Now Obama says he didn't say "you didn't build that"

[_krose]

What honest person really thinks that Obama believes someone else created my business.

What honest person thinks that, "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Any honest person who understands how societies work. Whenever taxes are levied and used for the benefit of all, it's "spreading the wealth around." The fact that this is good for everybody is inarguable.

How high does Obama want marginal rates to go. 50%? 70%? 90%?

Since my crystal ball is in the shop, and my mind reading skills are shamefully poor compared to the prowess of the NRA, I'm stuck relying on what he has said, which is that the rates in the 1990s were about right.

But you must have read his mind. What confiscatory rate does his black heart desire?

I have an acquaintance who built the first cesium atomic clocks in orbit (they were launched in NTS-2). He's still working in his late 70s in his small company in Danvers MA. Would he still be working if the government took most of the wealth. As taxes rise, the incentive to be an entrepreneur diminishes.

I'm assuming you can present data that show this -- that entrepreneurial activity has increased corresponding to the Bush tax cuts. I'm looking forward to seeing that.

What's interesting about your example is that taxes are much lower now (and in the 1990s) than they were in the 1970s, when your friend was making clocks. The highest marginal rate was 50% then.

[_richardMdBorn]

Barack Obama is supposed to be the World's Greatest Orator, the smartest man in the world. Yet his campaign asks us to believe he is not even competent to construct a sentence.

Bitter much, Richard? The sarcasm is noted, and while I realize the right believes Obama cheated his way through school and only got ahead through affirmative action, surely you will grudgingly admit (as Ben Stein eventually did) that he is reasonably intelligent -- not as a "real American" is smart, but at least fairly smart as a politician.

And yet you appear to believe that he thought it would be a good idea to get up on a stage and tell business owners that we didn't create our businesses. Right.

That was a quote from James Taranto. But I agree with it. Mr. visited 57 states with one left to go is not particularly knowledgeable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws

Austria is a country not a language. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr7zhnctF4c

I could list many more if you're interested. Compared to the people I knew at Brown or the University of Chicago, Obama is terrible at arguments and is not particularly bright. I met lots of interesting people when I was growing up such as Capt. P. V. H. Weems who I knew well since we went frequently to his house in Annapolis. And I've tripped over many real Nobel Prize winners at meetings of the American Philosophical Society. I realize that politics is a different field but Obama is a mediocrity off the teleprompter.

It would be interesting to see Obama's transcripts.

[_richardMdBorn]

I'm assuming you can present data that show this -- that entrepreneurial activity has increased corresponding to the Bush tax cuts. I'm looking forward to seeing that.

What's interesting about your example is that taxes are much lower now (and in the 1990s) than they were in the 1970s, when your friend was making clocks. The highest marginal rate was 50% then.

The highest marginal rate was 70% when Reagan took office. My co-author recently reviewed a book which show that patent applications took off after Reagan's tax cuts in the 1980s. Social Security and Medicare Taxes have increased much faster than inflation over the past couple of decades. And plenty of states have increased taxes (Illinois recently increased its rate from 3%-5%). It's the federal tax rate + S/S + Medicare/Medicaid _ state + local tax rate that is pertinent.

[_Kevin Graham]

My co-author recently reviewed a book which show that patent applications took off after Reagan's tax cuts in the 1980s.

Are you serious? Patent applications increased by a larger margin after Clinton increased taxes and they were already on the rise between 1979-1982 before his 1981 tax cuts took effect. Patents went from 100,500 in 1979 to 109,600 in 1982 but then dropped in 1983 to 103,700 and then increased gradually peaking at 139,000 by the end of his term. That rate of increase leveled off between 1990-1993 but then jumped up after Clinton raised taxes, going from 174,000 to 212,000 in two years. By the time Clinton left office that number was 295,000.

But I don't know why you'd tie economic productivity with patent applications anyway. That really makes no sense. Corporations have been abusing patent law, especially those involved with chemical engineering our foods, our drugs, etc.

