I, for all intensive purposes, am a Libertarian. The Libertarian Party is running Bob Barr as a candidate for President. Living in California, I also happen to believe that my single vote has very little influence in most presidential elections (and I’m probably right, as long as you ignore any social influence). Therefore, I believe in voting for the person I think is the absolute best choice for the presidency, not the best two party guy who can win it.  With all of that said, it would appear possible that I’d be voting for Bob Barr. I’m not. Barring (eh? eh?) some crazy, unforeseeable event, I will be voting for Barack Obama in November. This is my attempt at explaining why.

Disclosure: I will make an attempt to lay this out in a rationale, organized manner, I may fail. Writing concisely about issues I’m passionate about is something I’m working to become better at.

The issues that matter most to me are the economy (Stances:Ob, Mc, Barr) and foreign policy (Stances:Ob, Mc, Barr), and I also value the ability to be an effective leader. The first two are relatively easy to research, but the latter is a bit less concrete, more intuitive. It’s my belief that in these 3 issues, Barack Obama is the best choice for our country, and I’d like to offer my reasons why. In the interest of reading time and space, I’m going to address just the economy in this post, more to come later. Thanks for caring enough to read -Tyler

Economy:

Barack Obama has a clear economic plan that he has presented in speeches and online. It involves tax cuts for the middle class that are specifically aimed at jump starting the economy. In our current economic situation, something like this is needed. The middle class will spend money much more freely than people with larger incomes, which will affect the economy in a quicker fashion.

I do have some fear that Obama’s plan would stifle small business growth and the rate of entrepreneurship, he has helped address these fears with his $500 tax credit to help 1099 contractors offset the extra payroll tax they shoulder. As an independent contractor who made relatively normal (read: way less than 250k) salaries for 15 months out of the last 24, I can attest that a measure like this would have helped me. I’m not sure this break will be enough to encourage small business growth, and I think more can be done on this front.

I’m not sure how many of the 20-some million small businesses will be affected by a marginal income tax increase proposed by Obama; my understanding is the company would have to have more than 250k/year in revenue to be affected, I’m assuming that a large percentage of these small businesses are one-man shops and fall under this rate. If you have more than 250k/year in revenue I would assume you’re incorporating and playing the corporate tax game, and not filing under the individual system. I’d love to see some #’s on this though, it could make a huge difference in the health of this plan.

Note: Obama has also suggested eliminating the capital gains taxes for startups and small companies, but I must admit that I’m relatively ignorant on how this might affect the average small business — I will need to learn more about this and may expand on this point at a later date.