It isn’t entirely the audiences fault. Even when the audience clamors for Mozart, the politicians insist in talking to them in chopsticks.

And when someone who does speak about the complexities comes along, he gets hammered for being “elite”.

This is very true. It’s a Mozart system and the audience insists you speak to them in chopsticks. Heart and Soul if you’re lucky.

Then there’s Ronald Reagan who, after cutting taxes in 1981, raised them back again in 1982 when, horror of horrors!, his original economic estimates turned out to be off a bit. Then, of course, he raised taxes again a few years later in a way that hit lower and middle income people and left the wealthy off scot free (SS payroll tax).

But its okay if your a Republican, right SF?

I regret the fact that our economic discourse is so debased that politicians feel that can’t get elected if they don’t promise stuff like “read my lips”. Economics is a chaotic system, and things can happen to change the fundamentals in ways that are impossible to predict. When GHWB bowed to economic reality and raised taxes, a lot of the one-celled thinkers who supported him in 1988 turned against him irrevocably. I suspect that most of those one-celled thinkers supported McCain in the most recent go-round, so if Obama’s tax increases have to creep down the economic scale a bit I don’t expect it will hurt him quite as much, as long as he is good at communicating it as necessary, and as long as the economy in general is improving by the time elections roll around (GHWB wasn’t so lucky on that score).

Speaking of “how’d that turn out for you”, what about all those right-wingers who were screaming that the Bush tax increases, and later the Clinton tax increases, would ruin the economy, kill job creation, yadda yadda yadda? Boy, it’s like they were clairvoyant or something, innit?

Dude, that’s SO yesterday. Geithner started laying the groundwork for middle-class tax increases this morning on Snuffalupages’s show this morning.

The last president to lie about a tax increase on the middle class was Bush 41. How’d that work out?

In other words, not only is the headline misleading, your interpretation of it and/or the article is completely wrong-headed.

No surprise there. Sorry I called you a liar, Dennis, it’s possible you’re just a bit dense.

No, take that back, if it were just this post I’d entertain the “dense” hypothesis, but the number of times you’ve said things, been definitively corrected and come back to say the exact same things again puts you in the liar category.

As to what Ms. Sawhill said, no, I have no reason to believe she is lying (nor did anyone accuse her of that), but it’s far from clear to me what she was responding to. The reporter may have asked her “could the upper-class tax cut that Obama proposed ‘pay for everything’”, to which even Obama would tell you the correct answer is absolutely not. As to whether raising taxes on the middle class will be a necessary part of any revenue measures taken, that’s debatable, but it’s probably Ms. Sawhill’s honest opinion. Doesn’t mean she’s right.

It’s too bad the fire-breathing liberal New York Times allowed a lazy headline writer to distort the case in such a way that liars like Dennis could take advantage of it.
—Wil-burrrr

You’ve managed to outdo yourself for probably one of the most simple-mindedest comments you’ve ever made here, Wilbur. No small feat. And that’s simply because you only took the time to read the headline and lazily chose to parse it. I don’t think you even read the last line I posted here from the article.

Do you think the woman from the Clinton Administration was lying too when she stated that we can’t pay for Obamacare and the rest of his agenda, and get our deficits under control, without also increasing increasing taxes on the middle class?

That headline is deceptive in 2 ways: 1) Obama did not pledge to “tax only the rich”, he pledged to increase taxes only on the rich; 2) Obama never claimed that increasing the tax rate on the rich would “pay for everything”. That was only part of his plan to raise and streamline revenue.

It’s too bad the fire-breathing liberal New York Times allowed a lazy headline writer to distort the case in such a way that liars like Dennis could take advantage of it.

Subject: The dirty little secret no one wants to talk about

Obama’s Pledge to Tax Only the Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say
New York Times
1 Aug 2009

…“There is no way we can pay for health care and the rest of the Obama agenda, plus get our long-term deficits under control, simply by raising taxes on the wealthy,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, a former Clinton administration budget official. “The middle class is going to have to contribute as well.”
——

You don’t say, Ms. Sawhill.

Today’s must read.

And no, Obama is not going to pay your mortgage and your gas bill, either.

Alas, in the real world where most of us live, the lawyers and accountants who would be involved in writing and new flat tax code would still add those things in. Maybe in a world where the pink unicorns still fly over rainbows and Hello Kitty invites folks to tea with the Care Bears the entire tax code would be “Give us 10% of everything you made. Period.”

But does anyone with a working brain really think a flat tax would actually remain a flat tax once the legislators and special interests get involved? Anyone think they won’t get involved?

That does have a certain sense of basic fairness to it. But it’s also been recognized that, in our civilized society, that those who have more are able to bear a larger portion of the burden.

To take extreme examples just to make it clearest, Bill Gates could see 99% of his net worth disappear, $40 billion reduced to a “mere” $400 million, and not notice any significant change in his lifestyle. Meanwhile, those who are effectively living paycheck to paycheck notice nearly every dime they don’t get.

Now, that’s mixing worth and income a bit, but the point remains. The wealthier you are the more you’re able to contribute with less effect on your overall position.

