Tag Archives: Taxes

Barack Knows Best

Posted on August 25, 2013 | 10 comments

Barack Obama

I was playing around this weekend reading up on retirement accounts and options available to me when I came across this gem:

How many times have you read financial-advice stories lecturing you to max-out on your IRA, save as much as you can in your 401(k), and even pay taxes now to change your regular IRA into a Roth IRA that will be tax-free until you die?

Well, be careful how much you save.

That’s the message in President Obama’s budget for fiscal 2014, which for the first time proposes to cap the amount Americans can save in these tax-sheltered investment vehicles. The White House explanation is that some people have accumulated “substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.” So Mr. Obama proposes to “limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year in retirement, or about $3 million for someone retiring in 2013.”

That’s the annoying thing about the Left; they just feel they know all about “fairness”.  See, it’s not fair that someone retire with more than a certain amount.

And why?

Because, the Barackness Monster knows best.

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Posted in Politics: National

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Laffer’s Curve

Posted on August 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

The Laffer Curve

The Laffer Curve.  It’s the idea that as tax rates rise beyond a certain point, tax revenue declines.  It makes sense at the extremes; a tax of 0% raises zero dollars.  A tax of 100% also raises zero dollars.  No one works for free.

An example of this concept was displayed in Washington DC last month:

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) no longer plans to build three stores in the nation’s capitol, after the city’s council voted to force large retailers to pay starting wages that are 50% higher than the minimum wage there.

The world’s largest retailer also said it will consider its options related to three other Washington, D.C., stores that are still under construction.

D.C., a wildly successful example of a city that lifts its poor and most fragile citizens out of poverty:

/sarcasm

has once again created a law that really proves who is waging a “war on the poor.”

It isn’t the conservative whole embraces the free market that “hates” the poor, no.  Rather, it’s the intellectual liberal that “hates” the poor.  How else to describe the mentality of a people who vote to force job creators out of the market?

You’ll probably never get rich at Wal-Mart, but a job there is better than not a job anywhere.

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Posted in Economics, Economy, Government, Politics: State, States Behaving Badly

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Liberals, Charity And Consistency – Example 2,482,893

Posted on April 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

Biden Laughing

So, Obama released his 2012 tax filing Friday.  Guess what?

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama reported an adjusted gross income of $608,611 for 2012 and paid an 18.4 percent income tax rate.

Un-freaken-believable!

Anyway, the best part is yet to come:

[O]n June 25 of last year, the Bidens gave ‘Clothing, Boots, Kitchenware, Glassware’ totaling $400 to Goodwill,” the report notes. “Earlier, on May 16, the Bidens gave ‘Furniture and Exercise Equipment’ valued at $1,100 to the Ministry of Caring. And on May 27 of last year, the Bidens gave ‘Bicycles, Toys, Glasses, Pottery, Kitchenware’ valued at $500 to the same Goodwill.

Blink.  Blink.

This piece of garbage, “paying your taxes is patriotic”, next in line to be leader of the free world, donated less than 2% of his income to charity, and of THAT amount, 25% of it was in the form of unwanted shit laying around the house.

Seriously, who itemizes bikes, toys, glasses — GLASSES?!?!?!, pottery and kitchenware when they drop-off at the Goodwill?

Are you kidding me?

But hey, maybe I should go easy on the guy, after all, how is expected to survive collecting $29,761 in Social Security payments.

I would say that Biden is following my theory that the reason liberals are so tight in their personal charity is that they view taxation as charity.  However, a Biden and The Barckness Monster prove, they don’t even like paying taxes at a rate equal to that of Buffet’s secretary!

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Posted in Crime, Government, Idiots on Parade

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Lefty Has A Friend

Posted on January 23, 2013 | 10 comments

More on California taxes.

I posted on Monday that Phil Mickelson has had enough of the confiscatory powers of the state:

 And now California is about to.  When you tax the living snot out of people they are going to react.  They’ll either move or quit.

And that results in $0.00 tax revenue.

It’s really not rocket surgery.

Perhaps the only thing more frustrating than a government that confiscates so much wealth is the fact that it is so predictable:

…but when pressed during his interview Tuesday, here’s how Woods responded:

“I moved out of here back in ’96 for that reason. I enjoy Florida but it was also…I understand what he was I think trying to say. I think he’ll probably explain it better in a little bit more detail.”

When California takes 13.3% and Florida takes zilch the calculus is pretty simple.

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Posted in Economics, Rocket Surgery, States Behaving Badly

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Fiscal Cliff “Averted”

Posted on January 1, 2013 | 9 comments

The last charge of the 112 Congress has taken place.  With just hours before the session was set to close, the congress passed the bill that will now go to Obama’s desk for signature.  Only in my most vindictive moments did I want us to go over the cliff.  I wanted the average person who voted for the current President to face the economic damage first hand.  If nothing else, the prospect of facing an additional $2,500 in taxes with the possibility of the AMT hitting them, they  may have learned what happens when a tax happy spend happy administration gets in power.

As it is, we have very little to be happy about.  The first, if not only, is the fact that the Bush Tax Cuts are now permanent for everyone earning less then $450,000.  About time!  Although now that they are permanent, watch the left begin calling them the Obama Tax Cuts – as if.

