Obama’s Public Tax Nudity
Viewing someone’s tax forms is like undressing them in the middle of the Quad. Nothing can be hidden from the IRS. I’ve heard stories of criminal drug dealers reporting their drug money on their IRS forms but having no fear of the local or federal police authorities because they feared the IRS far more.
Obama is a mystery, but perhaps we can gain an honest viewing of him from his tax returns as dissected by Bloomberg.com:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent, according to tax returns for those years released today by his campaign.The Obamas increased the amount they gave to charity when their income rose in 2005 and 2006 after the Illinois senator published a bestselling book. The $137,622 they gave over those two years amounted to more than 5 percent of their $2.6 million income.
Bill Burton, campaign spokesman, said the Obamas gave as much as they could afford. He also said the Obamas gave $240,000 to charity in 2007, though they have yet to make last year’s tax returns public.
Burton should have kept his mouth shut. The Obamas gave as much as they could afford…oh really? $10,772 out of $1.2 million is all they could squeeze out? That’s a 0.8977% donation rate from 2000-2004.Besides these numbers being disturbing, especially given Obama’s supposed devotion to bettering the world and uplifting everyone from poverty and hope and change and yada yada yada, I am suspicious of the fact that his holiness’ donation rates have increased in recent years given that he knew he would be running for President in the near future and that these sorts of things would come under public scrutiny. Keep in mind that he hit the national political scene in 2004, is it a coincidence that the very next year his donation rate soared to an incredibly high and generous 5%? In other words, even the slightly higher donation rates were doubtfully inspired by genuine empathy for the world’s suffering. Furthermore, we do not know what causes Obama is donating to, they could be things like the Chicago Symphony or the University of Chicago, and not things like preventing the spread of AIDS in Africa. Obama’s low donation rates, and the hypocrisy it implies, troubles me more than anything else I know about him.
The hypocrisy, of course, is this lack of donation contradicts Obama’s vision that government use higher taxes to collectively pool the incredible wealth that laissez-faire capitalism has generated in order to lift up those who have been left behind. If this is a fair statement of his philosophy, then it is also ironic that he seeks to impede the same American capitalism that has generated that immense wealth by converting us to a Euro-welfare state.
More generally it is important to note comparative generosity, “Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America — and it’s making him nervous.
The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.”
Also bizarre is that the Obama’s appear to own no stocks and do not maintain a 401(k) plan. One reason to not keep a 401(k) plan is if you predict vastly higher tax rates in the future, something his chief economics adviser, Austan Goolsbee, warned of in 2006. Perhaps Obama is planning on future taxes being high because he is planning on raising them himself.
For Prescott and other tax nerds, here is Obama’s actual 2006 tax return.
Here is the CNN article describing Obama’s challenge of Clinton to release her own tax statements.
Comment by Augur on 2 April 2008 at 10:03 pm:
please cite the “gave as much as he can afford” statement.
please tell us how much you gave to charity last year
did you consider creating a similar analysis for Hillary or McCain?
your assumption about 401K’s is a poor one. There are many reasons one may choose not to invest in a 401K.
Comment by illinikc33 on 2 April 2008 at 10:10 pm:
please tell us how much you gave to charity last year
Because it’s really relevant to this discussion what a student (who has been in school and paying tuition for the past 6 years without generating much income, if any) has donated to charity. In the words of Jim Mora, “YOU KIDDIN’ ME?!”
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 2 April 2008 at 10:22 pm:
Augur,
The “he gave as much as he could afford” quote comes from the Bloomberg article…read it before you accuse me of not citing something. The article is linked to right there for you.
I gave nothing to charity last year, save for scattered donations to Champaign and Chicago homeless (recall the Urbanagora post I wrote about giving a homeless guy $20). But, as Illinikc has already noted, it is hardly fair to compare the donation rates of a student for is $40,000 in debt to a two-income household earning millions. Furthermore, I am not running for President on the platform that society should be more generous to the downtrodden via the forced donation method of higher taxation. We don’t have the tax returns for Clinton or McCain and they aren’t running on the platform that Obama is running on, which is a platform that directly contradicts his low donation rates.
