Don't blame John McCain!

Digby is unhappy that McCain said the following about capital gains taxes:

"Sen. Obama wants to raise the capital gains tax, which would have a direct effect on 100 million Americans." "That means he has no understanding of the economy and that he is totally insensitive to the hopes and dreams and ambitions of 100 million Americans who will be affected by his almost doubling of the capital gains tax."

Digby:

The idea of McCain claiming that anyone, much less Barack Obama, doesn't understand the economy because "100 million Americans" would be affected by the raising of the capital gains tax is mind boggling.

And Atrios chimes in:

With talk of raising the capital gains tax in the air, you're going to hear a lot of conservatives and mainstream media folks blather on about how much this kind of thing is going to be so bad for the "middle class" or "even working folk" because everyone is invested in the stock market through 401K plans, etc. But the capital gains tax rate will never apply to that money. More than that, any capital gains from those plans will be, upon withdrawal, taxed at the income tax rate which for most people will be higher than the current 15% capital gains rate.

Silly Digby. Silly Atrios. Don't they know that the well-respected, independent, unbiased, and wealthy Charlie Gibson had this to say during the Philadelphia debate:

... in the 1980s, when the [Capital Gains] tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

So there. Charlie Gibson says 100 million people own stock and would be affected by a change in the capital gains tax. That should settle the matter. McCain was not relying on an in-house bunch of crazy supply-side economic advisors. McCain was simply agreeing with pundit conventional wisdom, which Charlie Gibson represents.


posted by Quiddity at 4/27/2008 06:33:00 PM