"Nucular" Bush-O-Meter: 11 - FINAL

[Greg Berge]

The whole premise of the "Nucular" Bush-O-Meter is a crock. Carter mispronounced "nuclear" in exactly the same way Bush does.  He also graduated from the Naval Academy with a degree in Nuclear Engineering.  Accents are meaningless.  West of the Mississippi, everybody thinks New Yorkers sound brain-damaged.  Get over it.

Bush's policies empoverish the middle class while taking a steaming crap on freedom and tolerance.  Those are good reasons to vote against him.  Not because he talks like Gomer Pyle.

[Adam \'01]

Which policies are you speaking of specifically, Greg?  As I said before, I'm a moderate and I see problems with both the very conservative and very liberal points of view.  The problem with liberals is that they spew this b.s. all the time, but never have any real evidence to back it up.  Look at Jesse Jackson for example, a damn fine speaker cosmetically, but does anyone really understand on a substantive level a thing he's saying?  If politics is emotion, governing surely is not.  Instead of just talking about blanket "policies," be specific.

[Erica]

I only wonder why he insists on getting rid of the dividend tax for principality reasons, (he doesn't believe it's fair to double tax), yet when it comes to the double tax on Social Security (which affects much more the middle class), and is sometimes even a triple tax for those receiving it, he is mum. I made a whopping 22 dollars last year in dividends, I think I might actually save .82 with this tax elimination, yet Michael Eisner will save $4 million, the Walton family will save upwards of $18 million, and someone who donated a lot of money to Bush's campaign (can't remember the name) will save $1 million. Sounds to me like he just wants to benefit the people putting him in office. OTOH, the SS tax is absurd to begin with. You're only taxed up to $87,000. So for someone who is making that amount of money, that person is paying the full 6.7%. However for someone making twice as much as that, the percentage of their income going to SS is half as much. Is this fair, or even logical? And yet he won't get rid of the SS tax. So we are getting taxed on income we never even see. And I will never even see any of the fruits of my labor.  Explain this policy to me, someone, because I thought I had a grasp on it. I'm glad Bush will get lots of donations come election campaigning time, but will have alienated anyone that might have voted for him.

[Greg Berge]

Tax cut policy to be specific, Adam.  What it amounts to is a significant shift of the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class.

And before you brand that "liberal b.s." so that you don't actually have to address it, consider the following system as an alternative that would both work and be fair.

Have a two number tax system: Flat Rate R and Single Exemption E.  Each year Congress would as part of appropriations renew (changing if they wished) the two values.  The rule is that the anticipated revenue generated by an {R, E} pairing would have to equal the year's anticipated outlays.

Each year there would be genuine political discussion on the effectiveness of different pairings.  The rich would push for a low R and a low E, say {.1, 1k}.  Everybody else would push for a high R and a high E, say {.5, 75k}.  The compromise would reflect intelligent debate, not the gun-toting demagogery we have to hear now from both sides.

Now that system I would be in favor of.  But not this Trojan Horse crap that Bush gives us, where he bribes us with $600 so (a) his cronies can have $600,000 and (b) so that he can bankrupt all social spending and then say down the line, "gee, sorry guys, but we just don't have the money."  Not only is the administration's policy willfully dishonest.  It's... well... it's just so tacky.

Neocon economists have their heads buried up their asses so far that they can't see that their own policy of radical tax regression hurts their own constituency (the rich).  The middle class is the stabilizing element on the economy.  When it prospers, the rich have more rubes to sell useless geegaws to and the poor have more taxpayers to sponge off.  When it shrinks, everybody loses.  The rich benefit the most from a stable economy because they have the most to lose, so they should be protecting the middle class golden-egg-laying goose, not trying to eat it.

It amazes me that the G.O.P. would still rather hoard a few shillings now than invest in a vibrant economy and rake it in later, but nobody every said American business interests were strong on the long view.

[Josh '99]

Greg wrote:

Bush's policies empoverish the middle class while taking a steaming crap on freedom and tolerance.  Those are good reasons to vote against him.  Not because he talks like Gomer Pyle.

Bush's policies (if you disagree with them) are a good reason to not vote for him.

The fact that he sounds silly when he speaks is a good reason to make fun of him.  :-))

[Tub(a)]

Or how about a flat tax cut?

Everyone gets 1000-1500 bucks, regardless of income. This would cost hundreds of billions of dollars less than Bush's plan, and stimulate the economy.

The downside is that Dick Cheney wouldn't get as hefty a tax cut :`(

[Greg Berge]

> The fact that he sounds silly when he speaks is a good reason to make fun of him.

