39 Responses to “Liveblogging The Pennsylvania Democratic Debate”

1. Jim S Says:
   April 16th, 2008 at 8:02 pm

   I didn’t watch it all but I did catch Gibson’s audition for Fox News where he claimed that revenues from capital gains taxes always increased when they were cut. And then when he claimed that 100,000,000 Americans were affected by capital gains taxes. Sorry, but having a 401K (How most people are invested in stocks.) doesn’t put you in a position to be hurt if capital gains taxes were to go up to 20% or so. It was all so dishonest it was disgusting.

2. michael reynolds Says:
   April 16th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

   I agree. This was pathetic. Pathetic!

3. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
   April 16th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

   Dear god of course Obama had a hard time, almost the whole thing was just a bash of Wright, Ayers and Bitter, this wasn’t a debate, it was an ambush, although Obama comes off as tired and drained (and who wouldn’t be after the stupidity of the last two months) he did come off as classy, he tried to stick to the issues as best as he could under the circumstances and tried not to go negative, like with Hillary’s sniper lie. he wasn’t perfect but who would be under that barrage.

   I think Obama might get a net benefit from this, people are ticked at the debate and what they percieve as an MSM assault on Obama, I would not be surprised if Hillary overreached and came off as being mean and Obama actually got a bump in money and even support in the polls, I think the boos are telling.

4. Comments from Left Field Says:
   April 16th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

   And The Winner Is… McCain…

   If tonights debate had to be summed up in one phrase only one comes to mind:
   “What a disaster”
   When even Republican bloggers are referring to tonight’s debate as “nothing but Republican water-carrying” you know something h…

5. ABC News Loses Debate & All Journalistic Credability. | 2008 Presidential Candidates Says:
   April 17th, 2008 at 12:06 am

   [...] Top Issues Are WHAT?! ABC Hosts Heckled After Debate ABC Loses Debate Worst. Debate. Ever. [...]

6. Barack Obama 2008 Says:
   April 17th, 2008 at 12:18 am

   This was an absolute BS debate. I get so frustrated that stuff like this passes as journalism these days. It’s no wonder we are going down the tubes as a nation.

   BUT I am hopeful that so far (knock on wood) these BS “controversies” (Wright/Bitter) haven’t hurt Obama in the polls. Maybe people are actually starting to think a bit more? I hold out some hope.

7. mw Says:
   April 17th, 2008 at 12:47 am

   Ok. let me help here.

   When every single Obama supporter weigh’s in, and not one one of them says that Obama won, that means he lost.

   Was the debate biased against Obama? yes.

   Were some earlier debates biased against Clinton. Yes.

   Did Clinton win this debate? Yes.

   Will it have any impact on the polls. No friggin’ idea.

   Happy to help. Obama supporters can continue to complain about the media now.

8. dj Says:
   April 17th, 2008 at 7:53 am

   “And The Winner Is… McCain…”

   And that does indeed seem to have been the point of the entire thing. It wasn’t a debate — it was meant to make both of them look bad and once again establish McCain as the media darling. Mission accomplished.

9. Dos Says:
   April 17th, 2008 at 9:31 am

   I actually weeped during it. The crown of thorns was placed upon his head and the soldiers beat him. Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.

   Okay, kidding, I didn’t actually get a chance to watch it. But I just want verify the new position: 1) The media has been unfairly negative and mean towards Obama, and 2) John MaCain (aka “Mr.Iraq”) is the media darling. One question: What exactly are you people smoking and how can I get some?

   You know, I’m sure that if John McCain attended a church and befriended the pastor for 20 years of a ranting and raving racists, that would be brought up. I’m sure that if John McCain was friends with right-wing terrorists (maybe Eric Rudolph) he’d be given a pass by the media. I’m sure that if John McCain delared that black people were just bitter about slavery and thus voted against their economic interests and disliked white people — nobody would care.

   Face it. If you don’t vet your candidate, your going to end up with some 7th inning disasters, even when they looked golden in the first 6, and that is what Obama is. Hillary was smart to stick around.

