This is just too funny not to pass on.
For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama "Barack the Wealth Spreader," seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government's activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year's check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist-Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine-that "we're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs." Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it ("collectively," no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.
Do McCain and Palin have any concept of what "irony" is?
h/t to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo
As I think about other nations that are called Socialist (England, Denmark, Sweden) I find myself wondering why being Socialist is a bad thing...
Citizens sharing the wealth that none of them created seems like a good thing to me... perhaps McCain/Palin are being complimentary (grin).
I run a small business and employ about 8-10 workers. Sure, from time to time, my business like other small businesses will profit above $250,000 per year. But what about the years when the business profits fall below this level, as they always do?
Over the course of the last 20 months for example, my business operations have generated only $130,000 in gross receipts. The lack of revenue will likely to continue through the end of the year, as a business deal just developed in the fall will not generate any receivables until Dec 08 at the earliest. 80-90% of the receipts will be booked in 2009, and most likely exceed well above 250,000 net profits.
This is what many small business owners experience, as not every small enterprise in commerce operates where revenue is a constant flow like the gasoline or convenient-store. Instead many small business have few, larger customers who only purchase certain goods and services periodically, so revenue is anything but smooth. When a deal is landed and business is profitable, the excess is used to recoup from the past deficits and to save for the future.
Increasing taxes on small businesses who may bring in more than $250,000 during a particular year, will cause the price of their goods produced to increase, forcing customer to pay more for what they may purchase. But during tougher economic times as we are experiencing today, it is difficult to pass the increased costs from taxes into the cost of good produced, because such price increases may undercut one's competitive advantage in an already difficult economy.
Therefore, small business owners such as myself, will be left to absorb the cost of higher taxes elsewhere in our business operation. Without price control, the only place the cost from increased taxes can be passed down is payroll. This affect will either mean decreased salaries, or decreased employment.
The difference b/n increasing taxes on small businesses earning more than $250k and profiteers of natural resources, is that their is no inequality developed. The rise in revenue from natural resources came mostly from the rise in commodity prices due to increase demand, whereas operating costs were mostly unchanged. The same can't be said, however, in the cost in operations for uncovering new natural resources, as those costs had skyrocketed due to increases in land and construction prices.