Economic Bickering

Obama and McCain have been going back and forth the last few days, arguing about whose policy is worse for the country. Obama says that letting the Bush tax cuts continue past 2010 would just give more money back to corporate bigwigs and the richest parts of America. McCain says they will give American companies the ability to compete on a global scale, keeping good paying jobs in the country. McCain also says that Obama's tax increases would amount to the largest tax increase since WWII, and would hit middle class families and business owners, even some low income families. What's the average person to do?

Well, pull your head out for starts. It's basically been proven, that no matter how much money or tax breaks we give to big companies(or the people that run them), they're going to keep sending jobs to India or Mexico as long as they can bring the goods back into the country cheaply. Obviously part of the solution needs to be fixing our import/export system so that we're competitive with the lower production costs of foreign workers. Continuing the tax breaks already given, won't get our jobs back any faster. Unless we start moving to Vietnam.

There is some concern about Obama's plan hitting middle class and small business owners. If you actually believe that capital gains tax increases will hurt low income families, go down to your local "projects" and ask to see their investment portfolio. The small businesses and middle class families would be mostly covered by new tax breaks and amendments to the AMT. Which is even now ensnaring many of these same people as the Bush administration sits on its hands.

McCain's proposed extension of the Bush tax cuts, as well as a general repeal of the AMT, would cause a $300 billion reduction in revenue for the government(how do you keep funding a war by throwing away that much money?). Obama's modest(they may be the largest dollar amount, but any economist will tell you that percentage of GDP matters most, and this is ranked 5th since 1943) tax increases for big business and the people who run them would be dumped back into the economy for investment in health care and renewable energies. Both of those would represent a huge savings to the entire country if health care costs were down and energy wasn't brought by tankers into this country from places like Iran.

Really, the "trickle down" approach to taxation will not help solve our economic problems. Giving the money to the top will hardly make down the hill as everything on the way down takes its "share." McCain claims to want to give the free market a chance to fix the economy on its own, without government interference. We did that for 7 years and it has put us in the worst economic downturn in maybe 30 years.
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