If the rest of the world can impose “the argentine solution” on us, will they impose “the argentine solution”?

If so, it doesn’t matter what the President of the USA thinks is smart.

Raising taxes ‘a lot’ in the midst of the deep recession we’re probably headed for? Doesn’t seem like an obviously smart economic (or political) move to me.

But what the US government taxes is income, not wealth. And the income of the top few percent of taxpayers is heavily dependent on sources (capital gains, stock options, bonuses, 2-and-20 hedge fund fees, partnership distributions) that, in turn, are highly dependent on profits and economic growth, and these can be expected to shrink substantially during a downturn (much more so than salary income and payroll taxes).

So skepticism is certainly warranted that Obama will be able to keep the promise to raise taxes only on those earning over $250K and also pay for his proposed programs. The math didn’t work before the financial crisis, and it really doesn’t add up now. So one of the possible motivation in claiming loudly and repeatedly, that Obama’s lying and will really raise taxes on those making much less than $250K is to make it difficult for Obama to do this after elected—to try to make sure that such ‘flexibility’ would be very costly politically.

Setting a high bar for what constitutes ‘rich’ was a shrewd political move on Obama’s part (at least in the short term) as it tended to give him protection against Republic attacks on taxes and class warfare. But that decision may come back to bite him in the ass in terms of the additional tax revenue that he’ll be able to generate and spend.

Where does this supposed loss of 6 million jobs come from? The American Heritage Center for Data Analysis that Holtz-Eakin (apparently) cites offers a report on projected effects of the Obama and McCain tax plans, and this concludes only that the McCain plan would create about one (two?) million more jobs than the Obama plan, over 10 years. Even accepting the CDA analysis at face value, that’s still one (two?) million fewer jobs created, not six million jobs destroyed. Here’s the passage:

“Job growth over the 10-year forecast horizon is more than twice as high under McCain’s plan than under Obama’s. Total employment grows an average of 915,800 jobs under Obama, and by 2,126,000 under McCain. Both plans encourage job creation in each year of the forecast, but McCain’s approach leads to significantly larger job growth, and sooner. By 2018, McCain’s plan, which makes the Bush tax reductions permanent and lowers the tax rate on corporate profits, creates an additional 3,426,500 jobs. Senator Obama, however, raises taxes on many of the economy’s key investors and business owners. Job growth under his plan for that same year is lower, at 1,576,200.”

Where could Holtz-Eakin be getting this “six million destroyed” from? Six million destroyed, six million destroyed … hm … why, come to think of it, that one does rings a distant bell after all. It could be we have your basic dog-whistle politics plus Godwin’s Law situation here, perhaps directed at Jewish voters in Florida this time.

Thats’s an especially nasty touch, isn’t it? Evull regimes (Syria, Iran) have surrogates.

“Barack Obama says he is only going to raise taxes for X Y and Z, but if you read the undertones, he’s definitely going to raise the A B and C tax for everyone.”

It’s going to be fun at work.

They just can’t get it into their heads that they and their little friends couldn’t pay enough taxes to even matter. The rich in the USA are now very rich.