I was out campaigning for Obama yesterday, and I was impressed with how well Senator McCain's campaign ads and attacks are working to convince voters that if Obama wins the election, they will have huge tax increases. One elderly lady living in a subsidised senior citizens housing complex was a registered Democrat, but she was going to vote for McCain this year because she was convinced that if she voted for Obama all the prices would go up because businesses would pass tax increases onto consumers. The voters need some education about income inequality in the United States and the effect the Bush tax cuts combined with an expensive war have had on our national debt. The only problem is, it takes more than a 30 second sound bite to explain economics and the philosophical basis for a progressive tax code. Unfortunately, the attention span of the average voter seems to be pretty short. Maybe they need some graphs and charts. It seemed to work for Ross Perot. The picture above is a graphic representation of the Gini Coefficient, a measure of income distributuion, for various countries. The darker blue and purple colors show more inequality and the lighter yellow and green more equality. Compaired to other industrialized democracies, the U. S. doesn't measure up.
Now I can understand the top 3-5% of the population being against the repeal of the Bush tax cuts. I can even understand voters being reluctant to tax anyone, after all, no one likes to pay taxes or bills. But what I don't understand is how voters with average intellegence and a decent education can believe that McCain or Obama will fix the problems we face without either raising taxes for someone or going fruther into debt as a nation. We've all spent enough time at our kitchen tables trying to balance our budgets to know that if income doesn't equal spending you have to get another job, tighten your belt or go into debt. Maybe the voters really believe that the mavaricks, McCain and Palin will cut out all the "Bridges to Nowhere" in the budget and find a lot of hidden cash to balance things. ( Didn't Alaska keep that money?) Sorry, I just don't buy it. Congress has never been very good in the belt tightening department. Even with Sherrif McCain and Deputy Palin in D.C. packing pistols and riding herd on Congress, the budget isn't going to balance unless the taxes are raised for some of us or we hock our national treasures and our childrens' future in pawnshops around the world.
6 comments:
Here's a site where you can estimate what your taxes will look like under both plans: Will Obama Raise My Taxes? All the numbers come from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.
Obama endorsed Todd Stroger for Cook County Board. Stronger raised the sales tax and now Cook County has the Nation's highest sales tax (over 10%). Stroger has all of his family on the County payroll.... so it's a little hard to take Obama seriously on Taxes when his key supporters back in Illinois have given us punishingly regressive taxes.
Jess, thanks for posting this link. I would do a lot better under Obama.
However, a single parent of 2 making 35,000 would do better under McCain.
A single person without children would do better under Obama. If they had three children, they would do better under Obama. Must have something to do with the tax credit for dependents that each candidate is proposing.
Bill, sales tax is a regressive tax unless groceries and other essentials are exempted from the tax. For example, in Ohio, we do not pay sales tax on food items. From what I read, this increase in tax was an attempt by Stronger to balance an out of control budget. He also made budget cuts at the same time and was criticized for the cuts. I don't know the details or what the opposition candidate proposed. I don't know why Obama endorsed him, but it is not unusual for candidates to pretty much endorse everyone from their own party. Let's be real, to get elected from either of the major political parties, a candidate has to play ball and say nice stuff about people they often don't agree with or even respect. If you go trashing the candidates of your own party, your political career is
not going very far, particularly at the local level. I'm an idealist, but I also know how the game is played. I bet we can find people all of the candidates have endorsed that they might not want to have in a photo op with them. Sad but true.
We have had a historic animosity in this country towards taxation. It was, after all, a major impetus for rebellion against England in the American Revolution.
It's such a toxic issue that tax increases have to be made in stealth fashion, disguised underneath language, or submerged in bills. Clearly that is going to have to change because there's no way possible we'll be able to fund, for example, any functional universal health care system.
Kevin,
Yes, we want more from government, but we don't want higher taxes. It is like loving to shop but being shocked when the credit card bill arrives. You are right to point out the historic beginning of our ambivalence. The colonists wanted British help in fending off the French to get the land in the west for expansion, but when Britain tried to enforce tax laws to pay off the debt for her military help the colonists went into rebellion.
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