Man, it has nothing to do with color. Why drop the race card? The parallel is socialism -> the redistribution of wealth. The happenstance of melanin is completely incidental here.

Please don’t cheapen your OWN opinion by linking things to race. Ignorance, by friend, is completely color-blind.

Everything Obama does will be magnified 1000X, without any regard for actual historical accuracy. Bush is going to nationalize some bank assets and they just sit there, blankly, shrugging.

And once again, the brain-damaged ignorance and collective amnesia of the wingnuts regarding the past 8 years rears it’s disgustingly ugly head.

First, what do you think taxes are? They are a redistribution of wealth. So unless you favor the total elimination of taxes altogether, and along with it, any sense of a functioning American government, then you’re a socialist.

Second, it is Bush and the Republicans who’ve nationalized or want to nationalize virtually the entire banking system. Hell, what would be left for Obama to nationalize? Bush has already expanded Medicare, created the largest government expansion since FDR, suspended habeas corpus, thrown American citizens in prison with no access to lawyers or the courts, authorized wiretapping with no oversight.

And you’re going to pretend that your panties are in a wad because someone making over $250K a year will have to pay 3% more in taxes?

We’ve been redistributing income upward for the last 20-25 years. We’ve been overpaying our payroll taxes and underpaying our income taxes. The prime beneficiaries of this have been high income earners who would have paid more income tax if the payroll tax surplus didn’t exist.

Now it’s time to repay the debt. That’s not redistribution.

The whole “income redistribution” argument rests on the notion that some of the people who will receive tax credits “don’t pay taxes,” according to right wingers. Of course, what they mean is, “they don’t pay income taxes.”

Now follow me again.

For the last 20-25 years, folks have been paying more in payroll taxes than Social Security and Medicare have been paying out. The surplus, as conservatives love to point out, isn’t sitting in a bank. It was handed over to the federal general fund and spent. In return, the Social Security and Medicare trust funds got IOU’s.

The borrowed payroll tax money was used to supplement the general fund. For that reason, income taxes for the last 20-25 years have been lower than they would have been if there had been no payroll tax surplus.

With me so far?

Now the IOUs have come due. The surplus in payroll taxes was loaned by the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to the general fund. The debt has to be repaid from the general fund to the trust funds. Given the size of the current budget, there’s only two ways to accomplish that: raise income taxes or borrow the money somewhere else. )”Cut government waste” is a popular campaign slogan, but it’s not going to happen to any meaningful degree.)

We’re already borrowing at very high rates, so the most likely avenue is to raise income taxes. For the last 20-25 years, payroll taxes have been capped. Anyone in the very highest income brackets has been excused from paying payroll taxes on income over the tax limit.

Now if you raise income taxes on people who have spent the last 20-25 years paying out a surplus of payroll taxes, you’re essentially asking those folks to repay themselves–in other words, to forgive the debt.

The income group that has benefitted from the payroll tax surplus has been the top income earners. Without the payroll tax surplus, their tax bill would have been correspondingly higher. If there’s an increase in income tax to be paid, it has to be the people with higher incomes who pay it.

It’s not “redistribution” to ask people to repay the money they have borrowed.

So far as I know, Obama isn’t offering to decrease payroll taxes. In fact, he’s supposed to increase them for people making over $250k. Also, the money from taxing people with higher incomes isn’t just going to fund Social Security; it also will be used on tax credits to some folks whose federal income tax liability is smaller than their total federal tax burden (credit > payments to SS and Medicare federal income tax liability). Those taxpayers get a check from the government. Income is being redistributed from the wealthy to the middle and working class. That’s a redistributivist tax policy.

You know, I’d make the case that it’s not redistributionist.

During the last 20 years, income tax rates have been kept artificially low through the Reagan-era increases on payroll taxes. By design, this surplus was dumped into the general fund in exchange for treasury debt.

Now as the payroll tax surplus dwindles, it’s time to redeem that debt. The increased cost of Social Security, and to a much lesser degree Medicare, has already been paid by the very same people who are now due to receive the benefits.

A decrease in payroll taxes offset by higher income taxes is not a redistribution, it’s recognition of the debt owed to the majority of workers at the bottom of the income scale.

He has learned well from his leaders.

At this rate, economics departments will have to go Democrat in sheer despair at the inability of today’s Republicans to discuss economic policy in a rational matter rather than engaging in a new spin on Godwin.

Kim Jong-Il likes to torture prisoners. John McCain voted against outlawing waterboarding.

Doesn’t John McCain bear a passing resemblance to Kim Jong-Il?

Isn’t ridiculous hyperbole FUN?

heck–no ‘there’ there…just typical Rethug fear&loathing

Clearly, in that they both have letters that spell the words “economic policies”, that makes them almost identical.

Seriously, Jay, come off the ledge.

Clearly, Quaker, in 3 out of 4 situations the slow slide to despotism begins when countries put people of color in power …

Really. Don’t worry, we’ll keep an eye out for it. As puny as it is, it couldn’t have gotten far.

Try breathing into a paper bag, Mr. Tea. You seem to be a bit overwrought.

Refresh our memories–when these calamities befell Zimbabwe, Cuba, China, and Russia, was it an incremental increase in marginal tax rates that pushed them over the edge?

No?

Then go collect yourself and get back to us when you have found your sense of proportion once again.

Thenk yew!

Well, if anyone can find a fresher orange to compare to this apple …

I remember reading on Obama’s website where he proposed forcibly evicting hard working whites from their homes for the benefit of shiftless blacks. When I checked this morning I saw that the page had been scrubbed. Clearly, Obama can’t stand having his policies exposed for what they are by the right-wing blogosphere!

Jesus. Jay Tea, get some help.

It is happening in Zimbabwe. It happened in Cuba. It happened in China. It happened in Russia.

Indeed. Remember what happened in 1993 after the Deficit Reduction Act? Everything immediately went Tierra del Fuego South. The United States in the 90s made what’s happening in Zimbabwe look like an Ayn Rand Objectivist Utopia. Thank goodness we had a Dear Leader with the wisdom to restore order with massive regressive tax cuts.* Look how awesome things are now! We can’t let the MaoistLeninistMarxistIslamoFascist Barack Hussein Obama anywhere the White House. Or we’ll undoubtedly have to suffer through another stretch like the dystopian 1990s. And nobody wants that.

*The Iraq Invasion is also awesome. Also the Constitutional Amendment to outlaw queers from getting married.