More Debate Thoughts
I actually watched the entire Vice Presidential debate tonight. I'm not as fired up as the other night, but I do have a few observations. As some of the analysts are saying, Joe Biden did bring some passion to the debate that made it interesting. I also agree with some analysts that Joe Biden was somewhat rude with the amount of interrupting he did. He overdid the whining/pouting about getting equal time to speak. Half the fun was in watching the Twitter comments scrolling across the bottom of the screen on the Yahoo! News video stream I was watching.
Overall, I would say Paul Ryan did well. I wasn't blown out of the water by him, but his performance was solid. There were one or two times when I thought he was a little bit vague on some of the specific plans or didn't explain his numbers clearly enough. Also, I don't think I really learned much about either party's plan for how to reduce the deficit or increase/decrease taxes on the middle class. I didn't learn anything additional about what the Democrat plan is to save Social Security and Medicare, but I didn't understand what the real plan is from the Romney/Ryan side either. They both disputed the other person's numbers, and there wasn't really a way to discern the truth by watching this. You'd still need to dig into the details and numbers to get the real story.
I don't get how people say that the rich paying at a 14% tax rate is not as much as most other people. Really? I would say I pay at a fairly high rate considering I don't have any dependents and have a decent paying job, etc. I went back and looked at my tax post for the year, and it turns out that my effective tax rate is about the same as Romney's (within 1%). Who exactly is paying at a tax rate greater than 14%? I'm assuming we're talking effective tax rate after you've accounted for all your deductions, etc. And is this only federal income tax? What about all the other taxes Romney is paying for state income tax, social security tax, etc.? If you pay more than 14% for your effective federal income tax rate, please comment with what your life situation is that causes this to happen. Don't give me the whole story about theoretically what someone making $50,000 would pay without deductions and tax breaks, etc. I want an example from real life of someone who pays more than a 14% effective federal income tax rate and how this occurs. Also, how is 14% of many millions of dollars (which means the taxes he pays are in the millions of dollars) something to belittle when most people are paying taxes in the amounts of thousands of dollars (if they are paying taxes at all)? It's all in how you look at the numbers. You can make the data say whatever you want it to say.
Now on to some cases of hypocrisy that I detected.
Joe Biden said several times very directly that it's the responsibility of the Afghans to take over from our U.S. troops and be responsible for securing their own country. I find his adamant stance on responsibility ironic, considering how the Democrat party encourages many to not take responsibility for their own destiny and actions by increasing social programs and dependency on the government in our own country. Why is responsibility required of the Afghans but not of individual U.S. citizens? Why did we bail out GM and the banks? Shouldn't corporations take responsibility for their own actions?
Another thing he said that was laughable was that Obama's Supreme Court appointees didn't have an agenda. Everybody has an agenda. Everybody. Sometimes the agenda is noble, sometimes not. But everybody has an agenda. It's a natural law - your agenda is whatever your motivation is.
Towards the end, the candidates expressed their views on abortion, and Biden said he disagrees with abortion, but he doesn't think he should impose his view on other people by legislating to ban abortion. Hmmmm......but it's OK to impose your lack-of-view on churches and companies that they have to pay for contraceptives that they may morally disagree with......and it's OK to use taxpayer money to pay for abortions that many taxpayers find objectionable....how is that not imposing a religious view on someone through legislation? How is that not stepping on the constitutional right of people to have freedom of religion? Having basic laws like murder being a crime is based fundamentally in religion (one of the ten commandments and the belief that life is sacred). Get real. You can't completely separate religion from everything.
I don't want to be one-sided and say Ryan didn't make any statements that were without hypocrisy, but I didn't notice as many. Biden did call him out a little bit on how Ryan requested some funding for Wisconsin in the bailout legislation. That was probably the biggest thing I saw.
I'm sure you think that's enough for the night. You better hope I don't watch the upcoming presidential debates if you don't like these political rants.
2 comments:
Our effective federal tax rate last year was 17%. I'm not sure why (Megan?) ours would be more than yours, except for perhaps the "marriage penalty?"
Ours was 17%, also....But we got a "clean energy" credit because we put in geothermal, so after that it was about 16%. I heard a talk on NPR the other day about a non-partisan group who did a study to reduce the budget by $4 trillion dollars per year. The plan was to cut $3 for every $1 increase in taxes. The first thing they recommended was taking away ALL of the deductions (mortgage interest, child tax credit, earned income credit aka redistribution of wealth, energy credits, etc.) By taking away the deductions, it would automatically increase revenue by about $1 trillion dollars and then the government would still need to cut $3 trillion dollars from their budget. This would definitely raise taxes on homeowners; you can figure out how much it would increase your taxes by taking your mortgage interest for the year x your tax rate. The other benefit of this plan is that it will stop people who have only paid in $1000-2000 from getting $5,000-7,000 "tax refunds" through the earned income credit.
The other thing most people fail to understand about the US tax code is that it's a stepped tax table....So for everyone's FIRST $2150 they earn, they pay 0%. Then the next $8,700 they earn, they pay 10% on that. Then the next $27,000 they earn they pay 15% on that, and so on until we reach the maximum rate of 35%. Most people just assume that if they make $100,000 (for easy figuring) then they are in the "28% bracket" and are thus, paying 28% on all their income, or $28,000 in tax...This is not true because they get to take advantage of all the "steps" along the way of lower tax amounts. So when people say, "I don't want to make over XX because it will bump me into a higher tax bracket.", it's really not as alarming as you might think because it doesn't cause ALL of your income to be taxed at the higher rate; it's only the income that you make above that threshold that's taxed at the higher rate.
The other MAJOR factor for Romney only paying 14% is because I'm guessing lots of his income is from investments/capital gains. With the Bush-era tax cuts, that rate was lowered to 15% for all tax brackets, except the bottom 2 brackets, which only pay 5% on their capital gains. There are consequences to increasing the capital gains rates because it may deter people from investing in taxable securities, etc.
This is probably more of a tax lesson than most people care to read. Sorry!
-Megan
PS Kristin...Did your tax amount calculation include any self employment tax? Otherwise, you may just be in a higher bracket with 2 income earners or have fewer deductions.
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