America Goes to Lunch
Ten guys go to the America Bar & Grill. All order the same meal, except a few order a little extra “to-go”. The total bill was $100. Here’s how the payment of the bill went.
- The guy in the custom suit paid $70.
- The four guys with the newest cars chipped in a combined $28 between them.
- The last five tossed out change totaling $2 (though the ones that got to-go meals went to the bathroom when the bill arrived).
When the guys who didn’t pay a penny returned from the bathroom, they were furious that the guy in the custom suit had clearly refused to pay his fair share.
In righteous indignation they picked up their to-go meals and stormed out.
Wait… If you think THAT sounds stupid
Then you REALLY don’t want to hear the 2012 State of the Union speech, where Barrack Obama defended the idea that the guy in the suit refused to pay his fair share.
The top 10% pays 70% of ALL income taxes
The top 50% of income earners cover 98% of the entire tab. The other half of the nation pays only 2% of the bill, with those that consume taxpayer funded social services paying nothing.
Now… what’s this about not paying “their fair share”?
Obama is one helluva public speaker
He has to be to make an argument that logically fallacious sound “inspiring” to some… but with an economy on its way to becoming Greece, we don’t need a good speaker, we need a President that understands economics (or at least simple math).
Anyone that bought into his “Warren Buffet’s secretary” argument needs to hide their head, or at the very least buy a dictionary and a math book.
Rob Jones for President 
You forgot to include the payroll tax, which is very regressive.
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If you’re suggesting Kiplinger’s stats are inaccurate you’ll need to take it up with them.
Obama’s example using Warren Buffet’s secretary required the listener to be unaware of the difference between “taxes” and “tax rates”… otherwise they’d have figured out Obama was blowing smoke when he claimed Buffet’s secretary paid more taxes than Buffet. Classic use of logical fallacy.
The difference that caused her *rate* to be higher was that his income was largely attributable to capital gains and hers to wages or salary.
Capital gains are taxed at a lower rate to encourage those with money (which they *already* paid income tax on once when they earned it) to reinvest it into the economy… a policy CANDIDATE Obama agreed with in his 2008 bid for office.
If you really think Warren Buffet’s secretary paid more taxes than Warren Buffet, vote for Obama. I just get angry when he stands there and pisses on my boot while assuring me it’s raining.
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Warren Buffett has consistently said that everyone in his office pays a lower percentage than he does. I don’t know of anyone stupid enough to think they paid more dollars than he did.
That Kiplinger article is misleading because it doesn’t take into account the payroll tax – which is a very significant tax on income for people who make less than six figures.
As far as capital gains taxes are concerned, I agree to a point. That money has already been taxed. But the same is true of sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cell phone taxes, liquor and tobacco taxes, etc.
And, yes, capital gains are used to reinvest in the economy. But at the moment, investment capital is not in short supply. The reason bond and CD yields are so low, and stock prices are relatively high, is because there is a glut of investment capital available right now.
Where I think Obama went wrong is using the term “fair share”. He should have said we need a balanced approach to balance the budget – which includes spending cuts and tax increases. Then show everybody the following info and ask them, “Who can best afford a tax increase?”.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3220
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Well, it’s true Obama might have said it otherwise… Its also true that in a pre-scripted perfomance with a teleprompter to follow, he preferred a lie instead of the truth. That wasnt a slip in a moment of pressure, that wad a planned deception.
Nonetheless… Instead of deciding who can best afford to have *their* income taken to meet the government’s expanding hunger for cash… Maybe the government could just quit spending money like a drunken sailor on a 24 hour liberty. Obama was elected after promising to cut the deficit in half. Instead he’s throwing money we dont have at bullshit we cant afford.
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Here is the quote from the SOTU. Where’s the lie?
“Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/25/state-of-the-union-address-full-text
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True to that point, but the lie came in a later paragraph:
Quote: Barack Obama
“Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a
billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most
Americans would call that common sense.”
Buffet already pays more than his secretary in taxes.
Again, it wasnt a carelessly worded off-the-cuff remark, it was read straight from the teleprompter. Each word in a state of the union speech is labored on, crafted, calculated for effect. It was intentionally misleading, an emotional appeal to class envy aimed at people that flunked math.
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Well, it was clear to me what he meant. But then again I didn’t flunk math!
As far as the whole “class warfare” theme that conservatives are going with, did you take a look at the link in my second comment? It seems that the rich are winning the class war – and it isn’t even close.
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I saw the link. I also realize the US government isnt really here for the purpose of redistributing wealth. At least it didnt start out to be. If a gap between the haves and have-nots grows, it isnt a delegated function of our government to “fix” it.
Question: If I meet you in an alley carrying a gun and demand all your money… Then gallantly decide not to take your wedding ring… Did I GIVE you that wedding ring?
If the answer is a truthful “no”… Let us dispense with the whole idea that reducing taxes is a giveaway. One cant give away what was never theirs, and it does get tiring when guys like Obama work based on the opposite assumption.
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The US government is in the business of governing based on the laws written by the people we elected. If we wanted a hands-off, minimalist Ron Paul style government, we would have elected one. Since we didn’t, somebody has to pay for the government that we do have. Somebody also needs to pay back the $15 trillion that we’ve already borrowed and spent. Redistribution has nothing to do with it. I’ve never heard Obama say “We need to take more money from rich folk, and spread it around to the poor folk”.
The question is who should pay the bills? The people that saw their after-tax incomes increase by 281%, or the people whose incomes increased by 16%?
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No, the question is why the bills are so damned much more than the income. Obama claimed Bush was irresponsible in his spending amd promised to cut the deficit in half by 2012.
Dont take my word for that, heres his: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyrlMr0Bedo&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Democrats controlled both houses the first two years… They still control the senate, which hasnt passed a budget in over 1000 days. He flat didnt do what he says in that speech.
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That speech demonstrates his poor understanding of the economy. This is the worst recession since the depression and everyone that truly understands that knew 2008-2012 would be weak. Cutting spending or raising taxes the last few years would have made things worse. And there was zero chance of enough growth to close the deficit.
And a picture is worth a thousand words. The decline in tax receipts has been more responsible for the large recent deficits than spending has.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=21G
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With all due respect, Michael, that’s akin to saying that the decline in my income is more responsible for my inability to pay my rent than the new SUV I just bought.
Spending is out of control and it’s going to take a lot more than a few token cuts to get back on track. You could double everyone’s taxes and this train is still going off the rails.
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If you look at the graph you can see that spending has been going up at slightly over 6% since 2001 – more than the growth in the economy. You can also see that tax revenues have also been lower since 2001. Too bad whoever was in charge back in 2001 cut taxes and increased spending so much. Otherwise, we would have paid off most of the debt and been running a surplus today.
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Honestly think there are plenty of places our government could cut spending without doing much more than jeapardizing the jobs of some elected legislators… But i’ll agree his statement reflected a poor grasp of economics. Who knew people without jobs paid less taxes than when they had one?
Btw… That graph woulda been a lot more help with hashmarks for each year. Now i have marks on my ipad and im running outta white-out trying to fix em.
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To deal with our rising debt and unbalanced budget we can do 3 things. Cut programs, raise taxes, and/or deal with the problems of a fiat currency.
Obama went with tax raising. It isn’t class warfare if you think about it. You can’t squeeze blood out of stone. So Obama taxed those who can afford to pay new taxes. And that’s it.
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Note to Zap: I fully intend to steal that analogy. Just sayin’.
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