Wednesday, January 25, 2012

State of the Union - the morning after

I watched the State the Union address last night and spent three hour this morning studying the enhanced version on YouTube. The enhanced version had President Obama on the left side of the screen and the slide presentation on the right. I'm sure the slides were meant to clarify his talking points, but they also called attention to details that merit further examination. For example, Obama believes that eliminating the Bush tax cuts is fair. The slide that accompanied his address shows that someone earning $40,000 to $50,000 would pay $909 more in taxes and someone earning $1,000,000 a year would pay $103,835. The reality of this example is that the lower middle class family would actually pay 20% more in taxes once the Bush tax is repealed, but the millionaire would only pay 10% more! Granted the rich millionaire would pay more in actual money, but the 20% increase in taxes would hurt the salaried working stiff a lot more. Washington would get a heck of a lot more tax revenue to pay for new spending programs and the working poor would continue their downward economic spiral. I have to ask, where is the fairness in this?

No comments: