Maybe I'm missing something, but every time I hear team Red complaining about a return to pre-Bush income tax levels on "job creators", I find myself thinking about two questions.
The first, more often than not, is wondering how many people making more than $250k in a year actually run small businesses or objectively contribute to the number of people with jobs (excluding themselves, of course....)
The second question basically cuts to what I think is the core of the issue: Why is this an either/or situation? I don't buy that team Red are at all honest in how they present their concerns, but I wonder why team Blue (and especially the bluest of team Blue) doesn't call team Red out by presenting an option that would reward true "job creators" while simultaneously making non-job-creating high-income individuals pay a fair share of taxes.
For explanation, I'm a scientist in a field where being able to measure things accurately and objectively matters--measuring levels of radiation exposure, detecting chemicals in air or water, identifying cancer cells, etc., etc., etc.
By my perhaps naive thinking, I imagine that there should be a way to quantify job creation and reward an individual or company appropriately. As a first pass, I wonder why team Blue doesn't propose a tax credit for every part-time or full-time job created over the course of a year. In its simplest form, this could be based on a simple measure of X employees times Y hours per employee times Z dollars per hour in pre-tax or post-tax employee income.
A slightly refined version of this model would include an extra factor "A" that would mean a job creator gets a tax credit for 90%, 80%, etc. of new employee income they generated. Further refinement could institute a minimum employment duration, extra factors giving extra credit for hiring long-term unemployed, etc., etc., etc.
Now, I'm not fool enough to imagine that this sort of bill would make it to the President's desk with the House controlled by team Red and the Senate blocked by team Red filibusters. Even so, my personal feeling is that team Blue could cut team Red off at their knees by making something like this a key point during campaigning--get out there with a united front, explain that "we're cutting taxes for 95+% of you while rewarding people who create new jobs for everyone", and watch team Red squirm.
Thoughts?