Yes - we are making essentially the same contention, but from different perspectives.
Amen to that! Maybe the Democrats should start finagling a “lower taxes” platform based on paying for social programs through inflation while handing out refund checks. 
I’m a dirt poor social/civil liberal. As far as economics go, I’m definitely for balancing the budget / getting rid of the deficit / lowering taxes, but I think education is a reasonable thing for the government to spend money on (although it seems a good portion of education comes from local property taxes anyway). Social security came about because the market system wasn’t working for retirement. And health care isn’t being served by the market either. I can certainly see providing health care to kids - it’s not like kids can go out and get careers to pay for their doctor visits, and in general I wouldn’t mind paying for social programs that put citizens on a fair starting ground by the time they hit the age of majority. After that, I still think some sort of health care reform is in order. Universal health care might not be needed at this point but something is. And if it takes extra taxes that’s fine with me. I’d rather save on stuff like pointless military wars and pork.
But yeah, I think a lot of it boils down to taxes. And even if the Dems significantly change their platform, that “Dems= taxes” meme is an easy and powerful one for the Reps to use and hard for the Dems to defeat whether or not it’s true.
If it wasn’t taxes though it would just be another thing. “Marriage = man + woman” or “I wave the flag more than you” works in a lot of areas too. It’s just easier to throw volleys of whatever is the hot meme than express thoughtful views on the issues.
Which is why I’m tending now to vote less on the issues per se and more on character. Even assuming Bush was on the “right side” of the issues I care about, his character and way of dealing with things scares and frustrates me. Things like appointing people solely for their loyalty and not their qualificiations (Harriet!), putting policy over knowledge (pressuring the EPA to censor scientific findings), using “executive privilege” to do legally questionable things (illegal wiretaps, torture, etc.).
I can’t say I agree with Obama on everything, but from his speeches and writing I can tell that he’s an intelligent, compassionate, upfront, and sincere man. His speech about the reverend issue was amazing - a politician with a well thought out position who talks to us like adults instead of spinning! I was angry about his FISA vote, as were other Obama supporters, but his explanation of his vote made sense to me and even if I hadn’t agreed with his reasons, they were at least well considered.
So yeah, a lot of people just vote either their bottom line, usually money, or fall for whatever spin meme they feel most comfortable with. And of course, the way in which money is raised in campaigns is a big factor too. Both Dems and Reps do this altho from my perspective it seems a little biased towards one side inthe current climate. I’d rather vote for someone who isn’t running the government this way. I’m not sure what I can do except chose to vote this way. If every one else did too, I think we’d see better candidates on both sides of the political spectrum.
Taxes are really not that important to me. Both candidates want to cut my taxes (although McCain only wants to cut mine by 0.5% and Obama wants to cut mine by 3.6%), and since I have three children I end up not paying any under either candidate. I’m an Independent who voted for Bush I and would have voted for Bush II in 2000 if he hadn’t smeared McCain, and would vote for McCain if he was closer to his 2000 platform and didn’t pick a fundie for a running mate.
If Obama were to suddenly promise “no new taxes” and McCain come forth with a plan to undo all the Bush-era tax cuts, I would still vote for Obama because of the social issues.
I get the feeling this thread wasn’t aimed at me though… ?
To put it more succinctly, I would say that physical and social infrastructure ideally helps to uphold the value of the very property or income which is being taxed to support it. How much is a piece of real estate worth if it’s in a place that is so crime ridden and blighted that nobody wants to live or do business there? What good is it to earn 250K annually if banks are so under-regulated that there’s no place to keep your money?
That’s not to say that adjustments never need to be made. In 1977 in California, people were being forced to sell houses that they had lived in for decades, even if they owned them free and clear, because they could not afford to pay property tax on the new assessed values in the white-hot real estate market. The resulting Proposition 13 has been a tough pill to swallow, but it was necessary.
Your premise is faulty. Of course it’s my money. People don’t work for the State, or for the touchy-feely types, the Greater Good of Society. They work for the betterment of themselves and their loved ones. If everyone thought they were working for the State, no one would ever get out of bed again.
In my opinion the anti-tax mantra is rooted in the property ownership ethos which defines America more than other developed countries. Closely allied and equally defining, for better or worse, is the rootless willing to pack up and move to a new place instead of improving the old. Inner cities have rotted because it has historically been easier to move to the burbs than to address the problems in the city.
