Presidential Debate #3: 9 PM ET, 10/15/08

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by thedecline19

Tax savings to middle class allows more money to flow into the corporations in the form of purchased goods and services by the middle class. Because of the increase in purchasing power, companies make more due to increased sales quantity and are not forced to raise prices. Because of the extra income, businesses can (and are forced to) hire more workers to meet demand, creating yet another client base (newly employed workers). This, in a nutshell, is how middle class tax cuts end up stimulating the economy.

thats what happened this year with the "stimulus" package. they only gave out checks to those who make under x dollars (dependant on whether you were single or joint filing). not it didnt work. james millionaire and joe plumber/six-pack/electrician/etc will both spend the money, save the money or invest the money. their is no wealth creation that you see from a business. businesses create wealth.

Originally Posted by Tresselbeliever

Where is the money coming from? It's coming from the pockets of the next generation, and this isn't just for Obama's plan.

This is how I see it. Obama wants the tax increase on the top 5 percent to fund his tax cut for the rest of the 95 percent. I don't agree with this redistribution of wealth thing. But at least he's thinking about where the funding is coming from. McCain wants to fund the tax cut to mostly the wealthy and corporations, which at times of financing and economic stress, isn't going to invest that money in projects when the cost of capital is high and the projected return is low, so what's going to end up happening is that the wealth is going to pass down to the rich in the form of dividends. With the debate whether additional dividend income for the rich is going to drive the economy aside, the problem is that McCain doesn't say how he's going to fund it besides that he wants to put a spending freeze. A spending freeze on social security? on medicare? when the baby boomers are starting to retire in the next five years? I don't think so. So I think Obama's enlargement of entitlement and McCain's unfunded tax cut for the wealthy are equally bad. It's like pick your poison.

the 95% statement is an illusion, just like what 75% of these guys are saying, both of them.
Obama's 95% Illusion - WSJ.com

mccain just says hes going to continue the status quo basically. which ill argue is an eh plan with a bad tax code. im for redoing the whoe thing.

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

If Joe the plummer doesn't have TV commercials for his business all over town he's got issues. This guy just landed on a gold mine, and I hope he realizes it!

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

Which raises the ethical questions surrounding spending versus investing relative to household need, etc.

agreed. as a nation were are net spenders, not savers. good point bus

Originally Posted by billmac91

He may not need to work after he hits the interview circuit...Fox has the first interview, any guesses on which way he is leaning?

Either Joe is leaning right, or Fox pays well.....

fox had joe the plumber scheduled before the debate. nice move by them. either they knew the mention was coming or they saw the bluder and wanted to act on it. or they got lucky...

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

This is a wages issues, not a tax issue.

not always but a lot of times yes. but, look at our wage taxes. anyone who owns a small business or operates a business budget looks at their heads and shakes it. for those of you who dont, your company matches your ss and other such stuff. something people forget.

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

who's to say someone needs a tax cut? i bet you show me most middle class who purportedly 'need' a tax cut and i can show you plenty of wasteful spending and needless debt. also, to use your argument about the rich, who's to say that tax cut money to middle class get spent. i can tell you that my 600 tax rebate check (this should tell you what tax bracket i'm in) is in a CD right now. this brings me back to my original point. let the person who earned it decide what to do with it. it is not government's job to figure out who spends money the best.

good point but-their are more joe six packs and "small business owners" by which we likely mean one man shops to 5 employees (these small businesses are small small businesses) than their are s corp owners and millionaires. thats a lot more voters, lets pander to win the election to feed the special interest machine to make the politician lobbyists etc rich. im fully convinced its not about the best policy its about the most seats.

heck here we can have one of our biggest conservatives and biggest liberal and they can agree on this kind of stuff. life is a lot easier without a hand in the cookie jar.

Originally Posted by DaytonBuck

The appropriate solution is to just nationalize your company and force the jobs to stay here

or put up a proctectionist front.

while were at it, lets become "oil indpendent" and one of those ways is increase gas mileage. do we need to remind these two less than 1/3 or our oil usage is for automobiles?

