Monday, December 31, 2012
Yeah, Obama Was a Little Off On this One
This President, just like virtually all of his predecessors (Reagan and FDR included), has engaged in a fair amount of demagoguery. Perhaps the most egregious example of it had to do with his 2008 campaign assertion that HIS administration would crack down on tax havens and that that act alone would raise $100 billion extra every year for the treasury.............................................................................A little bit off? Yeah, the dude was a little bit off. Less than a year later, (by then) President Obama's own international tax proposal claimed to collect only $21 billion a year (a 79% reduction) AND the vast majority of that was in the form of tax increases on companies trying to compete in a world market. The amount of money that the report ultimately claimed to raise from this supposed tax evasion in low tax jurisdictions? Try $870 million dollars a year, a whopping 99.1% reduction from his original 2008 claim. Youza, huh? Millionaires and billionaires indeed.
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17 comments:
Same thing happens when politicians talk about cutting "waste and fraud".
Obama is just another politician. I don't get what anyone sees in him anymore. He should be criticized just as much as any other president, especially for stuff like this. If you've been paying attention to that fiscal cliff drama, and if you looked at the comments on the articles on The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, you'll see that liberals and conservatives are pretty much both pissed off at the deal that was signed. Conservatives wanted both tax cuts and spending cuts, while the liberals wanted to make sure that people making over $250,000 a year had their taxes increased, as if the economy is this magical Oort cloud that can be cured by suddenly raising or lowering taxes.
If I were Obama, I'd cut the demagoguery, act with more prudence, and slash the corporate taxes so that companies have much more incentive to do business here and compete in this global economy. I'd keep the tax rates up to Clinton levels, but also somehow encourage the individual states themselves to lower some of their local taxes. I would have to face reality and cut spending, and spend on projects that actually contribute to economic growth, like engineering and medical projects. Enough with the semantics and vagary about more "education" and "infrastructure" spending and be specific if you're to continue to spend like a drunken sailor. Get tough with Congress and cut pay dramatically to everyone working in government, at least by 10-15%. Finally, do something about the post office and have it be partially privatized or have the work done by private contractors instead because it's losing about $15.9 billion a year now. Continue with NAFTA and other types of free trade ideas and look into privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completely. Continue with diplomatic talks and reduce the number of drone strikes and look into whether the NDAA is constitutional or not. Finally, I would not reappoint Ben Bernanke and at least try to get a Chicago School monetarist to be chairman of the Federal Reserve. Probably someone like Scott Sumner with his NGDP targeting idea if you've been paying attention to his Money Illusion blog. He voted for Gary Johnson this past election and seems very libertarian and conservative in his politics That's my idea if we're still going to have a central bank in the first place.
Personally, I would prefer to have Austrian economist Bob Murphy be the Federal Reserve chairman with his gold targeting idea and he would be most ideal, but just in case political forces interfere in this idea, I would try my hardest to get Sumner to come on board.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/going-for-gold/
Slight typo with the original post. I wrote 'finally' two times, but you get the point. I think my plan would be a much better than whatever Washington and the politicians can come up with. A lot of people aren't going to like the idea, but Obama is going to have to disappoint someone to get any of these ideas through if he really cares about the state of the economy and other important matters that are preventing him from being an excellent president in my eyes. Don't forget enforcing immigration laws and having a border fence built, but at the same time, ensuring that we don't resort to becoming a racist, totalitarian police state to discriminate against immigrants that legitimately come to the United States to work.
I would make sure that there wouldn't be any corporate welfare, tax loopholes, or massive bailouts under what I'm proposing by the way. I just had so many ideas so I had to stretch it out to three separate comments. What do you think?
Roberto, if it were up to me, I would get rid of the corporate tax altogether and make up the difference with (like you say) a return to the Clinton era rates for the wealthy. The corporate income tax is a clumsy, anti-competitive tax that encourages tax avoidance, disproportionately hurts the middle-class, and doesn't raise all that much in revenue to begin with. If this country had a zero corporate tax, that would more than offset our higher labor costs and encourage a lot of critical investment, I think.......And I definitely think that we need tax reform. Have 2-3 rates with zero deductions and make it so that the return can fit on a post-card. According to the Tax Foundation, the present-day tax code costs the American public $410 billion each year in compliance and if we could get even a fraction of that back into the economy as savings and investment the results would be very impressive me-buck.
That's what I meant when I said slashing the corporate tax. It would be best if we didn't have one at all, but seeing as how certain people in Washington are going to think that we're 'enabling' the corporations, I imagine that they would have to be gradually lowered or there would be need to be a constitutional amendment regarding this. If there was no corporate tax, the corporations would have far less of a reason to resort to tax loopholes to stay in business. I've seen many countries where the corporate taxes are far lower and their economies are doing much better, like with Lithuania and Canada.
If the corporate income tax was eliminated, do you think corporations would proportionally lower their prices? After all, we are continually told that if we raise taxes on corporations, they will raise their prices?
What happened to the promised transparency?
I don't know if they'd lower their prices, Jerry, but a lot more firms would probably move their operations here. I mean, even the socialist-leaning countries in Europe are lowering their rates in an effort to compete. How 'bout we do what Roberto is proposing; lower the corporate rate and eliminate loopholes? That way a well-connected company like G.E. (Imelt has been pimping himself to both Democrats AND Republicans apparently) won't get any better of a shake than a lesser-connected company like U.P.S..
I have no problem with removing loopholes. I thought it was lower wages, not taxes, that was luring companies overseas.
It's both jerry.
Eco you have any examples of a company moving offshore because of taxes?
Eco was suppose to be Do. Fat fingers strike again.
Read "There Billion New Capitalists" interesting what emerging economic powers have offered in tax breaks and other benefits to attract business to their shores. You'd enjoy the book.
Wow!!!! Al Gore sold Current TV to Al-Jazeera.
There may yet be another opportunity for Olbermann.
Seems odd. Did this other Al claim to have invented the Internet also?
Isn't Al Jazeera at least party bankrolled by fossil fuel?......I also heard that Mr. Gore tried to make the sale prior to the fiscal cliff to save on taxes.
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