True, but we have his daughters for that.  Not that I would ever repeat that terrible joke about their recent 21st birthday, federally protected wetlands officially opened for drilling.

> Everyone gets 1000-1500 bucks, regardless of income. This would cost hundreds of billions of dollars less than Bush's plan, and stimulate the economy.

Yeah, but most of us would just waste it on some luxury like food, housing, or education.  It's much better to give it to the wealthy because, as we all know, they "create jobs."  ::rolleyes::  ::laugh::

[Adam \'01]

Greg, thanks for your explanation.  Not a bad system at all.  Might put a bit too much faith in the intelligence of the demand side, but overall seems sound.  I'm more of a supply-sider myself, but I can certainly see where you're coming from (i.e. "the rich have more rubes to sell useless geegaws to.")

Grant, though a flat tax "sounds" good in principle, I'm not sure it's so realistic.  Steve Forbes, who arguably is the main spokesman for this idea, has no policymaking experience and my bet is that if ever elected he would find it much harder than he thinks to actually implement this system.

[Tub(a)]

Just wanted to clarify that I support a flat tax cut, not a flat tax

[DeltaOne81]

Grant,

Got your meaning. But someone who's currently making $300,000 a year pay (I believe) somewhere in the range of $70,000 in taxes. How much a difference would $1000 make to them? Pretty much none at all? Why are we bothering to give money back to people who are swimming in it. And before you think I'm being self-serving, my parnents, between the two of them, who both work full time are pretty comfortable - not 300k perhaps, but living comfortably in the mid-upper 5 digits... and I don't think they should get a dime back... they don't need it, when it could much better go to schools and new jobs and the unemployed and social security and medicare and ... (oh, and btw, they agree).

And just to get an idea the #'s we're talking here, Newsweek has a chart with different kids of family's and what they'd get back. A two child family making $50,000 a year would have their taxes reducd ~40% - by about a total of $800 . A two child family making $300,000 a year with several thousand in dividend income would save a much lower % per year (can't recall exactly), but it worked out to over $20,000 / year! WHY?!? You could do such great things with that money, rather than giving it back to the people who are already rich.

The thing that bothered me about the Bush State of the Union (pronouciation aside, I prefer to make fun of his nonsensical phrases anyway), was how he proposed a multi-billion dollar war and a billion for fuel cell research and the huge campaign to prevent aids in Africa and the national mentor program all while reducing the "average family's" taxes to $45/year!

This Republican "have everything now" mentality is simply irresponsble. You can't have tons more and pay tons less, it just doesn't work that way. Can you say LARGEST GOV'T DEFICIT EVER. It'll foist the burden onto future generations < ahem > bankrupt social security and medicare and who knows what else. It's just reckless and downright stupid.

[jtwcornell91]

Grant MacIntyre '05 wrote:

Just wanted to clarify that I support a flat tax cut, not a flat tax

And therein lies the difference between regressive and antiregressive (retroregressive?) economic policy.

There has actually been some progress in disclosure lately, with Republican commentators admitting that the rich are getting the biggest benefits from the administration's tax cuts.  Now if we can just get someone to stand up during the campaign and say "I want to cut taxes because I believe the rich are overtaxed".  Maybe Frist will.

[Greg Berge]

Adam: ok, a peace pipe to you, too.

Forbes' ideas were derivative of ideas that came out of Cato back when it was more than just a rubber stamp for the beltway neocons.  They were okay, but there are better systems that aren't just an obvious tax dodge for, well, Steve Forbes.  Anyway, I don't think of him as anything more than a pretender.

A flat tax won't ever happen for some bad reasons:

+ eliminates ambiguities in the laws, the lawyers' rice bowl
+ eliminates goodies politicians use to leverage contributions

and for some pretty good reasons:

+ has trouble handling dependents
+ eliminates the precious few deductions that are actually good for the country (e.g., first time homeownership, charity deductions, education deductions)

But it's where we should be aiming.  Otherwise all we'll ever get is the same bribe/threat system we have now, where liberals scream WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!!! every time anybody wants to actually keep some of the money they've earned, and conservatives play the Bugs Bunny shell game "1 for you and 1 for me; 2 for you and 1... 2 for me; 3 for you and 1... 2... 3 for me."

[Greg Berge]

> Why are we bothering to give money back to people who are swimming in it.

Same thing for social security.  The dark little secret (although not very secret anymore) is that benefits go primarily to the upper middle class and wealthy, since naturally that's who paid the most in.  Our politicians are taking the credit for giving us back our own money, less the lost interest -- gee thanks.

