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

The effects of Trump's politics are well known: they are the same that have been happening in the entire Western World in the last two decades (sometimes even more) at the very least, and that have brought us where we are now.

They are the reasons why so many people are angry and looking for something different and they vote for the first one to tell them something that seems new.

That happened to the US too, and you elected a champion of the same group that brought you there. Only because he said things in a nice manner.

If you wanted to know what happens to a Western Country when you elect a multibillionnaire entrepreneur with shady ties, you could have looked at Italy and Berlusconi. He did exactly the same as Trump is doing: make the rich richer and the poor poorer while swearing otherwise and letting the fertile soil that is needed to generate wealth get arid and sterile.

I am not saying in any way that the alternatives would have been better; I am saying that this is what you chose to have, despite the fact that it was already possible to know the truth. The harsh truth: to have someone rich (=with power) share some of them with the poor... there needs to be a reason for that to happen; be it religion, necessity, force, folly, ideology. There must be a reason. With Trump, as with Berlusconi before him and all the "trickle down" nonsense, there was none, so it didn't happen. It hasn't been happening singe the 1980'ies, it has never happened with those ideas. Let's face reality.

The only moment the rich gave up part of their money is when they were forced, by some mean or other (coincidentally positive or brutally negative) to do so.
 
Before someone says that no politician would turn down an advantage, Al Gore was given George W Bush's debate prep and guess what? He called the FBI. I guess when you act like a thug and a gangster, in your world "calling the FBI" isn't an option.
How many times has Al Gore been president again?
 
Interesting that no one has mentioned that the current deficit is lower than it was under Obama.

The trend is probably far more important than the spot data:

Numeric Data

Graph

BTW, this strange tug war of debt and consensus exists from time immemorial. This happens in Italy too: one government spends and makes debt, one government (typically technical) tries to correct the problems, the next one (elected with the favour of the angry, gut-thinking populace) drives things down the drain again, then another technical government saves the day and gets hated, then comes the populists, etc. etc.

You can see the balance of carelessness against rigourous accounts (and often times harsh cuts or taxes) in the deepening problems of my country.

But do not think you are different; just more resourceful.
 
Politicians by and large don't want to balance the budget, they just want to promise free stuff to their constituents so that they get reelected (goes hand in hand with their unwillingness to pass term limits). This is all just a matter of a bloated federal government that spends too much.

Then why have you brought up the deficit, as if Trump had done something good to it?

BTW, every politician who doesn't care about the budget but only wants to be reelected should be looked with mistrust and seen for the freerider he/she is, not as someone good for the Country. Or for yourself.
 
Interesting that no one has mentioned that the current deficit is lower than it was under Obama.

It's always so cute when liberals pretend to care about the budget.
Obama was using deficit spending to recover from the worst economic crash since the great depression. This has been the case for every recession since the 1920s. Trump is doing it when the economy is doing well (thanks to Obama's policies). We don't need economic stimulus right now, the Fed was raising interest rates to try to cool the economy while Trump was using tools that are typically reserved for recession.

The pattern should be to use deficit spending in times of recession to get the economy back on track, then pay that down in the boom times.

Trump managed to slow economic growth with his idiotic tariffs, reduce the government income with tax cuts (still haven't paid for themselves, as he claimed they would), and still ended up handing out billions to farmers affected by the unnecessary trade war he started.

I care about the deficit because when the next recession hits, we will already be buried in debt that we should have been reducing, not accumulating.

Edit: Mobile typing.
 
Last edited:
I'm not the one who brought it up.

Why is it important to you (so much that you voiced what you though was a lack of information) that the deficit now is lower than in Obama's time, if you think this has nothing to do with Trump?
 
I didn't say the deficit has nothing to do with Trump. I was just pointing out to the resident "oRaNgE mAn BaD" Trump hater that his latest topic of outrage, the deficit, was worse under his beloved Obama.

Then I had indeed got it right the first time, but when I told you that what is important is not the absolute number, but the trend, you told me

Politicians by and large don't want to balance the budget, they just want to promise free stuff to their constituents so that they get reelected (goes hand in hand with their unwillingness to pass term limits). This is all just a matter of a bloated federal government that spends too much.

So I still do not understand why the fact that deficit was higher under Obama is relevant to you since a)you said that this has mostly to do with government rather than the President, and b)the important thing is the trend.

If you didn't know b), now you know. If you do think that deficit is not that much related to the President, then why did you bring that up?
 
