Obama and (Even) Higher Capital-Gains Taxes

HE IS SMOKING CRACK

With everyone selling, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the stock market will crash. Did you hear me? I said STOCK MARKET CRASH! What happens then? Poor people lose their jobs and start standing in soup lines. Sounds like "change" to me, but it sure doesn't sound like "hope."











Barack Obama intends, if elected, to nearly double the capital-gains-tax rate to 28 percent—higher than the 20 percent rate when President Clinton left office—from its current rate of 15 percent. But capital-gains taxes may be going even higher. Consider this: There are plenty of Democrats, such as failed White House contender John Edwards, who want capital to be taxed at the same rate as income. And since they tend to be the same folks who want to repeal the Bush cut in the top marginal income tax rate, such a move would push rates for capital-gains taxes to a sky-high 40 percent. That would be as high as they have been since before the landmark 1978 cut in the capital-gains tax.