The Left has lost...........

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Left has lost...........

Like I said, floating treasuries to cover $75 billion per year in education is labeled as "free stuff," floating treasuries to cover $1 trillion tax cuts for corporations somehow is not.

When it comes time to run the printing presses to hand the money for free to bankers, heirs, and ceos, the answer's always, "Yes, please, more, more, more!"

But run them for anyone who works for a living, and suddenly it's unaffordable and the sky is falling.

[Woodsman]

Re: The Left has lost...........

I guess we can declare election season officially open.
Woodsman is back making inflammatory political posts.

I never left, Thrifty. Mega was doing such a great job of keeping things going, and anyway there wasn't much to say that hadn't been said.

But why so grumpy, mother? Weather has you down? You should try coming down south and hitting the beach for a weekend or two. Sun does wonders for the spirit. And the ladies are very accommodating to us old farts, if you just make a little effort.

[vt]

Re: The Left has lost...........

If you look at the link you will notice that Norway's corporate tax rate is 24%. Ours was as high at 39% before the recent tax cut.

You cannot have an economy without production, and you can't get production with super high tax rates. You finance government with taxes.

Of course you can have government own everything and have a smaller economy with even more poverty.

Socialism, communism, and fascism have never worked and hurt the poorest the worst, plus kill far more.

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Left has lost...........

Well, I figure if Uncle Sam can put $10T on the credit card to buy you your xmas presents, the rest of us may as well ask for something of equal or greater value. After all, it's not like investing in education yields no return, and it's not like kids who didn't have student loans wouldn't be making money and spending it on houses and cars and whatnot instead. You insist that debt-financed tax cuts are an investment. But America has never grown slower than in the 30 or 40 years since we cut taxes to the bone.

Anyways, you'll see when the next recession hits that those trillions in treasuries we floated were just a give-away, and the economy is not better and people are not more productive than before. Just like after W. Bush's massive tax cuts for the rich. Or Obama's capitulation. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. 40 years of tax cuts. And nothing to show for it but 300 million people with flat wages and more debt, and 400 billionaires each with their own backyard novelty space program. I'm not so sure the same would be true if people had better access to healthcare and childcare and education and training: they might just have become more productive. But that's not what we tried. Only tax cuts, and only for the rich.

Notice what did and didn't happen.
They didn't repeal Obamacare.
They didn't build the wall, and Mexico didn't pay for it.
They didn't invest a trillion in infrastructure.
They didn't bring manufacturing jobs back.
But they did make sure to give rich people trillions of dollars in tax cuts.

Priorities. Gotta have 'em.

[vt]

Re: The Left has lost...........

Everyone got tax cuts. But more importantly a huge number of people got jobs and wage growth was 3.1% in the latest reports.

Corporations gave bonuses and raises to many workers.

The effects of tax cuts take time, but the economy has done better.

The Fed is trying to avoid a recession and debt is still a problem. We should have demographic tailwinds starting big time
in 2 years then you really see income inequality start to recede significantly.

Just remember which party didn't put banksters in jail, in fact they bailed them out with our tax money.
The left just covers up their corruption and failures.

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Left has lost...........

Wrong. Not everyone got their tax cuts. Some of us owe much more. This one screwed middle class professionals in high tax states really hard. It's a direct transfer of wealth from doctors and lawyers and engineers to blue blood inheritors and people of leisure.

There were almost no bonuses. Most of it went to stock buybacks. Look at what they did in one quarter alone thanks to Uncle Sam's generosity in borrowing money to hand it to them for free:



As far as the wage growth goes, benefits were down 0.4%, salaries were up 3.1%, for a total compensation increase of 2.7%. Inflation that quarter was 2.5%. It's pretty damned close to a wash. Nothing to get excited about.

Inequality continues to increase and will get worse and worse.

And no doubt Obama jailed nobody. I'm well aware of that, and happy to criticize him.

I'm also happy to look at taxes as an optimization problem, there's a level that's too high, and a level that's too low.

I'm not so sure you could say a bad thing about your party, nor am I sure that there's any level below which you wouldn't cut taxes.

That's the difference. And it's probably why, in the end, the left will lose.

[BK]

Re: The Left has lost...........

dcarrigg, I've been wondering if the SALT limit is just a short term issue and Republicans got one heck of a bargaining chip to barter that they would be happy to exchange?

I'm wrong regularly and often!

[vt]

Re: The Left has lost...........

Wait. Those taxpayers in high tax states are being subsidized by the rest of us in lower tax states.
Why should we pay to help people buying mansions? Subsidize million dollar mortgages?
This is the rich being benefited.

The high tax state governments are inefficient and poorly run. They are owned
by monopoly unions that give themselves cushy pensions.

We need to get rid of excess, unnecessary benefits at corporations and in
public unions. Reasonable benefits for workers are needed. Gold plated benefits
for corporate fat cats and public unions are not.

West Virginia teachers just struck to kill a bill that would have created just
7 charter schools that would have helped poor kids. the teacher's
union wanted to keep their monopoly.

Charter schools work when done properly. Competition works.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowl...s-work-or-dont

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Left has lost...........

Wait. Those taxpayers in high tax states are being subsidized by the rest of us in lower tax states.

For over 200 years the opposite has been true. But this is what I mean. Facts don't matter.

