As HD said, the tax plan is not for fiscal reasons, it is to punish democrats. He says it is par for the course, and is in return for some slight that the republicans perceived during the Obama admin.
Well, OK, so they invest it, and that’s good. Sorta kinda. But they invest it, they expect a return, a profit. Which they will also invest. What your banker calls the miracle of compounded interest, how the cute, pudgy little nest egg becomes Jabba the Hutt.
Now, if you pick the idle rich up by the ankles and shake 'em real good, money falls out. Give that money to the poor, and they will buy stuff. (That’s mostly what “poor” means, you can’t buy stuff.)
Not crazy about this whole “consumer economy” thing. Like to fix it. But without consumers, there is no economy to fix. I’d rather the people spend money at Wal Mart than have none to spend at all.
I don’t have a concrete plan, and don’t have the time to devise one and make estimates on how it would affect the budget. That’s why we have elected representatives. But, off the top of my head, I don’t find myself terribly opposed to any of those ideas. I’m not poor, or a student, I just paid off my house so the mortgage interest deduction isn’t benefiting me.
My understanding is that those who “have the most” already pay back a whole lot more, not just a bit.
Like I said, it was my feeling. I doubt Obama or the Dems were ever dumb enough to say “we’re doing this to screw red-staters” to a reporter, just like I suspect you can’t find many quotes by Republican Senators or Representatives saying “we’re doing this to screw blue-staters”. It’s an inference, based on what was / is being done.
Not what I said at all. I said “I don’t know”, but I don’t have the time or energy to quibble with someone who makes the inference that it is, at least in part, motivated by a desire to punish Democrats. It is one possibility among many, but please don’t misrepresent what I have said.
No, I don’t have examples ready, but off the top of my head: regulations on coal mines and Bears Ears National Monument come to mind.
Regarding #1: Yes, there is all sorts of budgetary trickery done to get more favorable ratings from the CBO. ObamaCare was the same way. I’m sure they’re banking on the idea that they can wait 9 years and then say, “if we don’t renew these tax cuts, it’ll effecively be a tax HIKE, so we have to renew these now.”
#2: I haven’t given much consideration to how to craft an income tax cut that only affects the middle class, but given the intricacies of our tax code, you’re almost certainly correct that it’s possible. ETA: As a philosophical matter, there are probably very few tax cuts I’d ever oppose. I don’t particularly object to an across-the-board one, and don’t particularly see the merit of restricting it to just the middle class. Tax cuts for everyone*!
- well, almost everyone. It seems that there is some small percentage that are going to be on the losing end of things here.
OK, but I’m not debating with “the GOP leadership”. I’m debating with HurricaneDitka.
Maybe. But who knows who will be controlling Congress 9 years from now and what they’ll do. If the idea was to protect the middle class, maybe the thing to do would be to make the middle class tax cuts permanent and make the corporate tax cuts temporary.
OK, but that’s a different issue from what I originally responded to. If one is trying to reduce taxes on the middle class, then seeing that the bulk of the tax cuts go to the wealthy could very well be a “surprise”.
I’m not one to care much about candidates showing their tax returns during the campaign, but an honorable president would show what his taxes would be before and after the tax cut.
I’m confident that they understand it’ll be easier to sell the middle-class tax cut renewal to the general public in the future rather than a corporate tax cut rate. It’s the result of some cold political calculus that this gives them the best chance of getting everything they want eventually, in the same way that a parent might say “eat your broccoli and I’ll give you some ice cream” instead of “eat your ice cream and I’ll give you some broccoli”.
Perhaps. I’m sure Democrats will bang the “Tax cuts for the rich” drum as much as possible.
I don’t know that I’d define honor by this particular action, but I’m willing to posit, for the purposes of our discussion, that Trump will pay less in taxes under the proposed plan than the current system, if that allows you to make a point.
But you do support the republican’s plan, which leaves a massive whole in the deficit, while giving tax breaks to those who need it least, while hiking taxes on those who need them most.
I have a different understanding, as most of those who have the most pay less as a percentage of their income than the middle class, so they don’t pay back a whole lot more, they pay back less, and not just a little bit.
And these are the people who benefit most from living in a society where they can accumulate these levels of recourses for their personal use and pleasure. So yeah, they should have to pay more as a percentage than less.
And that is not even going into “fairness” where a dollar to a person making 20k a year is far more valuable than 10 dollars to someone making 200k, or 100 dollars to someone making 2 million.
