S&P 500 up 61% since Obama took office

[AdamT]

Since when has "fair" been a part of the equation. That's a wandering standard solely based upon opinion. There are people who have spent like drunken sailors their whole lives and ended up winning a jackpot - is that fair? It's a laughable standard to use.

So in your opinion we should NOT consider fairness when setting tax rates? What is the basis for the oft-repeated Republican desire for everyone to pay the same tax rate? Oh yeah ... FAIRNESS. :roll:

 

[clownboy]

At least Norton managed to avoid being indicted!

She didn't "avoid" anything. The charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

 

[Republic Now!]

Gale Norton was one of Bush's department of the interior heads. She works for Shell Oil.

Sorry, I was looking at or before their time in the position.

Dirk Kempthorne, his other head of the department of the interior after Norton was Dirk Kempthorne. Actually I was wrong- he wasn't a CEO of a logging company, he was a former governor who took more donations from logging, mining and oil companies than any other governor in US history ever has. He is #1 on all three lists. Fervently anti-environmental.

Well, at least you can admit you were wrong.

Mike Leavitt was one of Bush's heads of the EPA. He was a board member of Utah Power and Light- an oil company.

UP&T is an oil company? I thought they were an electric power company (hence, the "Power and Light" in their name).

Christine Whitman, who was Bush's head of the EPA before Leavitt was never a CEO or board member of an oil company, but she owned hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in oil companies and was openly anti-environment.

Didn't Christine Whitman resign from her position because she felt the Bush administrations policies were too unenvironmental?

 

[danarhea]

The S&P 500 has risen 61% since Obama took office and it has doubled since it's low, which was just a few weeks after he took office.

By comparison, over the course of Bush's two terms it fell 38%.

Obama is outperforming Bush by a much larger margin than Democrats normally outperform Republicans, but on average Democratic presidents have always radically outperformed Republicans economically. Between 1927 and 1998 the stock market has performed 6.3 times better under Democratic presidents on average.

Income growth is similarly skewed with Democrats again totally destroying Republicans. If you are at the 20th percentile for income, between 1948 and 2005, your income increased an average of 2.64% a year under Democrats, but only 0.43% under Republicans. At the 60th percentile, it was 2.47% under Democrats, but only 1.13% under Republicans. Even if you're at the 95th percentile, the Democrats still beat the Republicans 2.12% to 1.9%. In fact, the GDP grew 2.78% under Democrats, but only 1.64% under Republicans.

That only tells me Obama is pleasing his corporate masters. You only need look around to see that the middle class is still screwed.

 

[clownboy]

So in your opinion we should NOT consider fairness when setting tax rates?

That's correct. Using fairness as a standard is every bit as accurate as using a dart board to predict the weather. Isolate any two people and you'll have two opinions on what is fair.

 

[TurtleDude]

As you know, there are tons of exclusions for retirement savings. A retiree saving up to cover their living expenses has nothing to do with any of this.

Regardless, you're totally off topic



Are you kidding me? If those guys aren't anti-environment, who would be lol? Really I should have said "anti-environment extremists", but I figured I'd keep it low key...

you claimed they were anti environment-ball is in your court-prove it

 

[AdamT]

She didn't "avoid" anything. The charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

Yes, they did not have enough evidence to prosecute, though there's a clear stink of impropriety.

BTW, she joined Shell in '06 -- almost immediately after leaving the Bush administration. Recall that Obama has put in much stricter rules against revolving door shenanigans.

 

[TurtleDude]

I spend time scheming against the property of others?! Do tell! :lamo

being a constant shill for Obama is scheming against our property

 

[AdamT]

Didn't Christine Whitman resign from her position because she felt the Bush administrations policies were too unenvironmental?

A sign of how shockingly bad Bush was on the environment.

 

[AdamT]

being a constant shill for Obama is scheming against our property

So then you are constantly scheming against the poor and middle class. Fair enough.

 

[AdamT]

That's correct. Using fairness as a standard is every bit as accurate as using a dart board to predict the weather. Isolate any two people and you'll have two opinions on what is fair.

Well, if you're going to take fairness out of the equation then we should probably go back to a 92% top tax bracket.

 

[TurtleDude]

That's correct. Using fairness as a standard is every bit as accurate as using a dart board to predict the weather. Isolate any two people and you'll have

two opinions on what is fair.

true but when it comes to taxes the right at least has some objective basis--given the richest one percent make 22% of the income and pay almost 40% of the income tax we can easily argue the rich are unfairly taxed

we can also note that the top one percent don't use anywhere near 40%of the resources funded by the income tax and certainly no where near 100% of the services funded by the estate/death tax and again we have an objective basis for saying the rich are taxed too much

the parasite advocates have to argue the rich use more than 40% of the resources or they have to argue that bearing 40% of the tax burden when the rich make 22% of the income is not high enough

 

[TurtleDude]

Well, if you're going to take fairness out of the equation then we should probably go back to a 92% top tax bracket.

