The Trump Presidency - how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hair

JFC...


How in the world is it bad for the middle class to get rid of the estate tax, DOUBLE the standard deduction, DOUBLE the child credit, and DECREASE THE TAX RATE? This is BASIC. FUCKING. ARITHMETIC.

I am literally living proof that the tax cuts benefited the middle class, seeing as MY TAX BURDEN DECREASED.

I'm not hungry, so world hunger is not a thing.

Meanwhile, changes in the mortgage interest rate deductions directly HURT THE RICH.

If you genuinely believe that the Trump tax cuts hurt the middle class and benefited the rich, then you're simply too fucking stupid to do basic arithmetic and understand your own damn taxes. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it but there's no other way around it.

You cited one aspect of the tax law, not the whole thing. The rich ended up getting much more back and the middle class got crumbs. I don't give a rats ass what your story is, this is the story of the nation.

To date, not a single one of you "orange man bad" idiots has been able to explain how the tax cuts hurt you in any way. You just keep posting moronic articles written by idiots that do ZERO analysis of basic facts. I triple dog dare you to refute me - go point by point through the new tax law and explain to me how each line hurts the middle class and benefits the rich. Go on now...

Just because you have a poor grasp of the bigger picture does not mean the rest of the world is so afflicted. I cited non-partisan impartial sources that clearly laid out the methodology and logic behind the conclusions. Just because you are warm doesn't mean others aren't cold.

I have cited it, repeatedly. These tax cuts will have to be paid for, with interest. They will not pay for themselves with growth and have not been tracking to do so to date. I previously posted the GDP growth numbers for Obama vs Trump to analogous points in their presidency and you bitched about Obama getting an advantage in the numbers, when the metrics actually handicapped him.

So far, I have not found a single non-partisan economist who agrees with Trump's very optimistic (delusional) assessment of his tax cut and tariffs.

Edit: hell, I just bought a house, thanks in (small) part to the fact that I'm paying less taxes. I'm not rich so the fact that Trump screwed the rich on the mortgage deduction didn't affect me - yay!

Again, your story is not everyone's story. You can't keep calling everyone who disagrees with you an idiot. This is not my opinion, it's the opinion of experts who have made economic policy their life's work. With every bit of due offense, your ranting means exactly dick by comparison.
 
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You talking to me, or the experts who came up with the data, because so far all I've seen is you rage and call people names, or belittle them for not agreeing with you.

Show be sources. Show me data. Show me projections based on current trends that indicate how these tax cuts will "pay for themselves" and lower the deficit before the next recession (and the next recession is coming, we've had something like four inverted yield curves in the past 8 months).
 
Not going around this ride again. I've posted the evidence and the opinions of experts. Your only counter to all of it is "They're wrong, I'm right, even a child could see it." You have nothing to back it up, no evidence, no non-partisan analysis. All you can do is try to limit the scope of the argument tonthe point that the greater effects are lost; but that's not how it works.

You erroneously blamed Obama for a slow and ineffective recovery and were shown, not only to be wrong, but spectacularly wrong. I noticed that you haven't addressed any of my post regarding that and have jumped back in to trying to limit the scope of reality to the carefully chosen aspects where you think you can win.

You're right, a child could see it and agree with you. That's because you are trying to dumb down something as complex as the world's largest economy into "which of these numbers is greater". Your argument lacks the nuance and comprehensive scope necessary to even begin to tackle this issue.

In the mean time, the adults are talking; if you insist on thinking like a child and acting like a child then you will be seated at the children's table and you simplistic opinions will be given the appropriate merit. The difference is that, despite being a trained and practiced systemic thinker, I still know my limits and listen to the people who are subject matter experts in economics. You just stomp your feet and demand that the evidence and experts agree with you or you will unilaterally reject what they say.

Sounds like someone else.... but who could it possibly be?
 
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What next? Will you tell me about your workout routine and how much you have in the bank as if it makes a difference? You are starting to sound like that Navy Seal meme.

I said what the data says, that the tax benefit for 60% of Americans was inconsequential at about $1,000 per year. The rest is spelled out in the links I've already provided. This is the opinion of the leaders in economics, not me. You are so obsessed with me being wrong that you are attacking anything I cite regardless of the source or evidence.
 
Level is just trying to tell you that he is winning.

Anyway, this was ignored. From the 2:50 mark.

 
@Blind_Io your argument here isn’t very clear, are you saying that tax cut didn’t help middle class enough? Or are you saying that the ROI is too low to justify the cuts?
 
 
if you're surprised that someone earning more got more dollars out of the tax cuts than someone earning less, you might want to look into how percentages work.

Make no mistake, a Big Mac costs the same to everybody, and the people who would benefit the most from a tax cut in absolute terms are those who get the least tax cut in absolute terms.

