[Finnster]

lol @ this thread.

I'm pretty sure Obama said income above $250K, and that its the income above $250K that would be subject to the higher tax rate. Ie, for $280K, the additional $30K would get taxed higher.

Its not gross, as $250K for any small business is nearly making jack$hit. Really you have to be bringing in a couple mil to really start making any real money. Inventory, overhead, etc costs alot before you get to bring any home. Now my cuz has a small biz, has ~10 guys and clears several mil a year, bring a few hundy home a year (3-4 maybe, hard to say...) Not only that, thru his biz he gets tons of writeoffs that just aren't avail to me as a normal non-business owner. He writes off cars, real estate, on and on. He can buy a $80k mercedes SUV, but as its classified as a truck he gets to write off as capitol equipment. I don't want to say everything he does, and some def pushes some lines, but he can still do it. I can tell you too, he's not hurting for cash.

Now I don't think he should just get the S taxed out of of him, but at the end of the day soemone has to pay for all the services gov't provides. And also, even @$400K/yr, he isn't that rich. Not like the truely rich. Its true that the greater amt of wealth one has, the more opportunites you have to exploit loopholes and dodge taxes, but on top of that, you just have opportunities to do things that avg people can't bc they don't have that kind of disposible capitol. Say, throw into lucritive hedge funds, make a huge return, and pay low cap gains taxes on it. The proportion of the countries wealth has been accumulating in the top top teirs (.1%) for decades now and its showing.

I think the big choice in the coming years will come down to spending regardless. The middle class has been very squeezed, and that makes it harder for entrepeneurs to go out and start small businesses and provide innovation.
We can't just shift tax rates out of the problem, but the big cost items like entitlements (SS and medicare) and defence which make up 2/3s of the budget. Obama has made some movements towards the former, but no one is really even talking about the latter yet, and not even the huge repair bill we are looking at for all the run-down equipment coming back from Iraq and Afghan. Eventually someone is going to have to ask if it makes sense to spend a trillion dollars a year on a coldwar-era big budget military when we are just fighting terrorists w/ RPGs and AKs and will be for the forseeable future. With mindblowing deficits, an expensive and inefficient healthcare system, and other domestic issues, I don't see a whole lot of people volunteering to raise their taxes to pay for it. I wish Obama well and lots of luck, as he's getting a huge mess to deal with and is going to really need it.