Of course they don’t say that, but I am still curious as to what they did that was screwing you.
I see on preview that you said that bear’s ears and coal mining regulations were attempts to screw red staters, but I 'm not sure I am really seeing that. Repealing the coal regulations just means that coal companies can fill streams with pollution and debris, but will not cuase any new jobs, and I don’t know that Bear’s ears has any sort of unique natural resources in it that can not just as easily be exploited elsewhere.
If you (or other red staters) took those things personally as intentional attempts to harm you, and a justification to retaliate, then I’m just not seeing it.
You said, “Probably not, but I don’t know.” Which means that you suspect that the reason is not coincidence, but is instead intentional. Some parts of the tax bill are simply bureaucracy, but some parts of it certainly are set up to harm democrats much more than republicans, and you said that that was “par for the course”, IOW, both sides do it. I see that as a perception that the democrats do it, and an admission that the republicans do as well. I disagree with the accuracy of that perception, but I can be persuaded to agree with your admission.
You should have seen it as an admission that it’s possible that the republicans do as well. I don’t have any concrete evidence about their intentions (and I haven’t seen any offered in this thread). None of them whispered in my ear at a secret Republican club meeting ‘we’re really doing this to screw Democrats’ or anything like that. It’s an unknown.
Why shouldn’t they? It’s true, and the GOP is banging the “tax cuts for the middle class” drum as much as possible. And since most of the tax cuts go to the rich, that’s an important aspect to know. Like I said, if it’s good policy to cut taxes for the rich, then let’s bring it out in the open. If it’s not, then don’t ignore it. And just so you know, I’m not averse to tax cuts for the rich. I just don’t like being bamboozled.
Well, yeah I define “honor” that way. Not the only way to be honorable, but an important one. If someone in government is to benefit from a given policy, he should be upfront about it. We (I) don’t elect them to enrich themselves (not that I voted for Trump, mind you). But I don’t expect honor from Trump, so no “surprise” there.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t.
Which is also true. I see much of the Republican advocacy for the tax plan to be along the lines of: “we’re cutting taxes for everyone, not just the rich.”
Yeah…Those examples are pretty lame. If anything, I would think most scientists would want to see more draconian measures to get rid of coal and would say that Obama compromised between what was really necessary and what was politically possible.
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning how in large part Red Staters have been screwed more by the Republicans they elect than by the Democrats. I believe that states that expanded Medicaid are generally seeing lower premiums and lower rates of uninsured than those that didn’t…and that harm to Red Staters lies totally at the feet of their Republican elected officials.
Breathing.
Actually, I don’t think they are intentionally screwing the Democrats as much as reasoning (especially in the Senate), “Well, it’s not like we are very likely to get a Senate seat in New York, California, and New Jersey anyway, so if we screw them over by taking away their deduction of state taxes, it isn’t really going to hurt us any.”
You have a cold and ruthless way of thinking. Come sit over here with us. We’ll scootch over, make some room…
Well, they aren’t cutting taxes for everyone. And, even if they are cutting taxes for most, the majority of the hole being blown in the budget by this tax cut is going to an extremely small percentage of the wealthiest Americans. And, God knows that when it comes time to pay the piper one way or the other, it ain’t those folks who are going to be forced to pay (at least as long as the Republicans are in charge).
Look, the fact is that the Republicans live with a very convenient and self-serving fiction that their donor class of rich good-for-nothings are in fact the “job creators” who will magically create more jobs if the government showers them with tax breaks. The reality is that in this demand-driven economy, it is the lower and middle classes that are the real job creators. And, it is the overpaid good-for-nothings that are often a big drag on society. (There are a few truly creative rich people, like Steve Jobs, who probably create new products that noone knew they wanted that do produce economic growth, but I think they are few and far between…and I don’t think they are actually likely to be particularly motivated to do more of this by getting tax breaks.)
Allow me to embellish. As well, their base already rotates on a suspicion of Big Gummint. They are already primed, all the Pubbies have to so is equate the Dems to Gummint, then paint themselves as the anti-Gummint rebels.
A bit trickier when they control so much, but they’re good at it. (Maybe “skilled” is the better word.)
It seems that the Republicans aren’t the only ones living with a “very convenient and self-serving fiction”. Who are, in your mind, the “overpaid good-for-nothings that are often a big drag on society”? Gates and Bezos? Elon Musk? Charles and David Koch? Koch Industries employs 100,000 people.
Damn white of them!