Thread: Second debate

Originally Posted by Morningfrost

The site I tend to use (Politifact.com) distinguishes between true, mostly-true, half-true, false, etc. You'll noticed I also mentioned he had a "half-true" amongst others. They've since updated the article (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...n-hall-debate/) to include a few more things. They rate his claims about 5 million new jobs as "half-true", because of the cherry picking you mentioned. The number they came up with was 3.6 million since the beginning of the recovery.

The one I take issue with the most though, is the one about oil production. It's only down in the most recent year recorded (from '10-'11). It was up the other 2 years of Obama's presidency, with a net rise in oil production (of 10.6%) even considering the down year of 13.8% (which gets rounded to 14%).

~Morningfrost

You have to ask yourself why it was up the two first years obama was in office. I haven't looked but im going to take a stab at it didnt have anything to do with obama policies. My guess would be it was left overs from bush but like i said i haven't researched it.

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

You have to ask yourself why it was up the two first years obama was in office. I haven't looked but im going to take a stab at it didnt have anything to do with obama policies. My guess would be it was left overs from bush but like i said i haven't researched it.

Actually you're close to the mark, but missed it by a bit. Politifact went into detail on that one, and oil production cannot be attributed to any particular president's policies, because process improvement takes place over decades. I believe they mentioned that the spike in 2 of the last 3 years could be attributed to things going back to the '70s. The reason for that is because of technological advances allowing increases in production, new techniques, etc. The only time when oil production can noticeably be attributed to a particular president is when there's a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina under Bush, or the BP oil spill under Obama, because those required temporary reductions in drilling for various reasons. Overall, they rate oil production numbers as being a poor indicator of a president, because increases and decreases can usually be attributed to a multitude of different policies, presidents, outside factors, etc.

~Morningfrost

There's actually one thing from the 2nd debate that stood out to me that I'm hoping someone can explain. It was when Romney was giving a few of the details of his tax plan.

He mentioned a few times that he would not decrease the share of taxes paid by the wealthy, but that the would stay steady at roughly 60% of the taxes of the country. That being said, at a few other points he mentioned he was looking to decrease the share of taxes paid by the middle class. I'm uncertain how that's possible, because if one groups share of something is reduced, another groups share must be increased. Who will eat the share of taxes that the middle class would no longer be paying?

I'm having a lot of trouble seeing how this adds up, to be quite honest. Reducing the percentage of taxes paid and closing loopholes to pay for that reduction is a good theory, but since Romney's stated multiple times that he won't touch the capital gains tax, I'm uncertain there are enough loopholes to pay for the tax rate reductions he wants to make. On top of that, reducing the tax rate seems to favor those paying high taxes (at least on the surface), because their amount paid will go down the least. For example, in my previous jobs I made enough money that my usual tax rate was somewhere around 10-12% on average (estimated, because I don't have a W2 on me to do the actual math with). Under Romney's plan of reducing the rates by 20%, my tax rate would end up being 8-9.6%. A nice drop, to be sure. That being said, a person whose tax rate is 30% would see their rate reduced to 24%, according to my understanding of his plan. That just doesn't seem right to me, because it benefits the people at the top (who pay higher percentages of taxes) more than anyone else, because their rates will see the largest deductions.

So I don't know if I'm understanding this wrong or what.

~Morningfrost

Originally Posted by -Lazarus-

I think maybe you are thinking about the number of people paying taxes as a finite number. As job creation grows there will be more people adding to the overall tax revenue stream. 3 million more taxpayers in full time jobs per year reduces the burden on government entitlements like food stamps or welfare and adds additional tax revenue at the same time. Combine this with cuts in spending limited to 20% of GDP and we will be well on our way to a strong recovery. Furthermore this has been done before very successfully, this is not a new strategy.

It's not that I'm thinking about the number of people paying taxes being a finite number, just that the overall pool of taxes being collected needs to add up to 100%. If the wealthy are paying 60% of all taxes, but the share being paid by the middle class is reduced (say from 30% to 25%, provided by the office of pulling numbers out of my ass), then that share of the "pool" has to be picked up somewhere else. I mean, I understand theoretically what he's trying to do: bring down the actual tax rate itself for people, and I don't have a problem with that if he can make the math add up. My main question is that if the wealthy pay 60% of all taxes, and businesses, middle and lower classes pay the other 40%....and then the share paid by the middle class is reduced (he mentioned doing that multiple times), then the share paid by another group is going to rise as a percentage of total taxes collected. The actual amounts of taxes paid my not rise, but the percentage of total taxes collected from that group will.

I don't know if I'm explaining this in a way that makes sense or not lol, so I'm gonna give it one more try and hopefully I can get it out in a coherent way.

Let's say for example (these numbers are almost certainly wrong, I'm making them up as I go) that the wealthy pay 60% of all federal taxes, businesses pay 20%, the middle class pays 15% and the lower class pays 5%. That all adds up to 100% of all collected taxes. If, however, the middle class' share of the taxes is reduced to 12%, the pool no longer adds up to 100%. So who ends up paying the increased share?

I'd like to re-iterate that I'm not implying the amount of money being paid by anyone will increase, only that SOMEone's share will rise, based upon my understanding of the plan.

~Morningfrost