Saturday, September 10, 2011

Why Vote for Obama

Now that Obama's campaign  is underway, I've been thinking of reasons that I should vote for him since "Hope and Change" will probably not be the reason.

  • Experience.   Being President is very difficult.  The country needs a person with the highest executive experience in the office.  No other candidate has comparable experience.  Look what happened the last time an inexperienced candidate was elected in 2008.


  • Not the other candidate.   The economy, the unemployment, the two, oops three wars.  They are all Bush's fault.  This worked last time.  Why not do it again?  Obama can be not Perry, not Bachmann, not Paul etc.  Blame all the economic problems on them, especially Perry for limiting economic growth to only Texas instead of helping the entire country.   Better yet, he can blame the third person incumbent.


  • Predictable.  After 2 -1/2 years in office, it's a lot easier to predict what Obama might do:  blame dysfunctional politics, scold those that don't agree with him, propose the same policies over and over.   A new President might do something different.

  • At this point, I can't vote for Obama based on results so I may have to justify a vote for Obama with  other reasons. 

    For more on Reflections and Musings, check back every Friday  for a new segment.

    This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

     Copyright © 2011 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

    3 comments:

    AS said...

    Total nonsense.

    Anonymous said...

    Total strawmen arguments. Here are two actual arguments.

    1. If you think it is immoral that thousands of poor people every year in the richest nation in the world could die of treatable maladies because they can't afford health care. If you don't think its immoral, two follow up questions: Are you Christian? Would Jesus be in favor of poor people dying while rich people get tax cuts?

    2. Our current economic woes are brought on by a failure of demand (not supply, corporations have been posting very favorable profit numbers). That failure of demand is pretty strongly tied to a failure of confidence and spending by the middle class which have been hammered by the housing downturn, high unemployment and job insecurity, rising prices, stock market volatility and huge class inequality. The GOP says that this middle class malaise should be remedied by balancing the budget (i.e. cutting government jobs) and tax breaks for the wealthy, Obama is in favor of middle class tax relief and jobs stimulus. The latter solution seems obviously superior.

    Super Saver said...

    @ AS,

    Total nonsense is correct. Where's your sense of humor :-)

    @ Anonymous,

    OK I'll bite.

    1. I agree it's immoral that thousands of poor people in the richest nation die of treatable maladies because they can't afford health care. So why didn't the Democratic President and the Super Majority Democratic Congress make the Health Care Bill effective immediately instead of 2014. There was nothing (including Republican opposition) that would have stopped them from doing exactly that. Pretty immoral to let those people die between 2009 and 2014, when the law could have been effective in 2009.

    2a. On tax breaks, there seem to be enough already. Around 50% don't pay any federal income tax. Last year, I qualified for the Child Tax Credit,the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, and the Saver's Tax Credit. Before retiring, I didn't qualify for any of these credits and I made well below the $250,000 that millionaires and billionaires make. The only tax break I got was mortgage interest, charitable deductions and exemptions. Did getting these "middle class" tax breaks make me more confident and spend more? No.

    2b. On jobs stimulus, funding public sector jobs isn't sustainable and the first stimulus showed it didn't work. Government jobs aren't sustainable if the private sector doesn't grow sufficently. Recent data showed private sector growth isn't enough to keep government jobs from falling. The admnistration is recommending more of the same. Why not try something different? There are two parts of balancing the budget: reduce spending or increase revenue. Increasing revenue can be done by increase taxes or increasing the GDP. People rarely talk about increasing the GDP. Now those are the types of win/win solutions that that I think are worth debating.

    Thanks for the discussion.