Soxbadger

Now the Democrats have taken their message of hate to the television stations: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,441301,00.html Ridiculousness level of Foxnews complaining about a Fox broadcast very high. But free advertising never hurts. So on that note have you heard? "Heard what?" The bird is the word. Im surprised that episode didnt get an article written about it with all the Jesus implications.

Wisconsin sucks this year. Luckily basketball starts soon!

I dont really think that article has anything to do with the debate whether Obama or McCain is more socialist. If anything that article suggests that Obama really is not going to cut taxes, which would mean that the argument that Obama is going to make the poor pay less gets thrown out the window. It cant be both ways, if all the people are getting is a rebate then it cant be Socialist or "spreading the wealth around" because under the rebate idea almost every person would get some sort of rebate, which would do the exact opposite of a Progressive Tax. So if that article is true and the tax cut is only in the form of rebates, then it would actually be a much less Socialist policy than the ones being currently advocated, as the rebate is applied equally regardless of level of income (you dont get a bigger rebate by making less money). The problem right now is the attack on the Obama economic plan is inconsistent, you cant on one hand say hes lowering taxes for the poor so much that they wont have to pay any, while at the same time saying that he isnt really lowering taxes just giving rebates. In fact the article does not even address the true question, do people with lower than 500 in tax liability still get the $500 credit, or does it just merely bring the tax liability down to 0. I know that I dont attack McCain and Palin so my posts might not get a lot of traction, in another thread I was told that Democrats only attack McCain and Palin, so I guess that either means Im not a Democrat, or it means that no one is reading my posts.

Unfortunately Im not really sure about any of that stuff. My tax knowledge is limited to what tax stuff I do and thats not for people or corps making $0

Well it really depends on how you view socialism and capitalism, and the problem is that they often intertwine into definitions that really make no sense. I discussed this with SS2k5, and because there is no actual statement on this from Obama its hard to tell whether or not some one can get a credit that exceeds their tax liability. My belief is that it will not and at most the credits will merely zero out taxes. IE if I have tax liabilities of 3k and credits of 5k, even though the govt theoretically owes $2k they just consider it as no taxes owed and you get no money. I really am not sure how it works, so these are assumptions on my part. I also think the way he phrases it like "making work pay" which means the only people getting credits are the people who are actually working and thus paying some income tax. http://www.barackobama.com/taxes/ As you can see the examples only point out people making above 35k, so they all would be paying taxes. Whether or not people paying no taxes will receive these credits is something that no one has really expounded on. I dont believe it will be the case, but I have no certainty on the subject. Not really, Socialism would be more along the lines of because the oil companies are making so much money the US decides to take over the oil companies to therefore make the profits for themselves, and then spreads those profits to the American people. Because there is no "collective ownership" it does not really pass the test of socialism.

Yeah the first sentence may have been a little convoluted. I need an internet argument secretary.

How many times do I have to say that McCain does the exact same thing with his progressive tax. Its not similar to Socialism, I already posted that Adam Smith (one of the founders of capitalism) advocated progressive tax. The reason why Joe the Plumber is ridiculous is because under Republican or Democratic control the more money you make the higher you are taxed. Thus if Joe made 250k under McCain hed be taxed higher just like if he made 250 under Obama. The problem that most people have with Joe is that he was a plant who purposefully tried to ask a question that was to try and stump Obama. Why do you think he picked the 250k threshold then said or maybe 270, 280, because the 250k threshold is the exact line in Obama's plan where the tax goes up. Now I dont know where McCain's top threshold is, he barely ever states the nuts and bolts of his plan. But they both are for a "progressive tax", so its just a non-issue because Joe the Plumber gets taxed more when he makes more under both McCain and Obama, just like under Bush, just like under Clinton. The only people who care are the ones who really think that taxation some how equals Socialism, which is just not true at all.

