What do you think? Their domestic policies are strikingly similar.

Obama – wants to vastly expand the role of government in health care, as well as a host of other entitlements (despite the obvious inability to pay for it).
Bush – Oversaw the largest expansion of the entitlement state since the creation of Medicare itself (mainly because of Medicare Part D)

Obama – Wants Uncle Sam in your child’s local classroom. He wants to expand the federal government’s role in education to unprecedented levels.
Bush – expanded the federal government’s role to unprecedented levels. (I should also point out that this creates an extra layer of bureaucracy, which drowns out the parent’s voice even further)

Obama – Supported the TARP and its use for auto bailouts.
Bush – Aligned with democrats to support the TARP and its use for auto bailouts.

Obama – has proposed 1,000,000,000,000 in new spending with little regard to the fact his children will pay for it.
Bush – was perhaps one of the most unapologetically spendthrift Presidents.

Obama – wants to shift more of the tax burden onto our most productive citizens and small businesses.
Bush – By lowering the initial tax brackets from 15 percent to 10 percent, expanding the refundable child tax credit and enacting refundable earned income tax credit (EITC), the 2003 tax cuts actually disfavored the "rich." Per the graph below, which sources its data from government statistics, shows that Bush’s tax cuts were actually progressive.

1/16/2009 2:46:11 PM

ibtflamers

1/16/2009 2:51:36 PM

1/16/2009 2:52:32 PM

you're crazy! Bush was the Anti-Christ and Obama is our savior!

1/16/2009 4:15:15 PM

with 1.5 trillion in 'financial bailout' money for seemingly every company on earth doled out by a democratic congress i think the next major round of elections will see a very strong reaction towards reduction....

here's a fucking thought, corperations get money/tax breaks based on % of employee's that are US citizens and in the US. second subset would be how much of their business outsourcing occurs in the US (not contracted out to india for instance)

i think that would provide incentives for greater internal economic growth of the US as a whole...

1/16/2009 4:20:48 PM

Ummm, your graph above. Could that not also mean...the rich made percentage wise more money in 2004 than in 2000, those, they had a greater percentage of all taxes paid.

1/16/2009 5:19:35 PM

^ isn't paying more taxes increasing your tax burden?..............

1/16/2009 6:00:35 PM

well, it could either mean that, or it could mean they are burdened with a higher percentage of their own income, which they have not been.

1/16/2009 6:21:18 PM

I'm not sure if "burden" has an accepted definition. If it literally means take the total taxes collected divided by who paid them, then sure, that chart makes sense. But if the rich paid proportionally more taxes because they made proportionally more money (something that basically jives with other data about stagnant middle class wages) then the Bush Tax Cuts didn't (in my eyes) shift any sort of burden. In fact, it seems to align with the idea that tax cuts stimulate economies, and if you're in a better position to capitalize on this (ie, those who already have the money to invest), then yeah, you'll end up making more and paying more of it out despite the cut.

1/16/2009 6:24:37 PM

getting paid more isn't going to drive someone else into a negative tax burden, just drive their percent burden closer to 0 from the positive


but a tax cut/refund will drive burdens into negatives, and also drive the higher groups up

1/16/2009 10:41:48 PM

Quote :

"stagnant middle class wages)"

Wages are only a portion of total compensation. There have been many studies showing comp to have risen with productivity. Notablly, per the National Bureau of Economics (NBER):

Quote :

"Total employee compensation was 66 percent of national income in 1970 and 64 percent in 2006. This measure of the labor compensation share has been remarkably stable since the 1970s. It rose from an average of 62 percent in the 1960s to 66 percent in the 1970s and 1980s, and then declined to 65 percent in the 1990s where it has remained from 2000 until the end of 2007. Feldstein concludes that two principal measurement mistakes have led some analysts to conclude that the rise in labor income has not kept up with the growth in productivity. The first is a focus on wages rather than total compensation: because of the rise in fringe benefits and other non-cash payments, wages have not risen as rapidly as total compensation. Feldstein feels it is important to compare the productivity rise with the increase in total compensation rather than the increase in the narrower measure of just wages and salaries. "

http://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/w13953.html

1/16/2009 11:10:03 PM

TWW WILL SURELY ANSWER YOUR QUESTION

1/17/2009 1:08:45 AM

^^ You have a point. When the cost of medical care has written drastically in the past 7 years, and most employers have had to eat the costs or in some cases (like my case) have passed on some or all of the increases to the employees...for what amounts to essentially the same care as 7 years before..well, it looks good to an economist but feels shitty in my pocket.

It gets really annoying when you academics come in here and try to tell the me what I should be feeling in my check book based on your warped sense of measurement. I know what pain I'm feeling, I can look around and see what pain is being wrought, stop trying to pretty it up with cute numbers and statistics that don't make me feel better.

1/17/2009 1:27:55 AM

anyone that uses a chart to show taxation broken down by 20% increments is a total fuckwad as the upper class is ~1% of the total population

oh and the bottom 80% has less than 20% of the total wealth

[Edited on January 17, 2009 at 5:11 AM. Reason : .]

1/17/2009 5:10:34 AM

How can you pay negative income tax?

1/17/2009 10:11:08 AM

You receive more back from the government in terms of tax credits (i.e., EIC) than you pay in.

It's not really that new of a concept - Milton Friedman proposed scrapping the entire welfare system and simply replacing it with a negative income tax.

1/17/2009 11:01:19 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h96qtbEviUU&feature=related

1/19/2009 12:44:37 PM

1/19/2009 6:15:18 PM

^Let me rehost that broken image for ya...



[Edited on January 19, 2009 at 6:39 PM. Reason : wow, Taft of all people loved him some of that hope and change.]

1/19/2009 6:38:08 PM

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'
January 17, 2001
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784?Revisit

1/21/2009 1:14:23 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVPBpkXcUfg

1/21/2009 2:00:33 AM

^^Oh, wow TheOnion really called that shit... at least 2/3 of the stuff they said Bush would do he actually did...

Which is sad, since TheOnion is supposed to be comedy/satire that mocks various policies taken to the extent of absurdity, not an accurate political projection...

1/21/2009 4:43:41 AM

I been saying this for months nigga. The hattas wont believe me.

1/21/2009 7:22:04 AM