As with most people who are interested (somewhat anyway) in intellectual consistency, my ears perked up during the interchange on taxes between Barack Obama and Charles Gibson during yesterday’s debate. The folks at the WSJ were obviously listening as well:
Time and again, the rookie Senator has said he would not raise taxes on middle-class earners, whom he describes as people with annual income lower than between $200,000 and $250,000. On Wednesday night, he repeated the vow. “I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes,” said the Senator, “I’ve been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes.”
But Mr. Obama has also said he’s open to raising ‚Äì indeed, nearly doubling to 28% ‚Äì the current top capital gains tax rate of 15%, which would in fact be a tax hike on some 100 million Americans who own stock, including millions of people who fit Mr. Obama’s definition of middle class.
Mr. Gibson dared to point out this inconsistency, which regularly goes unmentioned in Mr. Obama’s fawning press coverage. But Mr. Gibson also probed a little deeper, asking the candidate why he wants to increase the capital gains tax when history shows that a higher rate brings in less revenue.
“Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20%,” said Mr. Gibson. “And George Bush has taken it down to 15%. And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28%, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?”
Mr. Obama answered by citing rich hedge fund managers. Raising the capital gains tax is necessary, he said, “to make sure . . . that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don’t have it and that we’re able to invest in our infrastructure and invest in our schools. And you can’t do that for free.”
But Mr. Gibson had noted that higher rates yield less revenue. So the news anchor tried again: “But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up?” Mr. Obama responded that this “might happen or it might not. It depends on what’s happening on Wall Street and how business is going.” And then he went on a riff about John McCain and the housing market.
Very strange. Meanwhile, the wise men of the mainstream media like Tom Shales are complaining that Gibson and Stephanopoulos were engaged in a gotcha game…. Well he might have a point there because he definitely “got” Obama in that exchange as something of an economic nincompoop. McCain looks like Bernard Baruch by comparison. Actually the MSM deserve to be flayed alive for the free ride they have been giving Obama. And now that their emperor seems indeed to have few clothes, they are whining like the proverbial stuck pigs, rather amazing since most of them are lucky to have jobs.
No wonder Howard Dean wants the Democratic delegates to “decide now.” Dean’s no rocket scientist, but it’s pretty obvious much more of this and the donkey might as well take a vacation for four years.
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53 Comments
1. srlucado:It’s bad enough that a presidential candidate would bask in continual positive coverage–who wouldn’t?
But Obama has come to *expect* a fawning press, and now he’s whining because of one–one!–counter-example.
Worst of all, he simply doesn’t deserve the adoration. He’s just another liberal hack, with added arrogance and ignorance.
The more I see of him, the more I’m convinced that his talent is more suited to White Castle than the White House.
Scott
Apr 18, 2008 - 4:55 am 2. Lem:Enterprise zones are capital gains tax breaks by another name.
Is he for abolishing enterprise zones too?
It sounds to me that it is Obama who is the economic dunce in this campaign.
Apr 18, 2008 - 6:44 am 3. Lem:Speaking of economics, early word is that Mac earnings are better than both Clinton and Obama.
Mac does better and he is the economic dunce?
How does that work?
Apr 18, 2008 - 6:51 am 4. Boojum:Same old class warfare against the wealthy again. Why does the Left hate prosperity so much?
Apr 18, 2008 - 6:54 am 5. promoguy:“Same old class warfare against the wealthy again. Why does the Left hate prosperity so much? ”
Because no one will hire them.
Apr 18, 2008 - 8:05 am 6. ron norman:There is a little known bill wending its way through Congress right now authored by Senator Obama that by some reports would give upwards of $80 Billion Dollars to the United Nations per annum as our share in something called the (United Nations Millinium Development Goal). This is being fast tracked and has already passed by voice vote in the House and is now in the Senate.
Obama’s costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7% of our gross domestic product on foreign handouts, which is at least $30 billion over and above the exorbitant and wasted sums we already give away overseas. by Phyliss Schalfly.
This would give permanant funding to what has turned out to be one of the biggest bureaucratic organizations in history; it would be world government. Here is a site where you can see just what Senator Obama has in store for you.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/ibdarticles.aspx?id=288920093794177
Apr 18, 2008 - 8:14 am 7. Lightnin' Hopkins:“…it’s pretty obvious much more of this and the donkey might as well take a vacation for four years.”