You are perfectly right in saying that 1000$ are a lot to the family with 60.000 $, but you forget that 10.000$ are nice, but all in all inconsequential to someone already earning a million dollars.

On the other hand, the cuts in spending generated by the tax reduction will be divided among the entire population equally, so that the 11.000$ cuts in services will affect 5.500$ each. In the end, the 60k will have a net loss o 4.500$, while the millionnaire will have a net gain of 4.500$.

Clearly this is just food for thoughts, but it shows how percentages can be deceiving, when speaking about taxes, because the cost of goods is not proportional to how much people earn, it is fixed; it would be best to never forget the the absolute numbers.

In real life, moreover, those more affected by the cuts in services will be the poorest, who on one hand get the most benefits from government fundings and, on the other hand, experience no reduction in taxes, so no increase in the amount of money they can spend.

EDIT

BTW, the video posted by GRtak is quite interesting: it shows a completely untrustworthy man who fails to understand why foreign interference is not a good thing (and no, the problem is not the answer he gives, it is the fact that he doesn't seem to be able to grasp the potential consequences and implications of the interference).
 
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You are perfectly right in saying that 1000$ are a lot to the family with 60.000 $, but you forget that 10.000$ are nice, but all in all inconsequential to someone already earning a million dollars.
That's the nature of progressive tax rates and percentages, unless you want to complicate and already complicated tax code further there is no getting away form that.
On the other hand, the cuts in spending generated by the tax reduction
Where did you get cuts in spending from? There were none...
 
That's the nature of progressive tax rates and percentages, unless you want to complicate and already complicated tax code further there is no getting away form that.

Then you have to further complicate an already complicated tax code.

A single percentage tax rate is not possible because life costs the same to everyone, so that, let's say, 20% on the poorest is taking away important resources while 20% on the richest is taking away only surplus money. That difference alone makes the single peceentage tax rate unfair to say the least.

On the other hand, if you start taking away 60%, 70%, 80% of someone income, that's not fair either.
The reality is a compromise is necessary (Unless you have an economic system that rewards personal merit and not capital alone, allowing for everyone to better their position as much as their ability allows for it while erasing the pits of insecapable exploitation and the eldorados of undeserved enrichments... so not what the US (or the West) is now, regardless of what they all love to propagandate, but I'm digressing...)

The US tax rate is still in a "fair" range, if 40% is your highest rate.

Where did you get cuts in spending from? There were none...

If you reduce the amount that gets in, you have to reduce the amount that gets out, or run a deficit and make debts to compensate for it; debt upon which you will pay even more money as interest rates to investors.


What you're forgetting is that the more you earn the more you get taxed, not just in absolute dollar terms but the tax percentage is literally higher. I don't think that's ethical but that's another conversation.

Actually, ethic is fundamental:

I'd still rather earn 1 million dollars and pay 60% of them in taxes than earning 60k and pay 10% (I am exagerating a lot, to make myself clear). The reason is I'd still have 346k dollars more to spend. Wouldn't you do the same?

If we were taxed equal percentages, and you were the 60k one, you wouldn't like it either, because that wouldn't be fair (so not ethical).

And that is still in the range where I can reasonably believe I am roughly 20 times better at what I do than the other person.

If I'd earn 60 million dollars, the only thing preventing me from paying 90% taxes would eventually be greed. I'd then have 5 million 946 thousand dollars MORE than the puny 60k at 10%, and I wouldn't already have lost, probably, some of what I earned not through my abilities alone, because it is not physically possible to earn 1000 times what an average person earns. No man exists who is 1000 times better and hard-working as an average person.

You cannot have a fully ethical taxation, because you do not have a fully ethical system to begin with.

If you have people earning too different for the same amount of effort, you will effectively stifling the possibilities of the lower-earning one while unreasonably multiplying the possibilities of the higher-earning.

The Western World has been one of the best systems so far, yet stupid, greedy people are trying to destroy it and transform it back again into what the world was before it: extremely much to the already rich, just crumbles for the poor, destiny tied to your birth social position, not to your abilities. The moment an idiot rich can get richer and more powerful by doing NOTHING but spending his own inherited money, you know you have a problem.

Trump himself is your canary in the coal mine, regarding this problem. If he wasn't rich, he'd be a just a colourful guy in a bar.

Well, actually, he is the dyplodocus in the coal mine, because the pavement of the cave is already littered with dead animals and you still haven't noticed.

Democrats basically just want free everything, no one has to work, and we tax an infinite number of infinitely rich people at 99%.

What the extremists (or even the not extremists) among the Democrats want is not a reason to justify things.

If something is not good, it will not become good just because "the others" want something stupid.
 
