Should Obama be president?

Off-Topic Off Topic
#21

You must realize that those at the top that make the most money, also pay the most tax. And tax breaks are always fair… it’s just that a 1% tax cut on a million dollar salary = $10,000 and a trip to Hawaii, while a 1% cut on someone who makes $30k a year = $300 and a trip to Best Buy.

And those are tax cuts, it’s not like the government is just handing out free money. Instead of paying $390,000 on that million dollar salary, he only has to pay $380,000. A trip to Hawaii doesn’t look so hot then does it?

The Top 5% (makes over $150K per year) pays 60% of our taxes. And they pay the highest percentage of their own salary, 39%

The Top 50% (over $30K per year) pays 97% of the tax. They pay at least 25% of their own money towards tax, and of course it is higher if they make more (28% above $80K)

The Bottom 50% (under $30K per year) pay only 3%. They only pay 10%, and 15% above $8K.

#22

I think it would be my preference.

#23

The very fact someone wants to be a politician should mean they are barred from holding any public office.Dont vote for them it only encourages them.

#24

Don’t tell me you’re bottling and selling the water from that lovely river? :lol:

#25

Never been there unfortunatly.Its in the south.

#26

This is the problem, isn’t it?

The people who want to do the job are such a bunch of self-seeking, power hungry, unprincipled arseholes that they’re the worst people to lead us.

Yet better people wouldn’t stoop to do the job that better people want from politicians.

#27

Obama tried to sell a message in his innaugiration apeech about the state of the nation and economy and that the AMERICAN people were needed to fight and lift the country out of the mess. I think a lot of people have missed the hidden message-the government cannot solve the crisis on it’s own. The new administration needs the aid of everyone from the largest corporations to the lowly paid workers to WORK the way out of the crisis.

Whether the American people are capable of this, I don’t know.

And here lies the problem, the Messiah complex of Obama. He is just the messenger. Sure he has ideas and will set in place many of these, but he is also trying to point the way. Instead he has been labelled for a long time as being in the class of a Lincoln, a Luther King, a Kennedy, a Churchill, a Roosevelt, which places a great and perhaps unfair expectation on the man.

Time will tell if he has been capable of selling his message.

digger

#28

The US are screwed, no matter what anyone in the administration does, so Obama was actually a bad thing to happen now. Disappointed expectations combined with the hardships ahead are a bad combination for you over there.

#29

Sure, times may be bad, but that’s all the more reason to have a positive leader like Obama than a zombie like Dubya at the helm.

#30

It would be if he actually had a chance. Well, he doesn’t. And if you think times are bad now, you don’t want to see tomorrow. What lies ahead is more than just some economic pain, it’s the dissolution of an empire (US), the end of a civilization based on abundance of ressources (entire western world, including us germans and australians).
It’s probably not “the end” just the end of life as we knew it and the transition will be painful beyond anything mankind has experienced yet.

#31

What would you suggest as a better option?

#32

There is no such thing as a better option, that’s the point. For good or bad, the president of the US is an irrelevant figure now.

#33

Look at RS’s quote. There is the answer. Everything is in the hands of the people, everywhere.

digger

#34

So you don’t think that he, whatever stance he takes, can influence whatever is going to happen?

Under the influence of the biggest national economy in the world, which he happens to have some degree of influence over?

#35

That’s the greatest illusion of all. The forces that have started unwinding now are beyond our control, even though they are our own creation.

#36

Exactly.

#37

…and now for the bad news! :lol:

#38

Actually, this was the good news :wink: The bad news would be a global thirty years war, now with modern weapons ™, over ever scarcer ressources

#39

Everything passes with time.

The bad news would be a global thirty years war, now with modern weapons ™, over ever scarcer ressources

You are such a chirpy chap…life of the party.

#40

This seemed to be the train of thought here for a while. Now it’s transitioning back to “We’re America, here us roar! When our economy sucks, so does yours. So eat that China!” There are some that think the recession, or if we’re honest --not-so-great-depression-- might be a positive net thing because the US will no longer live on credit and borrowing as much as it does now and there is no longer a question of the US becoming irrelevant to the world economy anytime soon…