Also, my comment on 401(k)’s is less mine and more that of numerous other blogs, especially Greg Mankiw’s, who happens to be a Harvard economist and former Chair of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers…but to be sure, I’m certain that you economic and financial analysis rivals his.
There is no excuse for Obama. This is shameful.
I believe that if we were in a Halo chatroom someone would say, “Dannggg Augur just got Pwned. Pwnage^243. n00b.”
Comment by Brian on 2 April 2008 at 10:39 pm:
I’m honestly not sure what your complaint is. Are you saying every single person who makes a lot of money and doesn’t donate as much to charity as they can possibly afford is behaving in a shameful manner? Are you saying it’s shameful because he’s a public figure? Are you saying it’s shameful because he talks about hope and change?
I’d be happy to refute any of those assertions, in ways I would think would be obvious, but I honestly don’t know what you’re saying.
And…yeah, he’s gonna raise taxes. The horror.
Comment by Brian on 2 April 2008 at 10:43 pm:
To add further: the whole argument that this contradicts Obama’s theory of governance is bullshit. It reinforces Obama’s theory of governance. We can’t count on the world’s problems being solved through charitable donations, from Obama or anybody else. This is what’s called a collective action problem, a concept I’m sure you are familiar with, Billy. Taxes are the solution.
Comment by Brian on 2 April 2008 at 10:45 pm:
Except, again, I don’t know if what I just said is even a refutation of your argument because I can’t understand what the hell you’re arguing.
Comment by kofi the then come talk to me and say you need more on 3 April 2008 at 12:58 am:
This doesn’t so much illuminate Barack’s hypocrisy as is does the liberal movement’s hypocrisy (didn’t Al Gore suffer a similar humiliation during the ‘96 campaign?). One of the liberal rallying cries is ‘help the poor.’ Hillary wants to give away health care. Barack wants to ratchet taxes over 50%. Bill Maher makes millions bitching on tv about big oil tycoons that don’t care about the single working mother who struggles to fill up her gas tank and then he has his driver pull the Bentley around and whisk him home to his mansion (not a McMansion – Bill can afford the real thing). This is one of the things that sticks in the craw of the flyover state crowd. Liberals say the poor and the middle class need more help. They say everyone who is comfortable should make sacrifices to help those who aren’t comfortable. But do they, these people who are asking us to sacrifice our few excess dollars, sacrifice themselves? If everyone voluntarily donated their excess, there would be no need for entitlements. We wouldn’t need welfare or socialized health care or any other safety net system. Personal charity would provide a bigger net than the government could ever build. At its core, the liberal argument is “we need to tax you because you wouldn’t give it away otherwise.” And that sucks, because a lot of us do give it away. Billy probably earned negative money last year, but he found a way to give. When I occasionally let myself day dream about what it would be like to be a successful lawyer, one of the first three or four things I envision is giving back. I hear on the radio about some telethon or read in the paper about some fundraiser and I think “if only I could afford to drop a couple hundred bucks into that basket.” Conservatives are givers. Conservatives go to church and put 5% into the collection basket, and their church funds a soup kitchen or an after school program or sends money to a sister church in a developing country; when their pastor retires he is treated to free board in a rectory at a parish will he will probably say mass a few times a week anyway. Barack? A giver? Less than 1% to charity. And his church? Soup kitchens? Sister churchs? Where does the money go? McMansions for retiring pastors. Helping the poor is a noble cause; a cause that many conservatives already subscribe to. What they don’t subscribe to is some two-faced asshole telling them they haven’t given enough, when the asshole hasn’t give anything at all. As my grandmother used to say, “Practice what you preach.” Barack, Hillary, Bill Maher, Augur, Brian, Hanno: Practice what you preach.
Comment by Hanno on 3 April 2008 at 5:25 am:
“And that sucks, because a lot of us do give it away”
So…uh Kofi…wanna meet up somewhere and show me just how “it sucks” and you’re one of those people that does “give it away”…;-)
Comment by Hanno on 3 April 2008 at 5:52 am:
Well, given that I am about three times more in debt that Billy, I think I can be exempted from giving money until I can do things like you know, eat on income rather than debt. Beyond money, I’ve always donated my time to causes I consider worthy. I’ve worked on immigration issues, will probably work for free this summer in public interest, worked for free last summer, and have been volunteering since I was about sixteen at everything from youth centers to preschools. So yeah, I do give.