The Dems put up two straight utter blocks of wood in Gore and Kerry, and now this spectacle. They need to move the party to the center (and not just symbolically) and rejoin polite, ADULT society to win again. I have no confidence that they will – even four years from now.
Apr 18, 2008 - 8:39 am 8. markus:Once again, there is no way to determine causality. If the cap gains tax cut correlated with a bull market, of course revenues would go up. This is what happened in 1997 and 2003.
A higher cap gains rate marginally impedes growth to some extent. But raising the rate as part of a deficit reduction effort might offset whatever economic harm the increase might cause.
On a more theoretical level, if I make $100,000 performing brain surgery, and another $100,000 picking the right stocks on the internet at home, why should my brain surgery earnings be taxed at a higher rate than my stock earnings?
Apr 18, 2008 - 8:50 am 9. Stacy's Mom:“Mac does better and he is the economic dunce?
How does that work? “
Many politicians have a talent for generating income without much skill or knowledge beyond that of a grifter.
Apr 18, 2008 - 9:10 am 10. spinoneone:One might have thought that the MSM would have figured out a year into the campaign that Obama is a socialist. His wife, by her own admission in her senior thesis at Princeton, is more or less a Marxists. Our rich left-wing elitists have always been more than willing to have the Dems fleece them. They just seek more loopholes in the IRS code. If you are a Dem making, say, $100,000/year you will pay, under Obama, about 30% on your AGI. Plus your FICA limit will rise to well above your annual income, adding another 7.5% to the government’s take. However, if you earn, say, $100,000,000, suffice to say that your lawyers and accountants will figure out a way for you to pay about 5% AGI. And you really don’t care about FICA.
Apr 18, 2008 - 9:28 am 11. Peter G.:Markus,
That’s a fair point, though a counter argument to that could be that the capital gains tax cuts extended or helped propel a bull market. The problem Obama had was that he accepted the statement that the rate cuts increased revenues, yet he was willing to trade off a decrease in revenues if it made others pay their fair share of taxes. Which made him look confused, among other things.
Apr 18, 2008 - 9:38 am 12. sammy small:Marcus,
I’m sure you can work out a deal with the IRS to pay more taxes on your capital gains. Feel free to donate whatever you can to the feds. It will make all the rest of us happy.
Apr 18, 2008 - 10:13 am 13. ic:On a more theoretical level, if I make $100,000 performing brain surgery, and another $100,000 picking the right stocks on the internet at home, why should my brain surgery earnings be taxed at a higher rate than my stock earnings?
Markus, you should not. Shouln’t we lower the brain surgeon’s income tax rate to that of his capital gain tax rate instead? Why do you think the only remedy is to raise his capital gain tax?
Apr 18, 2008 - 10:57 am 14. Lem:Markus… Why do you think the only remedy is to raise his capital gain tax?
Because the liberal prescription for raising the standard of living of everyone is to lower everyoneís standard of living.
It’s much easier to lower the standard and call it ’social promotion’, just like in the public schools.
Apr 18, 2008 - 11:37 am 15. Lem:Liberals would free terror Gitmo detainees and waterboard Wal-Mart
Apr 18, 2008 - 11:55 am 16. Doug S.:Isn’t it obvious and common-sensical that lower capital gains taxes helped create the bull run of the ’90’s and helped raise tax revenues? Stocks go up when more people want to buy. If you reduce the cost of taking profits on your investments, you encourage trading activity. More people want to buy stocks. And by reducing the cost of taking profits, you encourage people to do it more often, therefore creating more taxable transactions.
I don’t understand why this is hard to understand.
Apr 18, 2008 - 12:17 pm 17. Lem:I don’t understand why this is hard to understand.
It’s not. It’s has nothing to do with making peoples lives better, and everything to do with the acquisition of more power.
I forget who said that the size of govement (and therefore the need for liberals) grows in direct proportion to the size of its failures. Homeland security, exhibit 1.
When people’s standard of living rises government is supposed to get smaller.
Now, why would a liberal want that?
Apr 18, 2008 - 12:45 pm 18. Lem:BTW, When people’s standard of living rises they have less children, less children means a smaller carbon footprint.
I would argue that lowering taxes in the best thing we can do for the environment.
Apr 18, 2008 - 1:33 pm 19. Buddy Larsen:Extend your logic, markus — if the cap gains rate was 100%, we’d all still be invested in buggy whips — and there’d probably still be a market for ‘em, too. hey, maybe that’s your point?
