Monday, October 27, 2008

Obama’s tax proposal: a little perspective

If you’re arguing with undecided voters about the socialism charge leveled by the McCain campaign against Barack Obama’s tax proposal, give them a little historical perspective and explain it’s a tiny tweak—not the huge deal McCain seeks to make of it.

Obama proposes to raise the top marginal rate to 39%—up from 35%. Note that the top rate hovered around the 90% mark all during the 1960s and stayed up in the 70% range throughout the 1970s.

The McCain campaign can try to make spreading the wealth into a mountain of an issue, but it’s not. It’s a small change. It won’t threaten the fabric of democracy.

Ask your disputants to enter their income into Obama’s tax calculator. See how they’ll be affected.

The Obama campaign should have made the calculator into an embeddable widget. I’ll take a look at it tonight and see if I can pluck it out.

My inauguration countdown widget continues to be a relative hit by my modest standards, getting 300,000 views so far this month. It seems like a very long time since I made it over the Christmas holidays last year. It has been fun to see it show up on other people’s blogs. Since the widget is available as a Google gadget, it’s been especially well patronized by Blogger bloggers.

Whatever will we talk about and think about when this is all over next week? Maybe some of us will stay involved and channel our interest into making things better and more just.