Originally Posted by Tresselbeliever

The nominal tax rate isn't the realized tax rate. It's lower than 35%. The movement of jobs and the restructuring of the economy is a very complicated thing. People win the nobel prize for theorizing over things like that. But these are very difficult issues that is ongoing. What am I saying? don't count on politicians to figure them out.

many choices are made on marginal rates (next dollar rates). corporations and small businesses pass taxes on to consumers. look at it this way, if exxon is charged a windfall tax who will pay for it. exxon. how? they will raise their gas price to cover the cost. or they cut production, this lowers supply and raises prices. some how they finagle their way into the most money they can, doing their job-creating value for the shareholder. which i bet if you own a mutual fund you likely have exxon, so you are an owner. end of the day is if you find a way to "get even" with exxon for making money, consumers pay for it, not the business.

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by OSUsushichic

Not according to my friends and family in Ohio. My mother's biggest complaint about McCain is that he is out of touch with the middle class. She knows how many houses and cars he has (and she watches Fox News every day). Obama is resonating with more and more of middle America. If my mother can talk for 20 minutes straight on the phone about everything she doesn't like about McCain, then he's in trouble. My mother hardly ever talks politics with me!

its pretty hard when you are wire tapped by mccarthy...

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

i told some people i was watching with that i could have beaten obama tonight. you laid out the playbook perfectly. why mccain continues to whiff is beyond me.

do you think he whiffed or do you think he backed him into the corner as obama dodge stuff and then never swung for the ko.

i laughed to myself watching it mccain made a comment about obamas plan as nailing jello to the wall. thats dead on to obamas style. obama is begining to remind me of bill clinton, hes an elusive guy to nail down and get. hes never wrong but evades questions, turns them and works his way out of the tough spots. kudos to obama for that.

[jimotis4heisman]

since ive already monopolized this thread with replies all also add this was the least "moderated" debate and the best moderated debat because of that. imo.

[jimotis4heisman]

The Wall Street Journal Online - Interactive Graphics
debate cloud

top words

obama
american-60
tax-56
mccain-54
economic-44
campaign-36

mccain
america-110
obama-94
tax-60
campaign-36
record-22

[jimotis4heisman]

FactCheck.org: FactChecking Debate No. 3

Spin and hype were apparent, once again, at the third and final debate between McCain and Obama:

• McCain claimed the liberal group ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” In fact, a Republican prosecutor said of the first and biggest ACORN fraud case: “[T]his scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting.” He said $8-an-hour workers turned in made-up voter registration forms rather than doing what ACORN paid them to do.

• McCain said “Joe the plumber” faced “much higher taxes” under Obama’s tax plan and would pay a fine under Obama’s health care plan if he failed to provide coverage for his workers. But Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher would pay higher taxes only if the business he says he wants to buy puts his income over $200,000 a year, and his small business would be exempt from Obama’s requirement to provide coverage for workers.

• Obama repeated a dubious claim that his health care plan will cut the average family’s premiums by $2,500 a year. Experts have found that figure to be overly optimistic.

• McCain claimed that Obama’s real “object” is a government-run, single-payer health insurance system like those in Canada or England. The McCain campaign points to a quote from five years ago, when Obama told a labor gathering that he was “a proponent of a single-payer health care program.” But Obama has since qualified his enthusiasm for Canadian-style health care, and his current proposal is nothing like that.

• Obama incorrectly claimed all of McCain’s ads had been “negative.” That was true for one recent week, but not over the entire campaign. And at times Obama has run a higher percentage of attack ads than McCain.
  
  
• McCain described Colombia as the "largest agricultural importer of our products." Actually, Canada imports the most U.S. farm products, and Colombia is far down the list.
  

• Obama strained to portray himself as willing to break ranks with fellow Democrats. His prime example was his vote for a bill that was supported by 18 Democrats and opposed by 26. Congressional Quarterly rates him as voting with his party 97 percent of the time since becoming a U.S. senator.

For details on these and other misleading claims, please read on to the Analysis section.

continued...

