There’s kind of a reflexive Obama-hating Bush-loving on the right, matched by a Bush-hating Obama-loving on the left, that creates an absurdity when the two are essentially doing the same thing, with the differences solely those of style, emphasis, and degree.
I won’t try to fill in all the blanks on the war(s) and education policy and subsidies and stimulus packages, but I am a tax lawyer so I felt obliged to look into some of these Obama tax increase packages that are making news.
The loophole proposals are, candidly, not a big deal. If I looked harder at the foreign tax provisions I’d probably find something to hate, but taking away capital gains preferences to commodities speculators, and holding heirs of property for which minority discounts were taken on estate tax returns to the discounted value for later capital gain purposes sound (its painful for me to admit this) reasonable.
Even the rate redux from 35% to 39.6% for top earners and 33% to 36% for two-executive type couples is not a real big deal historically. Adjusting for inflation, the rates on what is now the top bracket from the Second World War through the Reagan tax cuts were in the range of 55% to 91% so a 39.6% rate is hardly anything to start throwing tea bags over.
The bigger news with Obama is that the whole of his tax-hike, loophole closing proposals only amount to $577 billion over ten years, and are offset by different tax reduction proposals that are estimated at $836 billion over ten years. Thus Obama has stolen yet another page out of the Bush book: cut taxes, raise spending, borrow the difference. The deficit for this year alone is estimated between $1.2 trillion and $1.8 trillion. Note that the revenue figures were over a ten year figure so there’s a lot of tens and hundreds to be dividing by but the bottom line is that all these tax proposals don’t come within one twentieth of the projected deficit.
Tax cuts are a good thing if they are the result of a reduction in government spending freeing up more resources for the private sector. There’s not going to be any stimulation magic from cutting taxes, and there is no magic wand that lets you throw money around like a sailor on payday, and grow the government big enough to swallow up the banking industry, the automobile industry, and the health care industry, but keep tax rates now in place or even as proposed by Obama.
World economy
Global marketplace
United Nations
War on Terror
With the USA leading the way and paying the costs and providing the monetary unit of value.
I think the USA is not taxing all of its subjects.
The USA should have a “World economy, Global marketplace, War on Terror, TAX”. Administered by the United Nations and payable to the USA to reimburse and pay for these world wide costs.
Or at least limit our contribution to that which is reciprocated by our allies as a percentage of GDP.