The wealthy end up contributing a lot more to the economy. For example, a rich person will buy a Porsche instead of a Toyota

He is not forced to buy a Porsche, and a Toyota costs exactly the same as it would for someone with a lower income.

I don't want people to all buy the same things at all, I simply show that if a rich person spends a high amount of money to live (bigger house, bigger car, expensive lifestyle) it is THEIR choice, not a rule of nature forcing them.

Everything that is beyond a healthy life is a choice of the person. This is why 1000$ to a millionnaire is almost nothing, as they do not need it to get a healthy lifestyle, while 1000$ to an average person might mean to get a healthier life than it would have had otherwise.

BTW, on this part, we clearly agree, considering what you told Blind_Io, so you should see WHY 1000$ to the middle class is WAY better than 1000$ to the rich. It is proportionally better the lower the person's income.

There are entire books written about "keeping up with the Joneses" and the cost of living increasing with salary.

keeping up with the Joneses is not healthy living, it is showing off. People should have the possibility of doing that with their money, if they wanted, but that does not mean those part is on par with getting a better, healthier life. Not even close.

Considering something fundamentally silly does not mean wanting to eliminate it; that would be authoritarianism. It means favouring those who lack the important part first, whenever possible.

I disagree with your basic premise here. Someone making 1000x more than someone else isn't necessary working any harder at all - it's just that their labor is significantly more valuable.

There cannot be someone whose work is averagely valued 1000 times that of an average person. That is physically not possible, expecially in a human society, where everything gets done cooperatively.

No man could ever do the most valuable job in the society, and not for a high amount of time, if there weren't many others doing the less valuable ones and keeping them alive. Messi, for example, can do something as silly as playing football just because there is an army of people keeping him alive all with their own work.

The results of the highest are built on the work of the lowest, and this work should be rewarded. If the highest keeps it all to themselves, just because they are the frontman, this is not happening.

Remember: I have said 1000 times the earnings of the average person, not of the lowest, and I have said so specifically for that reason.

If suddenly ten thousand new doctors appeared, the field would become much more competitive, it would be harder for them to find a job, and they'd have to gain an advantage over other candidates by agreeing to a lower salary.

What happens if there are too many doing the doctor's job? Their value would go to a minimum and they would starve. If they can't change job, which may happen, they would get to starvation, fierce underpayment or even serfdom, to survive.

This is where the market mechanism breaks down: to have a fair market system, people should have relatively comparable strength during the exchange, to be able to DENY what they consider too low.

This does not always happen, so you have exploitation and people getting too rich and believing that is because they are better, instead of that being because they literally rob other people.

Again, Trump is your dyplodocus in the coal mine.

In other words, I'm willing to pay an electrician $150/hr to work on my house because it's so hard to find a good electrician

And if the electrician would get too expensive, you could even go without electricity. Never forget that part.

If that was a doctor, and you needed him to survive, you would pay them whatever they'd ask you, even all your money, even your freedom; you wouldn't be able to refuse (an offer you can't refuse... Godfather's style... mafia's style. And this is indeed what mafia does: either you do wha they want, or your life gets destroyed, maybe you even die).

Then, that doctor would get filthy rich, effectively robbing you of everything you have; not because his work is so much better, but because you can't refuse the transaction.

The "market" is a human behaviour: it only self-corrects when people can refuse the deal they get offered. If they can't, it won't self-correct anything and wealth will be destroyed rather than created.
 
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I understand where you're coming from but keep in mind that the more someone spends on all of those things, the more money they're pouring back into the economy and supporting more companies.

They're still not forced to buy the Porsche. Remember that I do not mind people buying Porsches, nor do I want to stop them doing that; I mention this, though it is a repetition, because it will become useful later on in this comment. I want the right importance being given to the right things.

Your desire to buy a (surplus) Porche is worth far less than the desire of someone else to buy a car plain and simple. It is not because of envy, it is because the more people the society is able to allow to raise, the wealthier that society will be.

Plus, a single $100k Porsche is nowhere near the impact of 4 $25 Toyotas when it comes to pouring money back into the economy. Another reason to grant more people a little less than few people a lot more.

Also, how far do you take the "basic needs" vs choice argument?

As far as you like, if you want. There is no such things as a hard limit on "how much is enough". If there was, most injustice would disappear because angry people would tear apart those getting too much, effectively creating funcioning communism, which we know for a fact cannot exist.

It does not exist because how much is enough is dictated mostly by the wealth level of the society, which is always changing.

However, the lack of hard limits works both ways: someone arguing that the most extreme luxuries are basic needs is clearly a greedy bastard disconnected from reality.

We have to study our society, understand what we can do, understand what is a good investment and what not, and then strive to allow each member of the society to get to what is needed the most in increasingly easy ways, while not taking away the possibility for the very skilled ones to get real high, without taking advantages of loopholes.

