taxes

It’s the Economy, Stupid! NO It’s the Stupid Economy!

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McCain and Obama may both be on the wrong page!

 Everyone knows that sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco are intended to discourage their use. Exactly the same rationale should cause one to question our present income and social security taxes. Working and investing are both desirable. Yet our nation collects over ninety percent of its income from taxes on American labor and investment. Does this make sense?

Certainly workers and investors should both pay taxes, but should we tax them more when they do these desirable things more often and better? Republicans see this problem when they advocate cutting taxes on corporations and investment. Neither party seems to recognize what our present taxes do to American labor.

When a business hires a worker, it has to come up with enough money pay the worker and also for the worker to pay taxes on his wages. Every incentive exists to cut jobs, automate, use imports, and outsource labor.

There is Such a Thing as a Free Lunch

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For the super rich, corporate executives and others in power that is.

David Kay Johnston has written another book on taxes, FREE LUNCH - How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With The Bill). He writes story after story how you're paying for your own economic destruction, often through the United States tax code.

Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top 10 percent got 48.5 cents. That was the top tenths greatest share of the income pie since 1929, just before the Roaring Twenties collapsed into the Great Depression

A few truths Johnston expands upon:

  • Government can have a huge effect on the US economy
  • The US government has not created free markets but rigged ones
  • The U.S. is not a laissez-faire economy

What's Wrong with Taxing Capital Gains?

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Capital Gains taxes were asked about in the last Democratic Presidential Primary Debate.

Capital Gains are the profits someone makes from investments on Wall Street. Reporter Gibson asked both Obama and Hillary on raising these taxes.

Here is the exchange:

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

Americans are Producers, Not Consumers

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Have you ever noticed that the only attention Americans get from this administration is when they stop shopping?

Bush announced a $145B Economic Stimulus plan that is in the form of tax rebates. He wants to put a whopping $800 dollars into the pocket of every single tax paying American.

Even Bruce Barltett, a former Bush administration member, said:

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