If the Republican nominee, for some strange reason, espoused a clear policy of raising taxes, while his Democratic opponent vigorously opposed expanding taxation even a nickel, wouldn’t most people simply swap political parties? Abortion, foreign policy, book-banning, right to privacy, patriotism–all this stuff would fly put the window, wouldn’t it?
I attended a barbeque this weekend, on a multi-million dollar estate, where my host was fulminating against Obama, not really making any sense, just generally ranting, which was strange because my host was a pretty smart, very successful and fairly sophisticated guy–and then I realized: If Obama gets elected his taxes will almost certainly go up sharply. This is just a business decision for him: Candidate A means he’ll make 4.8 million next year, Candidate B means he’ll make more like 4.2 million, of course he’s going to go for Candidate A. Obama’s going to cost him $600,000 next year–that’s a powerful motivation to choose one candidate over the other.
What was troubling, to me, was the smokescreen he was putting up. He kept ranting about patriotism, service, experience–all of them abstract kneejerk positions, none of them really arguable. It was like “I like McCain” and who could tell him that he didn’t? Most actual policies, he seemed to think that Obama’s position made considerable sense, but he wasn’t interested in the nitty-gritty policy matters, just the broad abstract ones, which made me wonder if this wasn’t all just code for “McCain will save me coin.” Is it?
Ah, yes, the old “Republicans only vote that way because they are greedy” canard. Well, you figured us out. We are sick, greedy bastards who are only interested in getting our hands on more filthy lucre. Democrats, on the other hand, are enlightened souls who put the interest of the nation ahead of their pocketbook.:rolleyes:
If your assertion was true, then no “middle class” (however that is defined) people would vote for Republicans, since Obama has promised a middle class tax cut. How do you explain them?
And, to flip your question, it’s likely that a lot of poor folks vote Democratic because Obama has promised them new welfare benefits (in the form of expanding Medicaid and other social programs). That’s more money in their pocket. So are they just as bad as the evil greedy bastard whose barbeque you attended?
“the evil greedy bastard whose barbeque you attended”? Hey, that’s a friend of mine–watch it.
Explaining why middle class voters buy into the Pubbie line is simple–besides the Pubbies arguing that Obama wants to tax everyone making over fifteen cents, which scares the shit out of some cautious middle-class voters (as is its intention), people are hopeful about how much they’ll BE earning that they aren’t earning right now. If some poor slob making $20,000 somehow manages to understand that Obama isn’t going to tax him even one cent more than Bush is right now, and will even tax him less, which is a hard point to understand when McCain is shouting how we’ll ALL get soaked under an Obama administration, the poor slob is fantasizing “B-b-b-ut if I get a tremendous raise next year, or if I win the lottery–and I’m pretty sure I can make at least one of those things happen, if not next year, then the year after furshure, I want to get to keep it, like Bill Gates and all my future pals at the country club.”
So if you’re quite done obfuscating my question, and playing “Well, aren’t Obama voters even worse?” games, would your vote change if you became convinced that the taxation policies were also reversed?
It’s always fun to see what liberals really think of conservatives/libertarians. Your view of us as a bunch of either rich, greedy bastards or morons who are either too ignorant to know about tax policy or too stupid to realize that they will never become rich is the reason why you folks have a hard time appealing to Middle America.
The tax issue is, indeed, one of the main reasons I stick with the GOP in spite of the war in Iraq and the Religious Right. It’s not because I’m in the top tax bracket or because I’m ignorant of the candidate’s tax policies or because I hope against hope to one day be rich and take advantage of lower taxes. It’s because in my view any candidate who proposes raising taxes just doesn’t understand the proper role of government. Government isn’t there to take the money from the productive and give to the unproductive. It isn’t there to provide me with all my hopes and dreams. It’s not there to make society “fairer” by taking away money from some and giving to others. Government is there to provide police, a justice system, and national defense (I may even throw in the roads, but only if I’m in a generous mood).
For me, a candidate’s tax policy is much more of a symbol. It tells me something about how that person thinks of government. If he or she has no problem raising taxes (regardless of who is being taxed) then it indicates to me that this person does not hold the same type of views that I do. Sure, many politicians who oppose tax hikes don’t share my views, but they are more likely to at least hold somewhat similar views.
Taxes are a bitch. I hate paying them. I’m self-employed so I see exactly how much the goverment steals from me every four months. But no matter who is elected the amount I mail to the U.S. Treasury won’t change that much. Maybe I’ll pay a few more dollars if Obama’s elected, maybe I’ll pay a few less if McCain’s elected. That doesn’t really matter. What matters is the principle. Obama thinks that the government has the right to take more money from “the rich” to provide government programs that I think are both useless and morally wrong. McCain at least pays lip service to the notion that people should be able to keep their money (not that I’m voting for McCain, but at least I like his views on taxes better than Obama’s).
If the GOP and the Democrats swapped views on taxes it would mean that the Democrats underwent a fundamental shift on how they view government. I would definitely support them if that were the case. But not for the reasons you think.