[Bucklion]

Well everyone here has said what I thought they'd say (sorry jotis...)

Same [censored], different debate. The only places Obama is vulnerable, McCain either can't articulate or has the same views as Obama. The 95% deal is a total myth, people will be getting money that they didn't pay in if they didn't pay taxes, thus, whether people like the phrase or not, that's income redistribution. He couldn't hammer him there. Amazingly, AMAZINGLY, this ENTIRE process managed to dodge the 2 issues that people were harping on were 2 of the 3 most important issues (with energy) just 2 years ago, and someone already mentioned this earlier...immigration/border security and social security. How thew F did we go through 2,123,456,354,235,678 speeches, interviews, debates, and talking points and have these issues get pushed entirely to the backside? Of course McCain's border leniency is on par or even greater than Obama's, and he has no plan to fix a social security system that will never get fixed, any more than Obama does. So, Obama wins. Throw in Obama artfully dodging the bullets fired about character from a war veteran (Clinton 101), and McCain has absolutely nothing other than abortion to separate himself, and that's a losing issue with a majority of Americans in terms of banning it completely, and not enough to sway most voters his way in any event. He also had no better answer to the Pakistan situation, of which it and Obama's response to it scares the crap out of me. Tally it all up, and McCain may not be Bush, but there's really no McCain being McCain enough to not be Obama, and Obama is a much better speaker, represents the party not of Bush, and has the whole "history in the making" thing on his side. After tonight, barring a miracle, it's all over.

[Jagdaddy]

Originally Posted by billmac91

I'm rewatching the debate....if McCain could have kept his momentum from the first 15 minutes he would have steamrolled this debate. I really thought McCain made the best points on Economy. And the sad thing is, is he could have done better. That is the worst part about this election...the economic policies should have been a singular debate.

McCain's two-year capital gains rate cut is one of the dumbest economic ideas ever proposed: In tough times let's violate the principle of tax neutrality and get people to sell long-held assets they might otherwise hold for a tax break within a narrow window. What a great idea for stimulating investment . . .

[tibor75]

[Tresselbeliever]

Originally Posted by tibor75

didn't you hear? that's called gotcha journalism.

[Bucky Katt]

Originally Posted by DaytonBuck

Andrew Jackson is the President I'd want to have drink with

That bastard killed my people.

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

who's to say someone needs a tax cut? i bet you show me most middle class who purportedly 'need' a tax cut and i can show you plenty of wasteful spending and needless debt.

I bet either one of us can do that for a corporation, too.

Originally Posted by jimotis4heisman

agreed. as a nation were are net spenders, not savers. good point bus

And that's they way they like it. If Americans stop spending, the economy is even more [censored]ed.

Originally Posted by jimotis4heisman

not always but a lot of times yes. but, look at our wage taxes. anyone who owns a small business or operates a business budget looks at their heads and shakes it. for those of you who dont, your company matches your ss and other such stuff. something people forget.

Yes, they match FICA, but it's still coming out of the employee's paycheck. If the matching portion disappeared tomorrow, you can bet your ass I would be demanding that it went into my pocket, not the company's. We could all walk in and demand a 7.65% raise.

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by Bucky Katt

That bastard killed my people.



I bet either one of us can do that for a corporation, too.



And that's they way they like it. If Americans stop spending, the economy is even more [censored]ed.



Yes, they match FICA, but it's still coming out of the employee's paycheck. If the matching portion disappeared tomorrow, you can bet your ass I would be demanding that it went into my pocket, not the company's. We could all walk in and demand a 7.65% raise.

my point is your FICA is matched. people dont tend to consider that. its another tax on the sbo.

[ORD_Buckeye]

Originally Posted by Bucky Katt

And that's they way they like it. If Americans stop spending, the economy is even more [censored]ed.

Agreed. The economy in recent years has been driven 70% by consumer spending. That being said, we still need to stop spending and start saving. Yea, it might be painful, but I consider it akin to a heroin addict having to go through withdrawal in order to get clean.