An Exchange Worth Your Time

I’m impressed by the thoughtfulness of many of those who choose to comment on NoQuarter articles. An exchange about Barack Obama’s so-called economic program was particularly informative. I am posting it as a full article for your education and entertainment.

First there was this from an apparent Obama supporter (obviously someone who knows nothing of economics):

Comment by oboe | 2008-10-16 04:22:00
this is why the country went into a bottomless pit and never returned, during Roosevelt’s day — when income from the highest tax bracket (equivalent to about $2.2 million and over, today) was taxed at 95%.

Taxing the incredibly rich, and slightly increasing tax rates on the well-off, won’t stop anyone from having jobs.

Right wing republican bullshit, once again.

This tripped the switch in a longtime NoQuarter regular, Indie Dogg, who wrote:

Comment by IndieDogg | 2008-10-16 05:17:22 | Edit This

Taxing the incredibly rich, and slightly increasing tax rates on the well-off, won’t stop anyone from having jobs.

Right wing republican bullshit, once again.

Wow, Oboe, or is it Opie? Quite impressive.

I am certainly swayed by your thoughtful insights.

Your economics degree is, I assume, from Oxford, considering the sophisticated way you turn a phrase, and the inescapable logic of your reasoned arguments. Quite fascinating.

Or…. sorry, but more like: Typical ignorant Democrat “where’s my check” mentality. We’ll just take money from businesses and people and they’ll go right back to work earning some more of it so we can take that, too.

After all it’s only super rich people whom none of us know anyway. They all live in castles and sit on piles of money they only have because their grandpappy was filthy rich too. No way they could have worked for it. Or earned it.

Well, guess what, Capitalism without capital doesn’t work. And you and your supreme leader aren’t talking only about the castle crowd. You’re talking about choking every last dime you can get your hands on out of the American investor. Which includes business, large and small.

I have a question for you. Do you know anyone who goes to work every day who does not work for a business? Do we have jobs without businesses? What, do we hire each other to sit around and help us wait for the mail for our check to come so we can go buy some bread?

When you take what one person has earned (not voluntarily, through charity, but by force, through edict) and hand it to another, do you not understand what that does to productivity?

Do you have any passing notion of what has fueled the increase in the GDP of the U.S. for years now? Increased productivity. More product from the same work hours.

And where is our capital invested? Assuming you think we still have some. It’s in our houses. That’s not (or, at least, it’s not supposed to be, before people started playing Monopoly on real streets with real homes) fungible. That’s a residence. You live in that money, you don’t spend it.

Never mind, too complicated for you I imagine, considering the trained chimp level of your comment. But, okay, let’s make it simple. You want to “spread the wealth.” Not your wealth, of course, why does it always seem to work out that way. Rather rich people’s money.

Used to be, people thought America was the land where you work hard and play by the rules and there’s no limit to what you can do.

But you and your pals want to tell people sure, that’s okay up to a point, but that’s all going to change. You see, now we’re going to cap what you can earn from your hard work and we’re going to take the rest and spend it on whatever we feel like and hand it out to the oppressed (and we get to decide who that is) so they can live cool, too.

Wherever that’s been tried, do you have any idea what percentage of those “pay the poor” programs has traditionally been eaten up by administrative costs, expenses of the bureaucracy that’s required to run the whole thing, and the dollars siphoned off to this group or that. Groups that act as “intermediaries” for the funds. Groups in touch with the poor and better able to identify needs and conduct community outreach?

Acorn and it’s progeny.

Do you know how much money actually makes it to the truly needy who have tried as hard as they can but have been knocked down by disease or catastrophe not of their own making?

You really think Roosevelt was that simple? You and your 95% tax rate talking point?

You’re as blockheaded as your half-wit answer. Get serious, study up and come back, but only if you can explain your Messiah’s tax plan and, specifically, who would pay more and who less, and what would happen to the investment of capital in this country, not only by our own citizens, but by those who are propping up our paper economy. I’ll give you a hint. A lot of them ride bicycles and eat a lot of Chinese Food.

You people are such blinded fools.

To follow in the rapture after a man who has, simply, no record of accomplishment in any endeavor in which he has ever entered. Right, he graduated law school; nobody said he didn’t have a brain. That’s theory and regurgitation. I did it, too. No big deal.

But, that’s apparently it.

No initiatives, no hint of this grand visionary until somebody said “Hey, you need some visionary stuff, things to promise people, if you’re going to run for President; people like to hear all about how you’ve got all these secret plans that are gonna save the world. No biggie that you haven’t mentioned them until now, nah, they know you were busy becoming a radical revolutionary, you didn’t have time to actually DO anything with your life. We get that. We’ll make some cool ads and say all kinds of good stuff. And, if we don’t know what to say, we’ll just listen to those other ones and repeat back to them whatever they say. This shit is easy, really. People will believe anything. And, you talk real pretty. People like that.”

Right. 100 of the leading economists in the world sign a statement pointing out how your policy boomerang man’s economic ideas are basically voodoo but you strike back with the clever retort: “Typical Republican bullshit.”

I’m sure they will all be studying your remarks closely to gain the insight that they are obviously lacking.

I assume you’re on Barry’s panel of economic advisors. Perhaps he’ll slide you in as head of the Treasury Department. You’ve obviously got some brilliant economic theories to bring to bear on our nation’s credit meltdown.