10. Elisabetta Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    I watched the whole debate. They were both grilled for untrue, wrong, offensive statements and associations. Each had plenty of time to respond and rebut. Obama justified and reinvented the meaning of his statements. He even lied that he had disassociated himself from Wright. He corrected it when called on it.
    He played down his association with the terrorist and never really gave a satisfactory explanation about anything.
    Clinton did the same in less measure.

    About time some of the MSM got their act together, quit the cheerleading and the softballing to ask real, serious questions.

    Liberals crumble and whine when the shoe is on their foot. Suddenly, they go into apoplectic responses, wailing, “foul…not fair…those pesky right-wingers… ”
    Being accustomed to special treatment from the media, it comes as a shock when faced with reality.

11. C Stanley Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 11:47 am

    Jim S, I don’t know if Gibson was entirely accurate to say that revenues always rise when capital gains taxes are cut, but certainly that’s been the case in recent history:
    http://www.ncpa.org/ea/easo95/easo95m.html

    And note the last line in the article I linked to as well; in 1993, 73% of all tax returns which showed capital gains (which represented 74 million returns that year) came from taxpayers who made under $75,000 a year. Extrapolating that from ‘93 to present time, and factoring in the wealthier people who filed returns with capital gains, makes it certainly plausible that Gibson’s figure of 100 million may be accurate (or even too low.) Do you have any links that would disprove it?

12. mw Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    C Stanley,
    Apparently you did not appreciate Obama’s answer to this question. He explicitly stated the reason for raising the Cap Gains Tax was not to actually increase revenues to the federal coffers, but for a perception of “fairness”. Pretty amazing when you think about it. Regardless of whether raising Cap Gain rates was effective or not, whether it raised revenues or lowered revenues, he is going to raise Cap Gains anyway – for purposes of perception. I think that exchange is going to come back to haunt him.

13. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    mw, the capital gains tax is currently regressive, as it favors the rich since its lower than the income tax.

14. mw Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    Ok Avinash – even if I were to accept that (which I don’t) – Are you (like Obama) saying that we should raise Cap Gains, even if it lowers Revenues to the Federal Government, because of this perception? Really, the worst kind of pandering.

15. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Actually I am, because if you did any research you would have found that response to rate cuts in Cpa gains is only short term and over the long term there is no benefit to lowing capital gains, checked out the CBO site and read up on that:

    The sensitivity of realizations to gains tax rates raises the possibility that a cut in the rate could so increase realizations that revenue from capital gains taxes might rise as a consequence. Rising gains receipts in response to a rate cut are most likely to occur in the short run. Postponing or advancing realizations by a year is relatively easy compared with doing so over much longer periods. In addition, a stock of accumulated gains may be realized shortly after the rate is cut, but once that accumulation is “unlocked,” the stock of accrued gains is smaller and realizations cannot continue at as fast a rate as they did initially. Thus, even though the responsiveness of realizations to a tax cut may not be enough to produce additional receipts over a long period, it may do so over a few years. The potentially large difference between the long- and short-term sensitivity of realizations to tax rates can mislead observers into assuming a greater permanent responsiveness than actually exists.

    Because of the other influences on realizations, the relationship between them and tax rates can be hard to detect and easy to confuse with other phenomena. For example, a number of observers have attributed the rapid rise in realizations in the late 1990s to the 1997 cut in capital gains tax rates. But the 45 percent increase in realizations in 1996–before the cut–exceeded the 40 percent and 25 percent increases in 1997 and 1998 that followed it. Careful studies have failed to agree on how responsive gains realizations are to changes in tax rates, with estimates of that responsiveness varying widely.

    http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3856&type=0

    I await your apology

16. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    You may not agree with me, but I think you aren’t silly enough to dispute the CBO, so according to them its only in the short term if it exists at all, possibly it may only be noise, so there is no reason to keep it low, raise it up, drop it only once in a while to get that short term boost and then raise it back up

17. mw Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    Avinash, From your link:

    “In general, there is significant consensus that broad-based reductions in taxes on capital have the potential to boost economic growth over the long run. Reductions in capital taxation increase the return on investment and therefore the formation of capital. The resulting increase in the capital stock yields greater output and higher incomes throughout much of the economy.”