Economists know that the Reagan tax cut didn't create economic boom. That was primarily due to the fed cutting interest rates, as even Reagan's economists even admitted during that time. It was much later when corporations and wealthy people, looking for a way to deceive people into thinking they should pay less, decided to use the correlation = causation fallacy with Reagan's tax cuts. All that did really was explode our deficit for the first time with WWII.

[_Kevin Graham]

I'm still waiting for bcspace to explain why he mangled Obama's citation in such a way? He should either take responsibility for it or blame his source and then admit his source is untrustworthy.

[_richardMdBorn]

Mark Steyn has interesting comments about Obama's intelligence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl7zDLxtmr8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl3-Mokm8Ws

[_Kevin Graham]

Steyn, while hosting Rush Limbaugh? That's pretty pathetic Richard. Limbaugh never even went to school, and he thinks he is intelligent just because he hires people to tutor him on using obscure words just to sound smart? Steyn let's his British accent do all the talking, since so many Americans tend to think English speakers are educated. In reality Steyn dropped out of school at age 18 to become a disc jockey!

Attacking Obama's intelligence is a no win for you guys, but it is funny because it shows just how desperate you really are. Reagan never finished school. Bush only got into Yale/Harvard because of his Dad, and is indisputably the stupidest President in recent memory.

If you really think Obama thinks there are 57 states, then you're either being dishonest or stupid yourself. What you always lack in these cheap attacks, is context. Totally appropriate that you'd throw this up in a thread dedicated to the latest Right Wing smear, based on their own dishonest use of his recent comments.

Obama said in this 2008 visit to Oregon that he had visited 57 states, “one left to go” and then noted that he couldn’t go to Alaska and Hawaii because it was too far to justify. So, Obama was trying to visit all 48 continental states, and he was trying to say that he had been to 47 states. It’s very easy to say 57 instead of 47. “fifty” is similar to “forty” and when we talk about the states, it is ingrained in all of us to say “50 states” instinctively. Mystery solved.

[_krose]

I'm assuming you can present data that show this -- that entrepreneurial activity has increased corresponding to the Bush tax cuts. I'm looking forward to seeing that.

My co-author recently reviewed a book which show that patent applications took off after Reagan's tax cuts in the 1980s. Social Security and Medicare Taxes have increased much faster than inflation over the past couple of decades. And plenty of states have increased taxes (Illinois recently increased its rate from 3%-5%). It's the federal tax rate + S/S + Medicare/Medicaid _ state + local tax rate that is pertinent.

I don't see it. Looking at the patent office statistics from 1963 to 2011, there is no significant jump anywhere along the line, just a fairly continuous climb. But even if that were the case, it's business starts you should be looking at to judge entrepreneurial activity, not patent applications.

But I'm still puzzled by the claim that, "As taxes rise, the incentive to be an entrepreneur diminishes." How does that work, exactly? I've got a great idea for a new business, but taxes are too high, so I'm going to continue working for someone else? Why? I'm still paying the same high taxes, but I'm not doing what I would rather do.

I'll tell you what really does put a serious damper on entrepreneurialism... health insurance through employers. True universal health care would free up tons of people who don't dare pursue their dreams because they are trapped by the fear of losing their insurance. I know several people like that. Hell, I'm married to one. She knows she could be successful as an independent consultant, but her job provides the only insurance coverage we have for our daughter with one of those dreaded pre-existing conditions.

[_Kevin Graham]

That's a great point Krose, and come to think of it, I know a few people who are afraid to quit their jobs because they can't afford to go through a transition period without health insurance for their families.

[Guest]

Is it just a weird coincidence that the attacks on Obama's character seem to reflect every negative racial stereotype? Lazy, unintelligent, dishonest, druggie, undeservingly entitled (affirmative action recipient), reverse racist, not even a real American... they're all there.

Yeah, I'm sure it's a coincidence.