Obama Tax Increases.

A note from my nephew:

I'm curious what you've heard Obama say and when he's said it that makes you think taxes on the middle class or small businesses will increase...

From Obama's web page:

Employer Contribution: Employers that do not offer or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan

A mandatory increase in the labor costs for small businesses, one way or another. Obama doesn't say what the percentage is but why is my employer responsible for my health care? What else will employers have to pick up to cover for my lack of personal responsibility? My beer tab? Oh Rahh! I could give up beer and afford health insurance. Most "poor" I know could give up something, if they choose to, those that make too much to qualify for Medicaid anyway. I choose not to. Businesses that can will pass this cost on to consumers. Those that can't will cut employees. This study of California’s “pay or play” attempt shows it would have eliminated 71,000 jobs in that state alone. However many, jobs will be lost, probably mine which means back to prison for me at a time when it is now twice as dangerous as when I left. Hurray because the prison does have medical! I'll be insured! I'll need it.

Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families:Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.

Take from the evil rich obscene oil companies and give to the poor. I think this is called income redistribution. Or communism. Problem is mom was big oil. Pensions, 401Ks, and IRAs are big oil. Half the income tax returns showing capital gains in 2005 earned less than $50,000. Three thirds earned less than $100,000. In any case if I invest in a company, putting my hard earned cash at risk, why should the government, who risked nothing, come in and take it? Why when your business makes a profit should the government say, well that's too much. And what is too much profit? Notice how they always put it in terms of so many billions? Not an obscene percentage in return on the trillions invested but a figure where they can say billions. Oil companies are earning a comparable rate of return to most industrials. Who do we go after next? Big pharmaceuticals? Big liqueur? (Remember the Whiskey Rebellion!) When these companies loose money do they get the tax back? Also consider the extra tax income the government gets from increased oil and gas prices. Why not give that back to the people? Consider that this only makes our public oil companies less competitive in relation to nationalized giants like those in Russia. Venezuela, and Iran. Our oil companies are at least trying to find us more oil as well as spending billions in alternative research. Nationalized oil companies are a cash cow for the regimes that control them and except for Russia their infrastructures are crumbling because so little is put back into the companies that production is in a downward spiral. Finally, and this is a basic economic tenant: No tax is ever paid by a company. As with any other cost, like health care for employees, it is passed on to the customer or the investor. The investor will not continue to take a hit and will divest. Someone pays, not a nameless, faceless behemoth called big oil but living human beings. That's why this won't work. Jimmy Carter tried it. According to a 2006 study by the Congressional Research Service, it generated less than one-fourth of the revenues that were expected and reduced domestic oil production by at least 8 percent. Less production is not the answer. Should Obama win I will make all my economic decisions based on the Carter years.

That's two I found with a quick look at his web page. More will follow. I throw this next one in even though it only soaks the rich because a tax increase that hurts the economy hurts the economy regardless of whatever class envy feel good feelings such increases may bring you.

Provide a Tax Cut for Working Families: Obama and Biden will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they need. Obama and Biden will create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. The "Making Work Pay" tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.

Fairness being I pay nothing, you pay for all of us 'cause you make a good earning. Obama will give a tax break to a hell of allot of people, (95% of Americans!), many of whom don't pay any taxes. How? My guess is by giving them more money like the Earned Income Tax Credit. Most of the taxes paid are paid by the top ten percent of wage earners, that's why any tax break intended to increase revenue has to include those who pay most of the taxes. But under Obama tax breaks for the rich will disappear, which is a tax increase that will hurt the economy. America's most productive earners will be further punished, taking the money out of their apparently talented hands and giving it to the, in my opinion, far less capable hands of the government. The fact that I get a cut in this extortion doesn't make it right in my book. The fact that the rich are getting stuck brings me no joy, those are the folks paying me to blog all night.