    So we agree that a cut in Capital Gains increases short term revenue to Federal coffers and increases economic growth long term.

    And tell me again – Obama wants to raise Capital Gains … Why?

18. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

    Seems like the CBO isn’t the only guys who say this, from Jason Furman of the brookings institution:

    Joint Committee on Taxation and Treasury both score raising capital gains taxes as raising revenues. There is some behavioral response but much of that is timing and doesn’t affect the medium-to-long term revenue loss.

    Note that the experience after the 1997 cut and the 2003 cut is not a meaningful way to assess the impact of capital gains tax cuts on revenues because so many things were happening simultaneously. The JCT score of the capital gains cut in 1997 was a few billion dollars annually. The 2003 cut was something like $5 billion annually. But capital gains revenues can go up or down by tens of billions annually. So it is hard to look at the noisy data and infer ex post the revenue impact of these changes.

    http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/04/16/sorry-charlie-you-re-wrong-on-the-cap-gains-tax.aspx

19. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    On Capital Income mw:

    And while reductions in the overall taxation of capital income can measurably increase economic growth, a cut in capital gains taxes alone is likely to produce much smaller macroeconomic effects.

    So capital gains taxes alone do little if anything, its capital income as a whole that makes a difference, capital gains taxes will only create a short term effect if any effect at all, this is about gapital gainst tax not capital income

20. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    So Obama is right to want to raise capital gains taxes, because the effective gain has long passed

21. C Stanley Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Avinash, I don’t see how you can say this:
    

    mw, the capital gains tax is currently regressive, as it favors the rich since its lower than the income tax.

    since most capital gains tax is in effect double taxation (most of the capital that was invested was initially earned and already taxed.) So it’s apples to oranges to compare the rates at which capital gains are taxed to the rates at which income is taxed, since the capital gains is an additional layer of taxation.

    What does the CBO say about growth of economy or job growth? Both intuitively and from what I’ve read, these two things do fare better under a lower capital gains tax in the longer run as well as the shorter run. And certainly it’s intuitive that it would be harmful to our global competitiveness to have our rates go back to levels that are much higher than just about every other country, in a time where recession and joblessness and job outsourcing already loom large.

    And a final point: to whatever degree you are correct about adjusting the changes for the parts that occur in response to the change, why didn’t Obama say that? As mw pointed out, he was making the argument that it didn’t matter if revenue went down, as long as the higher rate seemed more ‘fair’.

22. mw Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    Even though the CBO analysis you cite states that it will slow economic activity long term and may have a net short term decrease in Revenues. And the CBO report does not say that it will increase revenues longer term. It only says it is too complicated to know for sure.

    I guess this is where one really needs the audacity to hope that it will generate additional revenues, since there is no evidence of that and you raising Capital Gains in the face of evidence that it will slow the economy.

    Got it.

23. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

    Some of it is, but not all, a lot of people use the lower capital gainst taxes to avoid paying the income tax, hence why its regressive and favors the rich

    Wrong not in the long term if the only thing changed is the capital gains tax, you can read it right there, it has a small macroeconomic effect. Also economic growth’s biggest engine is consumption 2/3 of GDP, not investments.

    Oh I agree Obama wasn’t as ready for the question as he could have been, however Obama was acting off of the belief that the moderators were being honest, which wthey were not

24. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    mw, I think you have trouble reading, the issue is not capital income, but capital gains taxes, all the growth and benefit you are referrign to is with regards to the overall taxation of capital income, not the capital gains tax, repeateldy the cbo report states that capital gains tax have little effect on economic growth

25. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    what you should be arguing is not the capital gains tax but rather the overall method by which capital is taxed, removal of the doube taxation would be a first step but it must be implemented progressively

26. Dos Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    mw, the capital gains tax is currently regressive, as it favors the rich since its lower than the income tax.

    That is an interesting definition of regressive.

    drop it only once in a while to get that short term boost and then raise it back up

    You’re such a trickster. Way to work for Americans!

