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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (108233)	1/26/2012 3:12:56 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 149317

Since electebility involves people's perception, Romney's electability problem is bigger than Gingrich's. People perceive Gingrich as regular guy. He is not that rich one. Besides, of the three; Romney, Obama and him, his tax rate is the highest and Romney's is the lowest. When an American voter sees this, that person would quickly connect with Gingrich since tax wise Gingrich is in the same boat as the voter. Reminds you of McCain who did not know how many houses he owned. And when people learnt that Obama owned only one house, they connected with him since most of us like Obama own only one home and know the feeling of pain that comes from losing it. I am sure if Romney were to release his taxes for the past 12 years like his father did, people will more inequities (not illegalities) of our system which Obama has been harking about the past 18 months. Romney is a personification of the inequities in our society and that diminishes his electability significantly.

To: steve harris who wrote (108233)	1/26/2012 3:15:34 PM
From: brushwud	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Need to stop talking about income taxes and start talking about taxes on any gains. Good point. Can anyone give a refresher on why long-term capital gains get a preferential rate? It isn't because of inflation, because taxes on bank and bond interest don't get any reduction due to inflation. And it isn't because of the corporate income tax, because the long-term gains rate applies to real estate and collectibles as well as stocks. Part of the reason must be to induce people to realize those gains sooner (and pay some tax and reinvest in something new) rather than hold onto them until they die and their heirs get the step-up in basis. Maybe millionaires like Mitt should be required to mark to market annually and pay tax whether they liquidate a position or not!

To: steve harris who wrote (108233)	1/26/2012 4:41:14 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Well, you know, I'd actually prefer to scrap income taxes all together. We have everything backasswards. Here's what we should do: 1) tax spending: taxing income puts a disinsentive on earning money; why don't we tax spending so those people who spend a lot like the rich will pay more in taxes 2) let's stop measuring the success of our economy by GDP, which is a spending measure; measuring US economic success by using GDP puts a lot of pressure on our politicians to SPEND MORE increasing our deficits and debt, because we measure their success that way. Instead, we should measure growth of aggregate investments and savings or aggregate net worth as the true measure of increasing prosperity in this country. I've always said to my own employees that if you want to know what is going wrong first look at the incentive structure. That will usually tell you everything you need to know about the problem.