[Drew]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/op...28krugman.html

Considering tax rates are at historic lows, and reserves for social security, medicare, and medicade are also at historic lows, if McCain is planning on making Bush's tax cuts permanent then give me Clinton if I can't have Obama. She may annoy the piss out of me, but I'll take annoyance over national insolvency any day.

[TheMissing]

Agreed 100%

The last thing I want to see right now is a Conservative in the white house again.
But the more I think about it, in 4 years, we'll probably be complaining about whoever's in office anyway. So it may as well be someone different.

[metalheadpunk]

And Mr. McCain has said nothing realistic about how he would close the giant budget gap his tax cuts would produce — a gap so large that eliminating it would require cutting Social Security benefits by three-quarters, eliminating Medicare, or something equivalently drastic.

Clinton doesn't seem so bad when contrasted with McCain, however i still don't think she would have a chance at winning the general election if she somehow wins the nomination

[ohio_eric]

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the overall effect of the McCain tax plan would be to reduce federal revenue by more than $5 trillion over 10 years.

That's a scary thought especially given what sad shape our infrastructure is in .

[ElRay]

How about cutting expenses? We already give nearly/over 50% of our income to the government through direct and indirect taxes. If the Federal government (and States like Illinois) wasn't growing out of control and exceeding the authority given to it by The Constitution, that percentage should stay fairly constant. It's pretty much done nothing but grow even through decades of Tax&Spend Democrats and Tax(slightly-less)&Spend(less-slightly-less) Republicans. It's annoying how it always comes down to a matter of tax levels, who pays (directly) and what taxes we can shift into a totally non-regressive state by fooling the general public to think they aren't paying them because they're charged to "corporations" and the real issue of an out of control invasive government is never addressed.

Add to that the fact that abuses of the 9th and 10th amendments never result in anybody being thrown into jail, and the fact that you can't sue the federal government unless they they allow it, so we'll never see any of these issues make it to the Supreme Court.

On a related note, unless you're in one of the few "hotly" contested states (where victories will only be in the thousands), don't waste your vote on the lesser of two evils. Vote for the candidate you truly want. Your vote won't matter if your lesser of two evils wins by tens of thousands, and it won't matter if they lose by tens of thousands. But, every vote for a non-Republicrat helps everybody that has issues with both parties. But, even given that the "tightly contested" States will still have differences in the thousands, your lesser-of-two-evils vote still won't make any difference except to make you feel like you did "something" if your anti-choice happens to win.

Ray

[Drew]

Eh, compare American tax rates to tax rates in the rest of the first world - we're actually quite low compared to the rest of the civilized world.

It's not like you're pissing your money away into the void either, while I don't always approve of where the money is spent (see Iraq), I certainly have no problem paying higher taxes to revamp the American public educational system, covering bare minimum universal health care, footing scientific research that has the potential to improve quality of life, and rebuilding american infastructure.

I mean, it's only a problem that you're giving away 40% of your income to your government every year if in return you're not getting services (direct or secondary) that have value to you equal to 40% of your income, you know?

[Chris]

Under Bill Clinton, I paid something like $1.50 a gallon for gas and the biggest national crisis was if his secretary blew him.

I'd vote Hillary over McCain just because at the end of the day, the state of America under her husband was pretty damn good, and hopefully he'll have a decent amount of influence over her decisions.

[BigM555]

Originally Posted by Drew

I mean, it's only a problem that you're giving away 40% of your income to your government every year if in return you're not getting services (direct or secondary) that have value to you equal to 40% of your income, you know?

You're moving to Canada, Drew?!?!


No......really.

[Drew]

I actually remember paying less than a buck a gallon for a while there. $1.50 was the average, maybe, but it was pretty low. I also remember being surprised when it first crossed $2, and then shocked when it crossed $3. Now, we've been holding steady at $3.50 a gallon, $2.99 would seem comparably cheap, and it's a matter of time before we're over $4.

That said. Hillary is a VERY different animal than Bill. :/

[Drew]

As an aside, anyone else a little surprised Samer hasn't come in and flipped his shit about this thread?

Honestly, McCain seems to be economically a LOT worse for America than Clinton, whatever else you want to say about her. A buddy of mine and I have been going back and forth abotu his health care proposals all day, and not only would they probably be disasterous for middle class america, they totallly contradict his stated beliefs. I initially gave the guy a lot of credit for having the balls to state (quite correctly) that really what the problem was is that Americans pay almost 3x as much per capita for health care as their first-world peers and get, if not actually worse, than at least no better care ($6,300 compared to $2-2,500 or so). He's right, the amount of money spent on overheard and (my pet peeve) marketing in the American health care industry is appalling, and if we could redirect that into actual coverage we'd have no trouble with health coverage. He then inexplicably goes and tries to fix the problem solely by giving a $2.5k per capita/$5k per family tax credit, missing the point of course that this doesn't actually do anything to fix the root problem, that the industry itself needs to be reshaped...