    If you think that a hike in cap gains won’t mean a decrease in capital investment (even with your little game) you are wrong. You will see a decrease in long-term capital expansion by some business sectors. That will result in fewer jobs and a general stunting of the economy.

    Look, I work in the renewable energy industry. These companies, even with the grotesque amount of subsidization that they are receiving now and in the future, require considerable equity investment. They are often high risk, speculative investments — if you up the capital gains it will effect the analytic matrix of investors, particularly big ones. WHY would you want to make it less attractive for people to investment in high-risk companies that create jobs among many other things good for society? Not every company is blue-chip. It is the companies in the margins that will be most effected by a cap gains hike — and these are the companies with the most to promise in terms of technological innovation and are the highest risk.

27. C Stanley Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Avinash, basically what you are doing is taking the CBO’s point (which is that some people overstate the degree to which lower capital gains tax cuts increase revenue, because they pretend that the defensive behaviors on each side of a change in rate are more meaningful than they really are) and you are twisting that as though they’re saying that lower capital gains tax rates in general aren’t conducive of more capital gains (since people don’t have to defend themselves by holding onto investments) and conducive to growth of the economy. It’s you who’s being dishonest (or perhaps you really believe what you are saying, I can’t tell which it is.) Similarly, the moderators may have been guilty of overstating, but that doesn’t make them dishonest- and since when does a candidate get a pass for ‘not being as prepared as he should have been’? If the moderators got it wrong, and if Obama actually understood the situation, he’d have corrected them. Not as prepared as he should have been is a gross understatement- or the only other interpretation is that he does understand but is pandering to his base.

28. C Stanley Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

    And of course, when I talk about ‘lower rates’, that’s all relative. Obviously at a rate of zero, the revenue would be zero, and I assume that you’d admit that at a rate of 100% the revenue would approach zero as well. 15 seems about right because it allows for some promise of actual net return from an investment. When you get up to 20-28, our mattresses look like better investment than the stock market does.

29. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Well first off my comment about raising it up and down was more tongue and cheek than anything, I personally don’t think it needs to be down in the first place. And a regressive tax refers to a tax that has a higher tax incidence for those who make less, so yeah i’d say that the cap gains tax qualifies.

    Your idea that in order to fund these high risk ventures we need to have the low capital gains is ridiculous, especially since many people use the low capital gains tax to avoid the income tax in the first place, liek by taking stock options and holding them for over a year.

    No what we should do is have an initial tax whether it is coporate stocks, normal income etc. all should be taxed at the same rate initially, then any profits made on investments after that intial tax is tax free up to a certain level, at which point it becomes taxed as well

30. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

    No I disagree stanley, I think the stock market would still be a great investment, however I don’t believe it should be an option for people to avoid paying taxes, and using the argument that a small benefit is derived from the tax cut is not a good reason to try and cover that loophole when you know that any benefit to the economy is small at best, and likely overstated

    I believe that there should be an initial tax on all income, whetehr it is taken as cash or as option or whatever, and then profits on investemtns should have a certain amount tax free, this way you would close the loophole and incentiivize greater investment

31. C Stanley Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    OK, I’m thoroughly befuddled. First you say you don’t think that capital gains taxes should be low, and now it sounds like you are saying that a certain amount should be taxed exempt. Huh?

32. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Well I want is a system that prevents loopholes and is more beneficial to smaller investors, so yeah i’d have a part of any profits made tax exempt, larger for small investors and those who made less profit, and smaller for larger investors, so lets say you invested 1K you would have a higher percentage of tax exempt profits than say someone who invested a few million (maybe like 30% vs 2% in this case or something), same idea with the rest of the profits that were not tax exempt those who made a smaller profit would have a lower tax rate than those who made a large profit, like if you made less than 20K you’d get to keep most of it, if you made like a couple of million you’d probably see about half of it get taxed away

33. Dos Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    Your idea that in order to fund these high risk ventures we need to have the low capital gains is ridiculous, especially since many people use the low capital gains tax to avoid the income tax in the first place, liek by taking stock options and holding them for over a year.