Well no one really wants to debate the issues, because when you debate the issues you realize that the difference between McCain and Obama in terms of economics, taxes, etc is basically the same thing with different packaging. The most important differences come from the social aspect of the campaign where there is true disagreement, the problem for Republicans (imo) in this cycle is independents are generally considered fiscally conservative and socially liberal. With both candidates being big govt spenders fiscally there is no fiscally conservative candidate thus voters are being swayed by social ideas. There is not much to debate on social issues, either you are for abortion or against it, not many people change their mind on that one. Same thing with equal rights for gay people, or gay marriage, or all the other ideas that the Christian Coalition has in mind for America. And thus it is why I generally vote Democrat, I really am not a Democrat, Im far to Anti-govt and deregulation to ever really fit into their mold. But at the same time you have to pick a side and I err on the side of caution. There was a time when the idea of govt not being in peoples lifes was supported by parties, but today we just have 2 parties who have different views on how they want to be in your life. The Republicans want to change me morally, they want to write laws that will dictate how I act socially. The Democrats want to be in my life financially, they want to control how and what I spend my money on. At the end of the day the lesser of the two evils in my opinion is the Democratic Party. And until the day arrives when there is a Republican who can get away from the social core of their party, I will likely stay voting Democratic (at least in Presidential elections, in state elections you find that Republicans are not nearly as socially conservative in Illinois). Had McCain not chosen Palin, I may have gone for McCain especially if he showed that he was going to break from the social policies of the Republicans. But when he selected Palin he basically reaffirmed the social Republican position, and its just something that doesnt jive with me. (Edit) SS2k5, My post on socialism was to show why govt control of things does not always mean better, and that in most cases it actually creates situations that are worse. I used the Recorder of Deeds example to show how a govt can create a monopoly on a service that people need and then use that monopoly to make money for other services that are inefficient. Thus the fear of more socialist society is that eventually the govt creates different types of monopolies and just uses them to finance the entire govt increasing the cost to the consumer and at the same time doing nothing to increase the service being given to the consumer.

So McCain on Letterman, then the performer Ne Yo comes out with an Obama silhouette on the back of his suit.

Exclusive licenses suck because the NFL is a monopoly and therefore can set the price at anything and in the end the customer is made to suffer. When it sells a license for XXX it costs the producers XXX, so they have to realize that money some where. If Madden spent 30mil for the license, then they either have to save 30mil on making the product, or they have to charge 30mil more. The problem is that EA has no where else to go for the license, the NFL license makes or breaks the game basically so the price is greatly inflated. Just like the license for the jersey the product is worthless if its not for the real player, so the company (Reebok) over pays for the license, and then over charges the fan. Since its a monopoly supply and demand do not work and it breaks the system. There are thousands of licenses you dont notice daily, all the items that are made with tv shows, characters, movies, etc all are licensed products. But since they are made by thousands of manufacturers with different owners etc they drive the price down. Sure some licenses may be more expensive (Star Wars versus random movie made yesterday) but all in all the products are generally not that over priced as compared to the rest of the market (You can find a licensed super hero shirt at a walmart). The problem is that sports are monopolies and there is really no way to stop that because the costs are so prohibitive and all competitors have failed (AFL, XFL). The only way to change things is with consumer blow back, but sports seem to be doing record business, so they are going to keep increasing prices until some one stops buying.

Thats not exactly what the exemption allows them to do. The exemption for NFL allows them to pool broadcasting rights so that they can sell the entire NFL as a package. Otherwise individual teams would be able to negotiate for themselves. Think of college football where Notre Dame has a channel and then imagine the Dallas Cowboys having a channel or the Raiders being on no channel. The individual teams would be able to sell individual licenses to games thus having a Bears game or a Cowboys game. Selling exclusive rights is very capitalistic, if some one wanted to outbid EA for the rights they were very free to. EA just happened to set the market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_Broadcasting_Act_of_1961

NFL is a monopoly thats why it can sell exclusive rights deals that create other monopolies.

Oligopolies are products of the free market. They take advantage of the idea of buying in bulk to reduce price thus allowing them to sell at a lower price than a normal competitor. Lets look at the Coke and Pepsi example, if you go to a store you are likely to find several brands of drink (RC, Coke, Pepsi) all with very similar prices. You may then find some off brands at lower prices, but you will also find premium brands at higher prices (think IBC etc). The reality is that Coke and Pepsi are extremely cheap in comparison to other products (also think of the fact at the store you may find a 2 liter for $1 where as at some fast food places a 32 oz drink is $2 the equivalent of paying $4 for a liter.) Thus when you look at the price of coke in the store (straight from the supplier) versus the cost some where else, its pretty clear that competition in the market is what keeps the prices down, versus when you are at a restaurant there is only 1 brand generally available. And its not a fundamental flaw, its merely the market. The demand for coke is higher than the demand for knock off coke, therefore in pure economic principles the cost of coke should be higher because the supply of coke and the knock off are the same. Thus the knock off brand should always be cheaper just on the sheer fact that the original brand is almost always going to be viewed as more desirable. The only way to over come the "original" is to beat it in price or to make something better. Oligopolies are part of the capitalist system because there are some industries that are always going to have high costs to enter and thus prohibitive on a grand scale. If you look at the cost of a Miller beer versus the cost of a microbrew youll generally find that the Miller was able to go lower in price point due to the massive amount of quantity and economies of scale. The oligopoly in that case causes the beer price to go low, because there is always going to be a certain point where the little people can start taking on the economy of scale if the big business gets to greedy. Many oligopolies have fallen which is why you see coke and pepsi spending so much money on advertising. You want to be the one who is able to set the market, not the one who is following. So even then, the competition between the 2 makes it so that the consumer is going to likely see benefits.

