Florida Primaries

What's also forgotten:

Willard was born to the manor precisely because America's lower middle class earned enough money (with just one member of the family working, of course) from what is now considered menial jobs to buy General Motors products. Thanks in large part, of course, to unions insuring that the phrase "living wage" was expected, not an exception.

 

He was already married with children at the time as well.

Try that. (Well, not you, but you know what I mean.)

 

Wow. Great job Mitt. Here's your $50 million reward. But it's not tax free, nor should it be.

 

The above post is dripping with sarcasm, but really, what the hell?

My goal professionally right now is to do good enough work so I can move into a higher tax bracket. If paying a higher rate on my taxes comes with the territory, so be it. If I can make millions on capital gains and have to pay a higher tax rate when I get there, well, where do I sign up?

Again, why would paying higher taxes on capital gains be a disincentive to making capital gains?

 

Because it's diminishing returns. At some point, the money isn't worth the effort.

Have you seen "Margin Call"? The main character was a rocket scientist before going into investment banking. Why? Money. But isn't the money good in being a rocket scientist? Probably. But not for the effort.

And I'm someone who thinks the capital gains tax should be higher, and who thinks that some of Mitt's loopholes should be closed. But I'm not going to pretend that higher taxes wouldn't be a disincentive. They are. Which is fine, if the tradeoff is efficient for society.

 

Do higher taxes on cigarettes change behavior?

 

George Romney was a great American bootstraps story.

 

I don't understand how people can devalue Romney's education, but then get pissy when Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity hints that Obama was an affirmative action admit.

 

He truly was.

 

If taxes were lower, employers would also have a bigger incentive to lower wages. They would just rationalize that the government gave the workers a raise, so why should they?

"Working people" in many ways, does equal "poor". As someone pointed out earlier, for a long time, it only took one salary to raise a family, buy a house, own a car. Now it takes both members of the family working, and frequently, one of them has two jobs in order to support the family. And please don't claim that since everyone has an iPhone, that people are wealthy. There's a reason why the average American has over $7K in credit card debt. Without credit cards, the economy would collapse.

"And, to a large degree, outcomes are determined by what we put in."

An awful lot of people are putting in an awful lot of hours at their job. Only, they're not getting ahead anymore. They're being told they're lucky they have a paycheck.

Romney busted his butt. So what? Conservatives say why should they be punished for success? Well, why should they be given special rewards (like a lower tax rate on capital gains) for being successful?

 

Working people and the poor are so 2011. It's now about saving the middle class.

 

Well, at what point does it become a disincentive? Certainly, for me, the opportunities to work in several tax brackets higher than the one I am working in is ZERO disincentive to getting paid more. I can think of NOBODY working at, say, $50k a year who would not want to make $100k because he would have to pay proportionally more in taxes.

Similarly, I can think of no reasonable person who would not want to aspire to make enough capital gains where he does not have to work any more and can still live an extravagant lifestyle, just because the taxes on this income goes up.