To hear Thom Hartmann tell it, it sounds more like a greed crisis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzSbJnxiUQA

I think about the folks I see struggling every day.  People who are working three jobs.  People who are unemployed, underemployed, or disabled.  When I see how much harder life has gotten for the average American since the day I was born, the class warfare coming from the super rich disgusts me beyond comprehension. 

Millionaires will fight tooth-and-nail to kill an effort to return the top marginal tax rates from 36% to 39%.  They shower themselves with the insubstantial flattery that they are the "job creators."  They wallow in self-pity over how hard it is not to be able to pay off the mortgage for the winter chateau in Boca Raton. 

There were perhaps two billionaires in this country when I was born in 1969.  Rockefeller and Getty.  Now there are hundreds of billionaires.  On the other hand, our next door neighbor, a high school dropout who was a factory machinist, owned his own home and took his family of five children on vacation to Maine every summer.  Today you've got people with two master's degrees delivering pizzas. 

All the fascist media does when confronted with the evidence the U.S. is sinking into third world status is declare, "America is the greatest country in the world," and blame the problems on illegal immigrants.  If you're poor, well, it's because you suck.  That's all. 

Obama promised hope and change, and then he and Nancy Pelosi lined up for Kool Aid with everybody else. 

Goodnight America, it was fun while it lasted!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/icon_smurf.gif

It's funny.

Back when the Bush Tax Cuts were passed, the Democratic party and leftists denied that it was a tax cut for the lower and middle income classes.

Now that they are set to expire, the spin is different, asking why the Republicans would deny the lower/middle income classes their much-needed "tax cut" (actually an extension of the Bush Tax Rates) yet still consistently revile also maintaining constant tax rate for the upper income class.

It's funny.

Back when the Bush Tax Cuts were passed, the Democratic party and leftists denied that it was a tax cut for the lower and middle income classes.

Now that they are set to expire, the spin is different, asking why the Republicans would deny the lower/middle income classes their much-needed "tax cut" (actually an extension of the Bush Tax Rates) yet still consistently revile also maintaining constant tax rate for the upper income class.


Now let's be fair.

Democrats 2003: "ZOMGWTF you just gave Them Evil Rich People a huge tax cut!" (who cares about everyone under $200K/year?)
Democrats 2010: "Umm, dudes?  I know you set it to expire this year, but could we at least extend it for everyone under $200K/yr?"

Republicans 2003: "Hah!  Everyone gets a tax cut, can't wait to see you suckers argue against it in 2010!"
Republicans 2010: "Well, if you really want the tax cuts to expire for everybody, have it your way.  Or you could give our donors what they want in order to keep those tax cuts for everyone-under-$200K.  We didn't make that promise!"

In defense of the 'Pubs, it worked out exactly how they'd hoped when they assumed they were going to win 2008.  The Dems either acquiesce or get painted as tax-raisers.  If the Dems filibuster, they take the blame for everybody's taxes going up in 2011.  The 'Pubs were gracious enough to give 'em another year of unemployment insurance benefits.  

In defense of the 'Dems, this compromise is the best they could have done.  If the Pubs are willing to give in on another year of unemployment insurance, and a tax cut expiry date of 2012 instead of the twelfth-of-never, in order to secure capital gains and income tax cuts for everyone over $200K, it's almost like "securing capital gains and income tax cuts for people earning over $200K/y" was the only thing they really cared about.

http://i55.tinypic.com/suye1k.jpg

The real wins here are payroll tax cut (read: temporary holiday in SS taxes) combined with the unemployment insurance extension.  For once, both sides are right, even if they're right for the wrong reasons.

Negative return = bad for business.
Positive return = good for business.

Any given month in 2010 40 million Americans received food stamp benefits, which your Moody's graph says has the highest negative return.  Perhaps double that number were qualified, but did not apply for beneifts. 

One of Moody's best positive returns is making the Bush tax cuts permanent. 

Here is another graph:

http://reidreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bush-tax-cuts.jpg

Therefore, because it is "good for business" or a "positive return," it is moral for a family to go hungry while a millionaire saves $6300 on his taxes. 

I'll spare you the Paul Krugman analysis, which is, of course nearly inverse to Moody's, WSJ's retarded cousin.

Suffice to say, you live comfy.  You have your "Atlas Shrugged" handy.  Morals don't count for anything outside of your self-interest because your "bible" tells you so.

When you haven't eaten in two days and you have nowhere to sleep, the Sermon on the Mount starts to make much more sense than a bar graph in Moody's.  BUT, as a true Randroid, you might just say, "I'm a loser and I deserve the consequences."
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/12/dontknow.gif

Perhaps a positive return for business = a negative return for humanity.  You know, it would help to take every man, woman, and child who asks for a handout and melt them down for pills and soap.  It would increase the returns for the pharmaceutical companies.  My views may not be popular, but I've never thought in terms of popularity.  I'm a businessman, and I have a bottom line to watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpa7wEAz7I

Any given month in 2010 40 million Americans received food stamp benefits, which your Moody's graph says has the highest negative return.  Perhaps double that number were qualified, but did not apply for beneifts. 


Take a closer look at that graph, dude.  The tax cuts with the numbers less than $1.00 are the ones that provide less of a return than they cost.

It's saying that every dollar put into extending UI benefits, for instance, results in $1.64 of revenue.  As much as it sucks to have the person on UI or handing out food stamps, it's cheaper than the alternatives - having them working under the table (paying no taxes), or getting sick because they're malnourished. 

Similarly, cutting social security taxes makes it cheaper for employers to hire - and every new hire cuts the cost of UI, food stamps, etc. because the new hire doesn't need them.  And the new hire is paying income tax from his or her new job.

Conversely, capital gains cuts don't have much of a multiplier effect:  it might make my tax time a little cheaper, but unless I'm getting an allocation in an IPO or secondary offering directly from the issuer, I'm not actually putting a single penny into new businesses; I'm just buying and selling shares that already exist.  My annual software and commission costs probably covers one person-day's worth of work... and I'm not going to change my trading style over a 5% spread in taxes, so the change in economic activity motivated by the tax cut extension is probably about one person-hour's worth of work.