The corporate media was pushing back hard today against President Obama’s announcement that the Bush tax cuts will expire as scheduled with no possibility of extension. You can expect this item to be of great concern to the network news readers who all have incomes much high into the $250,000 plus bracket. They don’t mention this however and make a point of interviewing crotchety old Republican businessmen who make claims about how many jobs they will cut if they have to pay more taxes. This is a false premise of course that I will come back to.They try to make much of the estimate that this re-imposition of taxes will affect close to one million small businesses. This is a totally made up number as at least half the people in the top income bracket aren’t businesses in any real sense, but are partners in law firms and such or have a business on the side and don’t really make their money from “creating” jobs.
Most small businessmen simply don’t take that much money out of their businesses, but re-invest to minimize their taxes or they are being hammered by big business (you know, the real Republicans) and don’t make anything like 250,000 a year anyway. This is of course the false premise the Republicans are using to paint this a job killer. A business only pays income taxes on profit, taxing profit has nothing to do with how many jobs are created. In fact just the opposite is true as a higher top marginal tax rate encourages re-investment to avoid paying the higher tax.Not a single owner operated business will cut jobs to spite Obama for raising taxes and they are by no means compelled to do so since wages are paid from gross income and not from net taxable income. The number of jobs “created” depends entirely on demand for the product or service the business provides and nothing else. The austerity the Republicans are pushing would of course cut demand for products and services that’s why the Republicans don’t want any stimulus money spent as it would have a positive effect.
Since a higher tax rate has no effect on business except to encourage re-investment and therefore growth which will ultimately add jobs, that is if the small business isn’t crushed by some big box store or driven under by imports dumped into the US market at below the cost of production. If either of these things happen the top marginal tax rate is irrelevant since no profit results in no taxes. This is why Republicans love to replace income taxes with user fees, flat taxes and sales taxes that still must be paid by small business regardless of the lack of profit.
The Republicans talk about jobs even though the eight million jobs they lost in the last two years alone that will never come back under their policies, policies that they campaign on continuing as if we will magically get a different result this time. www.prairie2.com
6 comments:
And yet without withdrawing from GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA the FTAA and the WTO none of this will change under the Democratic leadership. Both parties are guilty of selling out our futures from under us and the Democrats are often do more damage because the people by and large foolishly think they have our interests in mind. Like how Clinton got away with welfare *reform* and NAFTA. Time to support a 3rd party and raise the middle finger up for our corporatocracy to see. Its plain for all to see that neither party cares at all about the people and are only there to serve the interests of the rich while stemming the tide against any real change. Anyone who thinks the change we need is going to come from within the corrupt decay present in both parties is not seeing reality.
The majority of Democrats didn't vote for NAFTA and the Progressive Caucus in the House is gathering support for its repeal. Voting for a third party will never accomplish anything, throw the Republican wannabes out of the Democratic party.
>> Voting for a third party will never accomplish anything, throw the Republican wannabes out of the Democratic party.
Sigh. This mindset, held by the majority of Americans, is the single biggest reason we will forever be locked into our two-party system. Round and round and round we go...
The Constitution was written without the realization that there would be political parties. It's winner take all and that's why no third party has a chance in the time available. There are ways to reform that but neither party will support it. Ross Perot started the only viable third party ever and it was simply taken over by the Republicans, the same fate awaits any similar attempt. Taking over the Democratic Party is a much more realistic goal, the progressives have done it before.
"It's winner take all and that's why no third party has a chance in the time available."
Which is patently false. Bernie Sanders is a sitting Senator that is neither a Democrat or a Republican. He's a *gasp* socialist. It can be done and needs to be done in much larger numbers. Now if you want to say the vote is rigged and the power elite will flip any election that threatens their control I would say that is a possibility. But if you believe in voting then the only thing that has to happen is enough people need to vote for the Greens or whatever progressive party is in their state and they will win. I saw the Greens run a full slate of candidates in my state (IL) during the last election. Its time to choose whether we continue down the failed road of the lessor evils which just make things worse each and every year or if we wish to turn things around and vote for real representatives. You are so smart on the economy and the problems and I know you even understand the solutions. However where an increasing number of are going to disagree on the left is the means. The actions of the current administration are intentional and are not guffaws. We know that we have a smart and charismatic President who of his own free will is doing the bidding of the bankers and multi-national corporations and the military industrial complex at the expense of ALL of our futures. Its especially insulting that he was a constitutional law professor. The split is coming in 2010. We aren't doing *anybody but bush* again.
Bernie Sanders lives in the only state where you can do what he did without a personal fortune to fund your campaign. The numbers aren't there for a third party. If you have a fraction of the organization and support it would take to form a third party, you could take over the Democratic party just as the Progressives did in the thirties, the voters are waiting for you to do it.
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