Democrats have had no more sense than a flock of geese. Hiking these taxes hurts Main Street, the most important investor class of all. Many senior citizens live entirely on dividend income alone; the middle class desperately needs its 401K and IRA money like never before because Social Security is in a ditch (thanks to the Democrats changing the law in the ‘60s so it could, for the first time, get its mitts on Social Security funds to spend on pork and to buy votes).
The Democratic candidates, in their blinkered concretism, stubbornly refuse to acknowledge human behavior. Investors sit on assets, including stocks, rather than sell and pay the capital gains tax, because capital gains taxes are voluntary. You don’t have to pay until you sell. Higher capital gains taxes keep frozen all sorts of economic activity. Hike taxes, you also get tax avoidance schemes going viral too–and massive loopholes written into the colossally inefficient tax code, a big tangled pile of barbed wire as it is. But we’d rather be a nation of tax lawyers and accountants. Both Obama and Clinton want to make it even more confusing with gimmicky credits that won’t buy you a bag of groceries for a month.
Obama and Clinton want to hurt Main Street with more taxes. “Why is Barack Obama so hell-bent on pursuing policies that would wreck America’s retirement savings?” asks Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform. ”Because, by and large, he doesn’t have any skin in the game.”
How so? Obama is not part of the investor class because he’s reported no dividend income on his tax returns from 2001 to 2004, and just $2,754 in dividend income on his 2005 tax return and $1,188 on his 2006 return (Clinton has yet to release her returns).
