Mitt's Average vs. Effective Tax Rate...

[cybrsage]

So just to be clear Romney paid all his taxes and he gave to charity MILLIONS more than Obama has every dreamed of and this is not good enough for the leftists.

Romney pays his taxes unlike the ideal rich democrat Warren Buffet who is the poster child for the democrats saying rich people like him should pay more taxes, of course this doesn't include him as he still owes back taxes, like many in the White House.

And the left wants to show their outrage?

You are arguing with birther....sorry, returners. They leave logic behind when they talk. So far, the best excuse they have come up with is "Cause I said so". At least that one has some merit, even if it is only based on hubris.

 

[Budmantom]

If you make 250K per year but owe 500K and up in loans the banker will not give you room to be your brothers keeper so you do what you can.

Maybe if Obama had rich parents he would have done more

So it's the bankers fault... of course, and he still can't help his brother because that darn banker.

Perhaps Obama can borrow some money from Warren Buffet since he isn't paying his taxes and that could help his brother get out of that hut.

 

[Budmantom]

You are arguing with birther....sorry, returners. They leave logic behind when they talk. So far, the best excuse they have come up with is "Cause I said so". At least that one has some merit, even if it is only based on hubris.

Returners.... lol

 

[mshan]

The point of this thread is not whether how much Romney paid is "fair" or not; it is that he is, yet again, deliberately distorting the tax rate he supposedly paid for political gain. (And even if you are a truly blindly loyal partisan who has to close your eyes and pinch your nose to vote for this slimey turd, you should at least be insulted that the Romney campaign thinks you are so stupid to actually believe this line of b. s. they are trying to push). There are obviously a few members on these forums who are driven by nothing more than racial animus, but I would still like to think there are lots intelligent and thoughtful members that don't support Obama who at least can privately recognize that they are being sold a bill of goods (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bill of goods)...

As Shira said above:

"Another grossly-dishonest aspect of this "20-year-average" tax rate is that from 1990 through 1997 (8 of the 20 years), the maximum long-term capital gains rate was 28%. And from 1998 through 2003 (another 6 years), the maximum long-term capital gains rate was 20%. It's clear from Romney's 2011 return that a high percentage of his income comes from long-term capital gains and qualified dividends, both of which are taxed at the capital gains rate. So presumably most of his income from 1990 through 2003 was also taxed at the maximum capital gains rate.

So of course Romney's "average" is going to be 20%:

If almost ALL of his income for 8 years was taxed at the 28% rate and almost ALL of his income for another 6 years was taxed at 20%, then (using Romney's own, dishonest "averaging" method) the ONLY way his average rate could be as low as 20% over the entire 20 years would be if his average rate the past 6 years has been 10%." Arithmetic, simple arithmetic... :sneaky:

I'm not arguing whether 10% or 20% is the "fair" rate; it is that his campaign is trying to distort the truth and imply he paid 20% when he seems to have actually only paid an average of 10% over last 6 years...

And even Republican strategists are scratching their head and saying WTF was that: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81546_Page3.html

(Strickland's comments at end of story suggest that Obama campaign, probably just like Newt and Santorum and other Republican Primary contenders, have long had all of Romney's tax returns (leaked out from McCain campaign?), but it is just not fair game until Romney himself officially puts them out in public domain, so to speak).

“If we had the answer to that question, he would not have a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected president. And that’s not off the record.”

"The California Democrat — trying to become the first lawmaker in nearly 60 years to return to the Speaker’s chair after being swept out of power — said there is a “60 percent” chance that Democrats can pick up the 25 seats they need.

“The momentum is coming our way,” Pelosi said."


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81540.html#ixzz27CtDfPyA/

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2272022

Romney is willing to throw the whole Republican Party under the bus just so he gets to play president for four years (it is, after all, his pre-ordained birthright, given the social class into which he was born)

 

[cybrsage]

LOL! You quote Pelosi as if she is a seer!

 

[mshan]

Then (the Ryan pick):

"My takeaway: Romney effectively threw Congress under the bus to get a possible (but not guaranteed) advantage for himself. Call it a calculated risk on his part."


http://election.princeton.edu/2012/08/15/ryan-is-a-game-changer-but-not-for-romney/

Now (the 47% comment):

"First, to quote Matthews’s claim:

John Sides and the team at the Monkey Cage have a model that uses GDP, the president’s party and approval rating, incumbency, and district-level presidential vote, rather than House polling. Their model gets the seat margin wrong by 2.61 seats, on average, much lower than Wang’s error. It gives Republicans a three out of four chance of keeping the House.

This is seemingly a convincing criticism. However, at its heart is some misdirection. The “2.61 seats” statement is revealing because it is too small to be realistic. It is the same weakness I detected in the FiveThirtyEight “four-factor” model yesterday: Overfitting of small residuals is basically chasing noise, and leads to massive uncertainties.

