Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Debates and the Financial Future

I listen to talk radio for probably 5 hours a day. I mostly listen to Dennis Prager, who I think is the most fair and polite radio host out there. The point is, I feel pretty abreast of the issues concerning this election. Thus, from my perspective, John McCain did a great job last night showing the flaws in Obama's policies. However, I am not convinced that those without a firm grasp would be convinced by his arguments. Thus, I am going to attempt to give you my take of the financial future in a McCain vs. Obama presidency.

Let's start with Obama's tax policies as I understand them. First, Obama says he wants to cut 95
% of American's taxes. I can't remember the exact figure, but the lowest 50% (I think) of earners in the US do not pay taxes. So, Obama will take from the "rich" and give checks to the poor. I am personally no fan of a real life Robin Hood. I am not jealous of the top 2% (who, by the way, pay 67% of the taxes). I would rather be one of the top 2%, not take their money.

Obama also wants to impose tax hikes on anyone who makes more than $250k/year. This again is to help his Robin Hood cause. Also, though, many of the jobs that are created are created just a few at a time, and if you're significantly increasing the taxes of those who make more than $250k/year, they won't be able to hire anyone.

Now onto Senator Obama's economic policies: first let me state that he is the top annual beneficiary of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Chris Dobbs over his lifetime has earned more, but yearly, Barack is raking in more from these terrible institutions. To paraphrase Dennis Prager, when you make compassion the source for policies and not standards, the overall effect is less compassion on the whole. This is a case in point. Lowering the standards and being compassionate, like the Democrats wanted, got us into this mess. You cannot give huge mortgages to people who neither have the credit history or the income to support them. You must keep your standards intact or everyone will suffer.

Second, Senator Obama wants $860 billion in new spending. We already owe $500 billion or so to the Chinese, do we really want to spend another $860 which we do not have? Senator Obama says that he wants to cut spending more than add to spending, so the overall would be a spending cut, but with all of his expensive programs, that is simply unsustainable. His idea for getting new jobs is road and bridge projects. Government jobs do not invigorate the economy. Private sector jobs do. He also says that college affordability is a high priority. Not only are colleges too expensive, ineffective and liberal, but unnecessary. The idea that the only way to get ahead is to have a degree is ludicrous. Bill Gates dropped out of college...there aren't too many people doing better than he.

Onto Senator McCain: overall, his idea is that you cannot raise taxes and spend more money during a recession. His ideas for economic solvency have to do with lightening the tax burden to increase productivity and boost job creation.

McCain would like to keep the income tax rates as they are. However, he would like to cut the business tax. We pay the second highest business tax in the world. There is no wonder that jobs are being sent overseas. Who wants to pay such a high tax to run a business? And to paraphrase John McCain, Ireland pays 11% in business tax and thus their economy is now booming. Seems like a good idea to me.

As far as personal taxes go, he would like to give a$5k tax credit for health insurance. The details of this elude me, so I will let John McCain's website describe it, "While still having the option of employer-based coverage, every family will receive a direct refundable tax credit - effectively cash - of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. Families will be able to choose the insurance provider that suits them best and the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider."

And, John McCain would also like to double the tax credit for children from $3500 to $7000 for each child. With our first on the way, that sounds like a good idea to me.

Now, onto the economy. Senator McCain would like to keep our $700 billion per year which we send to hostile countries for oil. He wants to build nuclear plant facilities, drill for oil and come up with anything else to keep our energy money at home.

As far as the current economic crisis, he wants to use the bailout money to buy and re-negotiate bad home loans so that people can stay in their houses. He wants to keep the current $300 billion tax cuts, plus $200 billion going to corporations and about $4 billion of that to go to oil companies (which, despite their large profits, earn a pretty small rate of return, per dollar spent).

My favorite part is, however, that he wants a spending freeze, and he wants to eliminate programs that are wasteful. Our government is too big and too bureaucratic, this couldn't come too soon.

Obviously, I am partisan, but I really think that Senator Obama will ruin our economic situation and that the tax-allergic McCain can only help.

2 comments:

Jennifer Klaas said...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/07/presidential.debate.transcript/ This is the link to the transcript of the second McCain/Obama debate, if you're wondering where I got my info from.

Anonymous said...

We do pretty well for ourselves. In a side-by-side analysis of the tax plans for Obama and McCain, Obama would increas our taxes by about $12 per year.

McCain would cut our taxes by several thousand dollas per yer.

On the other hand, the rest of McCain's economic policy is almost guaranteed to raise inflation tremendously, (not decreasing spending, probably starting another war, cutting taxes more than Bush already did) which means that the money he "gives back" to us...as well as that which we were keeping anyway, would ALL be worth substantially less.

Still voting for Obama. McCain could give us back a million, but since he's bound and determined to turn it into "Monopoly money"...no thanks.