Whats wrong with socialism is govt corruption and the fact that govt control leads to bureaucracy which leads to inefficiency. If you have to get anything done in Chicago you understand what a nightmare it is to have to work with Cook County or the City. You can call them and no one ever responds, you can get transferred to no where, you can fill out form after form and get nothing accomplished. Since there is no real "bottom line" there is no way to judge what costs should be. For example lets look at the Cook County Recorder. Right now it costs about $50 to record a deed (thats 3 pages for the most part). Its not because it costs that much to scan the document and store it, its because part of that money goes to fund other things because some services run by the govt have very little cost. For example you can get all the permits on a building for something ridiculous like 10 cents a page even though thats much more labor intensive and takes longer. Why? Because there is nothing to control what costs are, there is no competition on building permit searches or on recording deeds. You have to go there, so if they say it costs 50 dollars you pay 50, if they say 100 you pay 100, since the govt controls it and there is no competition there is no way to structure the pricing system and eventually the consumer gets hammered. Capitalism generally provides for the lowest prices, the problem is systems where you cant allow a truly free market for one reason or another. In those situations some times the govt has to guide the market but I think it should be like Obama's idea where govt insurance is just an alternative to regular medical insurance (thus in theory should actually increase competition and decrease costs). At least thats my theory on it. (Edit) And I dont watch CNN, if I wanted to know that Eurasia has always been Oceana's enemy I could just write the news myself.

You can just watch the highly educational obviously not taken out of context video that Alpha Dog posted in the Republican thread. Youll learn that now Democrats are only for the rich people and that Republicans are for the working class. Although Joe the Plumber was theoretically kind of rich so Im confused as to the joke?

I swear in this thread I posted why the message was misleading as well. Im pretty sure there are some posts with a lot of words discussing capitalism, taxation on corporation, etc. I guess its easier to just say people are attacking the messenger? Cause so far I havent said one word about Joe, Ive just said how the message was intentionally misleading and if you want to say that Obama is a Socialist, you need to say McCain is a socialist. If you want to say Obama wants to spread the wealth via taxes, you need to say McCain wants to spread the wealth with taxes. So far no one has said that McCain stands for anything but a progressive tax, which is the exact same system Obama is advocating.

What he was trying to say, and not very eloquently is that the term "mothers health" can be twisted and stretched until it is so broad that it basically means a mother can have an abortion at any time. IE: The mother is 8 months pregnant but a Psychologist writes a letter stating that the "mothers health" may be effected if the baby is born because the mother is not emotionally stable enough to care for the baby and therefore she needs an adoption. What McCain said is actually not that terrible, his problem is that he just assumes everyone understands what hes getting at. I personally am pro-choice but I actually understood where he was coming from. The problem isnt always what he says, its how he says it, and how he fails to narrowly tailor his responses. He just shoots from the hip to much, and it often comes out sounding terrible, even though some times the thought behind it is actually pretty rational.