Do you realize that the view from your echo chamber is consistently one-sided? Obama's policies blew chunks - that recovery was painfully slow and ineffective. Not that I'd expect you to know why a stimulus is supposed to speed up the recover so we could debate it's relative merits, but suffice it to say that even economists who favor this sort of government interference believe that the stimulus wasn't large enough to really do much.
There is still a lot of debate over the effect presidents/government have over economic factors.
So I still do not understand why the fact that deficit was higher under Obama is relevant to you since a)you said that this has mostly to do with government rather than the President, and b)the important thing is the trend.
Problem, as I mentioned before, is that all these criticisms are based on who is in the white house rather than the system itself. When Obama was in office it was the right bitching, now Trump is here and the left is bitching but really it has nothing to do with either one of them and everything with
a bloated federal government that spends too much.

So all of this bellyaching doesn't go anywhere.
 
I'm not the one who brought it up.



Do you realize that the view from your echo chamber is consistently one-sided? Obama's policies blew chunks - that recovery was painfully slow and ineffective. Not that I'd expect you to know why a stimulus is supposed to speed up the recover so we could debate it's relative merits, but suffice it to say that even economists who favor this sort of government interference believe that the stimulus wasn't large enough to really do much.

Gonna need a citation for literally all of that. Also, it's funny as hell to watch the right wing free-market guy say that Obama's bailouts and stimulus of the private sector didn't go far enough. That sounds suspiciously like socialism. :unsure:

EDIT: Fuck it, let's do this.

The recovery was slow and ineffective? I think not. In fact, ending the 2008 recession is one of the things Obama is being remembered for.

In February 2009, Congress approved Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package. It cut taxes, extended unemployment benefits, and funded public works projects.

The recession ended in July 2009 when GDP growth turned positive.

In just seven months, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act pumped $241.9 billion into the economy. That increased growth to a robust 3.9 percent rate by early 2010. By March 30, 2011, almost all ($633.5 billion) of the funds were spent.

The ARRA didn't go far enough:

The House version of the bill, H.R. 1, was introduced on January 26, 2009. It was sponsored by Democrat David Obey, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, and was co-sponsored by nine other Democrats. On January 23, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that the bill was on track to be presented to President Obama for him to sign into law before February 16, 2009. Although 206 amendments were scheduled for floor votes, they were combined into only 11, which enabled quicker passage of the bill.
On January 28, 2009, the House passed the bill by a 244–188 vote. All but 11 Democrats voted for the bill, and 177 Republicans voted against it (one Republican did not vote).

The senate version of the bill, S. 1, was introduced on January 6, 2009, and later substituted as an amendment to the House bill, S.Amdt. 570. It was sponsored by Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, co-sponsored by 16 other Democrats and Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucused with the Democrats.
The Senate then began consideration of the bill starting with the $275 billion tax provisions in the week of February 2, 2009. A significant difference between the House version and the Senate version was the inclusion of a one-year extension of revisions to the alternative minimum tax, which added $70 billion to the bill's total.
Republicans proposed several amendments to the bill directed at increasing the share of tax cuts and downsizing spending as well as decreasing the overall price. President Obama and Senate Democrats hinted that they would be willing to compromise on Republican suggestions to increase infrastructure spending and to double the housing tax credit proposed from $7,500 to $15,000 and expand its application to all home buyers, not just first-time buyers. Other considered amendments included the Freedom Act of 2009, an amendment proposed by Senate Finance Committee members Maria Cantwell (D) and Orrin Hatch (R) to include tax incentives for plug-in electric vehicles.
The Senate called a special Saturday debate session for February 7 at the urging of President Obama. The Senate voted, 61–36 (with 2 not voting) on February 9 to end debate on the bill and advance it to the Senate floor to vote on the bill itself. On February 10, the Senate voted 61–37 (with one not voting). All the Democrats voted in favor, but only three Republicans voted in favor (Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Spectre.)

If you are claiming it didn't go far enough, it's because the GOP acted in opposition and forced Obama and the Democrats to compromise. I don't recall and could find no mention of anyone in the GOP calling for more government bailout money.

