Is this thread really still alive? I thought I killed it with that 'I F'ed Billy' line. A lot of the dribble here is a little embarrassing for QuantNet I have to say. I'll just note a couple of things here.
250k is an arbitrary number. The current tax bracket for a married couple is 200k - 357k, which is 33%. Above 357k is 35%. Note that this is the marginal rate, which means you pay 35% on every dollar you earn *above* 357k, not 35% on your whole income (think about this when you start thinking that no one will want to earn more that 249 because they'll be earning less... false). I'm not sure why Obama chose 250 instead of 357 except that he wants to be able to afford the cuts for the other brackets, pay down the debt or pay for other programs. We'll see. One thing's for certain is that the gov needs to start running a surplus real soon.
The language on Obama's site (and what he's been using lately) says 'tax cut for 95% of *working families*' which is more accurate. Before they were saying 95% of Americans, which was just false. People who don't work won't get a tax cut, but they could see one of those rebate checks if they do that windfall profits tax on oil companies (I don't think either is a good idea).
Like I said before, the *temporary* Bush tax cuts that are in place now will expire without congress doing anything. We can call that 'raising taxes' if we want; we've called sillier things raising taxes.
The argument for lowering taxes on middle-income folks is that they spend money. When they spend money, business owners make more money. When they make more money, investors make more money. The argument for lowering taxes on higher-income folks is that they will have more money to invest. Their investments will require workers. The workers then make money that they spend. The danger here is that the investor might decide to not invest if demand is uncertain, or they might invest overseas, or they might just buy some financial derivatives. This wouldn't help the economy as a whole. Just think, Adam Smith wrote little about income tax because why would any government tax income... that's just stupid.
Ok, now you can go back to talking about natzis and communists and the destruction of America and disbelief in government or whatever. I have nothing to add to that discussion.
p.s. It took me 30 mins to vote (ten times then normal wait for my neighborhood). I know someone for whom it took 3.5 hrs. Normally, he probably wouldn't have bothered since in NY we always choose the dem. But this time people were really motivated to cast their ballot in this election. They felt good about voting for Obama or strongly about voting against him.