if you think you dislike obama's tax plans...

[rone]

... please consider this summary, which shows that you have little to worry about unless you make over $600k a year.  And if you do, you probably have little to worry about anyway, you rich fuck.

Comments

[opadit.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link.

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

The only people who dislike Obama's tax plans are either willfully ignorant or wealthily so.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, there actually are people (Sebastian Holsclaw, who is maybe my favorite conservative blogger though I rarely agree with him, springs to mind) who have a sort of economic-libertarian moral argument against distributing tax money from the rich to the poor, even though they're not really rich enough to be harmed that much. The argument is that it's illegitimate to let people vote to take money from somebody else (the phrase "by force" usually shows up somewhere in here) for their own benefit. It's not fair to use the power of the state to just take money for yourself that somebody else earned.

It actually sounds kind of convincing if you don't then start thinking about all the other kinds of power and force there are in the world. In a market system, self-interest applied to your economic decisions is supposed to be a good thing that runs the engine. If it's been bleeding poorer people dry for the benefit of richer people, well, that's just the legitimate working of the system; if the rising tide hasn't lifted your boat you're just not trying hard enough. The force ultimately used to enforce property rights and contracts is legitimate force. But give those poor people the democratic power to promote their monetary self-interest, and suddenly that's an illegitimate use of force and they ought to be more altruistic!

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

See, it doesn't actually sound convincing to me, so I can skip right ahead to the other stuff. :-)

[kodi]

It should cause people physical pain when they refer to an "average tax cut" for an income group, unless they're discussing it solely in terms of federal revenue received.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You noticed that, too, huh? My opinion matches yours.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's a trick that goes back a long way; the epitome of it is "Tax Freedom Day", the day when "you" are done working off the share of "your" income that goes to taxes. Calculated as a mean, of course.

Now just think for a moment here...

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

As we move forward nationalizing ever greater sectors of the financial industry, including the potentially optomistic plan, that the Department Of Homeland Security will control short selling with Massive FirePower to show those Terrorists we are serious....

We will ALL soon be making more than $2 Billion a year. Or will have slipped below the poverty level.

And if those Rich White Elitist Obamanites are going to punish POOR PEOPLE, the new ethnic group, who are making MERELY $600,000 a year, then it just shows how much they are Racists, Sexist, and just plain RUDE!!!!

You need to join the Team, and come on in for the Big WIN!!!!

It's those of us

[notr.livejournal.com]

around the 60th or 70th percentile (and, more importantly, all those who imagine they would be if they could just get the millstone of the government off their necks) who are worried about getting Obama's measly 1.8% break instead of McCain's whopping 1.4%. Uh, wait.

It would be interesting to draw the bars in dollars rather than percentages. That big increase for the super-rich in Obama's plan would be two hundred times the big tax cut for the poor, while the big cut for the super-rich in McCain's would be two thousand times his tiny tax cut for the poor.

Re: It's those of us

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I find it vaguely astonishing that I'm actually not rich enough to be hurt by the difference between Obama's plan and McCain's. Especially when you factor in McCain's plan to tax generous employer health benefits. I'd be all altruistic and support Obama even if his plan were whacking my income a bit, but I actually don't have to be.

[epileptikitty.livejournal.com]

Pick a penny from the clue jar: the national debt has doubled since 2001 and we just nationalized and bailed out a heapin' helpin' o' financial toxic waste vendors. There will be more to come.

There will be no tax cuts. There will be no national health care.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

[mopti.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, Michael Apple was a guest lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. He told a stroy about his activism registering poor African Americans in -- umm -- some part of New York in the run up to Regan's first election.

Apple and a fellow Democrat activist approached two older men who were sitting on a bench. When the paperwork was successfully completed, one of the men asked the other who he was going to vote for now that he'd been registered.

"Ronald Regan" was his answer.

"Why do you want to vote for /him/?", he was asked.

"'Cos he's not going to raise taxes", was the reply.

"Bert", his friend said, "you don't earn enough to pay taxes".

"I know. But when I win the lottery I don't want them Democrats taking it from me."

Apple wondered, those years later in the Edmund Burke Theatre in TCD, what it would take to get enough people to vote in (what he perceived to be) their own best interest based on the reality of their situations.