The other positive is that the AMT’s annual correction is also permanent.  No more posturing on that one.

But there is a TON to hate.  Taxes going up for anyone in this economy is only going to do more harm than good.  And those taxes are on business and investors.  Not to mention investment itself.

And the worst part?  There wasn’t ANY spending cuts of meaning.  Rather we have that battle in two months.  Oh yeah, I forgot the third thing – no debt ceiling limit rise.

All that means is that we get to go through this all over again in a few short months.

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Posted in Debt - Deficit, Politics: National

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Obama and the Fiscal Cliff

Posted on December 30, 2012 | 5 comments

Obama is confused.

Today he’s remarking that the republicans aren’t negotiating seriously:

In an interview broadcast Sunday, Obama told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Republicans are responsible for the stalemate that brought lawmakers back to Capitol Hill on a Sunday afternoon.

“They say that the biggest priority is making sure that we deal with the deficit in a serious way. But the way they’re behaving is that their only priority is making sure that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are protected,” Obama said. “That seems to be their only overriding, unifying theme,”

To be clear, there is only one party in these negotiations that have, as their entire offer, a single overriding theme.  And that is the President himself.  The President’s entire offer, the whole of it, consists of raising taxes on the wealthy.

And that’s it.

No spending cuts.  No entitlement reforms.  No talk about any effort to reduce the deficit or attack the debt.

Just tax the rich.  And he knows that this isn’t going to address any of the problems we face, on the contrary – it will only make it worse.

But if that was the only aspect of Obama’s confusion, he could be forgiven.  We know that he’s nothing more than a class warrior who hasn’t an inkling of a clue on anything economic.  But he should know how bills make their way through Capital Hill:

Obama said the Senate should vote on legislation to make sure middle-class taxes are not raised and that 2 million people don’t lose unemployment benefits .

The Senate doesn’t initiate financial bills; the House does.  And they have.  Two of them.  Both waiting for Reid and the democrats to take them up, amend them and vote on them.  The pressure is squarely on the Senate right now.  Not the republicans.

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Posted in Debt - Deficit, Economy, Government, Politics: National

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Top Tax Rate

Posted on December 29, 2012 | 6 comments

What should the rate be on the top earners?

Well, according to a poll conducted by the Hill, 75% of Americans feel that it should be 30% or less.

While Americans may feed on the chum thrown to them in the form of “Tax the Rich”, most people continue to feel that tax rates ought to remain modest.

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Posted in Debt - Deficit, Government

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Bush Tax Rates

Posted on December 28, 2012 | 7 comments

How is it that democrats can criticize the Bush tax cuts as hurting the middle class 10 years ago and then claim today that reverting to the rates before those tax rates went into affect would ALSO hurt the middle class?

How does a media allow this to happen?

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Posted in Debt - Deficit

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Laffer Curve – California Dreamin

Posted on December 26, 2012 | 19 comments

California is broke.  Way broke. And spending is the problem.  So what did California do?  They enacted new laws calling for new taxes on the rich:

The big state tax news is that California voters said to sock it to the rich–specifically those with income of $250,000 and up. California Proposition 30, which Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget and public education in particular depended on, passed.

Proposition 30 creates three new upper income tax brackets for the next seven years. For example, folks with $250,000 to $300,000 a year in income will pay 10.3%, up from 9.3%. The new top income tax rate–for folks with income of $1 million-plus–will be 13.3%, up from a current top rate of 10.3%. That eclipses New Yorkers’ combined state and local top rate of 12.7% and Hawaii’s top rate of 11%. The income tax hikes are retroactive to Jan. 1, 2012, but the extra bill isn’t due until April 15, 2013.

The expected result?  Well, if past results can predict future ones, I would expect that California sees more people leaving:

Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.

…

Meanwhile, taxes are harming the private economy. According to the Tax Foundation, California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. Its income tax is steeply progressive. Millionaires pay a top rate of 10.3%, the third-highest in the country. But middle-class workers—those who earn more than $48,000—pay a top rate of 9.3%, which is higher than what millionaires pay in 47 states.

People aren’t gonna put up with it; they aren’t going to continue to work harder for less, pay more for smaller houses and face ever increasing costs associated with energy and transportation.

The Laffer Curve wins again.

19 Comments

Posted in Economics, Government, States Behaving Badly

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President Obama’s Mandate

Posted on November 20, 2012 | 1 comment

Here’s what Coyote thinks of Obama’s mandate:

Barack Obama argues that the last election gave him a mandate to raise taxes on the rich.  Put another way, he is arguing that 52% of the people voted to raise taxes on 2%.

Nice.

I particularly like his illustration:

Let’s take a look at two propositions [in California]:

  • Prop 30, which propose to raise taxes on on the rich to help close the deficit (there was a token 0.25% sales tax increase for cover, but everyone knew it to be a tax on the rich).
  • Prop 39, which was a broad-based income tax increase which raised taxes on most everyone (or at least on the 50% or so who pay income taxes).

So, let’s look at the results:

  • Raise taxes on only the very rich:  PASS
  • Raise taxes on everyone (including me):  FAIL

Wolves and lunch and lambs people.  Wolves, lunch and lambs.

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Posted in Economics, Politics: National, States Behaving Badly

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