The problem again is the utterly discredited supply-side argument. The right wing believes that the "job creators" ought to receive tax cuts as incentives to invest, but this argument simply does not make sense. If I have tons of money in the bank, already make enough to satisfy my personal needs, and the economy out there is bad, if you give me a $1m check, why should I go invest it? I'll just put it in the bank and sit on it. And that's exactly what has happened over the past decade. The argument was discredited a long time ago in business theory. You don't make products and then put them out for sale hoping people will buy. You find out what the market wants, then you make it for them. Supply side economics is utter bunk and stupidity. You can't put money in the hands of the suppliers and then hope they will make products for people to buy. You put money in the hands of the retail buyer and stimulate demand, then the suppliers are forced to respond to that demand. The issue with Romney's argument is that there is NO JUSTIFIABLE REASON to want to cut taxes for the ultra wealthy who do not need it right now. It does NOTHING for the economy. I don't know how many decades of real-world evidence it will take for the Republicans to understand this. You can't spend the last three years shedding crocodile tears about the deficit and then come up with an utterly unprovable "deficit-neutral" way to cut revenue, and then hope that some benevolent fairy helps make up for it with rising incomes. It defies logic.
You want economic growth, but you don't want people to buy things? How will the economy grow if people aren't buying new TVs and iPhones? Magic trees growing fruits of gold in their backyards? Genius idea! Since the ultra wealthy already have all this cash stashed away and don't want to invest it, let's encourage the middle class and poor to stop spending as well and save up as much as they can instead. That way, nobody spends, we can all sit on our cash and the economy will ... grow! I wonder why nobody has tried this before!
I don't understand why people keep having such a hard time understanding that the Romney tax plan is a "framework." There are very specific details because Romney is only giving a guidepost to what he would like to do: lower rates (he thinks 20% sounds good), close loopholes, not increase the tax burden on the middle class, not increase the deficit. My understanding from what he has said is that if rates can't go as low as he wants without either increasing taxes on the middle class or increasing the deficit, he just won't lower rates as much as he would like.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/158048/r...link&utm_term=All Gallup Headlines - Politics Romney 50, Obama 46
That's sort of the problem. He's made tax reform a centerpiece of his campaign. And he wants the American people to elect him without giving them specifics - how can people evaluate his plan if they have no idea how it will affect them? He's been running for over a year. How hard would it be to actually come up with a specific proposal? It doesn't have to pass - but it gives you a way to evaluate him. Both Obama and Hillary came up with very specific, comprehensive health care reform proposals for their primaries. What Romney has done is the standard GOP nonsense from the last 30 years: avoiding all the hard decisions.
Polls are becoming absurd. I know Romney fans want to cling to this poll, but there's no way it's true. None. Besides, other polls show Obama leading by 3 or 4. Can't believe any of them.
Why? The average poll seems to basically show a tie, and they all have margins of error around +/-4%. So these polls are not really outliers - they all show results consistent with around 48% each, with about 4% undecided.
The math does not add up. He will have to cut write offs such as the earned income credit, mortgage credit, etc.... He knows all of this is true, but knows if he admits it he will alientate enough of the electorate to lose the election. So instead he plays a shell game and tries to move to the next subject. Under Romney the deficit will increase.
Gallup had Romney up BEFORE the 1st debate.... that tells me enough..... Major is right, this is a very close election.... really all I care about is who wins Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Michigan, etc... I dont care if Romney carries Texas by 5 or 10 points or Obama wins California by 8 or 15 points.
So weird. In the same Gallup poll U.S. Economic Confidence Best Since May Improvements continue to be driven largely by Democrats and independents WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' economic confidence, on a weekly basis, is now at the highest level Gallup has recorded since late May. The Economic Confidence Index score for the week ending Oct. 14 is -17, up from -19 the week prior and -21 the week prior to that. The current data are the first to include a full week of interviewing after the generally positive Oct. 5 jobs report.
Here is a link to the Real Clear Politics poll average. It currently shows an average margin of Romney +0.4: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html There is one poll (ABC News/Washington Post) in that list that has Obama up by 3 points, with none showing him up by 4, but that poll has Democrats oversampled by 9 points over Republicans. So, that could explain why it differs so much from the other polls in the average.
The bolded part is kind of why I don't think it makes sense for him to give specifics. Obama gave a very specific plan and was adamant that an individual mandate would not be part of it. We all saw how that turned out. So what use was the specific plan that wasn't really all that much like the one that was passed? Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind seeing some suggestions from him about exactly which loopholes he'd like to close. But in the end, it's not like I'm convinced he'll ever be signing into law the plans that he's campaigning on.
