They are already way too high, so raising them in a recession is just stupid.  Nice try at distraction with hyperbolic generalization, though.

So why did Obama promise that 95% of "taxpayers" would not see their taxes rise in any form, and that they would receive a net tax cut, and that he would cut "unnecessary" spending and streamline government if elected?

Oh, that's right. Obama is never to be taken "literally".

metaphorsbwithu

Philosophy reveals the power of the unknown. Case in point:

The reason an entrepreneur buys machinery or hires new workers is not because he has an uncontrollable urge to create jobs and grow the economy -- it's because he expects to generate enough additional sales to cover those additional expenditures and generate a reasonable profit as a result. For small businesses, those expenditures are paid with pre-tax money, not after-tax profits.

The key is the phrase: "he expects to generate ..." It isn't an expectation; it's a calculated risk. There's a difference. Expectation and risk are not the same thing.

• Pearlman's working in the premise that business owners know how their investments will result. You build a factory and you expect to get a certain amount. Of course, if it was that easy, all you'd have to do is build more factories whenever you need cash. But that's not reality. Businesses don't work on expected results. They work on risk. You're taking a chance. You don't know how it will turn out.
• The cost of new equipment, personnel, etc., is predictable, but the return on the investment isn't. Taxes make things riskier, especially for new businesses, which is what you're really trying for. It's tough enough for a new small business to make it, and taxes it makes it tougher.

And Pearlman's whole article is a red herring anyway. Conservatives don't object to paying taxes for things that government ought to do. We resent being asked to pay for things government shouldn't do. I'll pay for the army, and happily so. But why should we pay to fund a campaign promise that some jerkweed politican made to get elected? Taxes in general are a necessary evil, but not all taxes are part of the necessity.

Sorry, WaPo, but I like my headline better:

"Health System Threatened by Arrogant Socialist President and Sycophant Media's Messianic Fantasy."

"A July 2004 study by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, Paying, More, Getting Less,
concluded that after years of government control, the Canadian medical
system is badly injured and bleeding citizens' hard-earned tax dollar"  ..."delays affected Ontario heart patients scheduled for coronary artery
bypass graft surgery. In a single year, for this one operation, the
doctor said, "71 Ontario patients died before surgery, 121 were removed
from the list permanently because they had become medically unfit for
surgery," and 44 left the province to have the surgery, many having
gone to the United States for the operation."   Where will we go?

Nothing has been more damaging to rational discourse about economic
policy than the notion, peddled relentlessly by Republican
conservatives and accepted by too many centrist Democrats, that raising
taxes is always and everywhere bad for the economy.

How's turnabout on that statement?

Nothing has been more clear about economic
policy than the notion, peddled relentlessly by Democrat liberals and accepted by too many leftist Republicans, that raising
taxes is always and everywhere good for the economy.

Isn't that what we keep hearing from this crowd? Raise taxes to solve every problem. They beat us about the head with it and since it never works they always say 'Raise 'em more!'. Why don't the damned R's ask, in public, pointedly, how the relentless raising of taxes helps America?

D

.

Write Congress and Senate and tell them what YOU think!

Keep the ILLEGALS out, join NumbersUSA to send free faxes to your reps.

...so illegal criminal "invaders" in this country can have "free" health care while sending our grandparents or parents to an early grave, he can write a check to the IRS today.

BTW, I don't know what cave this elitist snot has been residing in, but I am seeing a hell of a lot of democrats out there, speaking out against what is nothing more than a seizure of our private health care system by the federal government.

I am seriously questioning Pearlstein's intelligence.

-Dave