Does that excuse your choices?
nm
Just noticing that I don’t recall you complaining about that.
I am not particularly a Bernie fan. I hoped he wouldn’t run; he was certainly not my first choice for the nomination. But, Fiveyearlurker, you’re missing something major here. If you’re not being paid any salary, then you wouldn’t meet that 130K a year test, and your stock options and your company wouldn’t be affected at all.
And the whole thing about stock options is in the context that, if income taxes go up, many companies apparently start giving their higher level employees raises in stock options instead of in salary increases: thereby providing them with a form of recompense that isn’t taxed. Unless they’re forbidden to sell those options, how is that not income? If I’m paid in cash, I can put the money in the bank, or I can buy stock in my company or in other companies, or I can spend it. If I’m paid in stock options, I can keep them as investments, or I can sell them and buy different investments, or put the money in the bank, or spend it. What’s the difference?
The start-up company in which the owners are paid in shares of the company instead of in salary is a different sort of case. But as I’m reading the proposal, it’s also exempt, unless the owners are also being paid north of 130K a year.
Exactly. Without information about whether the USA top 10% has a greater share of the wealth, there’s no way to tell which tax system is actually more progressive.
I spent a few minutes looking for comparison figures, but found them harder to come up with than I expected, partly because some sources are talking about wealth and others about annual income. Here’s something, although it’s talking as near as I can tell about annual income, not about wealth that’s not counted in income figures [ETA: and later in the article it implies but doesn’t cite a different picture]:
I haven’t yet found a comparative wealth statistic, but there is this:
So whatever the situation is in Sweden or elsewhere, the claim can be made that if the people holding 69.4% of the wealth are paying 45% of the taxes, then no, the top 10% are not paying their fair share. What happens next usually as that people start arguing what, in this context, “fair” means; because they’re not using the same meanings of what’s “fair”.
Well, if we assume the Nordic tax system wasn’t implemented last night, then it follows that the Nordic system is more progressive because it distributed the high income into social programs more effectively than the US system did. Thus, the most wealthy Scandinavians were not able to amass the higher proportion of wealth that their American counterparts did over the same period of time.
More to the point, Bernie Sanders issues some numbers about how he plans to pay for his social programs. Much to the chagrin of some of his supporters.
It’s difficult to look at those numbers and effectively compare them to the Nordic Model of taxation. But, as Sanders often refers aspirationally to that specific state model of democratic socialism, I think it’s fair to compare the US tax model to that of the Nordic Model, quoted upthread.
So the questions must be asked, and more importantly answered, by those who support the Sanders Democratic Socialist Revolution: would they accept a steep increase in taxes, across all income brackets in order to pay for the social programs for which they advocate. We’re not talking clawing back the Trump tax cuts. We’re talking much higher income taxes on the average individual or family, progressively staggered, to well over 50% on incomes of $250K or more. So the tax pain will not just be felt by the billionaires. It will be felt, perhaps even more keenly, by the low to moderate income classes. Is that something that every Bernie Sanders supporter aware of and supports? Because if so, then I applaud them for their selflessness and genuine goodness. If not, then I pity them their climb down from the cocaine socialism high.
I’m not fiveyearlurker, but my understanding is this: He is trying to start up a company but cannot pay in cash. Let’s say I liked his idea and wanted to help him get off the ground. He cannot pay me in cash now, but can pay me in stock options. I think he has a good business plan, so I want to offer my legal services in exchange for stock options. Win-win. He gets legal services now, I get an opportunity to cash in later. I make more than $130k/yr.
Under Bernie’s plan, I have to rethink this. If I am paying taxes on the stock options, I have to dig into my own pocket to pay the taxes.
Now suppose in two years despite fiveyearlurker’s best efforts, his new business goes kaput. Under the current system, I am simply out the free legal services. Under Bernie’s new system, I am out the free legal services plus all the taxes I paid on my stock options which never amounted to anything. I never had any income at all but was taxed as if I did. I not only paid in labor but in money.
So, under Bernie’s plan, fiveyearlurker doesn’t get free (for now) legal services, doesn’t get free for now any other services. Fiveyearlurker’s business is in the shitter right up front because of Bernie, even though he could have started a successful business employing many people.