Now, the Monkey Cage crew is aware of this issue. To quote them:

The standard error for the vote share estimate is 5.6%; for seat share, 8.7%. That’s a lot of uncertainty. It means there is at least a little probability of some pretty crazy outcomes. It explains why there is still a 1 in 4 chance that the Democrats will get the 25 seats they need to retake the House, when our own median prediction is only one seat.

In other words, the “median gain of one seat” sounds precise…but is meaningless.

Let me make the point graphically. Here are our two national-popular-vote predictions plotted side by side…but with uncertainties included:

For those of you unfamiliar with this kind of plot, the data points are the values that get reported in the popular press. The horizontal lines are error bars. They indicate the confidence with which we know the median. A large error bar indicates high uncertainty.

As you can see, our two ranges are perfectly consistent – but the PEC estimate gives much more certainty – and information. In contrast, their range, from R+13% to D+9%, contains many possibilities that we can be confident will not happen in November. If the Republicans win by 10 points, I will personally wash Dylan Matthews’s car with a toothbrush.

What about seat count, the ultimate measure of House control? Same story:

In short, their model indicates a three in four chance of GOP control because their uncertainty is massive. Do you think the Republicans will attain a 278-157 majority?

In some sense, our two calculations are consistent. However, what I presented is not a complex model in the same sense, but a precise short-term projection of likely outcomes.


http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/21/monkeying-around-with-fundamentals-based-models/#more-5986

September 22 snapshot (with 95% confidence interval):

"The black curves indicate the median of the electoral vote estimator (top graph) and the Popular Vote Meta-Margin (bottom). For the EV estimator, the shaded region indicates the calculated 95% confidence interval. This confidence interval includes sampling error, variation in biases among pollsters, and changes in opinion during the period when the polls were taken. Because pollster biases tend to cancel one another on average, the true 95% confidence interval is smaller, typically less than +/-10 EV."

FAQ: http://election.princeton.edu/faq/

 

[Budmantom]

The point of this thread is not whether how much Romney paid is "fair" or not; it is that he is, yet again, deliberately distorting the tax rate he supposedly paid for political gain. (And even if you are a truly blindly loyal partisan who has to close your eyes and pinch your nose to vote for this slimey turd, you should at least be insulted that the Romney campaign thinks you are so stupid to actually believe this line of b. s. they are trying to push). There are obviously a few members on these forums who are driven by nothing more than racial animus, but I would still like to think there are lots intelligent and thoughtful members that don't support Obama who at least can privately recognize that they are being sold a bill of goods (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bill of goods)...

As Shira said above:


I'm not arguing whether 10% or 20% is the "fair" rate; it is that his campaign is trying to distort the truth and imply he paid 20% when he seems to have actually only paid an average of 10% over last 6 years...

And even Republican strategists are scratching their head and saying WTF was that: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81546_Page3.html

(Strickland's comments at end of story suggest that Obama campaign, probably just like Newt and Santorum and other Republican Primary contenders, have long had all of Romney's tax returns (leaked out from McCain campaign?), but it is just not fair game until Romney himself officially puts them out in public domain, so to speak).









Romney is willing to throw the whole Republican Party under the bus just so he gets to play president for four years (it is, after all, his pre-ordained birthright, given the social class into which he was born)

So what I am hearing you say is that Romney paid his fair and legal amount owed unlike half of Obama's cabinet and Warren Buffet.

 

[mshan]

Yeah, sure, see whatever you want to see, even if it doesn't reflect reality in any rational or evidence-based sort of way...

 

[umbrella39]

Did anyone see how much he gave to charity and did anyone see how much Obama gave to charity?

Lets do what democrats like to do a "thoughtful analysis..."

Let's do what inane trolls like to do here... Divert! Stick a fork in him, he's done.

 

[Budmantom]

Let's do what inane trolls like to do here... Divert! Stick a fork in him, he's done.

I just want to do a thoughtful analysis of Obama's and Romney tax returns, so Romney paid $2 million in taxes, and Obama has been saying the rich people like him should pay more, so how much did Obama pay?

 

[cybrsage]

Thoughtful analysis is a loonie returner key phrase for witch hunt.

 

[mshan]

Lack of transparency allows these kinds of political lines of attack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qMl2AUIkFs4

Seems to me that ad is more designed to pull Republicans away from Romney (Republican downticket candidates, too?), rather than energize his core base of supporters.

Release the complete taxes, and if everything is as he claims, he will come out smelling like a rose and probably gain back some of the persuadable voters he appears to have lost in last few weeks:

https://mmicdata.rand.org/alp/index.php?page=election

 

[Budmantom]

Thoughtful analysis is a loonie returner key phrase for witch hunt.

Well the certainly don't want to talk about jobs, the housing market, economy, foreign policy, obamacare, they don't have any positive accomplishments so the only thing they have left is the taxes the Romney hasn't release going back 3, 5, 20 years back.

 

[Svnla]

From what I read in the annual tax thread, I don't remember any of AT members ever asked "geez, what can I do to increase my tax and pay more to the government?". Or anyone ever said so in real life.

As long as a person is fully compliance in current tax law and regulation and does not do anything illegal, he/she is kosher.