It’s not as simple as this. Say you’re the guy making $20,000. You know intuitively that your taxes will not go up. They can’t go up. Even if you do pay anything it’s negligible, and any sort of increase is politically unfeasible. So, are you fooled by tax cuts? Not at all. They do not benefit you one bit, because you’re already exempt. As a result you find yourself more likely to vote for policies that will benefit you, and you don’t necessarily care how they’re paid for because you’re not looking too hot yourself.
However, you also know in the back of your mind that one day you will make some good money someday. You aspire to get out of your impoverished condition. It’s the American Dream, after all, and sure, you might be shut out, but giving up and admitting failure is not an option. With an eye to that future you also realize that one day you’ll be paying taxes. Just like anybody else, and perhaps more so having come from poverty, you recognize that people who do pay taxes often get hammered. Sure, you make a lot more, but haven’t you earned your way out of poverty? Don’t you deserve the fruits of your labor?
That’s the disconnect. When you’re poor you don’t necessarily care who you take money off of, because baby needs a new pair of shoes. When you have money you think it’s unjust for it to be taken from you. That’s where the appeal lies for the middle class. The middle class is distrustful of people who raise their taxes because it always hurts. Republicans don’t usually raise taxes. The poor have little interest in tax policy because they don’t pay anyway, so they are swayed by social programs and the like, generally Democratic proposals.
Renob, I’m baffled by your position that the govenment is not there to provide fairness, but the government is supposed to provide justice. I see a lot of overlap between fairness and justice.
But I agree that it’s about the principle rather than the bottom line. I suspect that the vast majority of Americans are like myself and couldn’t even give a ballpark estimate of how much they pay in taxes. I’d have to dig around in the files to find my income tax return, I’d have to try to find a year end pay statement somewhere online to get a sense of things like social security and unemployment taxes. I’m not even sure where I’d find out how much I pay in property taxes - I think the mortgage co pays that one, right? I have very vague ideas about the (occasionally absurd) ways that the tax code works in my favor. So for most people, I assume that the bottom line of various tax proposals is at best a hazy guess. I know it is for me. Therefore, rhetoric about tax cuts doesn’t appeal to a rationalized cost-benefit analysis, but a sense of how things ought to be funded.
I will happily amuse you, then, though I don’t know if I count as a liberal. Anyway.
Libertarians: anarchists that lack the courage of their convictions.
I don’t know many rich, greedy bastards. Personally, I wouldn’t characterize people that way. I want more money, too. I sympathize with that position.
To me, a well-functioning democracy depends crucially on an educated population. Thus, public eduction. To me, a well-function market economy requires a healthy workforce. Thus, public health care. If the market showed it was capable of providing these things through magic, invisible hands, then so much the better. It hasn’t.
The amusing thing is that the theory that Obama wants higher taxes than McCain is, in fact, a lie.
The only people who would see higher taxes under Obama than they would under McCain are those people who make more than $111k/year- and the difference is only about $400 at that point. The only ones who get really hurt by Obama’s tax plan are the ludicrously wealthy- those that bring in more than $600,000.
The Republicans have spun this into, “Obama wants YOU to pay more in taxes!”, and, unfortunately, people believe it.
I doubt we want to turn this into a debate about the differences between libertarians and anarchists. However, let me say that having a few friends who are anarchists and having read some Murray Rothbard, I can truly say that my libertarian views and those of anarchists are quite different. They start with a different premise about the necessity of government, for one. I think government is necessary. They do not. That’s a pretty big difference.
And people require food, but we don’t rely on the government for that. They need shelter, too. Again, that’s not the government’s job. There is nothing “magic” about the market. It works quite well when government allows it to work. Health care is a great example. Our nation’s health care consists of the government paying for half the health care expenses in this country and regulating the industry more heavily than any other industry. And people think that this is somehow a “free market.” I’ll chalk up this kind of ignorance to the poor education offered in most government-run schools.
What I mean is that it’s there to provide a system to dispense justice. That is, you commit a crime then you get punished. It’s not there to create some kind of cosmic justice where people get stuff just because some social planner thinks that it would be great if every person had X.
I’ll agree with that. It’s much more a question of ideology and how you view govenrment than whether or not it will put money in your pocket.
Well it is a difference. You suggest this difference is fundamental. My somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment suggests that it is related to libertarians being cowardly anarchists. You offered that you found descriptions amusing; I tried to amuse. Nothing more.
That’s because the market can provide food, more or less.
And generally, the market can provide shelter.
I don’t think it is a free market. I think the government stepped in because when the market was free-er, it wasn’t providing health care to the satisfaction of the citizens. As you note in the food and shelter examples, when the market can provide things, people are pretty satisfied. So why do you suppose people aren’t satisfied with completely private health care or education? I will offer up two possibilities. One is that this is a, say, ethical or political position. The market, even at its best, simply cannot provide the level of care required. I find this argument completely unsound and will pay no more attention to it. The other is that there are very real reasons why something like health care might constitute a market failure, that in our case it actually did fail, and so intervention was required. In this case the question is how to properly intervene. (There are other possibilities. I only picked two. They are not exclusive, exhaustive, or other adjectives. All rights reserved, &c.)
