Desertion
Posted by hank, Mon Sep 15 02:06:00 UTC 2008
This is awesome - I’m pretty sure it’s accurate as well. While Obama’s side might look “fair” to many people, I think it will encourage the affluent to leave the country or move their businesses offshore, as well as their investments. It is a plan that will force our exports to decrease and our imports to necessarily increase since there will be less domestic industry. It is Rand’s nightmare realized. This will lead to a dramatic cost of living increase, and eventually another depression. It’s a question of whether we want a nation of workers who get a little more money per year but are massively unemployed, therefore increasing the tax burden on other workers over a period of time, or whether we want to continue borrowing tons of money from foreign nations, not paying down the debt, fighting increasingly expensive wars (which, of course, Obama wants to do as well), and decreasing our taxation, which is also unrealistic in the long term.
Obama’s plan to saturate the professional market with highly educated people, yet force the owners of businesses away from the country through very large increases in personal income tax, capital gains, and corporate taxes will either lead to massive unemployment or a population of outsourced labor a bit similar to what we’re seeing in India at the moment. While I do not support cutting taxes and increasing spending, I actually concede that John McCain’s plan is slightly more reasonable than Obama’s fiscally, mostly because of the opposition to push a ridiculous amount of funds into things like Americorps, his “Civilian National Security Force that is … just as well funded” as the military, and, last but not least, healthcare. I have a feeling that when Obama’s taxation plan fails to live up to the cost of the social programs he proposes to create, we will see even more increases of taxation of corporations and the rich, giving them even more reason to leave. I believe McCain’s plan will fail in an entirely different way, relying upon even more borrowing and foreign investment, eventually leading us into the same fate many other countries have faced - not being able to pay even the interest on their loans from afar. If McCain were to have to raise taxes to responsibly pay down the debt, I believe he would do it in a much more sane way than we see on the right side of the above figure.
Now, the Obama campaign has addressed this very concern, but it mostly addresses earmarks. McCain also primarily denounces earmarks when he talks about “cutting spending.” Earmarks have been demonized into being the worst wasteful spending possible, but the real problem is the number of social programs Obama will create, build upon, or perpetuate. For instance, he is a proponent of building low-income housing, which has created crime-ridden neighborhoods for years. He and McCain support the mortgage bailout that is happening right before our eyes, which will save the irresponsible house-flippers who made bad investments in their homes or obtained mortgages with terrible terms, as well as save the organizations that made this possible, Fannie and Freddie. The lenders themselves, while marketing bad loan products, are simply the middlemen, and the guarantee that Fannie and Freddie would buy any mortgage-backed-security-bundle they created is what has caused this mess. But, instead of those people having to stimulate the rental property industry and “lose” their homes (which just means the banks lose, housing prices go down, and people who don’t own homes currently have access to cheap property), we’ve decided to punish all the people of America for the mistakes of the few.
I still believe that my taxes will increase when the people most able to leave the country decide they don’t want to lose an extra $700.000 per year, and when the top 1% leave, we will be left with 28% more tax burden. All that needs to happen is for 3,000,000 people to leave.
Update
Obama laid out some of the things I said in a speech yesterday by the looks of it.
Blog Posts
September 21, 2008 @ 02:22 AM
Do you honestly believe that people that make over 2.85 million will leave the country if their taxes are increased? You have to think about the places they will go. Even if their taxes are increased, compared to tax rates in other western countries their taxes in the US would be low. Also you have to think about the issue of citizenship, and the fact that these people see themselves as American and will not just give that up for reduced taxes. My bigger issue with this is the idea of trickle down economics. I think the result of the last few days shown that this system has not worked, and now a president that viewed himself a de-regulator is responsible for the largest bailout in history. One final point, I contest this, “low-income housing, which has created crime-ridden neighborhoods for years”. To say this I feel show a disregard for the actual causes of crime. Making homes available for those who can least afford it does not in it self cause crime. Would you prefer that these people had no home? Also, the majority of these crimes are associated with drugs. Legalization of drugs would do more to stop crime then anything. Eric, I ask you to vote with the mindset of your current socio-economic status, not the one you want to be in. When you are rich you can vote like it. Until then remember where people like myself, and you are. We are in that bottom 90%.
September 22, 2008 @ 12:52 AM
Zach, I agree that there will probably be very few people who will leave immediately if their taxes are only increased a little, but the idea of continuing to increase taxes on the rich will not hold forever. The claim that most other western countries have higher taxes is false - right now it’s 35% federal and around 5% state for most of the people in question, so 40%. If this increases to more like 55% or 60%, these people will be seeing more income tax than almost any other western country. See this.
The real problem in the housing market is the fact that there is no responsibility given to the banks that actually write the mortgages. Instead of increasing regulation on the banks or on Fannie and Freddie, we should just eliminate Fannie and Freddie and let banks hold their mortgages or sell them to individual investors. Concentrating the risk federally was extremely stupid, and punishes everyone, as we’re seeing.
Low-income housing was meant to get poor people on their feet, but it creates neighborhoods of people who are much more desperate than most. This is where the bad connotation of the “projects” comes from. The illegality of drugs is not the cause either, but it is the chosen method of many desperate people to make fast money. Of course I do not prefer that these people had no home, but why should we build them a slum to live in that ends up costing us dearly to police it, in lives and dollars? It would be much better for them, and for us in the long run, to have them live in better communities and subsidize their rent.
Now, you know me, I’m all about eliminating the black market of drugs. Yet, would drug dealers, losing their profits to the industry, really just go back to factory work or McDonalds? No - they’ll find something else that makes them fast money for having questionable morals and disregard for the law, such as armed robbery, arms trading, organized crime, racketeering, hawking prescription drugs, etc. To reiterate, clustering/segregating the poor and possibly desperate is a bad idea, as has been shown famously in multiple cities in America, and removes all communal responsibility from the rich and middle-class since they don’t have to deal with it on a daily basis.
Also, I plan not to endorse either side in this election, and will probably abstain from voting out of principle and reality. Maryland is bluer than the sky this year.