This morning I stopped at the Supervisor of Elections office to drop off my mom’s absentee ballot and was impressed to find a table set up in the lobby of the County Governmental Center. They had log books for people to sign in with the name of the absentee voter and the person dropping it off, they time-stamped the actual ballot envelope, and had me insert the ballot into a sealed container. So I’m confident they plan on actually counting the absentee ballots. Needless to say, South Florida officials are trying hard to lose the name Floriduh.

Then Peter doesn’t win.

I’m assuming you don’t think that, automatically, *all* tax cuts result in increased tax revenue. Take that to its logical conclusion and we find that cutting tax rates to 0% would result in infinite tax income. Homeopathic tax!

Seriously, my understanding is that Obama’s tax plan means that 95% of tax payers pay less tax. Given that apparently in the Bush years, middle class salaries have declined by 1% in real terms, while those of high income earners have tripled in real terms, suggests that something is a little out of whack in the US economy.

The point is often made that cutting taxes on high income earners allows them to spend more to keep the economy growing. But wouldn’t cutting the taxes of low/middle income earners instead also achieve that result? After all, there are a lot more low and middle income earners. Additionally, these people are more likely to spend their income on ordinary day-to-day items like food, fuel, and consumer goods like televisions, white goods and cars – things which keep an economy ticking over.

Doug, with respect, my point doesn’t rely on people becoming millionaires to be considered successes. Rather, my point is that hard work, sacrifice and staying on track aren’t a guarantee of success. Despite all that, some people still end up losing out.

I have no problem with people going out there and giving it a go, and the government should do what it can to help them succeed. But I also think a compassionate government should be there to help those in difficult circumstances. The question seems to be how the government should raise the money necessary to do that.

The way I see it, where people earn so little that it’s hard for them to make ends meet, it’s inequitable to make them pay tax. High income earners, by contrast, are at little financial risk if asked to pay a little extra in tax.

Perhaps someone could post the current income tax rates for the USA.

Too late. If this was true McCain/Palin wouldn’t be getting any votes.

I reckon, for what it’s worth, that if you got the the truly ignorant and uninformed to vote they be pretty much divided evenly down party lines anyway. You do, however, seem to have a large group of people that are informed that choose not to vote for either philosophical reasons or for just being apathetic.

Anyway saying that some people shouldn’t vote smacks of “elitism”.

Having said that click my name to see the “The Chasers” perspective on people who voted in the elections in Australia. Funny but definitely NSFW.