Well its impossible to answer how corporations are taxed unless you know the type of entity. Corporate structures are not all the same these days there are 4 categories you could form when starting a business (only one of them would be considered a "corporation"). The first is called Sole Proprietorship, a single person is running the business and the business is taxed like regular income. The second is called a "LLC" also known as a Limited Liability Corporation. An LLC pays taxes like a Partnership, that is they pay taxes the same way as you pay regular income tax. All the profits and losses pass through the LLC to the individuals in the LLC and they are reported on personal income tax. The third is called a "Partnership" or "Limited Liability Partnership" the differences for this example are irrelevant are both are taxed exactly like an LLC, in that the profits and losses pass through the Partnership to the person, thus it is reported on personal income tax statements. The fourth is called a Corporation, and when speaking of corporate taxes it generally only refers to those who are "incorporated" and thus are a corporation as compared to a LLC or Partnership. It used to be that almost all businesses were corporations due to the liability protection that Corporations offered. With the invention of LLC's formation of corporations has been on the downturn due to the fact LLC's allow you limited liability with out the negative "double taxation" of a corporation. Double taxation occurs in corporations because first the income of the corporation is taxed and then the income of the employees is taxed, resulting in income being taxed 2 times. That is with a regular C corporation, in all reality the plumbing corp would be a "S" corporation because it likely has less than 100 shareholders and therefore would be taxed the same as Sole Proprietorship, LLC, or Partnership. Thus when you look at the facts the only way that the "plumber" could have been taxed at the higher rate was: A) The Plumbing Company is literally a C class by the definition of corporations. B ) The plumber made over $250,000 in gross income (not his corp, but he himself). If its Case A its not a problem for McCain or for Obama, its a problem why the lawyer who formed the Corporation or who is Corporate Council for the Corp and hasnt suggested reforming the entity as an LLC or S Corp to take advantage of the more advantageous tax laws. All in all, I think the event was staged to try and make Obama look bad, its going to backfire, but they gave it the good old fashioned try.

Well theres the difference between you and I, I dont believe anything that politicians say during an election year. Right now is the only time in America when "middle class", "poor" etc matter, because right now Obama/McCain need their votes. As soon as they are elected they will go back to what all politicians do, care more about where the money comes from. If you take Obama at his word he is simply going to do the following: Raise taxes on those over $250k, lower taxes on the rest. To that extent I believe him because thats really just a simple plan that does not take to much brains to come up with. If you increase the tax on people making over 250k 1% you can reduce the tax on people making 50k 5%. Thus with marginal tax increases on the rich, you can realize much higher tax decreases on the poor. And its not being stuck on the bottom tax payers, my numbers state very clearly that the bottom 50% (that would be 50% not the very bottom unless now bottom is equivalent to 50%) pay 3% of taxes. If you want to focus on the top 50% of tax payers the numbers still are pretty stunning. If you look at in from reverse I believe it said that the top 5% pay 60% of taxes. That means that the high middle (50% to 95%) pay roughly 37% of taxes (subtract 100%- 60% (top 5%)-3% (bottom 50%). So thus it goes back to my original math where I said that Obama's plan would likely increase the top 5% to paying 70% and lets reduce the bottom 50% to paying 0. Thus the new equation is 100% - 70% (amount paid by top 5%)-0% (amount paid by bottom 50%) leaving 30% to be paid by the high middle. This would leave the high 45% with a 7% tax decrease. So long as Obama's plan gets more than 63% from the top he can effectively make it so no one in the bottom 50% pays taxes and the rest stay equal. Hence my belief that all Obama will do is raise the highest level taxes to a maximum of 70% of revenue and then drop the rest. But thats putting a lot of my own theories into it, as you said no one really has "nuts and bolts" about the plan because no one wants to alienate any of their potential voters. Right now both sides want everyone for them, and no one can promise a tax cut for everyone even if we use McCains idea of freezing spending. We are running a deficit thus we need more money, not less, so its hard to cut taxes.

Well I guess as the say in Missouri, show me. Show me how Obama's plan is going to be fundamentally different. Im pretty sure you are talking about the whole idea of tax credits and how people who pay no taxes could theoretically get credits and therefore be paid by the govt. The problem is that I have never actually seen the policy so I dont really know the truthiness of those statements. I myself believe that it is most likely an exaggeration and the policy will allow credits up until the tax payer reaches 0, thus you could have taxes reduced to 0 by the credits, but could not actually get paid by the govt. I looked at the Obama website to try and find the answers but all I could find was: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/ But once again Im not sure how this differs from any of the other tax credits or tax loopholes that currently are available to the public. As I already posted, under the current tax code the bottom 50% pay 3% of taxes. Even if Obama's taxes were to make the bottom 50% pay 0 in taxes that would equal a 3% decrease in tax revenues. Im not exactly seeing the fundamental difference here, its not like under McCains plan the bottom 50% pay 50% or even 25%, they will pay roughly 3%.

