On some level I feel bad for the people, but then again, if you can't see the decades of tax breaks being pure grift for the wealthy and keep electing people who will do it, isn't it kind of your fault?

People of Wisconsin, you're doing this to yourselves and you kind of deserve it at this point.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eric-trump-national-emergency-border-wall_us_5c51992ce4b0d9f9be6b1ea3

hahaha, oh man, if Trump declares a state of emergency to try and claim power.. we are going to end up in a really bad spot. i should probably buy a decent rifle soon.

I should probably start subscribing to the Huffington Post soon (not).

As much as I don't want to admit it, if the wall ends up being a hill to die for, Ted Cruz and the EL CHAPO act are the best way to build this stupid wall. It doesn't cost taxpayers a dime so Democrats can save face, Trump can get his wall and claim a Mexican paid for it so he can save face, and maybe a wall will actually help (who knows). It would be appropriately symbolic at the very least.

Then we don't have to deal with anymore shutdowns or national emergencies or pointless, low-brow bickering among politicians (on this issue, anyway).

Pick your poison. Trump threatened to do it, so it's all over whatever website you'd prefer. Regardless of how you feel, Trump is very directly challenging congress and, as a result, American democracy. Even the threat is authoritarian, much less if he really does it.

American democracy is in serious trouble.



There's no point to build a wall when the entire motivation behind it is hollow conspiracy theory, but if we must do it then it should be out of Trump's hands. The "low-brow bickering" is hardly the issue here. The president is doing fascist stuff right now.

Honestly for the most part I don’t think conservatives intend to just give money away. They’re just ****ty bootlickers with ****ty bad bootlicker ideas about economics, then they start throwing tax money around to save face after their bad ideas cause the obvious outcomes.

As this case has proven, like so many others before it, it doesn’t matter how many subsidies or tax incentives you give a company. If the investment doesn’t make them money, they aren’t gonna do it. But if it’s free money they absolutely will lie to get it. Supply side economic stimulus is a fundamentally wrong idea.

The higherups are dumb yeah, it's just odd that after decades of the same exact policy failing, you'd have one of them look back and think.

Or maybe they don't even. They probably just go to cocktails parties and baseball games and get chatted up by people, and are too dumb to investigate anyway. They believe business owners have magic fairy dust up their ass and their word is gospel, right? Wouldn't be hard to talk them into it.

Now that Jeff Bezos is poised to lose half of his wealth following his divorce, and apparently seems happy about it, can we all agree that we can easily tax the rich and get away with it?

I'll believe it when I see it. I'm still waiting for the evidence that Bush did 9/11 to pass the Patriot Act.

The threat or an actual declaration?

I mean when does Trump literally become Hitler. When do we have a Tuope Hall Putsch

Do you not see what he's doing as serious?

They are extremely stupid. Most business owners are extremely stupid, too.

Dunno. Building a wall with emergency funds is one thing. I think it's seriously stupid to build a wall. I'm not sure he's taking away many civil liberties to do that, but who knows, given the humanitarian crisis at the border. I mean for all we know the next thing he could do is round up brown people caught near the border and put them into FEMA camps. So yeah I bet it's a real serious possibility, but it's so hard to tell how things are going to go for him.

I think things could get much worse as the election gets closer. He could drum up a deeper crisis to get reelected. That could be pretty ugly if he has more power.

Trump wants to build a wall. He's currently trying to get congress to fund it by negotiating with Democrats. This isn't going well. Trump has threatened to declare a national emergency at the border in order to sidestep Congress and the Democrats.

The "emergency" is that Mexicans are bringing crime, drugs, and terrorists over the border. Claims that range from dubious to flat out wrong. The president, after declaring a state of emergency, is basically given temporary power to suspend certain laws, use the military in some ways without congressional approval, or drafting retired servicemen, etc. This is so in the case of a terrorist attack, disease outbreak, surprise war declaration, the president can take actions to deal with the situation without waiting for congress's approval.

Previous examples are events like 9/11:



or the swine flu outbreak:



What he wants to invoke is invoke a national emergency so he can use the military to construct the wall:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/2808

The thing is, no such state of emergency exists. Everything he offers as justification for it is just false. What he's doing is he's trying to exercise emergency powers illegitimately to sidestep congress and fulfill campaign promises to appease his base. This directly violates the constitution and subverts the balance of power. It's a direct attack on the constitution and congressional authority.

You cannot abuse the spirit of the constitution nor its letter to fulfill campaign promises. Personal liberty aside, even the threat to do this is fascist. He doesn't give a damn about the constitution and wants it gone so he can have more power.

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Hitler screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I can’t think of any other reason Donald Trump, mafia-connected construction tycoon, would want the US government to start an unlimited-budget national security construction project exempt from environmental impact studies and without soliciting a single engineering feasibility assessment

it's cuz he's a good businessman. He knows how to build stuff.

Cymru am byth!

So I wonder if Howard Schultz is contemplating instigating the reforms that would be necessary to eliminate our first-pass-the-post voting scheme? Handing a Trump a second term might be the most likely way to ensure people give a **** about getting this done.

Trump really shows the truth behind the phrase: "Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies". Does anyone really believe Trump's lies? Nah, I don't think even most conservatives really believe the Alzheimer's haiku. What's dangerous are the convictions, that people would go along with something very demonstrably wrong to save face for the core convictions. Conservatism writ large.

Happy tax season

See above.

There is one good thing any time the Republican Party is ascendant: it doesn’t take much effort to feel like an economics genius. Trumpery seems to be based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of market economics, that prices in our economy are “cost-plus” or “value-minus”. It underlies the basis of everything they believe about economics.

