As usual Obama looked out for us fairly well. All you folks in the financial industry who are weeping and wailing can just pound sand, cash in some stock options, sell your Lincoln, cry me a river.
The biggest thing is earned income tax credit and medicaid, neither of which were touched. Looks like we lost 2% on Social Security contributions but that is more than made up by the earned income credit (EIC)
I should do more to define poor. By poor I mean lower than median income down to, well, to really really poor. Median is around 40K.
The earned income credit is the thing that pulls the greatest number of people out of poverty in the USA. It's an alternative to raising minimum wages.
You take your adjusted gross income and if you're a family with a coupla kids making between $13K and $22K Uncle Sam is going to either reduce your taxes by around $5K or reduce them as much as possible and send you a fat check for the remainder. How cool is that? Chart to figure what you get here. http://www.irs.gov/... What is Adjusted Gross Income? That's how much money you make, but it could come down for things like IRA contributions.
What else? Unenjoyment. Which I can't get anyway, and lots of people can't get, and it's not much, but, and it's a real big but.
For many demographics unemployment isn't 8%, it's like double that, or higher. Of course if you count everyone without a job who would like one the numbers are staggering. Some demographics it's more than half. And I don't mean people who are too proud to work in Walmart or Burger King, those jobs are the ones everyone is fighting over.
So ya, unenjoyment isn't great but it's much better than nothing.
Without reading I know that there are all the usual posts like every time there is progress made. "Obama sold us out" "caving to the Repubs" blah blah blah. Heard it all before, broken record.
I expect to hear 4 more years of the same.
End of the day, the guy gets up every day and goes to work and does the job I re elected him to do. Best president I'll probably see, and I was alive for Kennedy. Was it the best deal he could have gotten? Who knows, I'm just some schmuck on a keyboard, he's the President of the United States.
It's a happy New Year for me.
Long day at work for the negotiator in chief.
Update: A big thanks on the rec list. How does one get here? I should never write political stuff.