S.A. Owl Wrote:Personally, I'd say center-left, not center-right. But either way, it's a matter of individual perspective. Take this "socialist" B.S. coming from McCain. Obama's proposed marginal income tax rates were deemed acceptable through most or all of the Clinton and Reagan terms. And the refundable earned income credit has been supported and expanded by both parties for three decades. Suddenly, these ideas are out of the mainstream?
They may be "socialist" if you are, say, libertarian-leaning. And that's fine. But that's not the case from the perspective of mainstream U.S. tax policy from the major parties.
Go Owls!
I disagree on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start. So I will start with a couple of points of agreement. First, and obviously, go Owls. It is a lot more fun to discuss these issues with a fellow Owl, because you can count on a fairly high intellectual level for the discussion. Second, while I would describe myself as center-right-libertarian, I can certainly live with center-left. I would describe Bill Clinton as center-left, and I'd be very happy if we were on the verge of his fifth term.
As for the differences. My concerns about "socialist" aren't based on anything from McCain. Those concerns arose when I started checking out Obama after his speech to the 2004 convention. My ex-wife thought it was a great speech, I thought it was just typical political BS (as I've pretty much thought of all his speeches and his books), but I decided to check further into the record. Thanks to the internet it was pretty easy to see what he had done in the Illinois legislature (where he was at the time) and what I found didn't seem to track very well with the speech I had heard. So my concerns about socialism go back to then.
As for the tax rates argument, I think you're cherry-picking the most favorable thing you can find. I think the rest of the record and the rest of the platform suggest far stronger socialist tendencies. Even so, I think you're spinning things a bit too favorably to get to the statements you've made.
First, the tax rates you describe will not come anywhere close to supporting the full range of spending proposals that he has outlined elsewhere. What he needs to explain is where he plans to get the rest of the money he wil need. When that is factored in, I'm quite certain the tax rates won't remain anywhere near the levels you suggest. There's a deficit of honesty and/or transparency here. To be certain, that same deficit exists, albeit to a different magnitude, with McCain's proposals, which is why I can't support him either.
Second, I would discount any comparison to Reagan or Clinton years because the world has changed and therefore the context is different. Reagan's tax rates, plus the increases under GHWB, plus the increases under Clinton, remained the lowest marginal tax rates in the world, or at worst nearly so, throughout that period. Reaganomics really did work, lower tax rates spurred economic growth and ultimately balanced budgets, and the world took note. Other countries lowered their tax rates and began attracting what growth was taking place in the mid to late 90s and early 2000s. Other countries continued to change and we remained basically static, until we are now at or near the highest marginal rates for all taxes except individual income taxes. I have no problem going back to the Clinton-era rates in that one area, and I say that as someone who has been in that highest bracket throughout most of the Clinton and W years, and expects to be there some more. But the other areas where Obama proposes to increase rates--corporate income, capital gains, dividends, and inheritance taxes--are areas that impact investment, areas where we are at or near the highest rates in the world, and areas where we are already losing investment as a result. Raising those rates will drive more investment offshore, and with that investment will go jobs that we need.
If Obama were content to raise the top individual income bracket back to 39%, find ways to cut spending to go the rest of the way toward balancing the budget, and take a hard look at restructuring our whole taxation approach to one more favorable (or more correctly less unfavorable) to growth, then that's what I'd call center-right and I'd be fine with that.
Based on what the rest of the world is doing, I tend to think that some sort of consumption tax (VAT or GST or "Fair Tax") would be part of such an restructuring. Concerns about impact of such a tax on the poor could be addressed by a combination of something like the Boortz-Linder prefund (inherent in "Fair Tax" and conceptually equivalent to an expanded refundable earned income credit or, my favorite approach, Milton Friedman's negative income tax) and a French approach to health care. That combination would also eliminate the need for a big hunk of our current welfare structure. Packaging together VAT/GST/Fair Tax with a prefund, health care and welfare reform, and flattening or eliminating other taxes, really does strike me as change we can believe in, because it really would make things better for almost everyone. I don't see Obama going there. I don't see McCain going there, either.
The perspective of mainstream US tax policy from the major parties is out of step with what the rest of the world is doing. In today's worldwide economy, we're putting ourselves at too big a competitive disadvantage as a result.
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, trying to keep an open mind on her, but clothes yesterday, fruit fly comments today).