I'd hope someone who tried to do that would have his reign in office "terminated with extreme prejudice"

 

[TurtleDude]

So then you are constantly scheming against the poor and middle class. Fair enough.

no more than a top student "schemes" against the stupid and the lazy or a world class athlete "schemes" against the untalented coach potatoes

 

[AdamT]

no more than a top student "schemes" against the stupid and the lazy or a world class athlete "schemes" against the untalented coach potatoes

Or an entitled, silver spoon trust funder schemes to hold onto every unearned cent.

 

[clownboy]

Yes, they did not have enough evidence to prosecute, though there's a clear stink of impropriety.

No, the so-called stink was coming from someone in the BLM, not Norton herself.

BTW, she joined Shell in '06 -- almost immediately after leaving the Bush administration. Recall that Obama has put in much stricter rules against revolving door shenanigans.

You're right, though I'm not sure Obama has put those rules in place - that was another of those campaign promises. :mrgreen:

 

[TurtleDude]

Or an entitled, silver spoon trust funder schemes to hold onto every unearned cent.

more lies on your part combined with some major league envy.

 

[clownboy]

Well, if you're going to take fairness out of the equation then we should probably go back to a 92% top tax bracket.

What's "fairness" have to do with that? Politicians say all sorts of things in their speeches to get the people to go along emotionally. But JFK brought us down off that rate because it was stifling growth. Off course he also closed some major loopholes at the same time. This made the system more realistic and less about building better mousetraps for the wealthy.

 

[teamosil]

Utah Power and Light is not an oil company but an electric utility company. Gale Norton went to work for Royal Dutch Shell AFTER she was in government (three years after by law). Whitman has never been known as "anti-environmentalist", in fact as governor:

You already admitted to getting it wrong about Kempthorne.

Anyways, you get what I'm saying, right? Bush had people in those positions who wanted the agencies they ran to fail to fulfill their mandate. They were anti-environmental, pro-corporate exploitation of the environment, people in positions which are supposed to be fighting for the environment. The same is true across most of the regulatory agencies. He put people at the top who opposed the mission of the agency they ran. Obama fixed that.

 

[teamosil]

What's "fairness" have to do with that? Politicians say all sorts of things in their speeches to get the people to go along emotionally. But JFK brought us down off that rate because it was stifling growth. Off course he also closed some major loopholes at the same time. This made the system more realistic and less about building better mousetraps for the wealthy.

Yeah, he brought the top income tax bracket down to 70%. Today is it half that. We went way, way, too far. Now we have a massive deficit and an out of control rich/everybody else gap.

 

[Dittohead not!]

I didn't read the whole thread, so if someone else already posted this, oh well.

the right wing pundits, Limbaugh in particular, were pretty quick to blame the recession on Obama even before he took office. Now, if the stock market has really grown that much, why wouldn't they be crediting him for the growth?

The fact is, the POTUS has little impact on the economy one way or another, and the ranting about the Bush recession vs the Obama recession and giving the president credit for a rebound in the stock market is simply partisan BS.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows this, of course, and yet elections do depend on the economy to a great extent.

 

[ttwtt78640]

Gasoline (up 103.79%) and gold (up 96%) prices are up since 2008 too. Something going up, simply in U.S. dollar value, is not always a good thing, as simple inflation does exactly that. Obviously the S&P 500 is not a "perfect" overall U.S. economic health indicator. Picking a "good" number and saying Obama did that, yet ignoring the BIG (bad?) numbers of the U.S. GDP and national debt, is not really that hard to do. ;-)

 

[teamosil]

Gasoline (up 103.79%)

It still hasn't reached the high point it hit under Bush. It was just unusually low right when Obama took office, so that's a trick stat. And actually inflation as a whole has been unusually low since Obama took office. We even had deflation in 2009.

 

[Dittohead not!]

Gasoline (up 103.79%) and gold (up 96%) prices are up since 2008 too. Something going up, simply in U.S. dollar value, is not always a good thing, as simple inflation does exactly that. Obviously the S&P 500 is not a "perfect" overall U.S. economic health indicator.

The price of gas is coming down quickly just now. Is Obama behind that somehow?

 

[haymarket]

So now YOU want a FLAT FIT rate for everyone? WOW lets "git-r-done". ;-)

Where did you get such an absurd idea from my post?

Do you know what the statement "lets tax it all according to the same schedule" means?

A tax schedule contains various progressive rates even if it treats all forms of income the same.