Apr 18, 2008 - 1:51 pm 20. Barrett:What were the two biggest mistakes leading to the Great Depression? (A) The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (protectionism) and (B) tax increases.
What Obama proposes is (i) protectionism and (ii) massive tax increases in the face of economic weakness (and likely a recession of undetermined severity at this point in time).
He justified his capital gains tax increase based upon his subjective sense of fairness and not economics (because he does not know anything about economics).
It is a proven fact that declines in taxes on capital increase revenues – not just in the first year but long term.
Liberals really don’t care about economics or people. By redistributing wealth, everyone has a more equal but lower standard of living. There is more dependency on government and government bureaucrats entrench themselves in power via this dependency. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Higher revenues on lower capital gains rates is yet another illustration is that when people have economic incentives and have the opportunity to improve their lives via risk taking and hard work, they will do so. Prosperity begets more prosperity for more people.
Obama is another worthless liberal. He just happens to have a better toungue as he sells his snake oil.
Many people confuse being smart with possessing wisdom.
(Buddy, nice to see you around again. Buggy whips! Nice.)
Apr 18, 2008 - 4:52 pm 21. Buddy Larsen:Hey, Barrett– yep — the question isn’t whether or not BHO understands the capital markets, the question is *why* he hasn’t *bothered* to understand them. The system of creating wealth by allocating capital to its highest best use isn’t rocket science, after all. A defining moment for me, a doofus whose first vote was for Jimmy Carter, was sometime late in his admin during a press conference when he was asked something about the the devastation in the markets. He sort of sneered, grinning, and said “I don’t pay any attention to what the markets are doing” — by way of establishing that his governmental duties were elevated far beyond the grubby goings-on among the hoi polloi tradespeople in the street below. That’s when the big GONG sounded in my head — “oops!”
Apr 18, 2008 - 5:15 pm 22. Greenie:You guys really need to contact the economists and tax experts at the Treasury Department and the Joint Committee on Taxation. Both score raising capital gains taxes as raising revenue. They’ll be so pleased to hear they’re wrong.
Apr 18, 2008 - 5:25 pm 23. Buddy Larsen:They’re doing the static analysis. Of course a dollar that comes in via a tax is a dollar of tax receipt.
There is another question, though: what would that dollar have done left in the hands of the private party who generated it? That’s ‘dynamic’ analysis, and there’s just tons of empirical proof in our recent economic history that supports the belief that lower cap gains taxes create higher cap gains recpts. There is a cut-off, certainly. “Zero” cap gains tax would not bring in a red cent of gov’t revenue. Would do wonders for creating private wealth, tho. Maybe so much that the Democrats would no longer have enough dependents to keep ‘em in office.
Apr 18, 2008 - 6:05 pm 24. Captain Hate:Buddy, I think you made Greenie dyslexic when you mentioned leaving the dollar in the hand of the private party who generated it. After all, you’re not one of those hotshots at the Treasury dept or Joint Committee on screwing up the economy.
Apr 18, 2008 - 8:16 pm 25. Buddy Larsen:the Joint Committee on Using Your Dollar to Pay Itself to Turn Your Dollar Into A Quarter’s Worth of Services You Wouldn’t Need If You Still Had Your Dollar
Apr 18, 2008 - 8:39 pm 26. Gary Rosen:“Hey, Barrett– yep — the question isn’t whether or not BHO understands the capital markets, the question is *why* he hasn’t *bothered* to understand them.”
Because “understanding capital markets” is a completely useless skill to have if you’re trying to get nominated for President by the Democrats.
Apr 19, 2008 - 9:16 am 27. Lem:Ok, let’s give a concrete example, no more theory.
A comparison btwg Hong Kong with no capital gains tax and resource rich India.
As Ronald Reagan would say ‘where would you be better off’?
http://tinyurl.com/6y3eau
It’s a no brainer.
Apr 19, 2008 - 10:12 am 28. Buddy Larsen:another question you could axe yourself, “who really pays our highest-in-the-world 35% (thirty-five percent) corporate income tax?” Since you already know that the cost has to be passed on to the corporation’s customers, the real question is “how does this affect our global competitiveness?”
Apr 19, 2008 - 10:31 am 29. stu:Even a die hard liberal like Charlie Rangel understands Buddy’s point. He wants to lower the corp. tax rate to 25%,which will help keep capital flowing into the USA rather than going in the opposite direction. Most of our competitors have significantly lower rates than the current 35%. Regardless of the direct benefit to the investor of the lower cap gains rate, the indirect benefit to the economy is what is the important point. This allows capital to flow to the most productive uses thereby increasing our collective well-being. The only downside is that it is tough to buy votes pushing this policy.
Apr 19, 2008 - 10:44 am 30. markus:It is pretty ridiculous to hear about the destructiveness of big government from people who support a multi-trillion dollar collective effort to remake the Middle East and Mesopotamia. And every little spending program that you or John McCain would mention as something that should be cut to pay for it is just a drop in the bucket of paying for the expense of this imperial folly. If you want big government, you’ll have to pay for it, sooner or later.
Apr 19, 2008 - 2:32 pm 31. Buddy Larsen:so, markus, you prefer a government that ignores a chance to prevent an entirely possible world war over vital resources, so that it can continue growing itself as a Democratic party jobs program?
Apr 19, 2008 - 3:46 pm 32. TerryeL:markus:
not so long ago Democrats were demanding that we pay war reparations to Iraqis. Now they are treating them like deadbeats.
I realize that most Democrats think that if we just boogie on out of the Middle East it will all be rainbows and unicorns over there, but the United States has not maintained bases throughout the region for years now just to watch the second largest oil producing country on the planet turn into Somalia…with oil. Imagine the mayhem. I have been told by Democrats that the Iraqi Liberation Act actually called for insurrection within Iraq. That would have meant warring factions and Zarqawi still in place. Exactly how would that have been better? The United States would still have been drawn into the conflict. If Democrats were not such self serving partisans they would admit that. In fact if the Democrats had not been rooting for the enemy this whole conflict might have been a lot less difficult to fight.
Apr 19, 2008 - 4:09 pm 33. Captain Hate:imperial folly
Typical snarkus. How exactly is it imperial? As to whether it’s folly, that’s what you and your ilk have been hoping it would be all along even though as citizens of this country you should have a vested interest in it not being such. But it’s all just partisan games for you.
Regarding the spending for the war; you’re aware that it’s relatively small compared to medicare, medicaid and social security expenditures, no? Having paid my taxes last week, I don’t want the Bush tax cuts to disappear because I’m paying too much already, even though my household falls pretty low in Barry’s description of middle class. Frankly I don’t trust him or Hillary to devise a tax structure that will be optimal for the country no matter what its impact is on me. But as others have suggested, since the current tax code bothers you so much, maybe you should pay more than what it says you should.
Apr 19, 2008 - 4:48 pm 34. TerryeL:Imperial folly indeed. There is no way one can look at the royal pronouncements of the leaders of the Democrat party a decade ago and then today and not realize how opportunistic they are. Even Obama sways with the winds and the polls {on the war as well as just about everything else.} But they do not want the responsibility of seeing things through. That requires tenacity and character.
I am sure that Bush and Blair and even Clinton would do things differently if they had it all to do again, but the important thing is having the desire to succeed and hoping for the best.
Obama might be hoping, but it is not for the best, in fact he is hoping for the worst. And that is what is wrong with the Democrats.
They are like vultures on road kill. Pathetic really when you think about it.
Apr 19, 2008 - 5:22 pm 35. markus:Buddy — that looks like an interesting book. But how does indebting ourselves to China in order to finance the Iraqi occupation make any such future conflict less likely?
Terrye — No, things probably wouldn’t get better in the Middle East if we boogied on out of there, at least not at first. But things would get better in AMERICA, a country I care about more. Unless, that is, you believe the terrorists want to take over non-Muslim lands and are going to follow our troops back to America. (Why wouldn’t they go to Russia or China instead? They’re closer.)
Hate — it is imperial in the sense that we are trying to “forcefully extend our authority by territorial conquest that establishes economic and political domination of other nations.” Rather than disputing the characterization, I would suggest your side would be better of simply defending it, as Niall Ferguson, Robert Kagan and other neoconservative thinkers have done.
I’m not sure what your point is about defense spending vis a vis medicare and social security. The Defense budget is about the same as SS. If you add up SS, Medicare, yes, it is bigger than the defense budget. Are you suggesting that we should pay for the war by cutting these items? Or do you prefer the Bush/McCain strategy of selling bonds to the Chinese?
