Re: Obama XXIII: The Muslin Anti-Christ Wages War on the forces of Christianity!
Bad news. The Forbes 400 goes down to Dan Snyder at $1.05B, so that's a pretty good approximation for "our billionaires." Their net worth is only $1.53T. Figure they're all pretty shrewd investors, so let's say they're increasing their wealth (on average) by 15% each year. This gives a total income of $228B, which even with a 100% tax rate would not even come close to covering our deficit - forget about paying down any of the $15T debt.
Taxing a few hundred billionaires is not a silver bullet and is practically irrelevant to the overall math of balanced budgets. Anyone screaming for a tax on billionaires is looking to score political points, not solve problems.
I'm not anti-tax - taxes absolutely should go up, but they need to go up across the board. The fact that a few hundred billionaires will end up paying more taxes as a result of the changes is neither here nor there, and should not be the focus of any sincere tax policy.
I wasn't implying they could solve the deficit, only that if everyone thinks taxing them more does anything to help (besides making the bitter people feel better), then we would be better off applying the money directly at the issue instead of wasting it on government red tape.
It isn't just the billionaires that can't solve the issue, there isn't enough money in the country to eliminate the debt, period.
We can debate the current president's abilities among ourselves on here but nobody will convince me that his whole 'millionaires' campaign is anything more than an attempt to gather votes. He knows it won't solve the problem, he knows it isn't assured that the country's fortunes would be better if we did take more of their money...all it does is distract from the real issues.
I agree with you, it still may be the right thing to do, but making the whole election about wall st. vs. main st. is just blowing smoke and convincing people that the solution is that simple.
My continuous question to those who believe the country gets better if Bill Gates pays more taxes is "when does it stop?"...it doesn't even qualify as a band-aid solution...it is no solution at all but Obama has sure convinced people that they'll get a job if Warren Buffet pays more taxes.
The estimated cost of the MLK memorial is $120mm. 20 years of work and expense and they didn't get his quote right. Does it honor the man to spend $120million dollars on a statue and 4 acres of land we already owned? Is that really a tribute to what he sought to do? He must be turning over in his grave.
Of course we're going to spend $535 million over 2011 on trying to improve troubled grade schools. No telling how many campaigns now exist to solve troubled schools and how many should be killed to fund the new campaign, but nobody does that math, it is just $535million more dollars thrown into a rat hole.
