Some thoughts on the president’s petulance and its effect on Tuesday’s electorate. I disagree with this, though:
Our 44th president is a man who has an excellent brain and a not-infrequently childish disposition and who thinks he knows what is best for everyone but has neither the patience nor the humility to deal with those who preach a different way. He’s both brilliant – and exceedingly petulant.
I continue to fail to see the evidence for his “excellent brain” or his “brilliance.” I think that both are highly overrated, and always have. My esteem for his intelligence has dropped, however, along with that of the now-unentranced public. They now realize he isn’t as smart as the media insisted he was. I now think him an ideologically blinded fool.
[Update a couple minutes later]
See, here’s a perfect example: “Obama Calls For Compromise, Won’t Budge On Tax Cuts.” Democrats think that “compromise” means “going along with what the Democrats want.”
And as usual, he demagogues and lies:
“At a time when we are going to ask folks across the board to make such difficult sacrifices, I don’t see how we can afford to borrow an additional $700 billion from other countries to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent, even for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans,” the president said. “We’d be digging ourselves into an even deeper fiscal hole and passing the burden on to our children.”
No one, least of all Barack Obama, knows how much it will cost to keep those rates in place, or if it will “cost” anything at all.
The way I see it, anyone that believes the crap Obama does about economics can’t be that smart.
Apparently, we don’t borrow from other countries to provide entertainments or foreign travel for the Obamas and their friends.
Buffet has been arguing that wealthy people like himself should be taxed more, that the high end tax system is actually regressive. His effective tax rate, due to his much higher income and greater flexibility/options is less than that of many of his employees, and he thinks this wrong. I am not sure why this is but I would probably advocate an increase in tax rates on the very rich if it resulted in effective tax rates (actual as opposed to theoretical) that were closer to that of a flat tax system.
The Gini coefficient in the US has increased greatly in recent years, the disparity between rich and poor is now much greater than the historical average, and dangerously so. Perhaps this is in part due to business economies of scale with regard to fighting bureaucracy, unfairly advantaging the super rich over everyone else. Whatever, this really needs to be addressed (in a non punitive manner – something is fundamentally wrong).
I do not see the US federal government as actually capable of the ~20% expenditure cuts that some European countries have enacted when the need arose. The federal government is not that accountable and vested interests have far more power in the US. Europe for all its socialism does still have effective limits on the size of central government that actually work – unlike the US.
There is nothing to stop Buffet from taking less deductions except for his own ethos.
I tend to believe the administration’s other words about knife fights, hand to hand combat, punishing their enemies, and playing in hell.
Which party is a heartbeat away from violence due to the rhetoric of their politicians?
No one, least of all Barack Obama, knows how much it will cost to keep those rates in place, or if it will “cost” anything at all.
I don’t know exactly how much weight I would gain on a diet of 100% ice cream, or even if I would gain any weight at all; clearly anyone telling me that I shouldn’t try to lose weight by eating ice cream is a liar.
I should have added that because I do not see the US federal government as actually capable of dramatically reducing expenditure, as many other countries have done, tax increases will be necessary to pay off the deficit (assuming ongoing anemic economic growth that means tax rate increases).
Existing tax sources are I suspect near their practical limit so this likely means some kind of VAT will become necessary. By avoiding austerity during this crisis, Obama has perhaps made such a tax inevitable. Tanstaafl. Yes these tax increases will further hold back the economy – it is too late to do anything about that now. Is this what the Obama administration intended all along? A crisis is an awful thing to waste…
Are you ever going to get it right Jim? Obama is saying that keeping the Bush tax rates means borrowing money. It does not. What it does mean is whatever money taxes bring in are what they have. Then the issue is how to spend it. So he’s a liar and you’re a liar. I hope you choke on your ice cream.
Send a petition around “the rich” asking “Please sign if you think you should pay more.”
Then pass a bill that anyone who signed the petition has had their assets naturalized exactly as they desired.
It’s the tax rate stupid.
When will we get out of this endless, meaningless circle. The One will not budge because he wants to punish the rich, or at least believes he can. Lowering the Rate will do just what it always has. Increase govt. revenues.