Obama "tax cuts" are really socialism in disguise

To summarize the article. People who pay no taxes are getting money from the Govt which makes it yet another welfare program.

This is pure and simple socialism.

Source: online.wsj.com...


"Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be "refundable," which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable "tax credits" would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as "tax credits," the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is."

reply to post by mabus325


Where do you draw the line on the acceptable level of socialism in our society? From the tone of this, it sounds like you are 100% against all forms. Is that correct?

According to this Tax Foundation estimate:

“If all of the Obama tax provisions were enacted in 2009, the number of nonpayers would rise by about 16 million, to 63 million overall, or 44 percent of all tax returns. And if all of the McCain tax proposals were enacted in 2009, the number of nonpayers would rise by about 15 million, to a total of 62 million overall, or roughly 43 percent of all tax filers.”

Looks like McCain is about as socialist as Obama! Didn't know Senator McCain was a pinko commie in disguise... yakk!

Obama's plan helps small businesses

Other tax proposals that Obama mentioned today in discussing his economic plan include:

* Eliminating capital gains taxes on investments in small businesses and start-up companies.
* Allowing families to withdraw penalty-free up to 15 percent from IRA or 401(k) plans, up to a maximum of $10,000, through 2009.
* Creating a 10 percent mortgage interest tax credit. This proposal, which would be in addition to the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies, is part of his previously announced tax plans.

It doesn't matter at this point who will be the next President. He is being handed an economy tanking towards a depression and a government out of control with spending trying to make the depression into a massive recession.

The rest of the world is following our terrible lead into this mess.

Tax cuts are a dream. Any spending other than the economy is a dream.

Don't blame Bush, blame every damn one of them in the House and Congress for the last 20 years.

Originally posted by hinky
It doesn't matter at this point who will be the next President. He is being handed an economy tanking towards a depression and a government out of control with spending trying to make the depression into a massive recession.

While I'm somewhat of a pessimist, and I agree the task is enormous, we as people should not resign from it just yet. These have been some crazy years, and by fixing just some of that craziness, a modicum of confidence can be restored in the society.

Obama's socialist views sure beat the current Fascism views of the current administration. amirite?

reply to post by Karlhungis


I am one who draws the line at all forms of socialism.

Socialism is not acceptable under any form, name, or policy.

reply to post by Constitutional Scholar


So you think we should abolish all current social programs? What do you think the fallout of such an action would be? Do you care?

I'll povide this link to the other Obama is a socialist thread. Black-and-white arguments are inherently flawed but oh so easy to understand.

ATS post

reply to post by Karlhungis


Absolutely.

It isnt the governments job to provide for everyone. It isnt the governments job to make sure everyone is doing ok, is happy, or has everything they need.

That is not a function of government.


As for what I think would happen:

I believe initially it would be a little rough, but the future of the nation depends on it, and more importantly the future of our kids living in an economy where they actually keep all of what they earn depends on it.

Eradicating all social programs would ease the tax burden, enabling people to donate more (if they so choose), and it would finally motivate those who are willing to let government take care of them from cradle to grave.

Provide for yourself, or starve to death. The choice is pretty easy.

Hell, who knows, it might even beat some common sense into people. You know, those who have kids they cannot afford. Perhaps they would actually think for once.

Tough love is required in these times. If some die because they are unwilling to fend for themselves, then so be it.

Originally posted by Karlhungis
reply to post by Constitutional Scholar

 

So you think we should abolish all current social programs? What do you think the fallout of such an action would be? Do you care?

You don't have to theorize about what would happen -- you can hop on a plane and visit some of the more miserable places on this planet.

In places where good public education is unavailable, inequality becomes a generational phenomenon, i.e. a self-perpetuating mechanism whereby the poor can't get an education and can't get ahead in life, by society's design. The better-offs, on the other hand, cover their kids education and ensure they get good jobs. It's that simple... And I didn't invent this, I was told by a local in Thailand (which is not the poorest country but not great either).

And that's where the right wing ideology leads us -- a permanent class of the rich and a much larger and equally permanent class of the poor. Two caste system.

"Public education" is a joke. More and more money is thrown at it every year, and the results are pathetic.

If people have children, the job and responsibility of educating them rests squarely on their shoulders alone.