Comment by Augur on 3 April 2008 at 8:08 am:
Billy –
You are one of the most selfish people I’ve ever met. You gave a bum 20 bucks so you could feel good about yourself. But buying him 4 or 5 bottles of COLT isn’t the same as giving to charity. When you consider your income from Jimmy Edgar, or even your poker winnings, you could afford to give. While you can distinguish yourself from the Senator b/c he’s running for President, it’s pretty low to call someone shameful for not giving to charity when you are literally more likely to set money on fire than you are to give it to charity.
You talk about how government isn’t the solution, but that private parties should help people in their communities, etc, but you haven’t given a dime. Using the Billy Joe Mills model of charitable giving, the BJP/Obama model of furthering the public good through taxes seems more necessary.
Bah – missed the link. I agree, that was a stupid thing to say.
I obviously wasn’t saying my economic analysis is better than whoever you linked to. I was raising a very simple, easily supported truth. There are lots of reasons not to use a 401K other than believing the tax rate will be higher when you withdrawal the money. Do you deny that? It’s intellectually lazy for you to attack me and say that I’m somehow asserting superior economic powers than whoever you linked to, instead of responding to actual argument. What’s shameful is your abandonment of reason and intellectual honesty, in favor of the cheap, over the top punchline (the very tactic you accuse me of using)
Love love love
Augur
Comment by If people in debt give to charity . . . on 3 April 2008 at 8:22 am:
. . . who gets the money?
Comment by Augur, respond to the question on 3 April 2008 at 8:33 am:
instead of attacking Billy Joe for not giving to charity. That is simply not the issue, so stop reframing it to get off-topic.
Comment by Augur on 3 April 2008 at 8:49 am:
Ok, here is an exchange w/ billy and I on the heart of what he considers the insight of this post – i’m editing it to remove all of the times we insult each other (and there were many):
Billy: the best insight was this :I am suspicious of the fact that his holiness’ donation rates have increased in recent years given that he knew he would be running for President in the near future and that these sorts of things would come under public scrutiny.
me: he also started making a lot more money
did it occur to you that might have been a factor? say what you want about him obama is a brilliant politician and giving to charity
is very below the radar. it isnt worth [in terms of practical politics] giving an extra 700K
just for this story – that doesn’t make sense. if you were obama
would you honestly think giving 700,000 helped you enough politically to justify doing it for that reason?
it’ll be a blip in the radar
but that’s it. it isnt a big enough deal politically to justify your little “clever” theory
Sent at 10:36 AM on Thursday
Billy: i realize it will be a blib
and that’s a shame
to me it’s a big deal
in my personal analysis of obama
because i think it exposes him as a fraud
[billy and i call each other a bunch of names]
me: the giving wasn’t politically motivated, b/c he’s too smart of a politician to expect much of a practical return on giving 700K to charity, he could get a much bigger bang for his buck spending that money more directly on the campaign…as you admitted, this story is just a radar blip, not a big deal to most people, even if it’s a big deal to you
With that said, I will be away for a little while. I’ve gotta tie up some loose ends on a case I’m wrapping up.
Comment by Brian on 3 April 2008 at 8:52 am:
None of this makes any damn sense. Obama says, “Hey, look, if we all use government to work together in order to concentrate our money and our power into important problems, a lot of our problems will be more easily solved; rather than if each of us on our own did our part individually. Working together is, in a lot of cases, more efficient and more productive than working separately. So in pursuit of that goal, let’s make some people pay a little more in taxes.” Then Obama does not donate all of his wordly possessions to charity. Then Billy calls him a hypocrite. Am I the only one who thinks this is an odd chain of events?
I mean, agree or disagree with Obama’s theory of governance – obviously these are complicated issues and there is enormous room for disagreement. But where in the hell does the hypocrisy claim come from? Isn’t he just being totally, utterly consistent???
I feel like my brain is going to explode.