Absolutely correct but again, how far will you take this argument? What's "healthy"?

I kept this here because it is in line with what I just said: there cannot be a fixed line for what is "healthy". However, if you consider something being healthy, whatever it is, then evey person not having it comes before all people having more than that. And again, not in a communistical sense, but in that who cares if you have problems getting the Porsche, if the average guy has difficulties buying himself the Toyota.

If you consider the Porsche being the standard, then you'll have to help the average guy getting it...

On the other hand, if a Toyota would be deemed too much for the average person, then you won't need a Porsche, but a Toyota would be enough for you to distinguish yourself; everything over could be taxed even more heavily to help the average guy getting their 2500$ used car.

This morning I heard the news on the radio about a fire in Boston and that the flames spread across right houses because they were so close to each other - isn't living in a single-family home on several acres much safer (i.e. healthier) than living in an apartment building?

Can everyone live in single-family homes on several acres? If this is possible, and the society can afford it, it is probably healthier. However, our technological level and our demographics tell us that this is not possible. The limit then is not "justice", the limit is "resource availability and sustainability". We cannot ignore that.

And once again, the rich get taxed at a higher rate already.

Coming from a country where some people (not the richest...) are taxed up to 70% of their income, I tell you that 40$ is really, really, really acceptable, particularly for the extremely rich.

You don't think that a doctor who spent decades in school produced much more valuable labor that a janitor?

Indeed he does, but he couldn't do it, if not for a fraction of the time (maybe not even that), if the janitor wasn't there to keep the medical office clean.

What about the CEO of a company who employs 1000 people and makes decisions that could jeopardize the entire company?

What about the fact that the each one of the 1000 employees is producing more than they earn, otherwise they wouldn't have the job? (that was one of Marx's realization, and it is spot on). How much is enough for a person who can jeopardize an entire company, considering that the 1000 employees are all paid LESS than they contribute to the company itself? Shouldn't the CEO be also paid LESS than what they actually do? How much less? A Company (the bigger, the truer) is a cooperative effort.

Also, how do you determine the worth of something? What's the worth of a Big Mac?

The perceived market value of something depends on how many people want it and how much of the thing there is.
The real market value of that same thing depends on how much it allows the owner(s) to generate.

The perceived personal value of something depends on how bad that thing is wanted by that person.
The real personal value of something depends on what that person wants to achieve and how much the thing is needed to achieve that.

The perceived social value of something depends on how much the thing is considered to be worth to the well-being of the society
The real social value of something depends on the actual effects it would have on that society.

Outside of a society composed of all the human beings on the planet, there is no value at all, as "value" is a characteristics that human beings give to things in order to deal with them (at many levels, with various, differing "values") and which is completely tied to the usefulness (in any form) of that things to the human beings.

So how do you determine the value of a Big Mac, given that it has no value outside of the human world and its value for the human beings depends on who they are, in what conditions they are and on what their goal is?

The truth is, let's set at least an objective first, that we can agree upon, and I will tell you, if possible, how much a Big Mac may be worth in regard to that objective.

in a society where there is no income inequality, what would motivate someone to become a doctor when they can just go flip burgers at McDonald's?

Passion. ...but no, that is just to say how easy it is to counter the "motivation only through money" argument. In truth:

I do not ask for a society with no inequality, because this is not possible; I advocate for a society capable of cutting out useless things whose balance of pros and cons is damaging it, and for a society that is able to allow the LARGEST PART POSSIBLE of its own members to live a good live in which they can pursue their happiness and desires.

It would be good if it was all of them, but this is not possible; so I focus on the largest number of people possible.

We have the opposite problem in my state right now where there are not enough electricians, which causes the existing electricians to raise prices, more people are drawn to becoming electricians for the high wages, and eventually wages for electricians will return to normal.

This only works if people are allowed to become electricians. Stop them from doing that, and the few there are will become unfairly rich, at your own expenses (you couldn't refuse the offer of the greedy ones).

It is the same for the doctor: the problems come when you cannot refuse. Market is a human behaviour, which only grants good to both parties when they can refuse (and go buying the same from someone else, in this case)

You're speaking from an authoritarian position that dictates who can earn how much and what someone's labor is worth.

Not at all. That is the extreme of what I say, and I am not an extremist in the least. (this is also why I wrote that small part at the beginning)

What I'm suggesting is that we, the people, make those decisions in the marketplace.

This is not bad, as long as it does not become extreme. The marketplace is a human behaviour, and it needs a series of conditions to work well. The extremists of the marketplace believe that it could work regardless of the conditions. This is what I say is plainly stupid.

The market mechanism in itself is useful, but it is a tool, not a god.
 
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