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Jan. 9th, 2003 08:39 ami went to the philadelphia chamber of commerce job fair on the 6th, it was pretty depressing in many ways. it opened with the current governor of pennsylvania, Mark Schweiker, giving a speech where he said that getting a job in philadelphia was like an "undervalued investment." he then said "i know a lot of you know all about investing in here." perhaps not the best thing to say to a room full of unemployed people. i do know that my most promising prospects were offered from companies in New Jersey and Delaware. there is a slight commute, but they pay more than philly.
this kind of political insensitivity that of delivering a sound byte that addresses an audience much different than the audience one physicaly addresses, never fails to puzzle me.
for some reason i am thinking about the bush tax cut now. (unless otherwise stated, all facts come from this morning's edition of CNN's webpage) the centerpiece is designed not to stimulate the economy, but to "do something fundamentaly good for long term growth" (as Ari Fleischer so eloquently put it) mainly, to end the tax on dividends earned from investments. although 15.2 million people earning less than 50K reported dividends on tax returns, that bracket only made 27 billion from those dividends. the brackets above that are comprised of the same number of people (around 15.2 million) but they made 100 billion from their investments.
in any case, a plan whose centerpiece involves surplus capital is pretty insulting when it is supposed to "get americans jobs" as bush puts it. he did give the idea lip service, the smallest portion of the plan helps small businesses, by exempting them from the taxes on upgrading technology and equipment. there is a cap on this, at 75K, if a company invests all of that in new technology and in expanding their business, the tax relief would be around $2000. not a bad return on all the money they don't have to spend, eh?
and another portion wants to accellerate the cuts proposed in the earlier tax initiative, and eliminate the marraige tax. once again, tax relief does nothing for someone without a paycheck, and even with a paycheck, a person earning 50K would save around $1,100... incidently, this is almost exactly how much the average american pays in credit card interest. (www.cardweb.com)
this kind of political insensitivity that of delivering a sound byte that addresses an audience much different than the audience one physicaly addresses, never fails to puzzle me.
for some reason i am thinking about the bush tax cut now. (unless otherwise stated, all facts come from this morning's edition of CNN's webpage) the centerpiece is designed not to stimulate the economy, but to "do something fundamentaly good for long term growth" (as Ari Fleischer so eloquently put it) mainly, to end the tax on dividends earned from investments. although 15.2 million people earning less than 50K reported dividends on tax returns, that bracket only made 27 billion from those dividends. the brackets above that are comprised of the same number of people (around 15.2 million) but they made 100 billion from their investments.
in any case, a plan whose centerpiece involves surplus capital is pretty insulting when it is supposed to "get americans jobs" as bush puts it. he did give the idea lip service, the smallest portion of the plan helps small businesses, by exempting them from the taxes on upgrading technology and equipment. there is a cap on this, at 75K, if a company invests all of that in new technology and in expanding their business, the tax relief would be around $2000. not a bad return on all the money they don't have to spend, eh?
and another portion wants to accellerate the cuts proposed in the earlier tax initiative, and eliminate the marraige tax. once again, tax relief does nothing for someone without a paycheck, and even with a paycheck, a person earning 50K would save around $1,100... incidently, this is almost exactly how much the average american pays in credit card interest. (www.cardweb.com)
