They got scared because Bush began his last year in office?
And people that make more than that are taxed at either 51% or 56%
It depends, what are they getting for that 31%?
We are probably the least socialist large economy in the world. I don’t think there is a perfect place on the spectrum that we should maintain for all time, do you?
Apathy and the media. The media seems determined to take everything Trump says seriously. People seem to think that non-politician would do better. There seems to be a general opinion that Trump is a good businessman when he isn’t.
The main problem of diversity (especially among the poor, which is where most of our diversity exists) that I hear about, is that it tends to result in tribalism and gang violence that you might not see in a more homogenous society. I don’t see why social programs would be less effective because of diversity.
$15 minimum wage;
Universal Medicare (probably need more details but it seems unaffordable at the moment);
Removing unidentified (likely non-existent) tax “loopholes” for oil companies
A carbon tax to greatly reduce the use of fossil fuels
BUT no corresponding increase in nuclear or any other currently available and affordable form of energy.
The tax loophole for oil companies is likely “Percentage depletion”. They are allowed to claim as a deduction a percentage of their revenue from oil as the cost of depleting the natural resource that they once paid for. This allows them to deduct more than they ever paid for the resource, quite often much much more, which is something that run contrary to standard accounting and tax principles.
There are also plenty of other tax laws that are specific to the oil and gas industry that I’m not aware of details of. They likely get quite a lot of other kinds of credits and such.
You do see that sort of almost daily media coverage. In sources like Fox and the Washington Times; a rag more foaming-at-the-mouth than even Fox on a tear.
If you read or watch real media, illegal immigration is pretty much a non-issue. Except to the degree some politicians have seized on it in the last 6 months as a boogey man. Oddly enough these politicians are all, every one of them, part of the same group that listens to Fox.
The rest of us … not so much.
Someone mentioned to me today that the closed primaries looked very different than the open ones. Apparently (I haven’t had time to check this claim yet), Trump lost in 3 of the 4 closed primaries, but won the open primaries. Also, turnout for Republicans was way up, while turnout for Democrats was down.
This suggests either that some of Trump’s support was due to Democratic strategic voting, or that Trump won by peelng off independents who would otherwise have voted Democrat, or even by picking up moderate Democrats. That would suggest he’s an even bigger threat to Democrats in the general election.
As far as I know, only the Oklahoma primary has been closed so far, the other closed events have all been caucuses (WY, ND, CO, AK, NV, IA). I’d say the sample size is too small to evaluate.
Well, you are undoubtedly right about the sample sizes, but it’s interesting to note that Trump lost in Oklahoma, and was only a few percentage points away from coming in 3rd behind Rubio.
It would be interesting to compare voter turnout in Oklahoma compared to the open primaries. That might help tell us if the Trump phenomenon is partially due to his appeal with independents and disaffected Democrats. If it is, he becomes almost as much a problem for Democrats in the general election.
I think that it is a concern, but not by much IMHO.
If that was the case (about peeling off independents who would otherwise have voted Democrat, or picking up moderate Democrats) then the polls would had been consistent on showing more support for Trump against Hillary.
In the match up polls, support for Trump did go up on early polls, (showing how unreliable they are early, but they become more valid as time goes by) but Trump did not go over Clinton, then the polls have remained consistent for many months and up to now showing Clinton ahead of Trump by 5% or more.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton
While we might debate the wisdom and feasibility of those policies, none is dismissible as “nutty.”
You sure about that? I thought depletion was a cost recovery system so that you could only claim depletion deductions up to the point where you recover all the cost of the land that you bought. Normally you cannot depreciate real property but when you buy property that has mineral resources (including oil and gas) you can recover the cost of the real property but I didn’t think you could take a million dollars in deductions for land you only paid a thousand dollars for.
I don’t think their other credits are particularly good. The carried interest treatment that hedge fund managers enjoy was originally meant to benefit wildcatters. There are some domestic manufacturing tax credits that any domestic producer gets, including producers of oil and gas. There are some energy specific tax credits but the vast majority of them go to things like solar, nuclear and wind.
ETA: Holy Shit!!! You’re right. percentage depletion can be MORE than cost recovery. That is a tax handout to oil and gas. They should stop it.
So what? That’s not where the bulk of the revenue is coming from. My point is that if you truly want to be like Scandinavia, you have to advocate for higher taxes across the board, because ‘soak the rich’ doesn’t get you there. But no one’s advocating that, are they? Sanders is closest in that he at least is willing to look at slightly higher taxes in exchange for free health care, but he’s essentially still promising to deliver Scandinavian-style social democracy by taxing the rich. That’s not the way it works in Scandinavia.