Will a billionaire/business tax cut cause pay raises? “Yes,” they say, “because wages are value-minus, so when you increase the value, you increase the wage.” Obviously, of course, it didn’t, because that isn’t how market economies work.

I can’t count the number of arguments I’ve had with idiot conservatives where it boiled down to this kind of basic ignorance about the way the world works. I’d love to go on a victory lap and gloat now that they’re waking up and starting to figure this **** out, but conservatives being conservatives, they’ll just pretend they really knew it all along.

My return was better but I confess that I have not calculated whether or not my negative tax rate this year is lower than the previous. Anyway, nice speech tonight.

Congrats on being poor and not having many kids.

They doubled the standard deduction, but eliminated exemptions and deductions for state and local income taxes. In 2025 (so after Trump leaves office) the standard deduction will also go back to normal. The GOP tax bill was a straight up tax hike on all Americans who work for a living. Some of them just take the hit later than others... like poor people, from red states.

It is ****ed up and you should be outraged by it. Your “negative tax rate” will increase by thousands of dollars unless the Democrats fix it first.

Well, my tax situation is essentially going to invert over the next year or so as my wife and I transition into new career fields but I still benefit from a higher standard deduction versus itemizing or exemptions. TBH though, despite making a little less last year or tax was a little higher. Tax credits also came in higher though contributing to my overall negative effective rate. I'm certainly not advocating the current system, though. Income tax should be abolished.

I find it really weird that Americans have to file tax returns.

Agreed but almost certainly not for the same reasons.

Nations need to raise some kind of revenue, if nothing else just to assert their own sovereignty, so obviously there needs to be some alternative to income tax if it’s going to be abolished. Any suggestions? I’d like to have an intelligent conservation about government revenue with a conservative but I’ve never encountered one who’s known what the **** they were talking about.

Canadians too. Some people will always need to declare additional income, but tax authorities are perfectly capable of automatically filing returns for people. Intuit lobbies to keep it complicated in both countries.

Well, I'm not capable of participating in lengthy discussions here anymore but I didn't want to be seen as ignoring your post. I know you don't like the Fair Tax but if we're working within the confines of the current government I see that as preferable to the current system. I assume the sort of system you prefer would require a "burn it down" approach (figuratively speaking?) and in that sort of hypothetical situation I'd have to spend a lot more time and thought exploring it.

Howard Schultz the billionaire said of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 70% marginal tax rate proposal: "The American dream is to rise above your standing in life. Now we're gonna provide punitive tax rates for people who have succeeded?"

We're talking people who earn above $10 million a year (which is where said marginal tax rate would start). It seems to me like Schultz has an unrealistic view of upward economic mobility.

I can only guess by "the Fair Tax" you are talking about a flat consumption tax, because nobody who knows anything about economics would consider that euphemism descriptive.

I guess I'll have to keep looking then.



Oh no, a billionaire minimum wage employer thinks punishing greed is bad

Here's a great discussion on "the Fair Tax" (AKA consumption tax, indirect tax, VAT, etc): https://www.brookings.edu/on-the-record/the-pros-and-cons-of-a-consumption-tax/

Personally, I think a hybrid income/consumption tax is the way to go. It is detailed here: https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/files/2005-12887-1.pdf

The hard part is implementing a new system when the old system has been around so long. Any significant change is going to screw over people who have saved/invested for their retirement under the assumption that the current system will be around for a while.

"prices will be 60% higher"

yea great discussion

It might be a bit high, but in the context of the discussion, it's not that high. They're talking about eliminating ALL taxes - personal and business. The only other government income is tariffs. It also takes into account that our system isn't built for it yet - eventually there will be corrections, but up front, yeah, crazy high consumption tax rates.

[edit: it's worth noting that I haven't run any numbers myself, or even seen the calculations that led to the estimate in the article.]

That aint the **** I'm talking about







holy effin moly.

To their credit, the interview did talk about the fact that consumption taxes disproportionately affect poor people because they don't save as much. But that's just scratching the surface of the problems with consumption taxes.

1.) Taxes are never just paid by consumers, they're always shared with the producer, and the proportion of that sharing depends upon the particular good. Something like insulin, a 60% consumption tax will be paid almost entirely by the customer. Luxuries like yachts and diamonds, though? Almost entirely by the producer. It turns out that people don't really need luxuries, and if the prices go up people tend not to buy them.

2.) Poor people don't just spend a greater proportion of their income on consumption, they specifically spend it on necessities. Meanwhile, rich people spend most of their income on luxuries. That means not only are poor people going to be charged a disproportionate share of the "fair" tax to begin with, but due to the particular goods they buy, they'll pay more for the value they get than rich people do.

3.) Increasing prices due to taxation decreases demand, which causes firms to decrease production. Some goods won't be profitable enough to make at all at the decreased demand, and those firms will go out of business. Companies that aren't making **** don't need to employ people. Again, another cost disproportionately borne by the poor.

4.) Consumption taxes will need to be paired with comprehensive duties and tariffs, as well as substantial law enforcement spending in order to enforce them. A 60% tax is more than enough to encourage widespread smuggling for practically anything, but especially luxuries.

5.) Even with that, consumption taxes are trivial for the rich to evade. Need a yacht or private jet? Start a company in the Seychelles with your "savings", and use it for all of your most expensive purchases. Good luck cracking down on that without smothering investment, dudes.

The word you were looking for in that wall of text is "regressive," and it's the biggest problem with a consumption tax. Also: duh.

Ey, bucko, I worked hard to make dad proud.

Realistically it seems safe to dismiss people who keep making this point without response.

it doesn't matter anyway because the COMMANDER IN CHEF said we would never be a socialist country

Trump: 1
AOC: 0
Bernie: -1