I'm all for reinventing yourself but this is suicide. It looks foreign. Like if I were to go to a Wal-Mart in China, this is what I would find.


Moderators: The People's DJ, David Paleg











You guys don't get it. They don't have to...they can just leave.Cameron wrote:Bow to your overlords now big corporations!


P&G should get ol' "Keating Five" McCain to throw them a couple of billion to stay. We see where McCain's economic interests are. After that, we can give the automakers a couple of billion to make some more SUV's to get the economy rolling. Why hell, poor ol' Exxon can barely afford to stay in the US with this horrible business climate. Are you liking the "growth" path we're on - or have these failed policies that favor large business collapsed under its own weight?Arp2 wrote:You guys don't get it. They don't have to...they can just leave.Cameron wrote:Bow to your overlords now big corporations!
The CFO of Procter & Gamble said yesterday that P&G had already completed its preliminary study of moving the company elsewhere....with taxes on the company already the second-highest possible in the free world and heading higher and federal taxes alone on its leaders heading for 54%, why stay?
I really expected better from you, Cameron....engineers usually have deliberate, logical patterns of thought. You surely know math pretty well.....try to run Obama's numbers and make them work....try every way you can think of. Use his own materials as much as you want but run the numbers, yourself. G'ahead. Also, factor in what might happen if people start structuring their finances for tax minimization and avoidance rather than growth. Give it a shot....by and for yourself....


Here's some math:Arp2 wrote:
The promises are a lie, or the tax threshold is a lie........or both. Unless you can be the first one to make the math jibe, that is.....try it for yourself!
Obama and McCain Tax Proposals
According to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are both proposing tax plans that would result in cuts for most American families. Obama's plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy. For the approximately 147,000 families that make up the top 0.1 percent of the income scale, the difference between the two plans is stark. While McCain offers a $269,364 tax cut, Obama would raise their taxes, on average, by $701,885 - a difference of nearly $1 million.
The rich would pay more under Barack Obama's tax plan, and the poor and middle-class would pay less, a nonpartisan analysis finds. Under John McCain's plan, the rich would pay much less than they do now, the poor and middle-class would pay a bit less, and the federal deficit would grow, the study found.
Each individual's tax situation is different, so it's hard to say for sure how much more or less you would pay under the presidential candidates' ever-evolving tax proposals.
And at this point that's all they are -- proposals that may or may not get through Congress. They don't take into account wars, whether the president will sign an expensive social program into law, or the world economy.
With those caveats, here are highlights of how the candidates' proposals to change the tax code would impact you:
Obama says he would hike several taxes on people making more than $250,000, including the amount they pay on capital gains. Currently, the top income tax rate is 35 percent. Under Obama, that would go back up to 39 percent. Obama's staff told the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center he would raise the rates for people in the top two brackets -- about 2.5 million filers out of 100 million-plus. People in those high tax brackets would see the tax rate on their capital gains hiked from the current 15 percent to 20-28 percent.
The 95 percent-plus of the American population that earns less than $250,000 would see the following tax breaks: A $500-per-worker tax credit for people who earn less than $150,000 and do not itemize, and a $4,000 credit per child in college. Seniors who earn less than $50,000 would pay no income tax.
The Tax Policy Center notes seniors could end up paying more if corporations respond to Obama's proposed increase in the corporate tax rate by passing those costs along to consumers.
McCain would make permanent most of the tax cuts President Bush has already enacted, including those that benefit the middle class, such as elimination of the marriage penalty and the increase in child credits. He would also keep cuts that benefit the wealthy, such as the elimination of the highest tax brackets. Obama would keep the breaks for the middle class but not the ones for the wealthy.
McCain would also double the dependent exemption from $3,500 to $7,000, benefitting big families of all incomes.
Obama would leave the top corporate tax rate at 35 percent. McCain would cut it to 25 percent.
The two candidates differ widely in their approach to the estate tax, which the Republicans call the "death tax." McCain would set it at 15 percent for estates above $5 million. Obama would set it at 45 percent for estates above $3.5 million.
Both candidates favor extending a "patch" that would keep the Alternative Minimum Tax from encroaching on middle-income families.
Largely because his tax proposals would leave tax breaks for the wealthy in place, McCain's plan would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Obama's, the Tax Policy Center found.
The precise cost depends on whether you assume the current tax breaks would be renewed or would expire.
Assuming they would have been renewed anyway, Obama's plan would bring in an additional $700 billion in taxes over the next 10 years, while McCain's would cost the Treasury $600 billion. Assuming legislators would have let the tax breaks expire, Obama's plan would cost the U.S. Treasury $2.7 trillion and McCain's $3.7 trillion.
The center uses various assumptions both campaigns quarrel with. Each campaign also accuses the other of not being honest with the numbers.
The $600 million deficit the study projects McCain's plan would create doesn't count impact of current Iraq war spending. If McCain's plan drives the deficit up and puts upward pressure on interest rates, that increases costs for families and could force really Draconian, across-the-board spending cuts.
Neither plan will have much of an effect on closing the income-gap. The current market-forces that result from this latest crash will have more of an effect.A Tax Policy Center analysis found that those in the lowest 20 percent of income earners, making less than $18,981 a year, would have a 5.5 percent boost in after-tax income next year, if his plan were enacted. Those in the top 5 percent, making more than $226,918, would see after-tax income drop by 0.1 percent.
Under McCain's plan, if enacted, the 20 percent at the bottom would have a 0.2 percent increase in after-tax income next year, while the top 5 percent would gain 3.3 percent. Once McCain's plan is phased in fully, during 2012, top earners would gain 5.3 percent and the lowest 0.9 percent.


What's wrong with "work harder, earn more"?Neither plan will have much of an effect on closing the income-gap.


No, Cameron, not some math....your math! I want you to do the math, not cut and paste text from the website you saw in an Obama commercial.Cameron wrote:Here's some math:
Lower-income families, though, never enjoyed any boom associated "trickle-down".
"Responsible for," NO. Being an engineer, surely you know that what you're measuring does NOT necessarily indicate the cause of what you're seeing on your meter or scope, let alone a cause and effect relationship. Also, you surely know that there's a delay between a change and the effect of a change.The tax rates in the Obama proposal, though, mirror those of the ones responsible for the longest sustained economic boom in U.S. history.
If the only things that sustain or grow sales are the things "poor" people buy more of when given a marginal dollar (after three get stolen from others and gubmint's overhead eats two), then no one but those who make those low-level bare necessities and cheap pleasures will have a job.Maybe some lower income families will go and buy a Pepsi and kick-start things.



Good question. What happened?Lester wrote:What's wrong with "work harder, earn more"?Neither plan will have much of an effect on closing the income-gap.