Politics Who's Gonna Win?

The only problem is that the majority of Americans are the chickens, working all day to find enough to eat, get our eggs taken from us to be sold by the farmer, and then get slaughtered at the end of the day to make a chicken sandwich.

 

Chickens aren't carnivorous. What were they thinking?

Check out the eyes on the little girl. Now that's creepy. Brainwashed already - no kid can act that convincingly. Not in a Cain production.

 

The Buffet rule as being proposed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, would exclude income from municipal bonds. Even before the Buffet rule get off the ground "millionaires" are getting loopholes based on special interests. Way to go! Reagan supported simple and flat tax reforms.
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They were thinking we have chickens, we don't have (fill-in the blank), let's make a political satire video. It is pretty funny.

 

I don't care, I lost it when the dude raised his hand at the end! I don't care who you are that was some funny stuff.

 

That happens to be my favorite decade. I was in my 20's in the 80's, I think Cain was too. Perhaps it is generational.

 

It did have a classic 1950s ending.....Cain on the mountaintop ready to take his hard working farmers to the promised land.

Very Cecil B DeMillish

 

Political satire brought to you by Hee-Haw.

Looks to me like a low budget skinhead production.

Oooh, now there's some irony.

 

Well, it depends on which type of income from municipal bonds would be excluded. The interest payed out by many municipal bonds is already tax-exempt under a wide variety of circumstances. If this bill just maintains the status quo re:municipal bonds, then you've got it exactly backwards.

Plus, municipal bonds aren't exactly the cash-cows of aggressive, hedge-fund type investing. If Bain Capital (or Berkshire) was solely a municipal bond investment firm, Romney (and Buffet) would be much less wealthy than he is today.

 

Right. And he raised taxes numerous times after realizing that his 1981 tax cuts blew a huge hole in the budget.... and the total debt still tripled during his term.

 

The Hee-Haw crowd is entitled to some political satire too. Not everyone, including me, is into the Daily Show. Give me some good "hee-haw" any day of the week over Daily.
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I thought the point was to make sure millionaires payed a rate no lower than their secretaries or other hard-working people. It is the very logic illustrated in your posts that has given us such a convoluted system in the first place.

Note that in a state like New York where a combined tax rate can easily go over 50%, a tax free yield of 5%+ equates to 10%+ - a person with $100,000,000 in muni's can make $5,000,000 federal income tax free, or close to the equal of $10,000,000 that would be subject to taxation.
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I loved the 80's, but do we want to re-live the 80's?



I bet you had a mullet, didn't you? Care to share a picture?

 

No reason to relive the 80s other than to point out the myths that the Reaganites like yourself seem to want to perpetuate...and then ignore, when confronted with the facts.
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I'll find a picture from my Senate days in the 80s and maybe Reagan is in it

'90s, not 80s. Sorry, no Reagan.

 

I don't understand. Which portion of income from municipal bonds are you talking about? If you're talking about coupon payments, then those typically aren't subject to federal taxes right now anyway and if they were taxed, they'd be taxed as regular income, not capital gains. If the Buffet law keeps this characteristic of munis intact, then whatever. While I'm not an expert in Buffet's portfolio, I'm pretty sure he didn't make his money off the tax free interest paid by municipal bonds because he's not running his portfolio like someone saving for retirement. Besides, it kind of makes sense to allow interest paid from munis to be exempt from federal taxes: it should encourage private investment in regional/local public infrastructure which should encourage infrastructure decisions to be made at a more local level. Which is something I'd expect you to appreciate.

Municipal bonds are not exempt from capital gains taxes, and if the Buffet rule makes them exempt from increases in capital gains tax rates, then I agree with you that it's a bad idea. However,I'm not entirely convinced you have any idea what you're talking about here, so I'll withhold judgment.

Plus, a person with $100,000,000 in municipal bonds wouldn't actually pay $100 mill for those bonds, their actual price would depend on who issued the bonds, the treasury yield for bonds with equal maturity, etc. You're oversimplifying things here. The bonds would be priced so that the person who bought them would be effectively making less (probably less than a percent total) than 5% back when compared to, say, a treasury bond with similar maturity. And, it's likely that that person could only see the yields you specified if they immediately reinvested all of their interest payments. People who buy bonds don't care about face value interest rates as much as they care about spread, and these 5% percent bonds would sell at a price that minimizes spread.

But yes, if someone handed you $100 million par 5% municipal bonds, you could make some good, tax-free money waiting for the coupon payments to come through. You could probably pass the time waiting for the coupon payments by riding around the unicorn that would also probably exist in this scenario.

 

I realize that in your normal circle you are not used to any kind of push back, but if you really want an easy way to get a better idea of the fallacies in Democrat Party talking points, read the IBD opinion pages (they do offer at least liberal point of view every day), this was timely from Saturday.

Obama Misleads Americans In Comparing His Tax Hikes To Reagan's Tax Cuts - Investors.com

 

An opinion by Lawrence Kudlow, who served in the Reagan administration OMB and was among the supplier siders?

Now there is an objective commentary!
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I know that Reagan significantly cut taxes that disproportionately benefited the top taxpayers in 1980.

And then had to raise taxes on several occasions because of the growing deficit and debt that was created.

But Kudlow ignores that fact.