You're right, the conservatives are making a mountain out of a molehill and their protestations about Obama's tax hikes are bogus and shallow. All Obama wants to do is restore the tax rate to 39%, where it was under Bill Clinton. Last time I checked the rich got richer under Clinton, so the 39% didn't hurt the rich, didn't hurt productivity, didn't hurt growth and expansion. Not. One. Bit.
If tax does not hurt growth so let them make it 69%. Why stop at 39%? The corporations produce jobs in this country. The government cannot do that as nimble as the private corporations. The government should be thankful to the private corporations for creating jobs and therefor it should tax them at very small rate, almost zilch.
Angrycat, how do you stimulate this economy when the corporate leaders are decimating the working class in order to protect their compensation packages? in 1970's the CEO was making 40 times that of the average worker. Today it is 433 times. Is the new executive 10 times better than the past? No way! So who stimulates the economy more? One CEO making $4 Million or 40 people making $100K. How about 80 people making $50K? My bet is that more of that $4 Million would go back into the economy by way of the working class than by way of that executive. But that is not how it works. The executive keeps the job at present pay and sends more people to the streets to offset revenue losses. Such irresponsibility does not stimulate the economy it stagnates it - worse, it suffucates it. So why tax the higher wage earners? because the lower wage earners became the discardable pawns and raising their taxes yield little when they have no income. Socially responsible CEO's would recognize they have lived off a bubble in compensation and cut back to a more realistic level in this time of chaos. Corporations should be introducing salary freezes, cuts in high wage earner compensation, and staggered one week furloughs quarterly to save jobs. Unless we stabilize jobs we are in a death spiral that will be long to recover from. That will have a devastating impact on wealthy and poor alike.
Patchie, your post is filled with so many non sequiturs and Marxist dogma (whether you know it's marxist dogma or not is another question) that I don't have time to unwind all of the fallacies. The bottom line is that most people making $250K or more live in high cost areas like NYC where $167K buys you the same lifestyle that $25K buys you in Atlanta. The number of CEOs is one per company, so their numbers are very small and hardly worth talking about. The number of people making $250K or more greatly exceeds the number of CEOs. As you can see, "high" earners in these expensive metropolitan areas are barely supporting their families. They will simply leave and go to a less expensive area. Sure, they'll take a pay cut, but they'll spend less to live and they'll be on the receiving end of the the handouts. Not only will the additional tax revenue the government sought from those earners be gone, but so will the amount it was getting before. You have to think at the margin. Also, about half of the people making more than $250K are entrepreneurs who basically eat what they kill. They also have enormous flexibility in their income and, at the margin, will decrease their effort to reduce their tax burden and increase leisure time. Further, corporate leaders aren't "decimating the working class". I don't know what kind of class warfare fantasies you're engaging in but workers are paid the wage they can attain for their skills in the market. If you want a higher wage, you will have to accept higher unemployment - just like Europe. Sadly, your thesis on taxing the middle class is bogus. Studies show that the middle class tends to spend every tax cut and invest almost none of it. Higher earners tend to invest tax cuts. Investing increases the production necessary for government to tax. Thus, higher production means higher tax revenue. So, taxing the high earners reduces tax revenue and giving the middle class tax breaks reduces it further. This means that the additional 4% tax on higher earners won't even begin to pay for the goodies promised to the lower earners - let alone the deficit. Effectively, this means everyone will get a massive tax hike. You can tax the rich all you want, but the taxes will always be paid by those who labour to create value. However you feel idealogically about taxes, you shouldn't delude yourself with the fantasy that people will be willing to labour just for the love of it. There's no way I'm willing to work as much as I do now to keep less of it. I will decrease the amount I work with every increase in taxes because each increase makes the next dollar not worth earning since I will get to keep less of it. Are you saying you'd work just as hard if you kept only $0.10 of every dollar vs. $0.65?
You're exaggerating so much that this is simply a lie. And besides, most execs don't live in cities. They live in wealthy isolated suburbia. Regardless, why are you arguing? It's very simple, the tax rates are simply being reverted back to pre 2001 levels.
You sure it's this country and not India or China? Small businesses produce the bulk of private jobs in this country. Not corporations.
Well first get some Ritalin. Then attempt to read the article posted To summarize, this is what the article tries to explain about the tax hike: "It consists largely (but not exclusively) of returning marginal tax rates to their levels of 2001"
Small businesses included. All businesses should be taxed at minimal rate. Only payroll people should be taxed at higher rate.