And even if you do go with a flat tax, would you apply it to the minimum wage earners? To those below the poverty line? Because the moment you say “we won’t apply it to those at the lowest end, they’ll get a lower rate” you no longer have a flat tax. You’ve introduced some progressiveness to it.

Finally, taxes are also used to modify social behavior so folks are more likely to do things deemed to benefit overall society. In the US there are deductions for charitable giving and home mortgages because those things (giving, owning a home) are seen as positive things that are to be encouraged. Cigarettes are heavily taxed in part to discourage their use.

Maybe because you could cut the entire NEA budget and still not have the funds to build a good-sized bridge?

and federal grants towards studing the mating habits of rehsus monkeys?

There you’re talking about one or two potholes. Why do right-wingers hate science so much?

It’s all the exemptions and loopholes, explanations of what counts as income what doesn’t, etc. Flat tax doesn’t mean no exemptions or loopholes, so it would save about 3 pages.

As for why the NEA and grants studying monkeys wouldn’t be the first on the chopping block? Maybe because the savings would last for maybe a couple hours?

Hate to break it to you, Dennis, but sometimes headlines don’t reflect what the story actually says. Of course, I only know what I read.

Yes, Bruce, I’m aware of the sometimes that happens…

“GOP Looks To the Future With Steamboats”

… about a political gathering in a mountain retreat of a ski resort town…. that has no steamboats. Got it Bruce.

Only in the case of the Maryland tax article, it has the pertinent background information that gives credence to the title.

Why would those be the first on the chopping block and not, say, the NEA and federal grants towards studing the mating habits of rehsus monkeys?

For Bush and Cheney? They were either dumb enough or big enough liars to actually say Iraq would somehow magically pay for itself.

But you believe Dear Leader when he tells you Obamacare will pay for itself? Do you believe Dear Leader when he says he won’t raise taxes on dime on people making less than $250,000? Do you believe Dear Leader raising taxes on the wealthy, and states also raising taxes on that same group has no effect whatsoever on the middle class, or lower classes?

Dennis, it looks like Maryland’s problem wasn’t that they were levying a tax on millionaires, but that there simply aren’t as many millionaires out there due to the Bush Recession and the collapse of the Dow

It doesn’t ‘look like’ that at all. If it ‘looked like’ that, the headline wouldn’t describe the tax hike in these economic conditons a having ‘backfired’, now would it, young Jaim blogging from Korea? Maybe if you were back in Maryland or close proximity you might have a better feel for exactly what was going on. As it is, you don’t. Just like your life and career….all you know is what you read, and 90% of it from liberal sources.

Well, yes. Roads would fall into disrepair. Police stations and fire departments would be understaffed and unable to respond quickly. Crime would go unpunished. The army wouldn’t be able to do shit. Need I go on? Frank, I know it’s shocking, but taxes pay for stuff. You really think that the government takes money just to be mean to you?

Where would you rather set up a business? In a rich neighborhood or a poor one?

That would depend on what kind of business.

Where would you rather live? In a rich neighborhood or a poor one?

Whichever one is further away from you.

Democratics

What the hell’s a “Democratic”?

Not really. It actually means they can’t hire a part time worker to help with their small business.

So you’re saying that the business owner is going to hurt his business rather than buy a cheaper car? Yeah, if that guy fails, he has no one to blame but himself.

It’s so funny, yet sad to see the ultra-cons whining about paying taxes to better the country they falsely claim to love, in exchange for the cost of a T-shirt. Soon, they’ll proudly wear a shirt saying “I sold out my country, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”.

Restoring tax brackets to what they were in the 1990′s by letting the disastrous Bush tax-cuts die is not “soaking the rich.”

Restoring the highest bracket to what it was during WWII at 90%? Yeah, that would be pretty extreme. But it goes to show you that Americans used to understand that wars are expensive things that require sacrifice. For Bush and Cheney? They were either dumb enough or big enough liars to actually say Iraq would somehow magically pay for itself.

You vastly underestimate the cleverness of lawyers and accountants. Just to take a for instance, a clever employer can mask a lot of compensation as things like travel expense allowances. Are you going to tax reimbursed travel expenses? If so you’ve just made life really shitty for Joe the Electrolux salesman.

Now you can try to craft the code to account for these things, but the clever accountants and lawyers will always be a few steps ahead. Result: before too long you’re back to your 65000 pages.

And even if you manage to somehow write an accountant-proof code, you’ve still got the other structural weaknesses of the flat tax that I enumerate my previous post.

One final thought, sf: are you going to be the one to tell Joe Middleclass that he can no longer deduct his mortgage interest? Because no loopholes and no 65000 pages means no deductions, right? Pow! There went the housing market! Again!

10% off the income of a person earning 100,000 means maybe he has to buy a toyota instead of a jaguar.

Not really. It actually means they can’t hire a part time worker to help with their small business.

Pay attention, SF, that’s the result of your flat tax code we’re talking about. But to respond to the foolish comment I think you’re trying to make: some of the highest levels of employment in our history have coincided with highest tax rates on the upper income levels, so the notion that a moderate amount of progressivity is some kind of disaster for job creation is what most non-party-apparatchik economic professionals refer to with the technical term ‘horseshit’.