Welcome to the Newschoolers forums! You may read the forums as a guest, however you must be a registered member to post. Register to become a member today!
fully agree.
as much as people want to believe we vote for the best canidate we usally don't. personal charactor is one of the main reason people vote one way or the other.
this isn't always bad though, someones personal charactor can greatly affect the desicions they will make in office. if someone is poor in office (highly unlikely) there almost always gonna side with the poor. if someone is wealthy (almost always) they will usally side with the rich. so when someone says they voted for joe over bob because joe didn't make 42.5 million dollars last year they have a valid point for there vote.
Well done him... so? Spinning Romney making a bunch of cash as a bad thing is ridiculous and smacks of jealousy.
If the concern is that his effective rate is 15% tax, why is that an issue? That's what he's required to pay. If you can point to a law he's broken in paying that amount of tax, that might be a story, but complying with the existing tax law isn't. What is he supposed to do, obey imaginary laws that tax investment income at higher rates?
This is stupid.
Well, aside from the fact that he doesn't "act the same as them" in that he is using his extremely public and high-profile position to lobby for a change that would increase the tax burden on the wealthy including himself... okay, yeah. You're right.
I have no problem with criticizing the rhetoric. Ideally, every politician would lay out the dispassionate, policy-based reason for why their economic or tax position is objectively beneficial to the country. Unfortunately, this being politics, and people generally preferring to get riled up by values issues than by dry analytical dicussions on good government, demagoguery is inevitable.
This thread is a good example. Gingrich uses catchphrases like "out of touch" and tries to cast wealth as a negative thing, which is blatant emotion-baiting. It would be easy enough to point out that there are good policy reasons for incentivizing people to make their money by investing, and investing in particular sectors or types of businesses, and it would have the benefit of yknow, being true. But it would garner no headlines.
Most laws can be characterized as either prohibitory or mandatory - i.e. you must pay X in taxes; you must not fail to pay the taxes you owe, which in your case are X.
But that's not the point. The point is that this entire line of argument is intellectually dishonest. No one, unless they are profoundly stupid, expects anyone to pay EXTRA taxes to the government, regardless of their view on whether the taxes being paid by high income individuals is too little, too much, should be taxed in a different way, etc. It's not a straight argument. Talk about why you disagree with him on policy grounds, or why you think a graduated rate is inherently unfair, why people who pay ten or twenty or fifty times the national average in gross taxes shouldn't have to. But don't pull this bush league finger-pointing garbage while at the same time criticizing the other side's inflammatory rhetoric, because that's the only part of this argument that's truly hypocritical.
Personally I'd be happy to be convinced that people who make a lot of money should be taxed less. But when you or others of your political persuasion try to cast the argument in this light I find that obnoxious and have no interest in listening to you at all.
