 cadillacky. Thursday, October 30, 2008 are you picking up on what the end days of mcSame's campaign is all about? i've yakked about the constant and erratic lack of message, but i guess they've kind of settled on one. 'obama wants to redistribute wealth...your wealth...' assuming i reckon that you are wealthy. all 5% of you. obama spoke to it brilliantly by talking about sharing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when he was in fourth grade. but beyond the almost humorous last ditch effort to make this election some sort of class war (more on my thought on this below) is mcBush's disconnect in what it says about him as a candidate. in essence he is saying, 'redistribution is bad, when the rich are not getting the redistribution.' this really is the basis of his argument. since the reagan era and continued on with bush's tax cuts, u.s. tax policy has been merely about giving those winning in the economic checker game an even bigger reward by allowing them tax cuts, loopholes and redistributing all of our insignificant wealth to those already succeeding, er...wealthy. you see income tax (which you notice is the only taxes that republicans ever talk about when they are screaming 'socialist.') is the only progressive tax of any significance in our country. Almost every other tax in the u.s. is regressive—meaning, these taxes hit you harder the less money you make. oh, there are regressive elements at play in our income tax system, for sure. the wealthy are always lamenting about liberals talking about raising their capital gains--why? because in our income tax system they are taxed at a lower rate than earned income—so that means that money someone earned by buying a stock is taxed at a much lower rate than what a janitor earned cleaning up a piss-stained toilet, or a garbageman earned dumping pickled-trash soup, or a nurse earned for cleaning the shit off your grandmother in the ER. the progressive part is the percentage you pay on what you make...the regressive part...the fact that a lesser percentage is paid if you made dough investing...to our tax system, working for a living gets less of a nod than investing, you know because there is risk in investing...and there is no risk in loosing an arm on an assembly line. so you and i, for the most part, we get fucked because of the progressive nature of our income taxes while hardly benefiting at all from the regressive elements allowed by capital gains and other loopholes the rich get the front tit on. i get it, sure. the rich pay more taxes than the poor, not percentage wise though, monetarily—the numbers are great but percentage wise, not so much. warren buffet, everyman's recent 'go-to' rich dude made mention that whatever the nominal tax rate for people who travel in his tax bracket is, he and his ilk actually paid less in percentage terms than his secretary did. soak that in. in percentage to his salary, he paid less, than the person answering his phone, getting his joe the coffee and filing his briefs. how confident was buffet that this was the case, he offered $1 million dollars to anyone that could produce a tax return that could show that one of the nation's wealthiest individuals pays a higher tax rate than one of their subordinates. he's still waiting. the lower and middle classes continue to be taxed at a greater percentage than to the rich and that with the current market tankage, that the bailout by american taxpayers not only is the $700 billion flooding the banks but also $4-5 trillion more in continued regressive tax breaks for the rich. so when we talk redistribution of wealth, let's be sure, mcLame wants to make sure that the top 1-5% don't loose a penny. and they are gonna piss down all the wealth on you and i, the middle, working class, see how well that has worked the past eight years and we've gone from a surplus beyond reproach to a deficit beyond explanation in the country. see how it's worked, as we are in a recession, near a depression. see! it has truly worked. what? it hasn't, then why even even this band of crack-pots a fucking thought when it comes to electibility? the folks who made the most busted the system, we're bailing them out, we're not punishing them at all and taxing them fairly is now being referred to as socialism...well, i don't know about you, but the current system and those policies that mcPalin wants to continue will push even more towards our stature as world's largest banana republic...and if you don't know the 'definition' of the phrase, here it is, see if it is relative...A Banana Republic is a pejorative term for a small country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture (e.g., bananas), and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy, and corrupt clique...these nations have kept the government structures that were modeled after the colonial Spanish ruling clique, with a small, largely leisure class on the top, and a large, poorly educated and poorly paid working class of peons, though it might have the (fake) trappings of modernity (such as styling itself a republic with a president etc.) wake up, you've been fighting a class war for some time now and much like a deer involved in the 'sport' of deerhunting, we were not aware we are playing and even less aware we have already lost. vote early if you can. vote for some real change. ditch the cadillac talk and hit the bike and let's do something to fix something. cadtiki. Diana (Mark L clone) Ilford HP5+ Comment (1) | Permalink |
