TAXES
Little Tax Promises and Average Joes

It's been reported today that "Joe the Plumber" is not a licensed plumber in the state of Ohio after all. And his name is Samuel not Joe.
This guy is obviously a shill.

His name is Joe. Joe Wurzelbacher from Toledo, Ohio. He is not licensed as a plumber (and that is required in Toledo). Press reports indicate he currently owes over $1000 in back taxes. It's probably going to be difficult for him buy that quarter-million-dollar-generating plumbing business without a license. . .

It does seem pretty weird to lower capital gains taxes when the government should be encouraging people to put money into the stock market instead of taking it out. But nothing surprises me anymore.

I agree. These are all dumb ideas that just pander to stupid voters. As a small business employer, I wouldn't let a $3,000 credit enter into the decision-making process. It would just give a freebie to people who were going to add staff anyway -- and you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in that category in this economy.

The main idea behind 'Joe the Plumber' is the redistribution of wealth. Giving (larger) tax rebates to people who pay no taxes. You know, a futher slide towards socialism. From that perspective there are many 'Joe the Plumbers', people who have worked hard to get to where they are, without the handouts.

What happens when you give handouts with no strings, it becomes the family business for generations of people who expect someone else to pay. I have no problem with giving to those in real need, but we have never come up with a good solution to eliminating the freeloaders.

Those of us who pay taxes just keep paying while our Congressional leaders continue to squander our money -- $55 trillion in debt and unfunded entitlements and all either candidate can do is think of more entitlements. Do you really think the middle class will be exempt from paying? You can increase Warren Buffet's taxes all you want and you still won't close that gap. The only solution is a combination of tax increases and entitlement cuts --not a politically palatable solution. But being Americans, nothing will be done until it becomes a crisis bigger than the one we are in at the moment. The only solution then will be to seize assets, the next and final major step towards socialism.

Your getting lost in the weeds by picking apart Mr. Wurzelbacher, which is what Obama and Co. want -- take the focus off of what his true intentions are if he wins and has a majority in Congress.

Think about that.

The problem, Dave, is that most rich people want to redistritube responsibility and workloads - but not money. It's the poor working man or woman who teaches your kids or polices your neighborhood or fights your wars for pennies while those born into wealth and have all the advantages of good nutrition, health care and education just keep getting richer. Under the current system, the rich have all the lobbying power and they use it to keep getting richer. We need to level the playing field after eight years of widening the gap. It's really about equal opportunity.

Susan, do you believe in personal choice and responsibility? Or were the people you speak of forced into their line of work?

I was not born into wealth, but both of my parents believed in working hard every day, sending their kids to public school, being involved in church, and supporting their kids in extracurricular activities. Never were we taught that someone else should be "sharing" their wealth with us, but that we should learn to work hard for our own opportunities and possibly wealth would follow.

Personal responsibility and choice was not dissolved 8 years ago.

Dave is correct, Obama's plan is to "spread" the wealth so that future generations have to rely on the government for a handout. Obama and Co. will be bad for this country.

Dave, this is from factcheck.org (maybe you should read the article):

Congressional Budget Office figures show that even those in the lowest-earning fifth of households pay an effective federal tax rate, on average, of 4.3 percent of their income, despite benefiting from existing federal refundable tax credits to a major degree. This group had average income of $15,900 in 2005, the most recent year for which CBO has done the calculations. But despite receiving "a federal check" through the income tax system that boosted income by an average of 6.5 percent (this shows up as a negative tax rate in the CBO tables), they still paid an average of $600 in federal taxes. That's true even after subtracting the effects of refundable tax credit "welfare."

Kevin wrote:

* "Middle-class tax cuts were the centerpiece of Bill Clinton's 1992 'it's the economy, stupid' campaign."

That is revisionist history.

A) Actually, the "centerpiece" of Clinton's '92 campaign was BOTH an increase in the income tax on the top 1.2% of taxpayers, as well as an increase in the corporate income tax, AND a Middle-class income tax cut.

B) After the inauguration, it became evident that Dick Darman, the Bush administration's Director of OMB, had lied to the Clinton campaign, as well as the rest of the country, about the severity of the exploding deficit. Although the Middle-class income tax had to be curtailed, the $500 per-child tax credit for 27 million families with 45 million children was the largest tax cut for typical American families in decades. Not to mention that the expansion of the EITC well into the Middle-class provided tax relief to 15 million hard-pressed working families and lifted 4.1 million people out of poverty.

* "Yet, a fascinating piece in the Times published shortly after his inauguration explained how his advisers were already plotting tax hikes."

What "plotting" ?

Clinton and Gore were campaigning all over the country on the issue of raising taxes on the Rich & Corporate.
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Joe--

If you read the Times piece we linked to, you'll see that it makes it clear that the Clinton aides were looking at tax hikes BECAUSE the economy was in worse shape than they expected. President Reagan sincerely believed in tax cuts -- I've never doubted that -- but he accepted the '82 tax hike to attack the deficit. I bet most Americans today know the economy inherited by the next President is going to make keeping all their tax cut promises impossible. That was my point.

--kevin

Tax cuts for the uber wealthy would be fine if they deployed the capital into the economy and boosted aggregate demand. But they don't. They take it off shore to avoid even more taxes. If you give a tax cut to a middle class worker, he'll spend it and lift aggregate demand. I can't believe there are people still willing to defend the government is bad - tax cuts are good routine of the last 30 years. What we have ended up with is the greatest redistribution of wealth to a tiny percentage at the top and the destruction of everyone else. Without a strong and prosperous middle class, the country is a hollow shell; which is what it is now.

Kevin,

"If you read the Times piece we linked to, you'll see that it makes it clear that the Clinton aides were looking at tax hikes BECAUSE the economy was in worse shape than they expected."

But that's just it, the story got it WRONG.

There was no policy shift, or plotting to raise taxes after the inauguration. As I explained, in '92 they campaigned all over the country on raising the income tax rate on the top 1.2% of taxpayers and raising the corporate income tax, and in the Summer of '93, President Clinton signed budget & tax legislation that increased the income tax on the top 1.2% of taxpayers and increased the corporate income tax.

Given who the author was, it comes as no surprise. I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but Michael Kelly had a long string of getting it documentably wrong when it came to the Clintons.
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