The Right Wing

Imron:
the most obvious answer to your question is simple. over the past decade or so, our economy has continued to grow, but that growth has — for the first time in American history — not been felt among the over 90% families with incomes under 225k. this income stagnation is a clear indicator that the economy is not operating as an ideal free-market should be operating, so govt intervention is necessary. economic growth had been accompanied by rising commodity and infrasturcture-based costs, but the demand-side of the economy has not been able to keep up since incomes have not risen for the vast vast majority of Americans. the American economy will continue to falter unless the demand-side of the American economic equation is bolstered. the buying power of Americans can indeed be increased through tax cuts, but the american people pay the price for those cuts through a road and rail system that is stuck in the 1970s, a horribly broken education system, etc…

if the govt is to continue developing infrastructure, make good on its promise to provide equal access to education, operate war theatres in the middle east, AND provide the bulk of Americans with the wherewithal to participate in our economic system, simple economics dictates that of must increase revenue somehow. the simple solution would be to reverse the bush tax cuts, which lowered taxes on the top 0.1% to lower percentages than reagan did, while this same group (incomes over 9 million/annum) has seen its aggregate income more than double since bill left office.

the previous administration’s wanton spending means that we must seek additional sources of govt revenue. taxing the only group that is currently benefiting from our ever-slowing economic growth makes the most sense. this is not a question of punishing the wealthy; our govt has increased spending while simultaneously cutting revenue — this is simply not sustainable.
Matthew Kowal:

Alright, now that vacation is over and im back at work it’s time for more pearls of wisdom:

1. Americans with incomes under 225K aren’t feeling the growth of the economy: In a word, False. What is your source on that information? The reality is that we live in a capitalist free market economy, where every government intervention in the past has lead to either no effect or negative consequences. As Obama pointed out in his speech, he is from the party of FDR and JFK (which is all he can really claim as he hasn’t accomplished anything else in his life besides being in the senate for 143 days), and this party has initiated certain programs such as food stamps with no success. The simple fact that liberals do not grasp is government intervention does not help anyone, it all goes back to the same saying : give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for life. Where is the motivation to work hard and improve your lifestyle if the government is going to be there to bail you out? Honestly if you told me Obama was going to raise my taxes but he was going to take all that money to help the poor, improve schools, build a functional and fiscally sound national railroad system I would be all for it. The reality is that when taxes are raised the money never goes to those causes. It’s a sad reality, but even if Obama were elected president he can’t control where the new revenue goes. It will be chopped up, divvied up and spent meaninglessly before you know it. The liberal tax and spend method hasn’t worked in the past, why would it work now? The other major problem is that people are not as fiscally responsible as they once were. People today want to have the new car, the 50 inch plasma, the lake house, pets, etc. Saving just isn’t a priority, so when a rainy day comes most American’s don’t have the ability to cover it. Any financial advisor will tell you to live below your means, today it seems like everyone’s goal is to live beyond them.

1b. The National Railroad: Undesirable. In the seventies the Nixon administration was faced a decision to continue to fund growth of the railroads or let it die. In reality a national railroad would never work in this country for the simple reason that Americans would never use it. If you’re traveling from NY to LA you can fly non stop on southwest for 400$. Get there in +/- 5 hours. A train would take well over a day if it were going somewhat direct (which it wouldn’t), and people would be literally trapped on this thing for that whole time. Or you could drive, stop where you want to stop, eat where you want to eat, and sleep where you want to sleep. The cost of fueling an engine to make this trip, maintain this engine, staffing the train, maintaining the railroad for the trip, would result in a number indifferent from the flight. Thus the decision was made to reinvest in the interstate highway’s and keep trains funded by metro areas for commuters. On the topic of the interstate system, it is still the most innovative in the world. Nowhere else in the world can you travel such distances in a relatively short amount of time and not have to worry about food, rest areas, etc.

2. Obama is for raising the inheritance tax, the most flawed of all taxes in our code. Under Obama, the government would get roughly 40% of everything left to you by your parents. So, (God forbid) if your parents die and leave you $200,000 cash and a house valued at $500,000, you would have to give the government all of your cash if you want to keep the house. The reality is that most Americans don’t get that much cash in inheritance and if they are left a house more often than not they must sell the house to pay the inheritance tax on the house. In other words if you are left just a house valued at $200,000 you owe the government $80,000. Obviously the only way you can pay that tax is to sell the house. It is a painful situation made all the worse by the tax and spend regime of liberals.

3. The easiest way to help lower income families is to lower gas prices, and the simple way to do that is to help the oil companies. Currently we force oil companies to spend billions on wind, solar, and ethanol sources of energy. All of these forms are failures compared to coal and natural gas. Why base our energy needs on a source as unpredictable as wind? Here is the truth about alternative energy. One coal based power plant puts out 1000 mega watts of energy, which is enough to power a city like Cincinnati. According to scientific american, if we were to take all of the gas fueled power plants and switch to coal today, gas prices would be under $2.00/gal by years end due to the drop in demand. We are the saudi arabia of coal, and we have the clean coal technology to make this all happen without any adverse effects on the environment. Yet thats not considered alternative forms of fuel, so lets get back to the ones that are.

Windmills: These 30 feet tall eyesores which kill more birds than hunters put out 1.5 megawatts of power per windmill. Keep in mind that a coal based power plant puts out 1000 megawatts, so a windmill puts out about 1/750th the power of a normal power plant. To achieve the power of a traditional coal fueled power plant would require a wind farm 75 miles squared assuming that all windmills are turning at nominal speed and putting out 1.5 megawatts of power. As with all energy you can not store energy that is not used, our battery technology is awful (hence the waste of money that hybrids are)…(seriously I can’t even go a day without having to recharge my iPhone).

Solar: To meet the power output of a 1000 megawatt coal power plant, we would need 34,000 miles squared of solar panels. Oh, and the sun has to be shining on the solar panels 24 hours a day because you can’t store it. You don’t even want to know the costs associated with maintaining these panels either.

Ethanol: The reason our food costs have increased drastically, not the low dollar. Ethanol is 3 times more costly to transport and store, because unlike gasoline it is corrosive. Requiring the oil companies to spend more money to transport and store it.

The Kicker: A month before Al Gore released his much disproven movie An Inconvenient Truth, he had a little known meeting with Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and a few other lesser known democrats and other liberal leaders. He told them to invest highly in alternative energy forms like ethanol, which they all did. Soon after his movie was released democrats passed laws mandating oil companies produce more alternative forms of energy. In other words, they passed laws to make themselves rich. In any other industry we would call that insider trading, which in essence is the true nature of a liberal.

To wrap up the whole alternative energy issues, if there were none gas would be cheaper. Until a reasonable technology comes along to maintain our economy we are stuck with gasoline, but at least we don’t have to rely on foreign oil. We have enough in our own country sustain us for many years if we drill for it…..

For next time:

Barack Obama the elitist.

Barack Obama knows nothing of African Americans.

Sarah Palin has more experience than Barack Obama.

Obama-Biden, one way ticket to failure in 2008.