Point taken.

[khaosworks]

Comments

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

I'm not getting this.

A part of me wants to add "thank God".

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

The Bush adminstration wants to lift taxes on dividends paid by corporations to stockholders, claiming that this is "double taxation" and thus unfair (they also argue it will bolster the stock market, among other things). Opponents to this tax cut say that this will only benefit the very wealthiest and ignore middle-income families (Analysts have estimated that more than half the benefit of eliminating dividend taxes would flow to the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers). The cartoon is of course pointing out the ludicrousness of the "double taxation" argument.

[jost.livejournal.com]

Every time you hear the phrase "the wealthiest X%" in relation to tax cuts, you really should be able to just ignore it and skip on to the meat of the issue. That's the favored phrase of Democrats for every tax cut that is not specifically targeted to the lowest tax bracket. The reason they use it to try and snow the public is that the people who are in the top tax bracket pay over 60% of the total tax revenue for the US, even though the wealthiest bracket accounts for the lowest populated bracket. It would be impossible to have an across the board tax cut of say, for example, 2% for every bracket that would not end up benefiting the "wealthiest 1%" but what they never tell you is it benefits the poorest 1%, the middle 1% and everything in between. The use of that phrase is among my top 3 pet peeves from the political world since it's completely designed to obfuscate the real issues and design an "us versus them" mentality. More often than not, the proposed tax cuts that get listed with this phrase actually wind up cutting tax more for the lower brackets than the higher ones but that fact never gets mentioned.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Point of fact, I do agree - but the phrase the adminstration is banking on is this double taxation nonsense, which I suppose is probably trying to explain it in one-syllable terms to the voters who can't grasp the complexities of taxation, but it's still a stupid argument.

As it is, the way social programs are gutted in favor of increased military spending, one wonders where a tax cut on dividends will actually get us. How many people are, in fact, stockholders? Will this encourage investment in the stock market? Maybe.

What this does seem to have immediate effect on, really, is an increase in corporate profit. Mark me cynical, but with the deep corporate ties the current administration has, I don't think economic stimulation is the primary motivation here.

Re:

[jost.livejournal.com]

Statistics I've read show that over 50% of the US population owns at least one share, so this could stand to benefit more than half the population. Granted, it would only kick in on dividend-paying stocks but it's not like it's targeted to the 14% of the US that owns stocks or some other low number like that. I'm in favor of the whole flat-tax system though, so my opinions of taxes are biased towards any current tax cut across the board as it's one step closer to the government not wasting money. I'm sure you're under no false impression that the government is beyond highly wasteful in its tax revenue spending (the $250 hammers, etc) and instead of auditing themselves to clean up wasteful practices just prefers to increase taxes. I'm just as cynical as you are as to the intent but I don't know that a tax cut focused on businesses wouldn't help the economy nor would it be solely for businesses. Now corporate greed is another whole level of cynical for me and way too much for this post. I guess I'm just happy to see the government give back some of the money they've taken from us because they can't seem to manage their own purse strings better and therefore shift the burden to us.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Looking forward to more discussions like this in the coming months.

Re:

[jost.livejournal.com]

Mt too! W00T!

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Still, if the goal, as advertised, is economic stimulus, few programs can approach the multiplier effect of expenditures on public health - or, even better, education.

This isn't one of them.

So, even from a strict bang-for-the-buck perspective, this ought not to be one of our nation's top priorities. Not that the idea is entirely without merit ... just that there are a multitude of places where we'd do better to put our money.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

A take on why restructuring the tax laws to encourage companies to pay dividends might be a Good Thing:
http://news.morningstar.com/doc/article/0,,87696,00.html?hsection=Comm3