I thought that this was an extremely informative post. It’s hard to find people that actually talk about the truth of the two candidates, the truth being that there’s not a heck of a lot of difference between the two. One of the only other news mediums that I am able to get this information from is the Financial Sense News Hour, with Jim Pupplava and John Leoffer. With all of the money creation that is going in between the government and the Federal Reserve, taxes have to go up, or people will get very suspicious where all of this excess money is coming from (the masses generally don’t catch on to inflation until hyper-inflation hits home). I honestly didn’t see any difference between the two candidates, and I would have been choosing between the evil of two lessers. For this reason, I voted for Chuck Baldwin because he got Ron Paul’s endorsement. Ron Paul I think is one of the only politicians that truly understands monetary policy, economics, foreign policy, civil liberties, and the constitutionality of a document.

Honestly, I think that all of these tax increases will destroy the economy more and knock us into a depression, just like what happened when Hoover raised taxes in the early thirties. It will force a dramatic increase in unemployment, and a sharp decrease in spending. The government always seems to make the same mistakes and the masses always seem to fall for them.

Why don’t people ever learn?

It wouldn’t be a big issue for me if he weren’t 72 and if he hadn’t had 4 occurrences of melanoma skin cancer. That cancer is deadly and the chances of him living through his entire first term are not statistically very good because he hasn’t survived 5 years past his last cancer occurrence. At 5 years, your probability of cancer recurrence goes down to the same as anyone else your age, race and gender.

I do not believe Sarah Palin is ready to be the President and won’t be ready anytime soon. She would require a few years of intensive on-the-job training to be able to take over and actually do the President’s job effectively. A VP must be ready to step into the Presidency on day one. She is not ready.

There may be a majority of Democrats in congress, but from my own state, our Democrats are more conservative then most republicans, so a free ride through Congress still won’t happen if Obama becomes President and 60 Dems become Senators. If our Senator is reelected, she will vote against leftist policies. She has before and she will again.

I’m a moderate Republican, but that’s why McCain lost my vote.

Sherri

At any rate, I also agree that a one-party government is rarely good for the system overall. One of the pitfalls of our two-party system is that it so quickly can lead to a government dominated by one party.

I enjoyed your post. Your advice is very relevant to the upper middle class, the ones who won’t benefit from middle class tax cuts or tax credits, but not rich enough to have the deductions to lower their tax rates of 30%-50%. You are right that they need to take preventive action now, no matter who becomes President next week. The upper middle class could benefit from some serious study and application of tax planning. This is my first visit to your blog so I haven’t read enough to see if you’ve already written about it.

I’m one of those people whose job was eliminated at the end of 2003 and we have no health insurance. I went from a full-time industry job as a chemist to being a contractor with a small company to tutor math and science to high school students. Great job (I love it), good pay (but not as good as my old job), and no benefits.

I still go on as many job interviews as I can get for chemistry positions, but they can hire someone 15 years younger and pay them less, so I don’t get the job. I always ask why they didn’t hire me, and they say I would have to have training since I’ve been out of the lab for 5 years and my past experience is in an area not closely related to the job. I was an analytical wet chemist. Very few companies have wet labs anymore. Somebody else with current lab experience can walk into the job without training. Translation, somebody younger who was taught on new instrumentation. Companies are always minimizing analytical costs because they are a cost-center, not a revenue-producer.

My son and I have pre-existing medical conditions so we can’t get health insurance period at any cost today. There is a high-priced state pool but they don’t cover what we need covered – mental health. We pay over $400/mo on medications alone. If one of us has a check-up or is sick, we have to pay for it out of pocket. Some months cost us $1000 in medical bills.

It’s also telling that the U.S., the richest country in the world, is currently 29th in infant mortality. Last year (2007) we were 19th. It’s horrible when we drop 10 places in a year. We should have the lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but we’re 29th. We brag about our world class health care, but we’re 29th. It’s inexcusable.

Until Hurricane Gustav, my income was above the level where we could buy into the Medicaid program for my son. Since Gustav, we now have a low enough income that I can sign him up and pay a low premium. I make too much for him to get Medicaid for free. Too much is $3000/mo gross income.

So I’m looking forward to a supplemented system that requires affordable health insurance for children and requires they accept and cover pre-existing conditions. Maybe I can get some insurance, too. I have asthma but can’t afford the medicines to treat it properly. Fortunately, my allergist gives me samples for everything I absolutely can’t live without to keep me out of the hospital.

The past 8 years have been the biggest redistribution of wealth to the upper class since the 1920’s. And now our old buddy Hank Paulson can give several billion dollars to Bank of America to unfreeze the credit markets, but they have the option of paying themselves bonuses and paying on their own debt instead of that money being used as intended? That just stinks.

The rich are getting richer and the middle class are getting poorer, especially middle class retirees. My mom is 73 and she had to go back to work part-time to make ends meet. She gets a pension and social security, but they aren’t enough. She even has really good insurance and pays very little out of pocket for medical expenses. Inflation outpaces the pay increases of pensions and social security.

The millionaires and billionaires of our country pay effective tax rates in the single digits. Your effective tax rate is the amount you actually pay, not the amount on a tax table.

When I was a chemist, my effective tax rate was about 20% including state and local income taxes. Now it’s only 10% because I have a business on top of my job, so I can deduct a lot. That’s what the rich do, deduct a lot and end up with low effective tax rates. I don’t believe the tax rate on the rich will increase very much. It may go from 7% to 10% but I bet their accountants will find more deductions for them. They plan for the reality that they have a high tax rate and are proactive about lowering it significantly.

I may not agree with Obama a lot, but I do agree with his underlying principle that wealth and prosperity come from the bottom up, and having a strong middle class. A strong middle class works, gets paid and pays payroll taxes in larger amounts than a weak middle class, providing much-needed revenue to fill in the financial hole this country is in. They also spend more of any disposable income they have, creating more tax revenue. It’s not about rates as much as it’s about total revenue.

I believe the key to the whole financial crisis won’t be huge tax increases. It will mean closing loopholes, cutting unnecessary spending and collecting more revenue by getting people to work in higher paying jobs and giving incentives to companies who create those jobs.

A lot of skilled workers are being laid off as I write this. We would all benefit if we can get them back to work making good money.

Sherri