Apr 19, 2008 - 5:34 pm 36. Buddy Larsen:what, we should evict the Chinese from our treasury auctions? Good idea, markus — let’s not do business with rivals, lets not bind them to the free world in trade and commerce, let’s not make peace more valuable than war, no, let’s instead act on your bumper-sticker talking-points and go ahead and split the sheet with everybody who sells the world goods cheaper than your union bosses need to keep their stalinist adversarial labor model perking along in the 21st century. Yessirree, lets go ahead and do it like we did in the 30s, and get your world war started. It won’t bother you — you’ll never put 2 and 2 together and figure out what you did. You’ll just blame somebody in the other party, along the lines of showing that concern for America that you mention above.
Apr 19, 2008 - 7:01 pm 37. Buddy Larsen:maybe if we can get a war going with China, you could finally get WalMart unionized. that’d be worth it, wouldn’t it?
Apr 19, 2008 - 7:18 pm 38. Captain Hate:Well marcus, I dispute that quoted characterization as not being applicable to the situation in Iraq (although I’ll assume that’s a legit definition of “imperialism” because I don’t have the patience to go beyond a certain point on a Saturday night in my OED; the compact one with that awkward magnifying circle).
Regarding why I mentioned social security, medicare & medicaid: You were the one grousing about the cost of big government and I thought I’d point out the major components of that. And the ones that will grow and be very uncomfortable for the post-boomers to finance. Regarding the cost of the war on terror: Whether you want to admit it or not, there is always a cost for any course of action including doing nothing. And the cost of leaving now, as you suggested to Terrye, will be significant, perhaps much larger than the current projected costs.
Apr 19, 2008 - 8:54 pm 39. Mitch:I have noticed that the likelihood of someone voting Democratic varies inversely with the presence of a calculator on his or her desk. Fantasy is difficult to quantify.
Apr 20, 2008 - 7:55 am 40. TerryeL:marcus:
What makes you think things would be better in this country? I mean really? You assume that if we had just turned Saddam loose then VOILA! everything would have been ok fine. Free gas, free food, free housing.
I was a realtor marcus and people started buying houses on zero down loans back when Clinton was president. My broker even said that was going to end badly.
And it seems to me that when the Democrats won in 2006 they were going to fix all sorts of things like gas prices.
have they? hell no. All they have done is bitch at each other and the Republicans. Just one long nonending hate fest.
Apr 20, 2008 - 11:21 am 41. TerryeL:If we leave Iraq now and allow that country to collapse and render our word meaningless then how does that help us marcus? IN what world is that a step forward?
Oh but what the hell, after all, those Iraqis don’t deserve our help and our word is crap anyway. Of course the next time we tell someone that we are there to support them they will know we are full of it. But hey, as long as the Democrats can make political hay out of the loss who cares about our word, or humanity or the world economy, or the future or anything else.Right marcus?
Apr 20, 2008 - 11:26 am 42. TerryeL:Buddy:
Ever notice how many poor people shop at WalMart? I wonder if they would appreciate having to pay more for everything from food to microwaves just to please the AFL-CIO?
Apr 20, 2008 - 11:33 am 43. Buddy Larsen:but Terrye, don’t you know the Democrats are “for the little fella”?
Surely they wouldn’t want to raise the cost of living on our most vulnerable folks just for the sake of the bosses over at Big Labor?
Nah, it must be something else.
Apr 20, 2008 - 2:29 pm 44. markus:Terrye – Like I said, withdrawal is good for America, saving money and lives. If that’s not important to you, it’s also good for Israel, allowing her to put more pressure on Iran, even military force, without having to worry about dragging American troops in Iraq into a ground war with Iran.
And when did we give the Iraqis “our word” that we would continue to occupy their country until… no one willing or able to opposes our presence in the country is left standing?
The arguments against Wal-Mart are many, but they aren’t being made by Democrats. H. Clinton was on their board for years. In the context of a hollowed out, post-industrial economy, however, you’re right: many people do depend on cheap import prices to get by. But those lost prices come at a tremendous cost, a point illustrated well by the DVD of the same name (Wal-Mart: High Cost of Low Price)
Apr 20, 2008 - 9:24 pm 45. Buddy Larsen:markus, you have no idea what would happen in the world if we pulled precipitously out of Iraq. All you know is that our stabilizing the region (and keeping the global energy markets open and allocating efficiently) is robbing your party of a great political coup and is also keeping your party from scraping off its face all the egg that has accumulated over the de-facto support it has given to the jihad.
