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Laurene Powell Jobs Spotted Next to Chelsea Clinton at Democratic National Convention
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Ugh. I hate this misconception. The 48% refers to federal income tax, and ignores payroll taxes, which are 15% (half paid by employer) on even the poorest wage-earners. Contrast that with Mitt Romney, who paid 13-14% overall. Also, very few large companies pay the 45%; AAPL has tradionally paid in the low 20's, a number which doesn't count the tens of billions they have offshore and have paid no taxes on at all.
How many millions should one person be required to pay into the system? Im just curious if there is a set amount that democrats would determine as "fair" as we don't apply this logic anywhere else in society. "You make 5 million a year so you can pay 100 dollars a gallon for milk"
I know so much you'd be embarrassed if you knew the extent of your misapprehension.
You're confusing personal ideology with current policy, given contextual constraints.
For example, Vladimir Lenin was a communist, but following the Russian revolution, Russia couldn't handle a socialist economic model. In 1921, Lenin introduced the NEP (New Economic Policy), effectively re-liberalizing the "micro economy" to a large extent while keeping controls on heavy industry.
The in the above situation, you have a communist reverting a socialist system towards a more liberal (capitalist, as they call it) system.
One could not conclude that Lenin is a capitalist tool for having done so. Rather, he was merely following Marxist theory that you can only have socialism after capitalism, and Russia had clearly gone straight from feudalism to socialism under the Marxist model. Even as a communist revolutionary, Lenin had to take a few slow steps and steps "back" mixed in the his steps "forwards".
Back to Obama. While his policies are merely marginally more leftwards than those of his predecessors and opponents, he is operating within the context and machinery of the US government. There are limits on what he theoretically do (the constitution, division of powers), and limits on what he can practically do (political capital, bi-annual elections, his party).
And so his policy is in fact, objectively, to the right of europe's socialist parties' policies. This is normal - he is starting from a point much to the right, and with many restraints and electoral blocks.
Obama is getting some socialization of policy through (you referred to them as if they were merely the minimum of decency, and nothing astonishing), but nothing close to what he would want.
Just taking the healthcare bill, "Obamacare", as it's distractors call it, it clearly does not constitute full-on socialized medicine. But then take into account that it's the best he could get within the constraints of the system, and that he is on record saying he wants fully socialized medicine and that he thinks it wont come overnight but incrementally, and you get a better picture of his personal beliefs.
Obama isn't running France, where practically every single political party including the "right wing" ones agree on wide-ranging socialist policies. He's running in the USA. I have to laugh, both to return your (dis)favour, and because it's truly funny, at the idea that Obama can't be a socialist because he has refrained from committing self-defeating political suicide in favour of incrementalism, which has a track-record of working.
Finally, I'll add that from a Marxist perspective, any party, even the French Parti Socialiste, that isn't full-blown communist, is at best traitorous "Social Democratic", and intent on delaying capitalism's ultimate collapse due to it's internal contradictions by giving the masses trinkets, thus protecting capital.
But you don't seem to be a Marxist, so you're not using the above critique. No, your gripe is much simpler, narrower, less informed, and more mistaken. Perhaps you think that unless Obama has the Army surround the Congress, purge the courts, and start issuing executive orders to begin the immediate and instantaneous transformation of the entire country, he "ain't a [real] socialist"?
Sorry to laugh, but really, you know little about socialism.