Save The Rich! Screw The Poor!
According to Census figures, one in six Americans now lives below the official poverty line. That number will doubtless be used by lefties to argue that taxes should be increased on the rich so that to meet budgetary limits more need not be taken from the poor.
This must be checked. The rich must not be made to suffer a lessening of their incomes and wealth just so a bunch or poorer folks don’t get any poorer. We have to save the rich!
President Obama’s new jobs initiative is to be funded largely by taking away some tax breaks for the rich. Another lefty plot. Another vicious attempt to get jobs for people who desperately need them by taking away some riches of the richest.
This, too, must be checked. We have to save the rich!
Why! Because I’m mad as hell and blame it all on big government. Because I oppose abortion and think science is an elitist plot. Because I know that if we did away with Medicare and Social Security people would be healthier, the elderly would be living better, and the overall economy would flourish.
If you have any questions about the above, keep ‘em to yourself. Just do what I want. ‘Cause I run things now. Got that!
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3 Responses to “Save The Rich! Screw The Poor!”
I think you’re oversimplifying the issue, Michael. Obama’s plan did very little for the poor, unless you believe tax cuts on businesses will trickle down to the them. Do any progressives believe that? I would find that hard to square with their general positions on corporate taxation.
And you’re way oversimplifying the funding reality. Obama punted the funding issue to the joint committee, with the proposal that they raise $400B by taxing the rich. I don’t believe we could raise anywhere near that figure by ending a few tax breaks for the rich, nor that even Democrats would vote for such a breathtaking tax increase. I don’t believe Obama believes it either. I think he’s playing a political game, hoping to capitalize on credulous writers like yourself who are willing to play pretend with him, under the guise of standing up for the unemployed.
The problem we are facing is one of dedication to the solutions rather than a failure to address problems.
The right is only willing to address problems that can be solved with their limited set of solutions, tax cuts, reduced regulation and smaller government. The left, likewise are only willing to apply their limited set of solutions, tax the rich, more regulation, etc.
Right now we are facing problems that largely come from the repeated application of the right’s limited set of solutions. It is hard to get around this. To argue otherwise means you are saying that these solutions that have been applied for thirty years couldn’t have caused our current problems, in effect saying they have had no impact on the economy, but that what we should do is apply them yet again because they will impact the economy now.
The way we try to solve the problems has become more important than whether the problems are solved. I suspect that what Obama is trying to do is break this ever so slightly. He is offering the right the solutions they want, tax cuts for businesses, but at the cost of back pedaling and increasing taxes elsewhere, in the politically harder to defend area of tax deductions that let the few escape taxes.
Of course, tax cuts to hire people wouldn’t work. The buy in cost is too high. The government will have to give the tax deductions to businesses for the employees they would have hired anyway, including replacement workers for people changing jobs, for retirees, for marginal workers being laid off, etc. If you project that a tax deduction of 2000 dollars would increase new hires by 10% over what would have occurred without the incentive, then each of the additional hires will have cost the government more than 200,000 dollars.
Besides, businesses don’t base their hiring on such things as incentives. They base it on demand for their products and services. They will gladly take the deductions, if they actually pay any corporate taxes.
I seriously doubt that Obama will be successful. If we have learned anything over the last years it is that the Republicans will do anything to defend their tax cuts, including bankrupting the government, crashing the economy and pushing the nation to the brink of default. A few million more unemployed is nothing compared to damage they have already been willing for others to endure.
If Obama goes down in 2012 it won’t be because the GOP deserves to win, but because Obama spent too much time trying to compromise with people who don’t know the meaning of the word. I’m afraid his opportunity to be a bold visionary of a leader has pretty much gone by the wayside. There is no doubt in my mind he is a good person with good intentions, but he clearly underestimated the willingness of the right to trample principles that matter in shared governing. Would our current electorate put someone from the party of no into the white house, thus propelling us out of the frying pan and into the fire? I can promise you that tribalists on the right are hoping so.