Comment by tet on 3 April 2008 at 10:42 am:
This statement of Brian’s is enough to insure that I would not vote for Obama is he was the only person on the ballot:
“It reinforces Obama’s theory of governance. We can’t count on the world’s problems being solved through charitable donations, from Obama or anybody else. This is what’s called a collective action problem, a concept I’m sure you are familiar with, Billy. Taxes are the solution.”
For comparison, standard tithes in a religious society (LDS in Utah) are 10% of income–another reason why a society with firm religious principles can be superior. It would negate Brian’s statement.
Tom
Comment by Diogenes the Dog on 3 April 2008 at 10:56 am:
I’m with Brian on this. There is no hypocrisy here. I can see where Billy is coming from here on an emotional level, I just think the argument breaks down on the rational level when we get into the details. Obama is advocating that there be some effort by the wealthiest among us to help the poorest. And Billy, correct me if I’m getting this wrong here, feels that it is hypocritical that Obama does not practice such a philosophy when it comes to the expenditure of his own resources. However, as Brian points out, Obama is suggesting that the mechanism for this reallocation of resources should be done through government programs, and I concur as one who has watched the repeated failure of private charity where well-administered government programs once succeeded.
On another note, the discussion thus far has presented government spending as though it were some means of class warfare. I would like to point out, though, that government spending is not inherently some kind of communist plot to rob from the hard-working rich innovators, entrepreneurs, and captains of industry and give to the lazy, drug-addicted, welfare cheats. And if you truly believe that then I’m guessing you also live in a gumdrop house, ride a magical unicorn to work, and your wife is the queen of the faeries because you are clearly living in Fantasy Land.
There are some things that no one is going to pay for that we all have to pitch in on. Some of us will derive no benefit from it, but that’s part of what it means to live in a society. You are part of the group, not the rugged individual you fancy yourself to be. Ever used a public road? Drank water from the tap? Lived in some building that you did not contruct yourself? Taken prescription drugs? Looked at the nutrition label on your food? People who will never drive on that road built it with their tax dollars. The water did not kill you because the government mandated minimum quality standards. That building is safe for habitation because the government mandated minimum building requirements. The drugs you took were safe because the FDA required testing. You know what went into your food because the government mandated nutrition labeling. There’s a lot of areas, particularly the one about safe drugs, where I feel the government has slacked off in the last twenty years as we’ve become dominated by this insane Ayn Rand/Gordon Gekko, “greed is good,” “I got mine and screw you” mentality, but that’s another rant all together.
Furthermore, the taxes paid are, or at least were, also based on the benefit taken from the system. The rich do not simply pay more because they have more and are under some moral obligation to help the less fortunate, but because they are the ones who benefit most and make the greatest use of the system for which their taxes pay. The vast majority of our laws benefit the wealthy. Here I am counting such things as contract laws, patent laws, intellectual property laws, and laws that indemnify corporations against prosecution should their products prove harmful to name but a few. These are all laws that have been designed to benefit the wealthy, and expecting them to pay for said benefit is in no way class warfare.
The refrain often comes back, “But Diogenes, you Herculean sex god, you could write a book yourself and you would benefit from intellectual property laws.” You could say that, and you would be right. But once upon a time my copyright would last for twenty years or so, which would be all the time I needed to reap some reward from my psychotic stream-of-consciousness ramblings and move on to my next project. Then it would expire and anyone could publish my writings on the cheap. More people would be able to read my blather as there would be those who would pay $1 for the Dover Thrift edition whereas they’d balk at the $24.99 cover price (10% off when you use you Booktastic(tm) Discount Club Card!) It was a decent deal. It let me cream a bit off the top from my sales and funded my second book, “Jimmy’s Free Market Adventures in the Lollipop Kingdom.” Nowadays, though, the copyright would last my lifetime plus about seventy years, which does me no real good, although it may do a fair bit for my publisher should I turn out to be the next Stephen King, John Grisham, or J.K. “I Actually Own England Now Thank You So Much” Rowling.
Oh! And before anyone asks, in 2007 I gave several uncounted handfulls of change to the homeless guys hanging around under the L tracks, a total of $5.50 to the guy on the bridge over the Chicago River near the Opera House pounding out a beat on a snare drum and an overturned bucket, and $120 to Chicago Public Radio for which I received a coffee mug valued at $7.20. My annual income was well below $20k and that includes my poker winnings.