The system of the progressive tax does not change that it remains a progressive tax. And here is my question, how is Obama's plan any different than whats currently going on? http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxand...taxburden06.htm So its actually much worse than the 50% paying for the other 50%. Its more like the top 5% pay for over 60% of America, and under Obama's plan that will most likely increase to something like the top 5% pay for the top 70%. Once again, not really such a drastic change that you can label Obama as a Socialist while at the same time having a straight face and not calling Bush or McCain one. But then again I dont call any of them Socialists for their tax policies, their ideas start to blend with Socialism on a variety of other issues, but taxes is one where every politician has pretty much the same beliefs. So its fine to call them all Socialists, it just makes no sense to only call Obama one.

/sigh I swear I already posted that Progressive Tax is not Socialism. Is anyone even going to read that post about how McCain uses the exact same Progressive Tax in his tax ideas? So either both Obama and McCain are Socialists (which would be using the term wrong) or neither are (which would be using the term correctly.) I have yet to see Obama nor McCain differentiate themselves on this issue. Both McCain and Obama will have the highest tax rate at the highest income ie PROGRESSIVE TAX. Neither McCain nor Obama are going to get up there and argue for a FLAT or FAIR Tax. This is not pure Socialism, Socialism would be more along the lines of Universal Health Care and Bank bailouts, in which the Govt owns the means of production or owns the services. The problem is most American's dont even understand Communism, Socialism, or Capitalism. And the reason why no one cares is because both McCain and Obama have socialist ideas. The most Socialist of them all is the Govt changing the principal on loans (a McCain idea) as that would be directly having the govt own property and change the value of property with out the market having any say as to the value and directly interfering with capitalism. Another socialist idea is to prevent immigration (more Republican than Democrat) as workers are nothing more than the supply of a good, so when the govt interferes with supply it creates artificial demand (ie American workers are paid more than they would on the open market) this artificial demand creates artificial costs and therefore raises the wage of the worker. Thus why does it matter if Obama is called a socialist when McCain is also a socialist? Not to mention Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, advocated progressive tax because most economists understand that a flat tax may not even be possible. Here is an excerpt from Wealth of Nations, Chapter II: http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b5-c2-article-1-ss3.htm But what would Adam Smith know about capitalism, he must have been a socialist too?

Well actually I think people do understand his ideals and they understand its not Socialism. Obama supports Progressive Tax (ie the tax goes up as the amount of money made goes up.) McCain supports Progressive Tax. In fact you will almost never hear of a politician saying that they support a "flat" or "fair" tax. Why? Because if you wanted to change to a fair tax and make the same amount of money as the progressive tax, you would decrease taxation on the top 10% or so and increase taxes on the other 90%. Thus the fair tax is the classic tyranny of the majority example, the majority will almost always prefer the tax system that bests serves them (progressive tax) at the expense of the minority who prefers the fair tax. Trickle down or supply side economics sell when the economy is doing well. When middle class people are making a lot of money and they are able to buy lots of things, they buy into the idea that lower taxes on the rich will equal more pay and thus better for them. Right now the economy is hurting bad and most average middle class American's are hurting too. They dont feel sorry for Joe the Plumber and his 250k income when they are getting laid off from their 40k jobs. Social economic policies are almost always going to be the end result of a Demcoratic/Republic nation as there will always be a majority of haves versus a minority of have nots.

Well I thought Obama won. McCain was more aggressive but the bottom line was that Obama was more Presidential. Thats what Obama needed to prove in the debates, not that he was smart, not that he knew about policy, but that he could be on the stage and be a President. And this debate showed that even when McCain threw the proverbial kitchen sink at Obama, that Obama did not back down, that Obama did not sink to attacking back bringing up things like Keating 5, or acting with any sort of contempt like McCain, Obama did not almost cry when he was talking about people calling him a terrorist (as opposed to McCain who seriously looked like he might break down talking about the Wallace comparison). Obama did what he needed to do in this debate, and thats why I believe the numbers will most likely say he won. I thought Obama was purposefully timid and just didnt want to do or say anything that might hang himself. From the way he acted you could tell that he feels its his election to lose and barring him doing something ridiculously stupid he thinks he will win.

Yeah the network I was watching was showing side by side shots and it was pretty bad. Thats why I really cant see McCain winning this debate because his body language was just so bad. Well I think one of the biggest requirements of a US President is that they are able to stay cool under pressure and that when they are in negotiations that they arent unable to keep cool calm and collected. Body language tells whether or not some one is lying, whether they believe in what they say, whether they have conviction. When I see McCain's body language I see some one who does not have the presence required to be the leader of the United States. When you watch McCain he just gives away everything.