The post-USA SE Asian genocide is so obviously on your party’s doorstep that for thirty years you’ve just covered your ears and said ‘i can’t hear you’ whenever the topic is broached, but that’s apparently not enough to have taught you anything, as you’re all for a replay.
I’d recommend you study global headlines from 1975-1980 to see what to expect, but i doubt anything there would connect for you if it hasn’t already. But there is a thing called ‘reality’ and it really exists, and you can’t spin it away.
As far as your WalMart DVD, yes, there’s quite a propaganda campaign out there, well-organized and well-funded, trying to ruin the company.
Would you answer one simple yes-or-no question honestly for me? If WalMart were to unionize tomorrow, and keep everything else exactly as it is, would this huge, expensive, dedicated ”public interest” smear campaign against it continue, or not?
Apr 20, 2008 - 10:22 pm 46. Buddy Larsen:Or if walmart just started paying off big labor, an amount of tribute (protection money) equal to what big labor figures it would get if it could unionize the country’s largest employer, would big-hearted, average-joe-loving ”interested citizen” public-relations firms still be producing and nationally distributing slick professional films decrying the plight of walmart employees?
Apr 20, 2008 - 10:33 pm 47. markus:Buddy, it appears the DVD was produced by regular capitalists, eager to make a buck off the many people interested in social justice and whatnot. No union money as far as I can tell.
Costco proves you can be a profitable low-cost retailer while also paying workers a decent wage. Some of their stores are Teamster organized, but most are not.
You must read this article from the NY Times about Costco. With great quotes from their CEO, who cares about his workers and thinks over the long term. And revealing quotes from Wall Street pricks, concerned that this is a company in which “it’s better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.” A great illustration of the good and the bad in business today.
Sorry I wish I knew how to embed links in my words, but I don’t:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17costco.html?ei=5090&en=8b3103305fea6d68&ex=1279252800&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1121705296-Q4tqPzmKJ9sYl9Q2a0xDYA
Apr 21, 2008 - 7:28 am 48. Buddy Larsen:I’ll read it sometime today, Markus — and thanks for the pointer –
Apr 21, 2008 - 8:48 am 49. Buddy Larsen:here’s your link — may i offer, it you would push some of that left-wing clutter out of your head, you too could learn to hyperlink!
Apr 21, 2008 - 8:54 am 50. Buddy Larsen:stuff ben stein wrote
Apr 21, 2008 - 11:21 am 51. markus:I enjoy our back ‘n forth Buddy. I’m actually putting a lot more right-wing clutter into my head these days — of the paleocon variety. (Leave it to Buchanan and the folks at Taki’s Magazine to get me to appreciate Israel’s unalienable right to secure borders and continued existence as an ethnonationalist state.)
Apr 21, 2008 - 11:27 am 52. Buddy Larsen:So do i, markus — and compliments on a major step forward you re the totality of what we safe-and-sound (well, relatively) Americans call the “Israel issue”. Your comment shows you’re now separating the wheat from the chaff — the start point has always been that, what you said. And that of course is what the propaganda has always sought to hide. I’m glad you broke thru — maybe there’s hope for you yet.
Apr 21, 2008 - 12:29 pm 53. CaliforniaDreamer:That was fun, now back to the topic at hand:
Q: “On a more theoretical level, if I make $100,000 performing brain surgery, and another $100,000 picking the right stocks on the internet at home, why should my brain surgery earnings be taxed at a higher rate than my stock earnings?”
A: Because the $100,000 you earned picking the right stocks came from those companies making profits and thus having already paid income taxes on the (pre-tax) profits. As a shareholder you are entitled to your little piece of those profits (that’s why it’s call a “share”). So you should not be taxed again in order to take your own money and move it elsewhere. It’s like taxing your use of an ATM to withdraw cash from your own savings account (which is also post-tax money).
This whole topic, going back to Charlie Gibson’s original question to Obama and Clinton (who didn’t answer it any better, by the way), is basically an Laffer Curve question. When Obama said “maybe it will and maybe it won’t” he should have been pressed to list an instance since JFK’s administration when it didn’t happen. He can’t do it, period.
Apr 21, 2008 - 5:07 pm