We could make these programs fiscally viable and not the cynical Ponzi schemes they are by being honest and saying "The New Deal marketing of this plan was an understandable but regrettable mistake.  From now on, this is REALLY going to be a social insurance program, not an entitlement.  That means if you don't need the money, you won't get it.  You're rich, you've already won -- congratulations and thank you for helping your fellow man!"  But we're too childish to actually elect politicians who would do that .  We'd rather be promised rainbows and skittles and all go merrily into debtor hell with our illusions intact.

For that matter, it's nearly the same story for vouchers.  Would the Bushies be pushing school vouchers if we said, "OK, fine.  But they will be strictly needs-based.  Little Erica will not be chauffered to Andover on the public tab"?  Not likely.  This policy is just another GOP dodge to make us pay the tab while their conies put their kids through prep school, with the added bonus of propping up the Bible schools so the next generation of Creationists can vote in more Republicans on the "Now let's burn down the Observatory so this will never happen again!" platform.

If we grew up as a country and made benefits strictly needs-indexed, we'd be in much better shape, financially and ethically.  Too rational -- aint ever gonna happen.

[nyc94]

I'm pretty much repulsed by both parties although I have always voted Republican.  Since Cornell I've lived in Massachusetts and New York City so my votes have never mattered anyway.  But here are my few thoughts:

Does anyone know how taxing all income for Social Security purposes would affect the solvency of the program?  Or why it was set up this way in the first place?  By this I mean capping the amount of income subjected to the SS tax.  I get exceptionally frustrated when the Democrats convince senior citizens the "mean spirited" (one of their favorite phrases, after "wealthiest 1%") Republicans are trying to throw them to the wolves.  Would one of them stand up and explain why it is fair to keep raising the SS tax rate as the number of workers per retired person drops?  When the system was set up the average live span was 67 so the number of workers per SS recipient was quite high and the tax quite low.  As the years have gone on they kept raising the tax rate to keep up with longer life spans.  I tried explaining this on a CU list serv about 8 years ago and I got shouted down as being insensitive to old people.  One of the women in the group said she paid into the system so the money was her "right."  I tried to explain that actually a 1960 (or 1961) Supreme Court ruling said in fact that no, you have no legal claim on the money you pay in.  It is a "pay as you program."  Nonetheless, I took a beating in the group and in a not so polite way.  As is typical of Democrats, they have no respect for other people's opinions and rather than explain themselves the call you "mean spirited" or "stupid" or worse.  Putting aside the morality of caring for sick people, does anyone expect a system where medical costs rise faster than tax revenue to be solvent?  Try raising that question with a Democrat and they'll beat you into submission with curses.

As for the dividend tax, I read an interesting proposal in which instead of eliminating the tax on investors, they should make dividend payments a deductible expense for corporations.  They article suggested that the current rules encourage companies to borrow money rather than issue stock (and pay dividends) because interest is a deductible expense.  Since corporate income tax is a smaller portion of federal tax income wouldn't this theoretically mean a smaller inpact on government revenue, especially if some of the dividend deductions merely replaced interest deductions?  Just a thought.

I would rather hear a Democrat explain why we should double tax dividends or why we shouldn't change Social Security rather than hear them scream about Republican proposals benefiting for the rich.  Myself and other conservatives get repulsed by the continued rhetoric against "the wealthiest 1%".  Gore and Daschle seem to define wealth by having a high income.  Obviously this isn't necessarily so.  If you live on either coast where the cost of living is higher and state income taxes are higher, making $100,000 surely doesn't make you "wealthy".  If they really want to pick on people, pick on the wealthiest 0.1%, the people making millions of dollars.  

Lastly, the Democrats got mighty pissed off that the Republicans wanted to raise the amount you could contribute to an IRA, saying it was a gift to the wealthy.  First of all, the amount had been stuck on $2000 for about 20 years.  If SS benefits, standard deductions, etc. are all indexed to inflation, why wasn't the IRA limit?  I think raising it to $5000 barely put it ahead of inflation for all of the years it was $2000.  Shouldn't the Democrats want all of the middle income people to save as much for retirement?  If the amount of the contribution is a fixed dollar amount it can't benefit the wealthy any more than a middle income person that can afford to make the full contribution.  Again, they are missing the distinction between well off and rich.

[nyc94]

Another point:  I am all for spending more money on the schools.  I just wish the Democrats would admit that the teachers union is just as much a "special interest" (their third favorite phrase) as any corporate donor.  I can't help but be skeptical of them when the California teachers lobbied to set curriculums locally because without uniform curriculums it would be difficult if not impossible to apply standardized tests statewide.  It had been proposed that these test scores would be one way of identifying sub par teachers.  If they don't want the tests then should come out and say so and give a good reason.