Comment by Erik on 3 April 2008 at 11:22 am:
Does anyone here actually take the Democrat party seriously? Conservatives in all their stripes I can understand as anti-intellectual, fact-twisting,-ignoring &-falsifying, lying, delusional but ultimately possessing a coherent (if utterly incorrect and based on a few backwards assumptions) worldview.* The Dems to me seem to be another half of the elite ruling class which sees a monopoly in one area of politics and responds by claiming to offer something else within the realm of “reasonable” debate. I wouldn’t expect any more behavioral congruence between DEM party bigwigs talking pandering to working-class pride (the Obama camp recently whispered a guarantee that all their NAFTA talk was empty rhetoric and that grossly unfair free trade deals would remain safely unfair) than i would from Log Cabin Republicans championing family values–
–or Friedmanite conservatives dismantling newly-elected (Iraqi-organized and elected) neighborhood councils and local governments in Iraq following the fall of Saddam, then appointing ex-Iraqi Baathist colonels to take their places and market-friendly administrators to head the CPA–all while droning on about the fundamental links between free markets and democracy. I really wish someone on this blog would read and respond to Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.
Here are a few real-life truths I’ve picked up. Obama is a multi-millionaire. He wants to hold the highest political office of the most powerful country in the world. It also hurts when i put my hand in a flame. If i eat all of the food on my plate, the plate will be empty and there will be no more food. If I run off of a cliff I will not continue in a straight line but rather fall and if i bash my skull with a rock it will likely injure my brain or at least hurt a bit.
*Seriously, what do “intellectual” conservatives read? I’ve asked this a couple of times and never really gotten a response. I’ve subscribed to NR before and then cancelled because I found it childish in its logic, its editorials and analysis. From what I’ve read of Ayn Rand, well, I wouldn’t base a philosophy (let alone a unifying philosophy of the whole human world that I intended to impose by force and economic strangulation) on her writing. Seriously, what do you read?
Comment by J. Prescott on 3 April 2008 at 12:16 pm:
Erik -
I personally enjoyed your portrayal of both parties as two dimensional caricatures of themselves. That really cuts down on the thinking time that could be better spent on other things. So, thanks for that.
As for “intellectual” conservatives, I don’t think there is a mandated reading list for entry. I went out and reviewed the “intellectual conservative club” bylaws online, and it actually encourages people to read whatever we want, to think critically about it, and then to go from there. Conservatives have read such things as the Wall Street Journal, the Republic, the Bible, Green Eggs and Ham, the Wealth of Nations, the graffitti on bathroom stalls, assorted histories, and the Autobiography of Malcolm X, to name a few books. We aren’t communists who require people to memorize their Marx/Engals reader or the Little Red Book.
Comment by tet on 3 April 2008 at 3:06 pm:
They’ll be required to read mine, Prescott, if I ever get it written.
I’m too busy getting shades for the windows of my gumdrop house to do much on it, though. Diogenes, I don’t believe the rich should be benefitted by laws and government any more than the poor. I do espouse the very notions that you deride, and have for the last 35 years.
Tom
Comment by Cassie on 16 April 2008 at 10:46 am:
I know this is an old subject, but I just wanted to point out that the first job Obama took after he finished his undergraduate degree paid $10,000/year (I believe this was in the 80’s, but still). It required him to move to Chicago, a town that he had never been to before, to be an community organizer, a passionate advocate, for a group of people he had never meet before.
Sometimes non-monetary contributions are far more valuable and effective that just giving money and hoping that others will take care of things. Here is another question for you Billy, how many hours of your time have you donated to non-political causes in the last year?
Comment by Augur on 17 April 2008 at 12:44 pm:
I can answer for him, zero unless you’re counting time spent trying to pick up ladies :)
Comment by Alexandra Cooper on 12 August 2010 at 3:34 pm:
our local shop is giving away some free coffe mugs that are also of high quality,.*;
Comment by Arthritis Remedy on 18 October 2010 at 4:31 pm:
my favorite coffee mug are those that are made from porcelain or ceramic,:-