During the last Democratic debate Barack Obama was asked to clarify his position on raising capital gains rates. He’s vacillated between various proposals but during the debate his position was:
Obama has included increasing capital gains rates as part of his populist message of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Of course the Wall Street Journal quickly dispelled the myth that capital gains came only from the rich with this information:
In 2005, 47% of all tax returns reporting capital gains were from households with incomes below $50,000, and 79% came from households with incomes below $100,000.
Undaunted, Barack Obama continues to talk about increasing capital gains rates and usually wraps some story about evil hedge fund managers in to rally the population into gathering their torches and pitchforks.
Except they’re not.
Rasmussen Reportsasked the masses about increasing capital gains rates and found that 65% opposed an increase in capital gains rates. 85% of Republicans, 62% of unaffiliated and even 50% of Democrats said they did not want the tax increased.
Now Barack may try to enter the general election trying to explain to the masses that the capital gains taxes are just for evil rich people and he won’t raise taxes on the “everyday folks” but it looks like folks already see through that ploy. When asked by Rasmussen, 60% of the respondents said that if a candidate raises capital gains taxes, they would also raise other taxes. 41% of the respondents said their personal taxes would go up if the capital gains rates increased.
As it relates to his tax plans it looks like not only can’t Barack fool all of the people all of the time, he’s having a tough time fooling even some of the Democrats some of the time.