To refresh your memory, here's a smattering of articles from 2009 covering GOP opposition. The GOP never wanted any stimulus, they were pushing for more tax cuts for the wealthy, the way they always do. They got it under Trump and it primarily resulted in companies sitting on piles of cash and buying back stock. The average American is about as well off as they were when Trump took office despite the markets doing well enough to justify a rate hike.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/us/politics/26talkshow.html
https://slate.com/news-and-politics...n-opposition-to-obama-s-stimulus-package.html
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/27/paul-warns-inflation-depression/
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...blicans-opposed-obamas-stimulus-not-tax-cuts/
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100685976
 
Last edited:
This is all just a matter of a bloated federal government that spends too much.

Like pointless trade wars and bailouts that didn't need to happen in the first place? Or tax cuts that predominantly benefit the wealthy and did little to help the working and middle class?

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tax-plan-consequences/
https://budget.house.gov/publicatio...benefits-wealthy-and-large-corporations-while
https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresa...the-trump-tax-cut-benefited-you/#1db3598113e0
 
So from the Forbes article...
Forbes said:
the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that up to 80% would see some reduction in their federal taxes.

Forbes said:
The Tax Policy Center estimates the 60% of Americans at the lower end of the income distribution will have federal tax savings of less than $1,000.
It's not obvious whether it's 60% of low income, or 60% of all Americans.
Forbes said:
Those in the top 1% save $51,000.
Those two above figures are completely meaningless as they don't tell us anything about what the relative change in tax rate is. Also the 1% in itself is a rather meaningless figure, considering it starts at 250k/year and goes all the way to the likes of Jeff Bezos, so is it people making 250k/year saving 51k or is it people making 250mil/year saving 51k? Also since we have a progressive tax rate any decrease in tax rate that is meant to mostly benefit the middle class will automatically benefit those making me money since their overall effective tax rate will decrease.*

I already alluded to this, but absolute values are meaningless for comparing percentages, smaller percentage of a much larger number is still a large number.

*For the Europeans in the thread who might not be familiar with US tax code, under our laws each income bracket is taxed at it's set percentage. So say the extremely simplified brackets are:
Up to $10,000 is taxed at 10%
$10,000 - $20,000 is taxed at 20%
$20,000+ is taxed at 30%
So if you make $15,000, the first 10 is taxed at 10% and the other 5 is taxed at 20%
Forbes said:
Second, as Forbes contributor Howard Gleckman explained, the tax changes affected withholding through increases in the standard deduction and other provisions, especially the limit on deductibility of state and local taxes (SALT). But many taxpayers didn’t change their withholding allowances, so they may not have withheld the correct amounts in each time period. This means their tax refund is smaller than expected.
So people didn't adjust their withhodlings to compensate for changes in tax code, that's hardly an issue with the tax code...

The rest of the points he makes have nothing to do with whether middle class benefited or not and everything to do with how people feel, while that is important politically speaking it's completely irrelevant in terms of what data shows.

Bloomberg is more in depth, though they are using same data as Forbes, what isn't clear however is whether the below is included in calculating the tax decrease for the top quntile of earners.
Bloomberg said:
The wealthy also won a drop in the top tax rate, from 39.6 percent to 37 percent, which they can slash further if they’re business owners who qualify for the new 20 percent pass-through break.
It makes a difference because business owners typically invest money into their business and the more they keep the more they can invest.

I didn't read the house article because to be honest I'm kind of out of steam on this...
 
It means that the 60% of Americans who fall into that bracket, not 60% of the bracket. Meaning the majority of Americans will see about $1,000 more - a tiny fraction and hardly the boon Trump promised.

I don't have time to address all the nonsense right now but I have to mention this:



Reading comprehension fail. I never said I supported the stimulus in any way.



That's a fucking lie and we've gone over it probably a dozen times by now. THE TAX CUTS ABSOLUTELY BENEFITED THE MIDDLE CLASS. Any child with rudimentary knowledge of basic arithmetic can figure that out.
The tax bill was something like 700 pages long and so complex that professional bankers and accountants are still trying to figure it out. But by all means, go back to counting apples.

The vast majority of the be edit went to the top tax brackets, while a small cut made it to the middle class, it was fairly inconsequential in terms of their overall budget and some saw a tax increase with the elimination of deductions and some brackets.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-f...-needs-a-tax-cut-trump-didnt-give-it-to-them/

https://www.factcheck.org/2017/10/tax-hike-benefit-middle-class/

The Tax Policy Center estimates the 60% of Americans at the lower end of the income distribution will have federal tax savings of less than $1,000.
 
There is one way that new tax plan was bad for people, it stopped the Fed from subsidizing high state and property taxes.
Whether the feds should be subsidizing it or not is a debatable point.
 
Top