There are plenty of excellent black women leaders - Kamala Harris was not one of those. Do not excuse the Democratic Party here with their dysfunctional internal infighting with just being down to racism.
Milquetoast uninspiring leader should still beat someone who outright hates everything about our country, divides rather than leads, and plans to sell our institutions for scrap value while putting the proceeds in his own pocket.
Although I think the people blaming it on racism are hopeful. The real answer is that it struck a chord with people who do not want women in leadership positions.
I remember reading an article when Harris was nominated, about how it was set up to be a "historic moment". Indeed, it was.
> There are plenty of excellent black women leaders - Kamala Harris was not one of those. Do not excuse the Democratic Party (...)
As a non-USian this blend of opinion just reeks of blame-shifting.
You guys have a two-party system. One proposed a candidate that continued Biden's administration. The other was this hot mess. You guys picked this hot mess over Biden's regime.
If you looked at Trump and somehow decided a second Trump administration was better than a continuation of Biden's administration, the blame lays square on you. Not on Kamala. Not on the democratic party. Not on DEI. Nothing.
While Democratic Party could have picked another candidate, to appease comments like this (I heard this too many times by a lot of very, very smart people so I am not demeaning your comment/opinion in any way) that other candidate would have been a white male
My point is that she was a poor candidate both times, and OP blaming this all on racism gives the DNC a pass when they really need to fix themselves. Obama would have beat Trump handily (a hypothetical), and not lost due to racism.
This both sides thing is stupid. Though there's always some form of military actions under either Democrats or Republicans, Republicans consistently start unilateral (and illegal) wars that leave us in massive quagmires, leave power imbalances in the middle east, and destabilize things considerably.
The US have been fooled by Israel for the past... thirty, forty years at least? Look who Trump is sending around the world to negotiate on behalf of the US: two committed Zionists, personal friends of Netanyahu and past financers of the Israeli army. The other negotiators regard them as Israeli assets, plain and simple. While they pretend to "negotiate", Israel launches surprise attacks that have not been agreed with the US and that forces them to intervene.
I read somewhere that Bush made this awkward figure of speech not because he didn't know the idiom, but because he realized too late that he'd be saying "shame on me" on air, which is apparently a phrase absolutely Verboten by political media advisors (because it could have been taken out of context and used by his adversaries). In a way that says a lot about the political culture that resulted in a figure like Trump, I think.
I think "humiliation ritual" is a hugely important concept to keep in mind these days: It has a lot of explanatory power for the stuff we're seeing in politics. (For example, televised Trump cabinet meetings where the brown-nosing is almost beyond parody.)
A cult will demand members do things to "fit in", especially things that have a cost ("prove your sincerity") and also things which alienate them from the non-group. The latter is a ratcheting trap, leading to: "We are your only home now, nobody else will have you."
If you take Russia as a boilerplate; never. Trump will "trickle down" the corruption to just enough people to keep everyone complacent and do as he wills.
So many people make so much money from it. I don’t personally this time but I did last time working for tech. Maybe I will again next time. This is the third time America been “humiliated” in my life and my life is awesome and getting better.
/s
But that is the overall sentiment if I had to describe it without pretense
sending young americans off to die for israels relgious war and bury epstein news. the entire usa still operating my team vs your team. president trump is pedophile child rapist and noone can bother to care. sad times all around
Far too calmly. This is exactly why the Constitution requires Congress to declare war - so that we can't wind up in a war because of the decisions of one man.
This was true of past conflicts as well. Doe v. Bush tried to challenge the Iraq Resolution because Congress had not declared war, but the US Court of Appeals dismissed the case because Congress had not opposed funding the war. The sad reality is that this is what the people had voted for, and the government is still working as intended.
Wars are waged through inflation. Allowing the federal government to "print money", essentially write checks on a negative account balance, is funding these forever wars.
If you continue to support reckless taxation, this is what you will get.
IIRC, the US debt is at 39 trillion right now, with no plan to pay it back. Which is logical, because it's unpayable. There's no way in the world that will ever be paid back. I still haven't seen anybody properly analyze how high the debt can go before it actually can't go any higher, but we're going to find out.
The problem is that the constitution doesn't allow for a wealth tax. If you remember, we had to pass an amendment to be able to levy a tax on income, and that amendment is clear in that it only applies to income.
Interestingly, it was also promised to be only 1% or so on the richest households, and it has become, er, different.
But more important to the point, as the government already taxes about 20% of income, that is equivalent to holding about 20% of the wealth, as the wealth is just an income generating device and the value of the wealth is the flow of income it generates, of which 20% is already taxed.
What I'd like to know is why people are obsessed about stocks and flows in completely different ways. For example, not caring about the deficit but worrying about the debt, or vice versa, or focusing on taxing wealth but not really caring about taxing income.