    Great point Aviash. I have often thought that a solution to CEO’s making poor business decisions for short-term bumps in stock prices (such a significantly downsizing or liquidations) is to decrease the economic incentive to hold their stock options. What we need to do is to make sure that CEO’s are worse off if they choose to hold their stocks for the purposes of making them qualified-dividends. Absolutely fucking brilliant. Someone should put you charge.

    No what we should do is have an initial tax whether it is coporate stocks, normal income etc. all should be taxed at the same rate initially, then any profits made on investments after that intial tax is tax free up to a certain level, at which point it becomes taxed as well

    Your befuddled Stanley because somewhere along this thread, Aviash realized that his brilliant tinkering with the economy and redistribution of income may actually have an **effect** on what people do, so instead of giving up his grand plan — he choses now to try to target the impact to try to fix the problem. You know, just get the bad guy. He can do this, of course, because he has first-hand knowledge of the financials of each company and knows exactly how increased cap gains rates will effect their investors, their balance sheets, their cash flows and everything else.

    All hail Aviash!!

34. C Stanley Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    Well, the issue there is that the wealthier people really do have more money that they can choose to either invest (which increases the capital for economic growth) or sit on, or spend. I realize you are saying that the effects of tax rates on that behavior is not that significant, but I disagree. It doesn’t need to be a huge difference in how much the economy grows for it to be significant; especially in the face of a recession, every bit helps (which is why RAISING the rates right now seems particularly dumb, because even according to this skeptical outlook, in the short run that will cause some contraction of investment capital.)

35. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    Spending would be fine, and sitting on is just stupid thanks to inflation, you either invest, spend, you save or you buy bondss, and if you save then the banks will do stuff with it, and you’d till come away with a likely higher return on investing even with these taxes than you would with buying bonds or saving

    Sorry but you have to convince me that people won’t invest under that method, in fact i’m pretty sure overall investment would be higher since any small loss in the rich would be offset by much higher investment by small investors

36. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 9:33 pm

    Also by saying that the rich have the money and should be catered to with the capital gains tax also proves mine and Obama’s point, why should the system be catered to the rich, I think Obama’s fundraising shows the power of the masses, better to make the system catered for the majority, the middle and lower classes, encourage them to invest, the rich will do it anyways, because they will still come out with a ton of cash even with taxes, just because they invest so much at a time, if i’m a venture capitalist I’m probabaly going to invest in 7-10 things at a time and hundreds of thousands to millions into each, of those maybe 2-3 will be big money makers even then I would stand to make millions off of just those two-three things, even if I got large portions taxed away its still a win for me, more than I could make saving it in a bank.

    Its the small investor who doesn’t think they can make it big who should be the one catered to, we make our revenues off the large ones and incentivize the small ones, so they’ll get bigger and eventually be among the group generating the revenues

37. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    Hey Dos,

    Yes obviously there are no problems going on in the country why if I got to CNN money they’ll tell me how everything is milk and ambroisia, wait what’s this…we’re in a recession? Possible stagflation? Comparisons to 1929? Rising debt? Unemployment rising? But low taxes, they were supposed to make our economy super powered and generate enough revenues to lower the deficit. Low capital gains was supposed to generate massive job growth through corporate growth. Food Crisis? Oil Rising? Financials suffering huge losses? But this wasn’t supposed to happen. Where is the massie GDP growth Dos? where is it?

38. Avinash_Tyagi Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

    Dos, tell me has your system covered the deficit? no, the deficit and the debt are massive and according to the GAO will cripple our economy. Has it generated massive job growth? nope the GWB years have had weak job growth slower than the rate of population growth. Is the economy growing? Nope we’re in a recession, possibly the worst in decades, with signs of stagflation and even worse popping up. Food crisis, oil over a $115 a barrel, a sagging dollar and massive losses in financials.

    So tell me, what ideas do you have that actually work?

39. Democratic Presidential Debate Live-Blog 4/16/08 - Disabled Politico Says:
    April 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 pm

    [...] not just [...]

Leave a Reply

Related Posts:

• 2008Central.net’s Live Blog Of CNN / YouTube Democratic Debate (July 23, 2007)
• Liveblogging Hillary Speech
• Open Streaming The Second Presidential Debate Tomorrow