Is the assumption here that venture capital investment and stock market investment capital losses no longer apply under the Sanders model? Can people no longer write off their losses against future taxable income?
This is it exactly. Even for myself. I now have vested stock options in my company (again, not hyptothetical). I don’t own these options because I haven’t exercised them, and since my company is worth under 1M, these options are essentially worthless. What people do now is hold these vested options, without exercising them, in the hopes that the company takes off. If it fails, as most do unfortunatley, the options are worthless. But, I haven’t paid anything for them, so I lost no money. That’s a risk people are willing to take.
Under Bernie’s plan, I’ve paid taxes on these options that are now worthless, so I paid money to do work. That’s not a risk people are willing to take.
Yes, Bernie hasn’t been shy about attacking the characters of his Democratic opponents—he hasn’t limited himself to merely attacking their policies.
And DrDeth, I see the situation as the reverse of the picture you paint: I see a vote for Bernie in the primaries as being a vote for Trump. I do not believe that Bernie Sanders has any chance of beating Trump.
(As always: if BS is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for him.)
Bernie trots out his first pro-Obama ad: Bernie Sanders embraces Barack Obama for the first time in new ad | CNN Politics
Eh, Bernie promised another ‘youthquake’, and, again, the kids failed to support Bernie in the semi-finals, with only 13% of those aged 18-29 voting yesterday… and, of course, they all didn’t vote for Bernie. 538’s poll of pre-ST states has Bernie getting about 45% of this youth vote.
So, of course, his supporters are saying Trump can’t be beat without the youth vote. But if the youth vote can’t be arsed to support Bernie in the semi-finals, why does anyone think they’ll support him come November?
Apparently Bernie even admitted that he has failed so far to get out the big youth vote he had hoped to.
He’s not even getting as many votes as he did in 2016.
What I’m seeing from the pro-Bernie forces on Twitter, when these facts are brought up, is ‘everything will be different in the general election.’
When asked why that could be the case, they change the subject.
…Bernie said something to that effect (that it will all be different in November) in last night’s interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, but the transcript isn’t yet out, and I don’t want to misquote him. Here’s the link to where it will be available when it comes out:
http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show
Bernie Bros and sandernistas, you gotta be careful with your elections tactics- they are backfireing:
*Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign exit interview with Rachel Maddow, aired Thursday night, is a clarifying moment in this conversation. In the interview, Warren showed palpable anger with the online Sanders army’s treatment of her and other progressives.
“I think there’s a real problem with online bullying and online nastiness. I’m not just talking about who said mean things; I’m talking about some really ugly stuff that went on,” she said. She expressed particular concerned about threats, citing the publication of phone numbers and home addresses belonging to two women who worked for the Nevada Culinary Union after it produced a fact sheet critical of Sanders’s health care plan.
Warren’s reaction illustrates that these tactics make it at least somewhat harder for Sanders to build allies in the Democratic Party. And this failure of elite backing has real repercussions.*
It’s been clear over the past several years that there is a dedicated on-line cohort of progressives who go out of their way to harass or even “doxx” folks who disagree over politics or otherwise don’t see the world the way they do. Most of the time it’s aimed at conservatives, but I guess *anyone *can be a target.
That’s been my experience (with supporters I know, not random Twitter users).
“Good luck with Biden when the young people aren’t excited!”
“The young people won’t show up for Sanders AND he loses all the older people. How is that better?”
“Primaries don’t count, things will be different in November!”
“Sanders won’t be on the ballot in November because no one is bothering to show up now.”
“But primaries don’t count”
“…”
How is anyone supposed to take the chance on that? It reminds me of Wimpy’s old line: I will gladly pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today. Make Sanders the candidate now and, come November, the kids will come out… promise!
Yeah. It’s not a tactic calculated to appeal to people of average-and-above intelligence.
Which may be why the emphasis among many Bernie supporters in recent days has been on tearing down Biden (chiefly with the claims or insinuations that he has some sort of mental deficiency). They know that the “Bernie’s the best candidate because he’ll bring out new voters; Bernie’s the candidate who inspires people to get out and vote” argument has been completely refuted.
“I haven’t seen those numbers”, pivot to boilerplate :rolleyes: