I'm not too far right to admit it. The United States needs change. The past 8 years have been atrocious, wasteful, and at points, very bad for our country as a whole. The national debt has doubled. We're running a huge budget deficit this year. The economy is so close to recession it could tickle it on the ass and make recession giggle with glee. Inflation is on the rise. Social security is going to go bankrupt. Our troops are too far stretched that if we really needed to defend ourselves on the home front we'd have to rely on the 5 national guardsmen that are still stateside and various state militias. The dollar's value is the lowest it's been in a long time. Peoples' incomes are being stretched more than ever. The price of food is up.
So what's a country to do? Well, it can elect change. That's a good choice.
So what can be changed?
The economy? The president doesn't control the economy. Not even close. He can influence it by signing new laws, but that's such a small influence it's not worth counting on. Even if he did, the economy doesn't need ANY HELP right now. The best thing we can do is leave it the hell alone. No more "economic stimulus packages", and no more believing everything that the big media says. I once heard a writer say "The media has correctly predicted 2 of the past 36 recessions." There's a lot of truth to that. The economic slowdown we're experiencing now isn't Bush's fault. Get over it.
How about the deficit? Yeah, this has got to change. But here's something that's going to blow your mind; the deficit can be solved without raising taxes. *gasp* I know, hard to think of, right? We should cut the federal budget in half. This would mean no more war, less wasteful spending, and (here's the hard one) decrease the amounts of entitlements given out. Entitlements are one of the biggest wasteful spending items, and one of the most abused. Another thing that needs to end is corporate welfare. It's estimated that the government loses $92 billion a year because of corporate welfare.
How about this social security problem? The baby boomers are going to be retiring en masse soon. Again, the easy fix is to raise taxes. Raise the payroll tax rate, get rid of the FICA income cap, and get that sweet dolla' rolling in. Obama of course has expressed interest in doing both of those things, although if memory serves me he's against raising the $102,000 cap, which is at least not too bad. Now for the real solution: We need to privatize social security. SS retirement benefits were never meant to provide and actual income to retired persons, it was meant to provide extra spending money so little old ladies could buy their hard candy. It was meant to argument a person's life savings. But for so many people it's a crutch. You know what I say? I say decrease benefits for the baby boomers. Decrease them by at least half. The baby boomers have known about this problem their entire lives, and they've done absolutely nothing to prevent it. Bush tried to do something in 2000 but special interests shut that plan down. They don't deserve the retirement benefits. They paid into the system, but they knew it was broken all along and did nothing, so now our generation is going to have to deal with the repercussions. Give me the form and I'll opt out of the SS retirement system. I'll be the first to sign my name, releasing the government from having to provide me anything during my retirement. I'll be the guinea pig, and I'll show people that you can provide for your own retirement (just like people did before Mother Government did in the 30's).
The troops? Bring 'em home. Iraq wants a timetable, so give it to them. I believe we already have one. 2011. That's good.
Inflation? Let's stop the Federal Reserve from inflating our money supply. When the "mortgage crisis" hit, they lowered interest rates and pumped money into the system. This decreased the value of the dollar, made it easy to get credit, and punished investors, including the elderly who are trying to provide steady income with CDs, money market accounts, and high-interest savings accounts. When the Fed lowered rates, my savings account rate went from 1.5% to .25%. We have a lot of money in a money market account and we're only getting 1.98%, when a year ago we would've been getting 4-5%. Lowering rates rewards debt and punishes investors.
Also, to clear something up, there was never a "mortgage crisis", there was a sub-prime mortgage crisis. There WAS NOT a rise in the number of foreclosures for traditional mortgages, just for sub-prime, adjustable-rate, straight from hell mortgages. The people being foreclosed on weren't all defenseless people 'just trying to make it, most were dumb shits who thought they could cash-flow a heavily leveraged investment property, or people who bought into the whole "house-flipping" fad. The rest of them were people who bought way too much house than they could afford. These people DID NOT deserve a bail-out.
So what's a country to do? Elect the hotshot first term senator who's barely on the Senate floor, will push a socialist agenda, raise taxes, increase spending and entitlements, and will almost certainly be picked as prom king? No, that would be awful for the country. So we should elect the elderly, forgetful, often be-frazzled veteran of Congress? Well, he's done a lot to fight wasteful government spending, but he still has many problems.
So, you probably could guess, I'll be voting for McCain, albeit begrudgingly.
But why am I voting for him? Tax policies.
I'm in college for one reason and one reason only: to make myself marketable enough to get a good job. You never go to college to make less money.
McCain wants to create an alternative flat tax system and let Americans choose which system to use (old or new) depending on which saves them the most money.
He wants to get rid of the AMT, which is sucking more and more money out of the middle-class every year.
He wants to lower the corporate income tax which will do much more to keep businesses here in our country than any of Obama's tax-breaks (remember how much I hate corporate welfare?).
He wants to keep the capital gains rates low, unlike Obama who wants to raise it, seemingly based on general principle since it's been proven that federal revenue goes down when the CG rates are raised. How does this affect you? When you start working and saving for retirement you'll feel the crunch of the CG tax.
Say you invest $10,000 and you're able to get 8% average for 15 years. You make extra payments into the investment every month to the tune of $200. At the end of the 15 years you'll have an investment worth $102,738. You would have paid in a total of $46,000, making your earned interest $56,738. If you're in the 28% tax-bracket you'll pay 15% of your investment's gain to the government (all in the name of 'fairness'). So you'll only end up with $94,227, losing out $8,510 to the government. Plus you have to factor in inflation, which is about 4% every year. If Obama is able to raise the capital gains tax to something around the short-term rate of 28%, you'll end up paying $15,886 to the government (because you make too much damn money you greedy capitalist pig). You'll only end up with $86,851, not including 4% inflation. Factor in inflation and you'll end up with about $61,541, which would make your overall earning for the investment around 2.27%, which is only slightly more than our shitty money market is doing.
He also wants to kill the estate tax, which after a 2010 hiatus will go back up to the old rate of the federal gov't taking 55% of all estates worth over $1,000,000, which will kill an ungodly amount of small business. (so if you have a large estate and you're about to die, hold off until 2010, but don't live into 2011).
He's definitely not a perfect candidate but I'm a fiscal voter and since Ron Paul dropped out, McCain gets my vote.
Obama 's only plan is to tax the rich. Which brings me to my next bitch-about-town: Why tax the rich? Yeah they can afford to pay more, but they shouldn't have to. It's not fair. It's not morally fair, it's not ethically fair, it creates a large disincentive to earn, and it's economically inefficient.
90% of American millionaires are first generation. That means they left the cave, killed it, and brought it home. They didn't have help from daddy, or daddy's contacts, they didn't have any special hand up, and a good portion of them came from poor households.
The average millionaire is a small business owner (keep in mind that most employers in America are small businesses), most drive cars that aren't flashy, but rather are a few years old and well-kept, and the vast majority live in very reasonable houses.
Did I mention that most already donate a substantial amount of their income?
Our country needs more self-reliance, without the false sense of entitlement and the 'gimme gimme' attitude. The progressive-left, welfare, and class warfare have turned us into a bunch of whiny babies. Redistribution of wealth is inefficient, and most importantly un-America.
Back to Obama's tax-policies.
It really is a shame. America was founded as a place of equality, where someone can come and make millions. We are the greatest country in the world, and "progressive" interest will stop at nothing to turn us into a quasi-European welfare state. Those are some pretty harsh words, but somebody has to say them.
Progr essive taxation does nothing but reinforce the thought that we're all different. The whole idea of progressive taxation is based on nothing more than fiscal jealousy. Supporters say that "everyone, despite how much they make, must have a tax burden that hits them as much as the bottom bracket is it". In other words, a person making $200,000 must be hit as hard by income taxes as a person making $15,000. That's hardly the reason why they support it (in America at least).
