be to put sand in the socialist gears, help turn every redistributionist program into an over-budget disaster, not that it wouldn't become one anyway. The internet is our information friend. We now have super-human powers of communication, open source wisdom, and information sharing.
Another thing is to keep up appearances of wealth: a beautiful green lawn, the house front in good repair, a clean new-looking SUV, a smoking chimney, laughter and happiness. Tell all your neighbors about the great restaurants and vacations out there. Don't let them win in their effort to turn America into Cuba Norte.
The root cause of war is envy, and envy is attacking. This war has broken out and is on!
Laffer was right.
I see it in my business (real estate). I've already notified the contractors I use that I will not be doing any new rehab or remodeling this year. Also, if my tax burden is increased then I will delay start up until the rents reflect my increased costs.
I'm in business to make money. I'm not a social welfare agency.
The Obambi administration is one of the most anti-business administrations in US history so far and unfortunately this is going to continue.
Democrats don't necessarily want more tax revenues. They want you cowering in a one bedroom dilapidated apartment watching them, your communist leaders, on a community-approved sized TV, not emitting any more CO2 than from tofu and bean sprout digestion.
Continue to work hard and enjoy life. Just work hard at things that cannot be taxed during the socialist era. Self performed home-improvement is an example.
Don't let them win. They want you to drop out and stop being a source of envy to them. Even driving an old rusty truck, a vehicle they don't own, makes these sick people envious. They want you to go back to living as a hairless baboon eating grubs off a stick, while they continue to stew in their sorry lives. Misery loves company.
There is much benefit to playing on a team, just not a team that plays against itself. Civilization has its problems but it's a better way to live. Don't give up.
Interesting comment because I’ve been thinking the same thing; I just don’t have the time to intelligently research these matters, but this administration and it’s backers are strangely more resemblent to National Socialism or Fascism than Marxism. And it’s accompanied by the anti-Israel flavor as well, or at least that’s what I detect.
What I can’t remember/research is the Fascist link to the economy. I know they did it different than did the Stalinist regimes but I can’t recall the differences.
HS. The root cause of the war is a whole bunch of folks earning $50M a year who lacked any common sense and crashed the economy by investing in Miami condos and high end girlfriends. Most sensible folks know the difference between someone earning his salary and someone ripping off the public. Plenty to be angry about without getting jealous of those who actually did get somewhere through talent and personal accomplishment.
Thats what always scares me about dims. Just like with the toon, with the zero we're going to have to parse his words and find out what he really means.
I think you're right. He said most of us won't see our taxes increased by "one single dime". We're gonna be taxed a whole @#$%^& boatload of dimes and that POS can still say he kept his word.
Obama is also planning on eliminating/reducing many deductions including state and local taxes and charities. He is like a bull in a china shop. He is wrecking this country.
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