Who are the "millionaires and billionaires" Obama talks about?

What is the President driving at when he talks about "millionaires and billionaires"? He doesn't describe them, which raises the question of what mental image he's trying to call up? One familiar picture is a retired man sitting on a 100-foot yacht smoking a cigar and sipping a martini. But suppose he's the CEO of a large corporation and involved in high-value decisions like what mergers to make, what new product lines to open and whether to expand the production facilities. These decisions all have major implications for employment, so you might not want to interfere with him too much if your focus is on "jobs, jobs, jobs." You only hope he's making the decisions intelligently!

What is the "fair rate" of taxation?

The answer is, it doesn't exist! Suppose taxpayer A earns $100,000 a year. What tax rate would be "fair?" Most pols and pundits interviewed on TV hew and haw without offering a number. Others try to attack the question by saying that the taxes should approximate the benefits the taxpayer receives from the government. Sounds reasonable, but there's no discussion in the media about what those benefits might be, or even how to calculate them. Let's take a simpler tack. Suppose taxpayer A earns $100,000 and pays $20,000 in taxes, a 20% tax rate. If taxpayer B earns $200,000, or twice as much, should be pay $40,000, or twice as much? Sounds reasonable. After all, he has twice as much income protected by the police, and so on. But that would mean the same tax rate, 20%. So a flat tax means the rich pay would pay more in proportion to their income. What's the justification for our progressive tax rate? These are the types of factors we need to consider in deciding on tax rates. They're not what pols and pundits seem to have in mind when they assert that millionaires should pay their "fair share." (They generally seem to mean nothing more than that the millionaires should pay more than they are now.)

Why is presidential election reporting so confusing?

The media's reporting of the presidential election process can be extremely confusing. But it doesn't have to be. Just tune out everything that's name-calling, as opposed to providing information. Name-calling, in my terms, means not only describing ideas and people by pejorative names, but also includes making statements that are pure assertion, without any trace of objective support. When you read or hear new information, make a quick judgment about whether it's name calling, and if it is, tune it out without spending another moment on it. It will simply things greatly, since 95% of what you read and hear from pundits and politicians is name-calling!