[vt]

Re: The Left has lost...........

That's the rich helping the poor, which is what you said you want.

Rich states that have oceans for ports and rivers for navigation; that have
better climate and more job opportunities.

[BK]

Re: The Left has lost...........

In the Northeast the mantra is we don't pay teachers enough....
But, in many school districts pay can go as high as $80K-$110K for 185 days of work and a defined pension for life that is often 75%-80% of highest three years.

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Left has lost...........

We don't got alligators, but I'm not sure if that qualifies to call it a better climate...

[vt]

Re: The Left has lost...........

I love Boston. Rooted for Celtics for decades. Met Red Auerbach and high school classmate played for them.

Boston and Northern Virginia both get snow and cold.

By the way, the moderate, popular Republican governor of Maryland (no Trump fan) has cut some taxes and has performed well.

Oh, and Virginia has a good government, but the current Democrat leadership is two thirds a sorry embarrassment and 1/3
probably gone soon. Maybe all three go. Stay tuned.

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Left has lost...........

I suppose that's meant to rile me up. But honestly, I'm totally uninterested in Virginia Democrats, or blue dogs generally. They're basically somewhere to the right of Charlie Baker. I shed no tears for McCaskill or Heitkamp, and I'd shed none for Joe Manchin or his daughter with the fake MBA who somehow got the CEO slot at Mylan and used it to jack up EpiPens to the point where in my mind she may as well be culpable for multiple manslaughters. Has Tim Kaine ever stood for anything in his life? I don't think so. How many people were put to death by his hand? I'm not saying politics is never a bloody business. But we've got states up here that banned the death penalty before the Civil War. I think it makes it hard to see eye-to-eye. I don't think people down south have any idea how conservative even their Democrats seem to a New Englander. And I'm sure that goes both ways, and Baker seems like a flaming liberal to you.

But here's the thing, vt. State taxes are different. States, other than the Vermont Republic, have to balance their budgets. So a tax cut in one place just leads to higher fees or higher taxes in another. Or else it leads to direct cuts in services. The same is not true of the federal government. The federal government can be running a huge deficit, and still choose to drastically cut taxes, and still choose to increase spending, and the result is simply a debt-financed tax cut. I'm far less skeptical of tax cuts at the state and local level for that reason. New Englanders will never ever suffer government service levels as low as those in, say, South Dakota or Kansas. Partly because New England towns have much more power than municipalities in the other 44 states, and partly because every citizen is a legislator through town meetings, and it's harder to do fool things or just bribe one county commissioner. New Hampshire runs fine with no sales or income tax, but it has the highest property and corporate taxes in the country to make up for it. One way or another, at a state level, the piper gets paid.

So all that varies is service levels. Alabama comes in dead last at $3,200 per capita or so. New York comes in first at about $9,000 per capita or so. Everyone else falls somewhere in between. Virginia's about $4,600. Mass is about $6,200. That's kind of the range. In Mass, you pay about $120 per month per head more. Obviously that disproportionately comes from wealthy people. Whether you think the services you get are worth that $120/mo is up to you. You can always move to Alabama if you don't like the T or Mass public schools and you'd rather save few bucks than fund that sort of thing. But you know the honest truth about it, vt? You're way more likely to end up in an HOA down south and have to pay them that $120 to do what your town would otherwise do for you in New England anyways. Or you save a couple bucks in property taxes that go to the private trash company because you don't have public trash pickup. Save $20/mo in taxes, pay $30/mo to private industry. But I bet it mostly comes out in the wash. And in any event, the difference between low tax states and high tax states isn't really all that huge, and it's directly noticeable in service quality.

But with the federal government, it's a whole different game. You've got to beat the spread on the treasuries you issue to pay for the tax cuts, even if you think that tax cuts are investment with a positive ROI. And I really doubt handouts to heirs or for corporate stock buybacks are gonna beat the spread. We're gonna have to pay interest on every dollar we print to give to Apple and JP Morgan to use to buy back stock. And we're printing a whole goddamn lot of them. I figure, if we're going on a spending spree financed by debt, I'd just as well have it cover some kid's college or universal healthcare than hand it to Apple to dump into the incinerator and pay out to Steve Jobs' widow. But that's just me. You seem to prefer to borrow money just to hand it over to the wealthiest because you believe in your heart of hearts it will trickle down. I don't think that's gonna work any better for Trump than it did for W. Bush or Hoover or Harding or any of them who tried it. But yet we keep trying the same thing, telling ourselves that this time the result will be different. Can't stop sticking the fork in that outlet, no matter how many times it shocks.

[vt]

Re: The Left has lost...........

Don't believe in trickle down or gifts to the rich. Why don't you just confiscate their money? You would only run the government for a year or two.

I do believe in eliminating blocks to competition for entrepreneurs and innovators, which unfortunately are done too often at the local, state, and
federal level aided and abetted by government officials and corrupt private groups.

Don't say I'm responsible for any of this. Look at the banksters and government officials on the right and left that never were indicted over the 2008 crash.
Bankster cash overcomes the left's commitment to the average citizen.

Woodsman's correct. The global elite had bought off the politicians on both sides of the spectrum. They are corrupt and the socialists are too.
It's all about control. We don't need to be controlled, we have freedom and they can't take it away.