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From Barack Obama and Joe Biden comes the list of ‘plans’ they offer if you elect them as President and Vice-President in November 2008. Since the economy has become the dominant issue of this election ( when hasn’t it been) based on MSM reports and polling data as well as everyone else’s guess and the recent ‘meltdown’ stories, Obama/Biden’s plan for the economy is what will be covered in this post.

After some rhetorical campaign dribble opening the OB plan for the economy the first item mentioned is a ‘windfall profits tax’ that will redistribute wealth from energy companies to selected members of the public at large. OB suggests the money would go to ‘middle class’ families permanently at $1000/year tax relief. One assessment of the breakdown in population size that dissects the US in terms of upper, middle and lower income groups is from the Pew Foundation and generally breaks it down in thirds..One third each for the three income groups is the breakdown in this country based on income. So OB will give $1000/yr forever to one out of three households in the US from a windfall profits tax wealth redistribution.

Number of Americans Paying Zero Federal Income Tax Grows to 43.4 Million

Who Are the Non-Payers?
Using IRS data, we are able to create a profile of these individuals who are outside the federal income tax system. As Table 1 shows, those who file as single or head-of-household are much more likely to be non-payers. One-third of single filers pay nothing in federal income taxes, and almost two-thirds of those who file as head of household pay nothing. In contrast, just 22 percent of married filers are non-payers.

Why do many single filers face zero tax liability? One reason is that single filers tend to be younger and earn lower incomes than married filers—especially single parents who file as head-of-household. As a result, married taxpayers pay roughly 75 percent of all federal income taxes, despite filing only 40 percent of returns.

Let’s say one third of tax filers are low income which could be the non-payers listed in the reference above. Then there is the one third middle-income and one third upper-income. Let’s further say, we still have one third each of the 135 million individual tax returns filed as either lower, middle or upper-income groups. So OB will pay about 45 million tax filers $1000/yr permanently from a windfall profits tax. That’s 1000 x 40,000,000 or 40 Billion dollars. Is he seriously suggesting taxing energy companies an additional 40 billion per year on windfall profits? Number one, what’s to say that even if you believe energy companies are experiencing windfall profits that they will continue to do so every year for eternity?

You should be able to raise your own questions about this Obama/Biden (OB) plan with the scant data provided here and anything you find for yourself. The point is there is no clear justification for either punishing energy companies or giving handouts to millions of Americans no matter how noble the intent or fact that just about anyone could use another grand a year. The socialist or communist idea of redistribution of wealth alleged by many of Obama’s opponents seems to be borne out by his proposal presented at the Obama campaign website.

The second item from the ‘jump start the economy’ portion of OB’s economic plan suggests using $50 billion to ‘prevent one million Americans from losing their jobs.’ OB would use 25 billion to subsidize ‘ health, education, housing, and heating assistance or counterproductive increases in property taxes, tolls or fees‘ for American families which is somewhat vague. The other 25 Billion would be used for public sector expenditures on infrastructure construction and maintenance as a method of giving people jobs at taxpayers expense. Probably the tax revenue paid by one group and given to another group who pays no taxes. Another form of redistribution of wealth and the Obama/Biden socialist doctrine. The private sector they want to tax into the stone age is the appropriate venue for job creation, not the government.

So there are the first two economic policies published on Obama’s campaign website under the title of jump starting the economy. Both items support the criticism that Obama and the DNC are nothing more than socialists and in their own words.

There is a lot more to chew on at Barack Obama Dot Com but one post cannot cover it all. Stay tuned for the next installment of the Obama Manifesto or visit the candidate’s website on your own for some amusing yet scary policy proposals.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

Trackposted to Take Our Country Back, The Pink Flamingo, and Shadowscope, Cao’s Blog, third world county, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe

An assignment for Obama’s new “truth squad” (Michelle Malkin) 

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Public Affairs, Money Matters, wordpress, Politics, campaign, election, Biden, Democrats, liberal, Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.