It's all about fiscal jealousy. The idea that "if I can't have it, no one can". It's an asinine thought process. The liberal, democrats, and so called progressives can't stand that some people make more money than other people. But that's not even the real reason, or at least the main one. All the progressives that are hawking the idea of a European-esque socialist utopia are just doing it for the votes. Who do you think there are more of, the wealthy or the poor? Who do you think is going to rely on Mother Government more, the wealthy or the poor? Who has the greatest numbers at the polling booth, the wealthy or the poor?
I crack up when they point out that "the vast majority of the wealthy people either didn't work for their money or they had a tremendous amount of help from their daddy's connections." Never mind the fact that almost 90% of millionaires in the U.S. are first generation, meaning they built that wealth without daddy's help.
Wealth building takes a certain kind of person, and if you're not willing to control your habits you'll never build wealth. The typical millionaire drives a 3-4 year-old car, invests, has a good amount of self-discipline, has a household budget, they didn't get rich quick, they don't gamble or play the lottery, and they don't buy mansions that could hold 303 elephants.
People who are jealous about not being rich are usually the ones who play the lottery, buy as much house as they can barely afford, buy new cars every 3 years, and go out to eat way too often to show people that they have money. Most actual millionaires aren't concerned about letting people know about their wealth.
Speaking of un-American acts, let's talk about the oil companies.
Take, for example, Obama's plan for a windfall profits tax on the largest domestic oil companies. Ask your parents how that whole idea went down in the 70's. He also bitches about the subsidies (Which I'm also against, but for a much different reason. We wouldn't need subsidies if we lowered our horrendously high corporate income tax rate). The argument about the oil company tax breaks is such a nonsensical argument on his part. If he thinks that taking away tax subsidies is going to lower prices for consumers then he needs to go back to college and take a couple of economic courses.
The oil companies aren't making out like bandits like everyone seems to think they are. There profit margin is fairly low for as large of a business as it is. Exxon Mobile posted the biggest profit ever made in the history of man last quarter. The left see it as too much, but nobody seems to realize that Exxon Mobile is the largest company on the planet, dwarfing even Wal-Mart (which is the second largest).
It's also important to realize that only about 1% of domestic oil company stock is owned by their rich CEOs. Roughly 50% of domestic oil companies stock is owned by individual investors (i.e., people like me who invest on Scottrade because we know the government isn't going to take care of our retirement, nor do we want it to). The other roughly 40-49% of oil stock in America resides in 401(k)s and pension funds. These are the same 401(k)s and pensions that millions and millions of Americans are relying on for their retirement, including teachers, firemen, and police officers.
Taking away from oil companies' bottom lines will drive gas prices up and drive their stock prices down, along with million of American's retirements. If one was twisted enough one might conclude that Barack Obama is wanting to make people more reliant on government help by reducing peoples' individual retirements. I don't buy into this, but I've heard people say similar things.
Anywho, Obama's plan is a horrible one. But I think most importantly, it goes against everything America was created for. In socialist-Europe it may be okay for the governments to dictate what a "reasonable profit" for companies to make is, but America was founded by brilliant men on capitalist principles. Windfall profit taxes are un-American and will raise prices for the consumer.
What about Obama's federal income tax plan? Well, it's going to indirectly increase the tax burden on the middle-class.
"But Michael, Obama's plan will LOWER taxes for 95% of Americans!!! You don't know what you're talking about!"
An Obama presidency would be HORRIBLE for the middle-class.
Sure, his tax plan lowers FEDERAL INCOME TAXES for middle-class earners, but the effects of his tax plan will create many tax-increases in other areas. He's expressed interest in raising the gas tax, energy taxes, a quasi-tax on the American people in the form of higher gas prices caused by not drilling our reserves to their fullest potential, capital gains tax, FICA taxes, estate taxes, and income taxes...
The list goes on. So, yeah, the middle-class families who get the tax cuts will have to deal with all of these, effectively negating their tax cut.
There are many reasons why Barack Obama shouldn't be our next president, but I think the issue of our money and financial security are paramount.
Hope I rustled some feathers. It seems to anger people when I point out that Obama is not the Second Coming.
Cheerio.
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