One Less for Obama
Uh oh. Talking to a businesswoman friend of mine, a young Latina running a successful agribusiness. She was all for Senator Obama and ready to vote for him, until —
She heard Obama's proposal to levy new taxes "only" on those making more than $250 K.
That would include her, and her business.
She is now voting for McCain, as of this evening.
!
Free advice to the McCain campaign, who I know faithfully hang on my every post: get that video of Joe The Plumber versus Obama and run with it. There are scores of businesspeople out there like my friend.
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Her *net profit* is more than $250K per year? Fantastic. I can see why she wouldn't want to pay an additional 3% on every dollar over that.
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'm just sayin'. Maybe people like us, Cog, who had the American life handed to us by our parents, and didn't come over from some other place, the whole family with maybe $500 (which -- o comedy of errors! was stolen almost immediately) altogether -- maybe we don't see things the same way they do.
Same as that other fellah I know, the guy who came over from Italy with pretty much zilch, started as a busboy, worked his way up through owning a few restaurants, wears a nice tailored suit *every time* I see him on campus.
These "people of color" just don't get it, do they?
Spread that wealth! What's a little 3% here, a little 3% there? Anyone run any figures on how much of the federal tax burden those people "unfairly" bear? 1%? 2%?
I forget.
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She'd be paying a LOT more taxes than that in almost any other industrialized country in the world. Heck, she would have been paying more than that under Ronald Reagan.
We have bridges to maintain and food to inspect. We have a military to rebuild and children to teach. We have borders to guard and public health to protect. Most importantly, we have a monstrous debt to service and retirees to support.
That's a pretty tall order - and less than 20% of that is non-security discretionary spending.
The >250'ers will get their taxes raised to just what they were during the largest, longest period of economic growth in history. You can't really make a case that that is somehow overly burdensome taxation. I don't see anything unfair about it.
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Yeh; "monstrous debt load..." I live in Californistan, and can you believe they're going to try and add on some more debt this November? Not surprised at all are you? One would think smarter guys in the room -- there don't seem to be any, anymore -- would learn from our State Government's awesome destruction of the 6th-best economy in the world (or whatever). A fine land, overflowing with natural resources, arable land, potable water, temperate weather, who-knows-how-many biomes, and 10+% of the nation's population to use as a tax base, and some of the highest per-capita tax rates to boot -- and they screw the state right into the ground.
Truly awesome. How could the feds not learn?
I say: restrict the feds to what they should do: roads, military (that includes the borders, IMO), public health -- you and me see eye-to-eye there. But after "most importantly," after you've just listed the "most importantlys"... retirees and debt? How did we get into that game? It wasn't a good idea, and longevity isn't making it any better... [re retirees, I say we peg the age of retirement so that 65, relative to the life expectancies of FDR's time, is kept relative to our new, longer lifespans -- Social Security for 80-year-olds, anyone? 83? :o) ]
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As for my friend, who is a girl, but not my girlfriend,
I'm just saying it's not our place to say, really. Or maybe I'm saying that those people -- people; they're not all robber-barons -- maybe they should have input too.
P.S. I never did get those figures re: what percent of the federal tax income those people and businesses netting over $250k contribute...
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