I heard a radio clip on dennis prager of Obama stating the hard facts of his tax plan to a working plumber whos taxes would be raised 500$/year. Saying that everyone must share the wealth. But that is to me, code for elitist entitlementality. America needs to humble the rich elitists who use their money to influence liberty and international rogues who completely jack the system and garrote our ability to live free. I for one and beyond sick of seeing control freaks and paranoid greedy losers create a world of tyranny and promote it as cool. I would seriously say their are parasites in the brains of most leadership, especially those who ousted Ron Paul, the original presidential candidate who WON ALL the DEBATES so "they" ousted him because he wasn't pop-culture cool, meaning a mind controlled slave drone from a lab somewhere.

There is so much 'not in my back yard' mentality flying around. We've had a $10B a month spending spree thanks to the wars in the ME; $2.4T for the War on Terror by 2017; the bail-out package whose real number is elusive, but for the sake of discussion let's say $1.5T; $25B to the automakers... you get the idea. We're spending a phenomenal amount of money above and beyond the 'normal' day-to-day business of the country. Unprecedented is a good word.

So who is going to pay for all this?

Apparently not businesses:

Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress. Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

The 'transfer of wealth' argument is convenient to say the least. There has been an ongoing and accelerating transfer of wealth from the lower economic cohorts to the highest for many years:

The gaps in wealth between the rich and the poor and between whites and minorities have grown wider, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday in a closely watched report that also showed a broad increase in stock ownership in the USA.

The difference in median net wealth between the 10% of families with the highest incomes and the 20% of families with the lowest incomes jumped 70% from 1998 through 2001, the Fed said in its consumer finances report, which it conducts every three years. The gap between whites and minorities grew 21%.

The wealth gaps between races and income levels had shrunk slightly from 1992 to 1995 but had also risen by double digits in the 1998 report.

and:

"We have had a fairly sharp increase in wealth inequality dating back to 1975 or 1976. Prior to that, there was a protracted period when wealth inequality fell in this country, going back almost to 1929. So you have this fairly continuous downward trend from 1929, which of course was the peak of the stock market before it crashed, until just about the mid-1970s. Since then, things have really turned around, and the level of wealth inequality today is almost double what it was in the mid-1970s.
Income inequality has also risen. Most people date this rise to the early 1970s, but it hasn't gone up nearly as dramatically as wealth inequality.

The top 5 percent own more than half of all wealth. In 1998, they owned 59 percent of all wealth. Or to put it another way, the top 5 percent had more wealth than the remaining 95 percent of the population, collectively.
The top 20 percent owns over 80 percent of all wealth. In 1998, it owned 83 percent of all wealth. This is a very concentrated distribution.

The bottom 20 percent basically have zero wealth. They either have no assets, or their debt equals or exceeds their assets. The bottom 20 percent has typically accumulated no savings. A household in the middle-the median household - has wealth of about $62,000. $62,000 is not insignificant, but if you consider that the top 1 percent of households' average wealth is $12.5 million, you can see what a difference there is in the distribution."

Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University

So charges of 'socialism' are being made to sully any attempt to balance the tax burden in this country. But if we want a current example of 'socialism' we need only look as far as the current financial systems bailout. Only those acts of socialism directly benefit the wealthier cohorts so apparently it is OK. But not to everyone:

"As I've often said... this [increasing income inequality] is not the type of thing which a democratic society—a capitalist democratic society—can really accept without addressing."

Alan Greenspan, June 2005

"Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution."

Smeeding, T. (2005). Public policy, economic inequality, and poverty: The United States in comparative perspective. Social Science Quarterly, 86, 956-983.

The stability of a country is measured by the disparity in wealth between the lowest economic cohorts and the highest. The greater the disparity the less stable a country is.

No one wants to pay higher taxes. But this country's finances have spun out-of-control and we're facing a long, grueling uphill climb to get things back on-track. How do we distribute the costs of that climb?

Something that troubles me --- especially here on ATS --- is the preponderance of overly-simplistic, black-and-white arguments. There are few thiungs in nature that are black-and-white. Fewer still in society. There is, instead, a nearly ifinite range of greys.

Personally, I'll end-up paying more taxes under the Obama plan. Like anyone else I'd rather not. But I'm a realist. Huge mistakes have been made by the leadership of this country and we're all going to have pay the tab for that drunken kegger. I believe this country --- any country --- is better off when people have hope. This isn't about lazy, underachievers. That argument is ridiculous if not outright insulting. It's about taking responsibility. Which is worse, the single mother getting foodstamps to feed her kids becuase her take-home isn't enough to make ends meet or the corporate CEO who can pay a tax accountant $1M to make sure he shelters all his income?

Keep one thing in mind all you blue-flag-waving folks: those military people that we need to honor? They're middle-class. Their families are on-the-ropes. This 'wealth distribution' will help them, too.