Obama: Income Redistribution

You are correct, IslandDog.  I am in support of Obama over McCain, but this is pushing things a little too far.  I think perhaps a better solution would be to simply remove some of the tremendous tax breaks these large corporations have to hold them a little bit more accountable for their surging profits with jacked up prices.  A forced program like that could be taken advantage of by the public; how many people would be getting those benefits?  Why directly from the oil companies?  Just because a business is making a ton of money doesn't mean they have to give it back.  This idea will be met with much scrutiny and rightly so.  In the end, both of these candidates are politicians...they'll say what they can to sneak in more votes and build up support with their base. 

I love how when McCain proposed a gas tax relief holiday that was pandering but somehow Obama giving away $1000 isn't?  Why is that? 

That is SOP for democrats. Hillary already proposed something similar.

Zubaz the grammar dog being MIA here, that should be "forcing".

Classic! I support Obama but not on this "fairy tale."

Good show!

No, she wants "windfall profits" to be reinvested in alternative fuels.

Taking money from someone so that YOU decide what to do with them is the same thing. Taking from others instead of putting your own where YOUR mouth is.

Besides, Congress (and the president) cannot manage the money they are now getting. It is insane to think they would somehow manage more money better (Insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results).

Good post, Island Dog!

Obama's "base" income in 2006 was $991, 296, therefore his hugely increased income for 2007 ($4.2 , million) gave him and Michelle a "windfall" profit of $3,208,704.  Surely no one will say that a couple with two kids having a family income of over nine hundred thousand is barely scraping by, right?  Therefore their huge increased income, mainly due to increased book royalties, a direct result of his candidacy sparking interest in all things Obama, is a windfall.

I propose Obama set the example by volunteering, and writing the Treasury a check!

How any of you can still be supporting Obama is beyond me....things like this, and FISA,  effect all of our lives more than Iraq.

I'm "pretty sure" more money is being dumped into this idiotic war and hurting American interests within our borders more than plans to protect individual privacy and offering suggestions to improve the quality of life for struggling citizens.

Why not "force" the Iraqi government to send checks to the American people since it, too, is experiencing windfall profits from oil they sell to us?

Then they can have their own boston tea party!

I am always amazed when I see that someone thinks company's pay taxes of any kind (indirectly, sure). Taxes on company's are passed directly on to the consumer (you pay the cost in the product/service, the company takes that out and gives it to the gov.). So raise taxes on the company's and watch your price go up too. Here's an hypothetical example: oil cost one penny a barrel - the price at the pump however,will cover refinement, employee wages, transportation, business expenses and bills, and what ever the company pays in taxes and they will still make a profit and you'll be happy cause your paying 40 cents a gal. instead of 4 bucks. I can't believe there are people still so naive enough to believe company's pay taxes out of their profits (the left is banking on it though). I can just see a typical board of directors meeting within the Democratic fantasy world: CEO to board members - "Our corporate tax taxes is going up as we will be losing our tax incentives, there go our profits, how can we ever recoup the money? Oh dear, I guess we'll just take it in the shorts and let's give everyone a pay raise while we're at it!" Think about it...just a little.

Obama's corporate plundering(s) will be a middle class tax increase(s), in addition to the more direct tax increases he will establish.

US corporate taxes are among the worlds highest (35% and 38% after Obama lets the cuts expire). That is why businesses that can, leave the US.

I never said that corporations were taxed on their profits, but if you want to put in words in my mouth, more power to you. I merely stated that removing larger tax cuts for an extremely profitable organization would produce more money for [hopefully] improvements in within the system.

I don't believe I mentioned you by name, so was in no way putting words in your mouth. My words were: "I can't believe there are people still so naive enough to believe company's pay taxes out of their profits". Don't worry I would have given you proper credit, your words just triggered a culmination of other similar if not explicit ideas I've heard. Your opinion is just as good as mine or anyone else here. So I never try to get personal about others opinions, sorry you took it that way.

