GOP Definition Of "Small Business" Owner Includes Obama

[hermit]

Despite several polls showing support for President Obama's tax proposal, the GOP is maintaining its rigid opposition to any plan that does not extend tax breaks for the nation's top earners. The GOP argument hinges on the claim that ending the Bush tax cuts would affect not only the wealthy, but small business owners across the country. Specifically, GOP lawmakers are repeating ad nauseam the misleading claim that "half of all small business income" would be subject to higher tax rates under Obama's plan.

However, as Bloomberg reports today, there is an overlooked problem with the GOP's numbers. The party's definition of "small business" owner is so loose that even President Obama and billionaire financier George Soros would qualify:

[Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell's numbers only add up if you consider people like billionaire investor George Soros, most movie stars and Obama himself small-business owners, tax experts say.

That's because the lawmaker is basing his figure on a broad definition of the term that experts say includes authors, actors and athletes who employ few if any workers. It also encompasses businesses that many people wouldn't consider small, such as Soros's hedge-fund firm and major law partnerships.

It's particularly amusing that Obama would count as a "small business" owner, according to the GOP, considering the frequent assertion by party leaders that the White House doesn't understand small businesses. Just today, for example, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) described Obama's tax plan as "an assault on job creators" from an administration "with no business experience."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/142940/Americans-Allowing-Tax-Cuts-Wealthy-Expire.aspx

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...sinesses-bearing-share-of-tax-on-wealthy.html

 

[377OHMS]

I don't think the left quite understands that rich people are also generally employers.

They prefer to create a perception of class warfare.

 

[phenomena]

Definitely. They desperately try to sell the class warfare theme... The fact is that theme is a facade. The only extent to which it exists is the extent to which they have created it. Before the left wing took root people were fine with one another, and generally respected wealthy men and women as it was an indicator of accomplishment. Now, the left wing is trying to brainwash people into think that if you are wealthy, it's because you did something immoral to obtain wealth. It's trying to, with very limited success in proportion to their vast resources (media outlets etc), make poor people angry with rich people. That effort has more or less been a failure so far. They are also trying to engender anger in non whites towards whites, and to some extent Jews. Any prosperous group is their target.

Class is only an issue when classes exist legally (feudalism, nobility, racial/jim crow laws etc). If legal classes don't exist, there is no class warfare, so they have to create the illusion of one and sell that illusion to people.

Quote from 377OHMS:

I don't think the left quite understands that rich people are also generally employers.

They prefer to create a perception of class warfare.

 

[noob_trad3r]

Quote from phenomena:

Definitely. They desperately try to sell the class warfare theme... The fact is that theme is a facade. The only extent to which it exists is the extent to which they have created it. Before the left wing took root people were fine with one another, and generally respected wealthy men and women as it was an indicator of accomplishment. Now, the left wing is trying to brainwash people into think that if you are wealthy, it's because you did something immoral to obtain wealth.

Class is only an issue when classes exist legally (feudalism, nobility, racial/jim crow laws etc). If legal classes don't exist, there is no class warfare, so they have to create the illusion of one and sell that illusion to people.

I think what happened is back 30 years ago Wealthy Men were pro America and would never dream of sending millions of our jobs to a communist country.

Old school Buisness men knew the value of keeping our country strong. Now they are not pro america but pro me and screw the long term future of our nation.

 

[bugscoe]

Quote from noob_trad3r:

Old school Buisness men knew the value of keeping our country strong. Now they are not pro america but pro me and screw the long term future of our nation.

They are only reacting to the environment created for them by our political class.

 

[phenomena]

Not at all the case. Back "then", it made financial sense to employ Americans. That was back before the corporate tax was higher than anywhere else in the developed world. That was back before the information age, where all information and relevant data could be sent across the world instantly. Technology, and increasingly less favorable business regulations and taxation are what caused the shift offshore. Not some universal sense of nationalism amongst wealthy people. It often makes very good sense to NOT have operations in the United States now.

Quote from noob_trad3r:

I think what happened is back 30 years ago Wealthy Men were pro America and would never dream of sending millions of our jobs to a communist country.

Old school Buisness men knew the value of keeping our country strong. Now they are not pro america but pro me and screw the long term future of our nation.

 

[hermit]

Quote from 377OHMS:

I don't think the left quite understands that rich people are also generally employers.

They prefer to create a perception of class warfare.

Those tax cuts didn't really show up on actual jobs and economic performance numbers.

 

[377OHMS]

Quote from hermit:

Those tax cuts didn't really show up on actual jobs and economic performance numbers.

The Bush cuts? No, they weren't big enough to make much difference. I did notice it at tax time but it was small. Probably bought alot of big screen televisions.

So keeping it in place doesn't represent that much of a revenue "loss" for the government. Conversely its probably a bad time to take a little more tax money from households given the conditions.

But it is mostly sound and fury signifying nothing, from both sides.

 

[hermit]

Quote from 377OHMS:

The Bush cuts? No, they weren't big enough to make much difference. I did notice it at tax time but it was small. Probably bought alot of big screen televisions.

So keeping it in place doesn't represent that much of a revenue "loss" for the government. Conversely its probably a bad time to take a little more tax money from households given the conditions.

But it is mostly sound and fury signifying nothing, from both sides.

So you agree that continuing Bush tax cuts is unnecessary and only adds to the deficit?

 

[377OHMS]

Quote from hermit:

So you agree that continuing Bush tax cuts is unnecessary and only adds to the deficit?

lol hey!, I'm trying to be reasonable here so don't just grab huge chunks of real-estate.

I said that I thought that continuing the current tax situation did not represent an undue burden on revenue collection and that it was a bad time to allow the tax rates to revert upward for households. So, I'm for keeping the Bush tax cuts in place, all of them.

The administrations big problem is on the spending side.