I saw it again just now: the commonplace that Senator McCain believes the middle class are those who earn $5 million a year.
This was drawn from the Saddleback Presidential Forum of mid-August. But reading through the transcript, you can see this is taken out of context.
Rick Warren: Ok, on taxes, define “rich.” Everybody talks about taxing the rich, but not the poor, the middle class. At what point - give me a number, give me a specific number - where do you move from middle class to rich?
Is it $100,000, is it $50,000, is it $200,000? How does anybody know if we don’t know what the standards are?
Senator McCain: Some of the richest people I’ve ever known in my life are the most unhappy. I think that rich should be defined by a home, a good job, an education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited.
I don’t want to take any money from the rich — I want everybody to get rich.
I don’t believe in class warfare or re-distribution of the wealth. But I can tell you, for example, there are small businessmen and women who are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week that some people would classify as - quote - “rich,” my friends, and want to raise their taxes and want to raise their payroll taxes.
Let’s have - keep taxes low. Let’s give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have. Let’s give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice. Let’s not have the government take over the health care system in America.
So, I think if you are just talking about income, how about $5 million?
(LAUGHTER)
But seriously, I don’t think you can - I don’t think seriously that - the point is that I’m trying to make here, seriously — and I’m sure that comment will be distorted — but the point is that we want to keep people’s taxes low and increase revenues.
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THIS is the cute statement:
"we want to keep people's taxes low, increase revenues."
How will revenues increase, if not by taxation? That IS the mode of Federal revenue, there is none other that I have ever heard of... The Fed does not manufacture and sell items to other countries (except weapons... hmmmm... maybe that is the cash cow...), so where is this ghostly revenue that is glibly spoken of in the same breath as "lowering people's taxes"?
This is the kind of statement that gets my ire.
In the State of California, the people are taxed, then taxed again, and then again. The State is supposed to fund public education, but does so disproportionately and poorly. This means that local city government has to step in with parcel taxes, the only option available to cities. So, the State has taxed the citizen, and then the city taxes the citizen again.
The highways are falling apart, but the Fed is too busy with the war on terror to think about the roads and bridges that were once built by the army corps of engineers. So, back the state. State places bond initiatives on the ballot. That is CREDIT, folks. Then the bonds become due. Where does the money come to pay the bonds off? Tax, tax, tax.
So, even in just these very few (I can, unfortunately, provide more) examples you can see the illogic behind ANY person's statement (Rep, Dem, Green, other) that revenue can be increased without taxation.
SHOW ME how it is possible, I say.
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