I think the idea of taxing income makes a lot of sense, and don't want the government to try to value assets, particularly illiquid assets. And if it was up to me, I would dramatically simplify the tax code to eliminate all deductions and tax all income at the same rate, regardless of source. No reason to have one tax rate for carried interest, another tax rate for dividend payments, a third tax rate for wage income. Treat all income the same, and apply a progressive rate to the total income. Your tax form should not be more than a page long.
> What I'd like to know is why people are obsessed about stocks and flows in completely different ways...focusing on taxing wealth but not really caring about taxing income.
Because wealth grows faster than income.
r > g
It's easy, especially for rich people with lots of wealth, to have low taxable income.
I disagree that r > g over long periods, rather there are some periods where it is less and others where it is more and it basically averages out to r = g. If you do not believe that, then you have to think that capital income will be larger than GDP, which is mathematically impossible, as capital income is one component of GDP and the ratio is relatively stable over time.
More importantly, it does not matter at all whether r > g, because both capital income and wage income are taxed. If you don't believe that, try not reporting your capital income and see how that works out.
However, you will say, long term dividend income is taxed at a lower rate, whereas wage income is taxed at a higher rate. Correct! That is why I said that the solution to that is not to impose a wealth tax, but to tax them at the same rate. All market income should be taxed at the same rate, and that solves your r > g non-problem.
Personally I feel that by using an asset as collateral the person is essentially “realizing” the gain (the person is formally and contractually saying the asset is worth at least this much and using it to exchange something of value, even if only in case of default) and should pay capital gain tax for however much the gain was based on assessed collateral value minus the cost basis. And the cost basis steps up to the assessed collateral value.
Yes, let's discuss this. By the way, for the r=g, head on over to measuringworth.com, which has long term GDP and interest rate data, and run the calculations, you'll see how r = g over long periods but swings above and below, it doesn't track it exactly. I used to be fascinated by this stuff and generated lots of charts and even had an econ blog but that was a long time ago. The data is out there.
In terms of borrowing against assets to "escape" paying taxes, I wonder if you have a problem with someone who borrows to pay their taxes. It's the same thing. At the end of the day, they will need to pay interest on the loan, and that rate will be more than the risk free rate.
What is strange is that you never hear the opposite argument:
If you want taxation to be based on spending rather than income, then you want consumption taxes. Now a lot of economists hate income taxes as a group and think only consumption should be taxed, in which case you make a billion but only pay taxes on what you spend.
Overall, do you think billionaires would fare better with consumption only taxes or with income only taxes? How many assets pay no interest ever? It's a weird argument to be making, that billionaires escape consumption taxes when they spend down their savings.
But even here, people are making a mistake, because eventually you need to sell assets to dispose of the loan, and that's when you pay taxes on the realized gains, with interest. And the interest rate charged to the billionare will be more than the risk free rate which the government can use to borrow, so if the government just borrows the expected amount of taxes and rolls over the loan, the government will outlive the billionare and when the estate is settled, all that spending, plus interest, will be realized gains (100% gains, remember) and the tax bill will be paid in full.
This is really no different than borrowing to pay your taxes. Sure, in a sense you "avoid" paying taxes, but not really.
So what you really want is to close the income tax loopholes. Treat inheritance income as income. Ban non-profits. Ban "foundations" that don't pay tax, etc. All you need to do is treat all income equally for tax purposes and you are fine. No one can escape taxes, even if they borrow to pay their taxes.
For rich individuals it could be the risk free rate. Banks can curry favor with rich individuals and gain other business if they do this.
> are making a mistake, because eventually you need to sell assets to dispose of the loan, and that's when you pay taxes on the realized gains, with interest
You seem clued in to this stuff. You really haven't heard of Buy-Borrow-Die?
Without any funny business (meaning no re-valuation of the debt, which I guess there are strategies for) and assuming an interest rate on the debt of between 3-5%, I figured between 10-20 years before the interest payments eat up most essential services.
Monetize it or default are the only options I think. Monetizing affects everyone while default only (directly) affects bond holders. Monetizing is much easier to obfuscate though so that is probably what will happen.
Perhaps, but the monetization would have to be pretty extreme. And that would send interest rates to the moon, making further borrowing difficult.
While these things are impossible to predict, my guess is that in a couple decades the government will do some sort of technical default. Force Treasury bond holders to exchange their current holdings at par for new bonds with longer maturities and artificially low interest rates. Politicians will be able to claim that no one has lost money since the nominal bond values will remain the same even though the market values will be much lower.
The other thing I expect to happen is that the government will force retirement accounts (both defined benefit pension plans and defined contribution 401k plans) to purchase Treasury bonds. Because of course they're so much "safer" for retirees than risky stocks.
the US has run deficits for years, so it's not reckless taxation in the form I think you mean. "Pay for its bills" would be a novel concept, involving undoing various "give money to rich people" tax cuts.
It’s just embarrassing at this point. How long will the Americans put up with this humiliation ritual?
