Last night, I spent some time with an alleged Obama voter. I say “alleged” because this fellow seems like an intelligent person, which makes it hard for me to believe he is actually voting for Obama. But he insists that he is, and he insists that he is not playing games with my head.
He is a Democrat, a Hillary supporter and an Obama voter.
In an attempt to get a logical reason for voting for Obama, I asked him to tell me what it is about Obama or his policies that he liked. He told me that for him, it came down to the issue that affected him, the economy, and he was voting for Barack because he would be better for the economy.
I remained calm. It was difficult, because I can get pretty worked up over politics, but I remained calm.
I asked him if businesses paid taxes. He said, “Sure. Businesses pay taxes.” I replied, “No, they don’t. Consumers pay taxes.”
I explained to him that when the taxes, or any cost for that matter, go up on a business, that cost is transferred to the consumer. So, under Obama’s plan to raise taxes on businesses that make over $250,000 a year (or is it $200,000, $150,000 or $120,000…I’ve heard all three now), he would be costing the consumers, including him, more money at the check out line.
To illustrate this, I pointed to Obama’s words, where he explained that under his system, electricity rates would “necessarily skyrocket.” Obama said that all coal fired power plants would be forced to retrofit their facilities with equipment required under his plan. That would cost the company money, which Obama said would be passed down to the consumer.
I explained that taxes work the same way.
I also explained that raising taxes on businesses prevented the creation of new jobs, because rather than paying a new salary, the money was being turned over to the government for redistribution.
I further stressed the point that with the shape the current economy is in, the last thing that it needed was higher taxes on businesses.
There were other things I brought up, like Obama’s plan for a civilian national security force as powerful and as well funded as the military. He said he didn’t know about that. I talked about a lot of things Obama said he was planning. Most of them, he hadn’t heard about either.
In the end, my friend was unswayed. He ended the discussion by saying he was not expecting Obama to do a lot of the things that he said he was planning to do. He said he thought it was a bunch of campaign rhetoric and essentially, lies.
I said, “You are voting for Obama because you think he is lying about what he says he is going to do?”
“Yes.”
“…”
How do you argue with that?