That said, don't you think penalizing (your words:removing larger tax cuts for an extremely profitable organization) would stifle creative thought and enterprise? Where would Microsoft be if that were the case. It would also set a dangerous president as no other nation punishes their top business. I think anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws are good, but who in their right mind would get into business only to try for marginal profits. More an more "average" people have 401k's and IRA's as retirement investments, should they hope for small gains since many of those plans are invested in the stock market (aka big business)?

It's this decision which has really made me reconsider whether I want Obama to win. Taxing a company because they've made 'too much' profit is a terrible way to go, and will wreck havok with market incentives. In effect, it means companies will have little or no incentives to make sure they're efficient and cut their costs, since doing that will increase their profit, which they'll then lose to a windfall tax. It also makes investments much more uncertain - e.g. you could spend lots of money investing in something, if it goes badly you lose money, if it goes well however you make up your money...except you might not because if it goes well it might be decided that it's not 'fair' you've made so much money and you then get taxed.

In the end, a windfall tax can end up hurting the very people it's meant to help!

Liberals don't see it like that.  They think taxing an industry they have demonized will get them votes, and to a point it will.

"Windfall profits" implies an unusual event such as we have now in the gasoline crisis. In these times it is not asking too much for the profiteers to give back some of the spoils.

Why should they? Say for example you're a small gold mining company (i.e. you're a price taker not a price maker), and the price of gold suddenly shoots up as people are worried about how reliable the currency is, and various other reasons, meaning you then make more money. Should you then be expected to give away your company's profits simply because the price of the commodity you deal with has gone up? Equally, if the price of gold was to fall, should the government be expected to give money to that same gold company?

It's effectively the same with oil; the price of oil goes up, meaning that for US oil producing companies (which I think account for 7% of world production) they make more money from the oil they're selling, why should they then give that money to the government? The government is hardly going to step in and give them a ton of money if the oil price was to plummet and they made losses. So if those companies are expected to bear the full brunt of any downsides, why can't they benefit from the upsides? (and that's without even taking into account the negative impact such a tax would have on investments as I touched on in my previous post)

"Windfall profits"
"Profiteers"
"Spoils"

Certainly applicable to fraud and to thieves and their loot but that's not what we're talking about here.

The term 'windfall profit' is simply bogus, nothing more than demagoguery at its finest. The fundamental notion underlying the use of the term is flawed - that the economy is a zero-sum game, that deprivation is the flip side of the profit coin. There is of course a corollary - that the deprived should have a say in what to do with those profits. Those 'windfall profits' have no meaning or use unless they are 'spent' and no company exists for the singular purpose of accumulating & hoarding 'profits'. A buck never spent is just a piece of paper. That money will return to further grow the economy from the 'black hole' where some people (mostly those with an agenda) claim it goes, and those thousands of folks smart enough to invest in oil stocks benefited handsomely from the run-up in profits (sadly, they didn't include me, at least not directly).

The inconvenient truth is that the more a government redistributes the wealth of an economy, the smaller the total pie of the economy becomes.

In other words, rather than fight inequality the US has thrived by growing the pie larger and larger, so that even the poor are relatively well-off (ie those in poverty with color television, etc.). Bigger pie means everyone gets a larger piece!





It's the old joke, in Soviet Russia, everyone is equal, equally poor! Sad but true...

But it will be interesting to see how many votes  "the promise" (not guarantee) of $1000 will buy.

When you sell your home (hoping to make a little money I assume) to retire or find a smaller place, Obama wants to tax your windfall profits too. Bust your hump for so many years, paying 4 times the cost of the home (interest) then the government takes 38% (the new rate) of the sale price? Sounds like robbery to me.

Yeah, like the black hole of more modernized, adaptable refineries--where are they?



I suspect you're implying that let alone can humanity afford a global middle class, it's not even possible in the wealthiest[thanks to debt]nation on earth.

Goodpoint! It seems those screaming for the windfall profit taxes are also the ones that figure the oil companies "got what they deserved" when the price was $20/barrel.

Awaiting the feds & states to make bothering to build them feasible.

Oh, the old NIMBY syndrome, eh?--what a crock.

Indeed, because I filled up my old Buick for $4 out of my pay envelope of $35 even when oil was $3 per barrel. I'm appalled that so many of you sound like the dialect of the millionaires' country club. Get real.