Once people have left the city, its concerns become increasingly irrelevant to them, since they may go there only to work; as retail and entertainment opportunities become available in the suburbs, people has even less reason to go downtown. But urban cultural assets such as museums rarely follow the shopping malls, and become the haunt primarily of groups of schoolchildren herded by their teachers from one gallery to another. The life of adults who ignore these cultural assets is the poorer for it. It may be telling that the few exceptional places, decried by arch-conservatives as stomping grounds of the leftist elite, are just those places that still boast a healthy mix of races and classes, and extensive mass transit infrastructures, like San Francisco and, especially, New York City. To a lesser extent, we can say the same of Los Angeles. While it’s true we have to drive just about everywhere here, our concept of what is easily accessible reinforces the notion that cultural assets like LACMA or Disney Hall are here and not “down in the city” or “somewhere else”. Tellingly, the suburban San Fernando Valley, home to millions of people, still lacks a single major cultural institution, and the local newspaper was opposed to the subway extension that connected the Valley with downtown. City dwellers are more dependent on government services such as mass transit, and are more likely to be renters, which can put them at odds with property owners. A well-off Manhattanite paying $6000 per month to lease a spacious apartment has something in common with someone paying $900 for a single in Queens–they are both renters. The owners of a tiny suburban starter home, of a Bel Air mansion, and of the building I live in also have something in common–they are property owners. I think Republicans, and conservatism generally, is as strong as it is in this country because their advocates strike a chord with small property owners, by convincing them to see themselves in the same light as land barons. Certainly I don’t mean to suggest that this is true for everyone, but I do believe it happens enough to be a major factor in the big picture. How else could rent control be either non-existent or feeble in the vast majority of the U.S. when there are obviously so many more renters than landlords?
Try to earn it in a country filled with armed bandits plotting to take it from you on every street corner, where you need to hack through open countryside to get from one city to another, and where every opportunistic foreign country will try to invade your borders and rape your cattle and steal your women and drink your beer.
Maybe that would be a country where your 2nd Amendment rights would come in especially handy, I’ll grant you.
Revenue flat - revenue problem. The big increase is the proposed budget, which has already been cut.
Thanks to Prop 13, a lot of revenue depends on house sales to reset assessed valuation. This is especially because business property taxes are effectively frozen forever. So the revenue hit is a part of that, but falling housing prices don’t mean that schools need any less money.
To be fair, the Republicans have finally released their proposal. It involves cutting financial aid for college, cutting the pay of home health aides back to minimum wage - but it does include more money for prisons. And instead of raising the tax, they plan to borrow the still present shortfall. Now that’s fiscal responsibility for you.
Cite - an editorial true, but just pay attention to the factual stuff.
But, to play the role of the average Republican - I’m paying relatively little in real estate taxes, since I’ve had my home for 12 years, so screw everyone else. Paying my fair share would be so, so Democratic.
It just goes to show that the Republicans don’t have the answer either - not having a majority, they can screw the state and remain pure to their no new taxes dogma.
In case you hadn’t noticed, we all live under the rule of law. It isn’t fair either that I have to be held up by a red light, or not hold a cell phone, or drive somewhere close to 65 mph. Do you think it is any more fair for someone making $50k to pay taxes than someone making $600K? I don’t think it is fair at all that my tax money is supporting this law based on a lie (let alone paying Cheney’s salary) but that’s what the Congress voted.
If you don’t like the concept of taxes, you are welcome to move someplace in the wilderness where no one will find you, or arrange to make so little money that you won’t have to pay. It is a free country, not counting Gitmo.
Now we’ve dealt with that, how to allocate taxes? Roughly equal pain seems to be the most reasonable measure. During the bubble I made obscene amounts of money for a few years (not $600K, but pretty darn good) and I assure you I never felt those awful Clinton taxes. Do you think a 20% tax rate hurts someone making a million as much as it hurts someone making $50K. And once you buy progressive taxation, the rest is negotiating.
Warren Buffett is quoted in a letter to the Times Magazine today.
How do you expect the economy to grow if the masses of people have no money to buy things? The answer, as we’ve seen in the past 7 years, is that it doesn’t. Not in sustainable ways, anyhow.