Joe the Plumber, a new spin
Find a Conversation
| Fri, 10-17-2008 - 4:16pm |
The appeal of Joe the Plumber is that he puts a face to a tax number. Even if he's really not earning that much or isn't even a plumber. I am married to someone who makes that much and let me try to make the same point from a different perspective.
Go ahead, raise my taxes Obama. You are right, I can afford it. But first I'd like you to meet Mike, Steve and Emily. I don't own a business or anything, but I do spend my money (you know, since I'm one of the have's, that's what we do). Obama wanta to spread my wealth around and here's how it will affect 3 people in the middle and lower income brackets.
Mike - Mike is a music school teacher. He does private lessons on the side to make a little extra, in addition to volunteering in a community band. He loves teaching and playing music. He teaches one of our children and we pay him $100/mo.
Steve - Steve works full time doing private music lessons. He has two kids who he pays child support for and he lives on the edge of poverty. Private lessons is his only source of income. We pay for him to instruct three of our children and me every week. We pay him $364/mo.
Emily - Emily works full time but became a mom at age 18 yo, has no education past high school and lives near the poverty level. She is on her own being recently divorced. She helps us out once or twice a week, earning $120-$160/mo.
I recalculated Obama's tax proposals and realized it will only cost my family $1,350/mo on average. I can cover almost half of that by cutting my budget back, not hiring the babysitter and doing away with private music lessons (they are luxury items anyway).
I'm sure Mike, Steve and Emily will be glad to know that instead of earning money from my family, they will get $500 refundable tax credit next year under Obama's plan. And maybe even if $300 stimulus check like they got from Bush in the past.
Make less and pay less in tax, that's Obama's plan for the middle class.
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/

Pages
>>>So they shouldn't have too much trouble with a slight increase under Obama's plan from 33% to 39%.<<<<
I have heard people from the Obama campaign say that they are only going to return to the tax rate we had in the Clinton years, but that is not so. His increases on payroll taxes is an additional increase over and above repealing the Bush tax cuts.
I guess we have a different definition of slight.
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
Pennsylvania Mom
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
You wouldn't need to be a rocket scientist to do my husbands job, but you would have needed to start young, get an advanced degree, and work for it your whole career.
I can't earn what my dh can earn and I don't want to, it was never a priority for me. But I also never felt I needed the government to send me a check that represented someone else's wealth. I was happy with my choices and my middle class lifestyle and didn't need a hand up when I was where I was because I wanted to be there. Quite frankly, I never would have wanted to work as many hours for as many years doing my dh's job to get to where he got. Therefore I don't "deserve" to earn salary.
I think teachers should be paid fairly, and I think it's totally unfair that teachers in my area earn $90k when teachers in an inner city, who need the best teachers, make so much less. That should be changed. But at the same time people choose a career knowing about what they can expect to earn, and it's up to them if that is going to be enough or not. If you want a lifestyle that is more than what a teacher can afford, don't be a teacher.
Obama's $500 credit isn't really going to give anyone a different lifestyle, though the higher education credit certainly might help some children get a better education than they otherwise would be able to afford. For some reason he's giving that credit to the wealthy too, that boggles my mind.
Pennsylvania Mom
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
It's
This is a long article and I haven't had time to read it all, but two interesting points:
"But the larger point is that the immediate deficit isn’t as big as it was in 1992. Then, it was equal to 4.7 percent of gross domestic product. Right now it’s about 2.5 percent."
"Tellingly, he said that while he admired what Clinton did, he might have been more open to Reich’s argument — even in 1993. “I still would have probably made a slightly different choice than Clinton did,” Obama said. “I probably wouldn’t have been as obsessed with deficit reduction.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/magazine/24Obamanomics-t.html?hp
I'm curious what you think of that in light of your desire to see the deficit reduced? What do you think of the additional spending Obama has proposed? Does Obama pledge to balance the budget? I know McCain has said he would, though you could question whether you believe that.
Do we know what the tax increases over $250k will bring in additional federal revenues? I don't for sure, but I thought I heard a number that wouldn't even cover the recent bailout, a little over $100 billion. And if that money is used to "spread the wealth" and is then handed out to the middle class, it won't do anything to reduce the national debt or the budget deficit.
My understanding of subprime:
Allowing securitizations was a huge part if not the main problem. The government's role is to allow them or not allow them, not to oversee them. By allowing them they permitted the company originating the loan to take on no risk for the loan, thereby not really being responsible for their work. Mortgage lenders would securitize originated mortgages right away. When you sell them in huge chunks it's difficult to know the true risk of the portfolio, you have to do analysis on the database of information about the loans. The new owners of the securitized loans were really investors, usually the loans were serviced by a third party (billing and collecting), the investors didn't know what they had (or couldn't know as well as if they had originated the loans and were responsible for managing the loans).
I don't think the government would have ever had oversight of the actual securitization transactions, they happened every day all over the country, and the investors could choose whoever they wanted to analyze the risk of a portfolio they wanted to purchase. What the government did have oversight of was how many of these portfolios were purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Even after problems with accounting and fraud, and a call for more oversight of F&F that went unheeded, Barney Frank was saying F&F should buy even more subprime mortgages (not just by mortgages, specifically buy subprime). This policy encouraged banks to originate more subprime, knowing the government would buy them. The two issues together, allowing securitizations and encouraging F&F to take on more and more subprime loans - was as I read in one article "a marriage made in hell."
The law that allowed securitizations was passed before Bush was in office and had strong bipartisan support. The House banking committee held hearings on Fannie and Freddie and recommended against more oversight, and has had a lot to do with the F&F mess. If you go on Barney Frank's own congressional website, it's obvious he missed the bus even though the bus was sitting right in front of him honking the horn.
I agree with you on your analogy on kids trying drugs, it'll be fine. But the problem is the government DID step in, stepped right in it big time.
Pennsylvania Mom
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
We'll we'd have to cut the money from somewhere. You don't really think people can be taxed more without it affecting something, do you? Maybe others would cut college savings before babysitting and music lessons, I was thinking we'd look to cut "extras" before college savings. Maybe now knowing Obama wants to save my family $96k in college costs that will change how we approach this.
I don't think cutting babysitting and music lessons would be making our kids "go without." The music lessons are beneficial but they won't stop playing even if we did stop the private lessons. And they like the babysitter but if we re-arranged our schedules in some way that we could live without her, I don't think the kids would be deprived.
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
I don't see how that is irresponsible. We live within our means, it's our choice to spend our money the way we wish. We aren't looking for a government handout. We aren't "throwing the money away" it's going to people who want to earn it and it's a fair amount for the services that are provided. We could live without those services if we had to, but it's not "throwing the money away."
Unless you are saying WE shouldn't spread the wealth around, it's not our job, that job ONLY belongs to the government?
Pennsylvania Mom
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
Pennsylvania Mom
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
Pennsylvania Mom
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
Pennsylvania Mom
http://openlettertobarack.blogspot.com/
Pages