Pollywogs!

I wrote this on a different forum today, liked it so much I’m going to cross post here.

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I read this in Fortune magazine today, found an article with the same chart online at CNN:

The source seems pretty centrist, lots of experts in law and accounting there.

Looks like McCain is planning on the same thing Bush did: lower taxes and expect lower spending and ‘an expanding economy’ picks up the slack. I don’t know why McCain would expect anything different than what happened the past eight years. Check this out: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-06-08-dream_N.htm

In a period that economists now refer to as the golden age, rich and poor alike prospered. From the end of World War II in 1945 to 1973, those at the bottom of the income charts actually advanced a bit faster than those at the top, in what Harvard University economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz labeled “growing together.”

In recent years, however, most of the economic gains have gone to those at the top.

The richest one-tenth of American families — those with incomes above $104,700 in 2006 — accounted for almost half (49.7%) of all income that year, according to economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley.

That represented the highest share since 1917, higher even than at the stock market peak before the crash of 1929, says Saez, who studied income tax and Census data since 1913.

His analysis shows that the richest of the rich — the top 1% of American families making at least $382,600 — have garnered especially large gains. From 1993 to 2006, those families captured about half of the nation’s overall growth. From 2002 to 2006, they received about three-quarters of total growth.

I added the emphasis. If trickle down economics (supply side, reaganomics, what have you) works, how could we POSSIBLY be in a recession right now! We ought to be in the most massive and wonderful economic position our nation has ever, EVER, been in!

It looks to me that Obama’s tax plan will bring things back in line with the way our nation has historically been, rather than the recent (Reagan/Clinton/Bush Jr.) massive splurge of tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. So no more complaining about how Obama is going to tax //anyone// into ruin: if you’re making $3 million dollars, something tells me that you’re living a pretty damn comfortable life, and are the MOST able to afford a tax increase without it affecting whether you can buy any hamburger at the store this week cause the kids have been asking for meatloaf for months…how much hamburger is a $113 tax cut going to buy? One or two extra servings per week if inflation doesn’t wipe out the dollar first…