But there is one thing that drives me crazier than the rest of the crap I hear out there and I feel the need to pontificate upon it.
President Obama is currently out there talking about the "Buffett Rule". For those who don't know, this rule is named for Warren Buffett, the President and CEO of Berkshire-Hathaway, a multi-billion dollar company whose stock value is currently in the $100,000 a share range. The premise is that Mr. Buffett pays less in taxes than his secretary and that is fundamentally unfair, and we should raise the taxes on the rich to make things more "Fair".
That word, "Fair" is key. Everyone wants to be fair, and this rich guy paying less than his poor secretary doesn't seem fair at all. Well, Mr. Buffett doesn't pay income taxes first of all, he pays capital gains tax, because he does not take a salary. So right off the bat, they are comparing 2 different taxes. That doesn't seem fair either.
President Obama is claiming that raising these taxes on the rich will cure our economic ills. It will allow us to invest in education, renewable energy, infrastructure AND pay down our debt. WOW, those rich people keeping all THEIR money SUCKS! The Buffett rule would sure bring in a whole lot of revenue, right? Well, let's look at that.....
We have been told that the Buffett Rule would increase revenues by 54 Billion dollars. Holy Cow, that is a bunch of money. Well, sure, it is over 10 years, but that is still 5.4 Billion Dollars a year and THAT is a TON of cash. I can see why people on the left are screaming for that money.
The sad truth is, however, that our annual deficits are running 1.2 TRILLION dollars and 5.4 Billion dollars will barely make a dent, let alone heal the sick, and all the other miracles they are claiming this extra revenue will do. In fact, the estimated number of people making over a million dollars a year is somewhere between 110, 000 and 220,000, depending on which number fits which argument one side or the other is trying to make. Let's take the higher number just for fun. If you took 1 million dollars from each of them it is only 220 Billion dollars, and that is barely enough to cover the deficit for February of 2012.
Which makes me wonder why they keep going to this "Tax the rich" argument when it will do practically NOTHING to ANY of the things they are claiming that it will.
However, revenues have ALWAYS gone up when taxes are lowered. It worked under Coolidge. It worked under JFK. It worked under Reagan and it worked under the evil G.W. Bush. During his presidency, revenues went from 995 Billion a year to 1.436 TRILLION a year. Now I am not the smartest cookie, but that seems like a heck of a lot more annual revenue increase than 5.4 billion.
So it seems to me that if my friends on the left wanted more money to spend on the poor, or kids, or old people or trees (That ALL conservatives want to eliminate from the face of the earth) or stuff like that, They would get off the tax the rich bandwagon and get on the lower taxes for all bandwagon, because that is what increases revenues and that IS fair.
I believe our president knows this and is being dishonest with us. Politicians take advantage of the fact that most people don't pay attention and MANY people just don't give a crap and don't bother looking into facts before forming an opinion. This isn't just a republican/democrat thing. This is a politician thing and it HAS to stop.