Well if you are starting from the position that your opponents are ignorant, this will probably not go very far.
Why are you surprised? For someone making several million a year, their only real issue would be taxes. They may have an opinion about health care, education, and pretty much everything else in an abstract way, but none of it is an actual issue for them. They have health insurance. They can afford to send their kids to any school. Even the economic issues might be no more than a nuisance unless it actually affects their business or other interests.
But getting a tax bill for several hundred thousand is a real tangible thing that will actually test their political beliefs.
I didn’t say I was surprised–I said I was troubled. This friend, who’s pretty articulate when he needs to be, was babbling all sorts of weak, ill-formed general statements about why he was so strongly supporting McCain (he referred to Obama as a “Communist” which seemed very unsophisticated to me) and I sensed that he felt embarrassed to say that it was all about the coin. So I thought I’d ask here, and find out if I was on to something.
Despite some perfunctory insults from friend Renob, that’s what I’m finding out. It’s really not that far-fetched to imagine an expensive Republican platform (wars are expensive to maintain, and sophisticated systems for spying on your citizens’ privacy must mount up, too) that an honest Pubblie might acknowledge would require a tax hike, and it’s not impossible to imagine a Democrat who wanted to reduce government expenses (Clinton’s welfare reform ideas, for example) at a time of a booming economy that might allow for lower taxes–if you thought that would happen with McCain and Obama, wouldn’t that turn you around pretty quickly? Why do Pubbies have such a hard time putting their central “principle” into simple words?
Taxes are a major issue. They’re not the only issue, and for some voters it’s barely an issue at all. I support raising taxes to keep the government out of deficit spending, but if a candidate could convince me that they could keep taxes the same (or lower them) while balancing the budget, I would consider voting for them.
I’m what people call a “character voter”. I actually care about the issues much less than I care about the personal impression I get from the candidates, their charisma, their assertiveness, honesty, integrity, etc. Lots of people, especially here, would call me foolish for that, but I don’t really care. I’d rather vote for a good person than someone I agree with.
Umm, no. In fact the Dems are the party of Fiscal responsibility whilst the GOP is the “tax & spend party”. The Bush Admin has increased the Nat’l debt by a HUGE amount in the last 8 years. Anyone with half a brain has to know that that stuff has to be paid for someday, and it has to be paid for by taxes, as we’re short on magical unicorn wishes. What the GoP is hoping is that the Dems will be the fiscally grown-up and raise taxes to pay for the GoPs crazy run-away charge the credit-card up to the limit spending.
The GoP is currently and has been for the last 8 years been spending trillions on “government programs that I/we think are both useless and morally wrong”, just that they’ve been *borrowing it *and ruining the economy and the dollar by doing so.
At one time the GoP was the “cut spending and taxes party” but that time is long past. Now it’s the 'spend money like a drunken sailor and hope someone else gest the blame for paying for it" party.
You let GWB spend all that money- how do you propose we pay for it?
Somehow we have to deal with the national debt the cut taxes and spend republicans cause. The interest is crippling to the economy.
It is difficult to convince people to accept your viewpoint if it costs them money. They will find some way to explain their choice and may even convince themselves it is true. But it is asking a lot to expect someone to vote against their own short term interests.
Not just taxes ,but regulation. Anything that costs money is rejected on some vague philosophical basis , but the root is money.
DrDeth, I agree that the GOP has dropped the ball on spending. However, the Democrats propose even more spending. They have made absolutely no efforts to cut spending during their time in control of Congress. They merely want to raise taxes to pay for their new spending. No thanks.
The GOP continues to at the very least pay lip service to controlling spending. Yes, they haven’t lived up to it, but at least they don’t celebrate speding as a positive thing like the Democrats. I continue to hope that they will actually live up to their words of fiscal discipline. Perhaps I’m being naive but I really have no choice given the Democrats’ rhetoric and action on this issue.
On the state and local level, there is a large difference between the GOP and Democrats on these issues. I’m mainly a Republican based on this. I would not be part of the GOP if the only thing I cared about was national politics.
No, the national debt was still pretty high when Clinton was in office. We didn’t have a deficit for a few years. Of course, we had a GOP Congress in place, too. I think the natural tension of divided government leads to better fiscal discipline.
But to answer your question, no, I don’t support raising taxes to take care of the national debt or even to reduce the deficit. We need to cut spending. And, yes, I do support ending the war in Iraq and cutting our military spending dramatically to help do that. There is no need to raise taxes if spending is cut. Even if spending increases were merely kept to 1% to 2% a year we could grow our way out of the deficit in a few years. Of course, long term we need to address entitlement spending since those will kill us within a decade or two.