My guess: A lot less than what they’d get if they were allowed to keep it for themselves. Once you get into the business of taxing the middle class in order to give goodies to the middle class, you are essentially saying that the government can do a better job of deciding what people need and proving it for them than the people themselves can do. We’re no longer talking about wealth redistribution, but taking over control of a large part of everyone’s wealth.
The assumption is that that the government is a more efficient allocator of resources to the general population than is the market. The history of socialism tell us this is absolute nonsense. Modern science, if anything, increases our understanding of why governments fail when they try to run things. Information theory, complexity theory, and modern public-choice economics all points to the conclusion that a society works best when power stays co-located with the information necessary to efficiently use that power - information that is utterly inaccessible to central planners.
And yet with one of the highest standards of living on the planet. And the country that leads in innovation. Do you think that’s a coincidence? And the areas in which the U.S. under-performs the most tend to be the areas of most government control - education, health care for seniors, veterans and the poor, etc. The cities in the worst trouble in the U.S. are the ones that have been run exclusively by Democrats for decades and which have the highest taxes and the biggest public sectors.
Yes, I’m sure the answer is more government, higher taxes, and more decisions being made by the people farthest away from the problems they are trying to solve. Because historically, that always works.
Of course they are. You can’t drastically reduce carbon emissions while simultaneously shutting down nuclear power production without destroying the economy and standard of living. That’s about as nutty as it gets in this election.
But those Moroccans or Libyans are streaming across the Rio Grande. Trump showed a video so it must be true!
The Republican Party has been ranting about this for more than 8 years - even when one of their own was trying to do something sensible. When an outsider rants louder and more effectively, they can’t all of a sudden say look at the facts. Remember, when a Republican politician tried to say something reasonable Rush would yell at him.
If we chose our sources correctly their support would dry up. It is pretty much similar to how the Chinese government is now telling financial journalists that their job is to support the Party line.
CA elected Arnold. MN elected Jesse Ventura. Why Trump? The sentiment I perceive most is ‘Because fuck you that’s why’.
I have no doubt at all that he can make the trains run on time. 
That really depends on how income is distributed doesn’t it?
The 51% rate kicks in at just over $60K.
Scandinavia or Sweden?
There are plenty of areas where this is obviously true. Even the most conservative of conservatives seem to think that we are better off pooling our resources to buy a military, judiciary, police and fire departments. Most of them think that public financing of schools are a good idea as well. The notion is that education (while not a public good) is something that we do not want to let the market allocate based primarily on ability to pay. Health care (IMNSHO) falls into the category of things we should not allocate primarily on ability to pay. We can quibble about how much health care we are talking about and who qualifies for the benefit but we already pay for most of the health care costs in the country.
Socialism just means that we tax everyone to give everyone a minimum standard of living. It doesn’t mean we throw capitalism and free markets out the door. There are plenty of examples of command economies where the government allocated resources to pretty good effect.
Much of the growth in Asian economies like Japan and Korea have been the result of command economies where the government told industry what to do and often told them how to do it. I’m not proposing we adopt a command economy but the guy that developed the notion of comparative advantages sorta supported government control of their economies (primarily to specialize in things that they could export).
China is another example of a relatively hands on approach to the allocation of resources by the government.
That’s a nice theory. Its wrong, but its a nice theory. The wisdom of the masses works just fine until it doesn’t (see Trump, see credit default swaps, see 2008 economic collapse, see Tulips)… kinda like central planning.
We haven’t been the world leader in innovation in a while and much of that innovation came from brain-draining the rest of the world.
Can you point me to the list of countries that outperform America on education that DON’T have government run education? I’m looking at a list of top performing countries and I think they all have public schools.
Can you point me to a country without government run health care for seniors that has BETTER health results for seniors than America? AFAICT, the other countries that have better health results for seniors tend to have MORE (not less) government involvement in the health care system.
I am not familiar with our underperformance on veterans issues. can you elaborate?
Can you point to the country that is successfully applying private sector solution to poverty?
The fact is that the government steps into areas that the private sector can’t do AT ALL and consequently the government does a worse job of providing health care for seniors than apple does of providing iphones to teenagers.
I think a lot of that is due to Democratic machines and corruption. And to be fair, most cities have been run by Democrats for decades. If we are going to do a pro-rata comparison, I think we will find just as many problems with places where Republicans do not have much competition. IOW, its a corruption problem more than it is a Democrat problem.
Sometimes, yes, sometimes no. It depends.
There comes a point in the “lack of wisdom/feasibility” spectrum when you are in nutty territory.
I will take the tax loopholes for oil companies off the list.