[FoRK] How Barack...

[Jeff Bone]

On Apr 18, 2008, at 9:31 AM, geege schuman wrote:
> I'm still not getting how a statement about fairness got translated  
> into a
> socialist agenda.

Socialism = the mistaken notion that the role of government is to  
ensure equality of economic outcome.  This is precisely --- by his OWN  
ADMISSION --- what motivates Obama to support increasing the cap gains  
rate, never mind whether that would reduce tax revenues.

> Anyway, tell me again how the tax CUTS have helped our economy?

Which ones?

The Bush tax cuts haven't done much good for the health of the overall  
economy because in general they are FAKE.  If tax cuts are not  
accompanied by corresponding spending cuts, the net impact is negative  
over the long haul.

OTOH, it can easily be demonstrated that certain tax cuts (such as the  
cap gains reductions under Clinton and Bush) correspond to increases  
in revenues *under those tax categories.*  I know this doesn't  
resonate with anybody that isn't a supply-sider to begin with, but  
facts are facts.  (We can argue causality at some other time.)

> As The Donald once said to Wolf Blitzer, "The economy just seems to do
> better under a Democrat."

I believe I've made that point here before;  through the beginning of  
Bush's first term, over the preceding 30+ years, any randomly-chosen  
day under a Republican president was 6x as likely to be recessionary  
as any randomly-chosen day under a Democrat president (all other  
factors being equal.)  Furthermore, anybody who is paying attention  
KNOWS and is INFURIATED BY the fact that the GOP's rhetoric about  
"fiscal responsibility" and so forth is a complete LIE, diametrically  
opposed to their ACTUAL behavior (over the last 8 years at least.)

I'm not arguing which party does better shepherding the economy.   
Neither Bush nor Obama are truly representative of their party.  Just  
as Bush is really a representative of the lunatic, theo-fascist, far  
right-wing fringe of the Republican party (which, perhaps, is a bigger  
part of that party than any of us really expected before about 8 years  
ago), so I'm now getting the sense that Obama is the representative of  
the far-left fringes of his party --- and those "fringes" may be a lot  
bigger than we expect.  At least, that's how it's starting to feel to  
me...

jb