For all of their talk about keeping America safe,  the Republicans almost never talk about what can be done to lift the burdens on the poor in this country or how the poor can actually be able to attain a more equal footing in America.  That is why after eight years of a keep the rich rich and do nothing at all for people that make under $50,000.00 a year president that it is so important that at this time we have a president like Barak Obama that really does want to help the poor to elevate themselves in this society.  Whether it is through placing heavier taxes on rich individuals or rich corporations in order to relieve them a bit of their excess wealth and redistribute it to the poor, Obama is the first president in eight years that wants to do something for the benefit of most Americans.

    Today The Washington Post ran a story detailing the plight of the poor in this country.  Poor people in America have to pay a larger percentage of the money that do have on necessities than richer people have to pay for similar services and very often they can't afford things like the most inexpensive automobiles that many of the wealthier citizens take for granted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html?g=0

The poor do not pay more for necessities, that's just ridiculous.

Who do you think it is whose tax money is used to pay for welfare and social programs that poor people can take advantage of? Oh that would be your friend, the rich man.

In Canada, who pays for the Health care when a poor man gets injured? Oh that would be the rich man and his tax money.

And do rich people get any special benefits? No they don't. Do we get first dibs on health care since we paid more tax for it? No we don't.


So don't bring that shit in here about the rich staying rich. The poor only get by on our tax dollars. Without our tax money the poor would actually be forced to try harder to get by.

 As a percentage of their income, yes they do, the poor pay a higher percentage of their income on necessities than the rich which is why we need to tax the rich more, in fact the rich are taxed too little at the moment, even Buffett one of the richest men ever, wants to see higher tax rates for the rich.

Also Canada's health system spends a lot less per person on health care and health in Canada is better than in the US

Oooh I just got the weirdest sense of deja-vu reading this.

Obama is a socialist, what do you expect. He sees helping people and supplying basic necessities as very important. The only people who would disagree in helping the majority is the wealthy to be perfectly honest lol.

*highwaystar101 braces self for backlash*

The division between the Rich and Poor increased more under the clinton administration then it did the Bush administration.  It's a statistically proven fact.  I've mentioned it numerous times.

In fact under Bush the division between the rich and the poor stood nearly still.  He was the best president in regards to the Gini Coefficent since WW2.

Either Bush cared... or he was so incomptent that he did the exact opposite of what he planned to do.

The moral of the story is.   Presidents rarely practice what they preach... and the "Distributing from the rich to the poor" is code for "Distributing from the rich... to other rich people that give us their money."

I understand that the poor can't afford to pay a lot but that doesn't mean we should exploit the rich. With all the programs in place for poor people there is becoming less and less incentive to work hard and become rich, you know your going to be taxed through the ass and get no special treatment.

Also another thing to note: Who is it that's donating large amounts of money to charity? Is it the poor guy who is barely getting by?? No its the rich guy with lots of disposable income. Not only are we being taxed, but the more generous rich people also donate to charity like my father.

People who are more conservative do tend to donate a higher percentage of their income to charity.  Though they usually tend to be poorer.

If we socialized everything less money would likely get donated to charity since peoples core beliefs would move away from a more "Everything is up to you the individual stance."

Though less money may or may not be needed depending how adequte and efficent the government programs put into play are.

Really we shouldn't tax rich people more.  But simply tax capital gains at the same rate as everythign else.

Hell you could make our tax system a lot less progressive if you did that.

Right now the rich but uninvested are largley subsidizing the stock guys.

The rich donate for the tax breaks, no other reason, how do I know that, because the only way that the data would be collected on who donates is if people file it in their taxes, if it was done anon, there would be no data on who gave money to charity.

We should tax the rich more, and their cap gains as well

I don't think you understand how tax breaks work when you give money to charity. 

Please give a detailed description of how you believe it works.

Edit: ah screw it.  Here is how it works.

Say I'm rich and I donate 1,000 dollars to charity.  Now I don't need to pay 350 dollars to the government.

Say I'm rich and I donate all my money except 1 dollar to charity.  Now I need to pay 35 cents to the government I get to keep 65 cents.

No matter how much money you donate to charity your tax rate does not change.

Well until soon anyway.  Obama wants to make it that if a rich person donates all their money to charity they'll still owe the government money.

     You say the division between the poor and the rich increased more under Clinton than Bush.  However, that might not be the proper question.  The proper question might be how affordable were basic services under Clinton in comparison to how affordable they were under Bush.  It seems that I remember paying $1.00 for gasoline under Clinton but at one point in time more than $4.00 for gasoline under Bush.  I also remember one plan that Bush had where he wanted to make it impossible for patients to sue doctors for medical malpractice.  I don't remember such idiotic plans being proposed under Clinton.

     Well if it was standing still then that means there weren't that many poor people raising up to join the upper classes under Bush.

     Obama's plan is to redistribute the wealth to aid the poor.  It is true that he faces much opposition from the wealthy in this endeavor.