How is Obama going to keep his pledge of soaking just the rich to pay for his programs when the number of rich in this country are declining at a fairly rapid rate? Think regular Joe's are safe? Number of U.S. millionaires falls by a quarter Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:20pm EDT By Edward Krudy NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of American millionaires fell by more than a quarter last year as the financial crisis decimated their investments across the board, a report said on Wednesday. The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including first homes, fell by 2.5 million to 6.7 million in 2008, according to the Spectrem Group report. After the 27 percent drop, the number of millionaires is at the lowest level since 2003, when the millionaire population stood at 6.2 million, the report says. The S&P 500 stock index has lost over half its value since the stock market peaked in October 2007, wiping billions from savings, while wealthy households have also been hit by declines in the value of other assets such as property. From the housing market peak in the second quarter of 2006, home prices have plummeted 26.7 percent through December, according to Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index. The report also shows that the number of U.S. households with a net worth over $5 million, again not including first homes, fell by 28 percent to 840,000. "America has a lot fewer millionaires than when this economic crisis began," said George H. Walper Jr., President of Spectrem Group. "The culprit is not just the stock market, which we all know has dropped precipitously, but broad declines in the asset classes available to the nation's wealthiest investors." More modest households with net worth of $500,000 or more fell to 11.3 million last year from 15.7 million in 2007, a decline of 28 percent. The Spectrem report is based on surveys of 3,000 affluent households conducted throughout 2008 and data from an online survey of 750 millionaire households conducted in November and December 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52A71B20090311
I doubt anybody is safe from higher taxes. But how do you propose we pay back the deficit that Obama inherited? If not higher taxes, what do you want to cut? This is something Bush should have addressed a long time ago but failed to do. The two biggest budget items are Medicare/Social Security (44%) and Defense (21%). By the way, interest on our debt is now 8% of our entire budget. Unless we pay down the debt, the interest piece will go higher and higher. http://www.askquestions.org/details.php?id=158&gclid=COerufHVnZkCFSQhDQodITVcCQ What do you want to cut?
Not sure my math is right, but... 1. Bush left us with $10T national debt... ($5T of that on his watch... ASSHOLE!) 2. NObama has added another $10T with guarantees and stimulus... that right? (Not all his fault, we know.) So.... $20T.... if the average interest rate is 4%, that's $800B interest obligation... Total Federal Income Tax revenues about $2.6T... so $800B/$2.6T = 30% ??
and a child born today will have a bigger debt burden than his parents on his first day of life!! Democrats are here for the "little guys" eh?
<i>How about the deficit his spending proposal plans to double?</i> So I take it there is nothing in the budget you want to cut then since you aren't answering the question? It is easy for people to get angry when taxes go up, but they rarely will suggest what spending cuts should happen instead. I don't recall anybody who protested when we borrowed money to attack Iraq. It is like most people thought the war was free. Somebody is going to have to pay for it. Will it be us or our grand-kids? It is irrelevant what Obama does, we will still have an enormous deficit irregardless of his spending.
Therein lies the problem. Only difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush wanted to borrow money to fund a war and Obama is borrowing money to fund social programs.......either way we're in debt and screwed.....pretty sad political state in this country.
There is a little difference. Obama'll spend money even faster than Bush (a very impressive feat, I might add). OTOH, he'll raise taxes. If we're going to have a massive government on which 90% of us rely for handouts then we should probably be paying for it. A massive, bloated government is certainly what the voters want. On the third hand though, Obama has already stated that he doesn't really care if new taxes bring in less revenue, tax increases are about "fairness", so his fiscal responsibility seems unlikely as well. It would be best for the country if we could become a self-reliant people once again. But American Idol is on, so if we can just get somebody else to buy us a shiny new plasma set to watch it, we're happy. We're going down this road of socialism, and the worse that things get, the faster we're going to travel.
What you Obama bashers fail to grasp thusfar is that what seems like huge #'s coming from him is no different than Fuckhead Bush, the only difference being transparency. What Bush hid, Obama has brought into view. Bottom line, anyone who truly believes there is a two-party system in this country is a complete idiot. No matter who you vote for and what party you associate yourself with, if you believe that your party or candidate is all that different, then yoyu get what you deserve. The political system is designed for all the slaves we are, we are led to believe we have choices, but they are all the same. Whether a republican victory or democratic one, we get the same. You'll be more enlightened when you realize this and stop playing tit-for-tat.
All I know is that spending needs to be cut and TAXES NEED TO BE RAISED ON EVERYONE! Problem is that all we have is a bunch of people pointing fingers at each other participating in class warfare. If you want a fair tax system then EVERYBODY should pay the same tax rate. The amusing part is that somebody in the 28% tax rate will bitch about Obama being a socialist yet if you ask that person if they would be fine with having their taxes increased to 33% so that the rich's tax rates can be brought down to 33% so its fair for everyone. I bet the reaction 9 times out of 10 is no they don't want that. As I've said before, democrats or republicans...they are both socialists as long as they support a graduated tax system. Its bad enough that we rely on other nations for energy and now we are also relying on other nations for finances as well......not a good combination. But oh well, I'm too addicted to Rock Band to do anything about it