Obama and Taxes

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.

Here is what the candidates in this election are not talking about. The presentation comes from Ross Perot's website (Remember him) . Although I didn't vote for him, his warning of the disaster to come with trade agreements being signed was not lost on me. This morning I saw his running mate, PAT CHOATE, author of Dangerous Business: the risks of globalization for America, on C-Span. That and the first campaign 2008 forum last night prompted me to post something on this blog.

After watching the Warren forum, I fear that this election will be decided based on campaign slogans, smear ads (even an 11 year old can see through), and social issues. If we care about our country, we should be talking about economics, not abortion, gay marriage, getting Osama Bin Laudin dead or alive, and rattling our sabers at Russia. What was really scary was how the political talking heads rated the performance of the two candidates after the debate. McCain got high marks for his expected pandering to the religious right and Obama got slammed for his "nuanced" professor type responses (recognizing and discussing complicated issues in an intelligent manner?). Unfortunately, economics is a complicated problem and there is no easy fix that can be summed up in one slogan or campaign promise.

We are in deep trouble in the U.S. and our economic situation is a major threat to our national security, both economic and military. Ross Perot and Pat Choate are trying to get the discussion going. I only hope the voters are up to listening to it.