As long as a significant portion of the population continues voting for it.
That's not why they got this.
In fact they precisely voted someone promising no more wars, no more foreign meddling, and so on.
And they'll get wars and the same shit after they vote the other way too. Just like they got wars under Obama.
No matter who they vote, the bastards always win.
They voted for a proven con-man because they hated the idea of a black woman being president. US Racism - still going strong after 250 years...
There are plenty of excellent black women leaders - Kamala Harris was not one of those. Do not excuse the Democratic Party here with their dysfunctional internal infighting with just being down to racism.
Milquetoast uninspiring leader should still beat someone who outright hates everything about our country, divides rather than leads, and plans to sell our institutions for scrap value while putting the proceeds in his own pocket.
Although I think the people blaming it on racism are hopeful. The real answer is that it struck a chord with people who do not want women in leadership positions.
I remember reading an article when Harris was nominated, about how it was set up to be a "historic moment". Indeed, it was.
> There are plenty of excellent black women leaders - Kamala Harris was not one of those. Do not excuse the Democratic Party (...)
As a non-USian this blend of opinion just reeks of blame-shifting.
You guys have a two-party system. One proposed a candidate that continued Biden's administration. The other was this hot mess. You guys picked this hot mess over Biden's regime.
If you looked at Trump and somehow decided a second Trump administration was better than a continuation of Biden's administration, the blame lays square on you. Not on Kamala. Not on the democratic party. Not on DEI. Nothing.
Own your mistakes. Do better.
you should familirize yourself with Kamala Harris before saying she is not a leader - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris
While Democratic Party could have picked another candidate, to appease comments like this (I heard this too many times by a lot of very, very smart people so I am not demeaning your comment/opinion in any way) that other candidate would have been a white male
My point is that she was a poor candidate both times, and OP blaming this all on racism gives the DNC a pass when they really need to fix themselves. Obama would have beat Trump handily (a hypothetical), and not lost due to racism.
0% chance Obama would have beat DJT in 2024, 0!
Why on earth would anyone vote based on a Trump campaign promise?
This both sides thing is stupid. Though there's always some form of military actions under either Democrats or Republicans, Republicans consistently start unilateral (and illegal) wars that leave us in massive quagmires, leave power imbalances in the middle east, and destabilize things considerably.
Well let’s hope, as Bush once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… can’t get fooled again.”
Hopefully. They've bene fooled into voting for him 3 times already.
The US have been fooled by Israel for the past... thirty, forty years at least? Look who Trump is sending around the world to negotiate on behalf of the US: two committed Zionists, personal friends of Netanyahu and past financers of the Israeli army. The other negotiators regard them as Israeli assets, plain and simple. While they pretend to "negotiate", Israel launches surprise attacks that have not been agreed with the US and that forces them to intervene.
I read somewhere that Bush made this awkward figure of speech not because he didn't know the idiom, but because he realized too late that he'd be saying "shame on me" on air, which is apparently a phrase absolutely Verboten by political media advisors (because it could have been taken out of context and used by his adversaries). In a way that says a lot about the political culture that resulted in a figure like Trump, I think.
Seems like the better option is to simply say, "you know the rest of the saying".
Perhaps he actually just flubbed. Many such cases.
It’s been going on for a very long time. Remember USS Liberty?
It's everything they voted for...
20 years.
I think "humiliation ritual" is a hugely important concept to keep in mind these days: It has a lot of explanatory power for the stuff we're seeing in politics. (For example, televised Trump cabinet meetings where the brown-nosing is almost beyond parody.)
A cult will demand members do things to "fit in", especially things that have a cost ("prove your sincerity") and also things which alienate them from the non-group. The latter is a ratcheting trap, leading to: "We are your only home now, nobody else will have you."
As long as their leaders care more about Israel than the nation they were sworn in to serve.
The response from Ted Cruz in the interview with Tucker Carlson was glaring, yet refreshing - it went from silly conspiracy to fact, overnight.
If you take Russia as a boilerplate; never. Trump will "trickle down" the corruption to just enough people to keep everyone complacent and do as he wills.
So many people make so much money from it. I don’t personally this time but I did last time working for tech. Maybe I will again next time. This is the third time America been “humiliated” in my life and my life is awesome and getting better.
/s
But that is the overall sentiment if I had to describe it without pretense
sending young americans off to die for israels relgious war and bury epstein news. the entire usa still operating my team vs your team. president trump is pedophile child rapist and noone can bother to care. sad times all around
this never ends well....
Yeah but he painted himself into a corner with the Hormuz thing.
Is it just me, or are we taking the beginning of Iraq War v 2 very calmly?
Far too calmly. This is exactly why the Constitution requires Congress to declare war - so that we can't wind up in a war because of the decisions of one man.
Sure wish that was still in force...
Congress can stop it at any time. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5799286-iran-war-powers-...
This was true of past conflicts as well. Doe v. Bush tried to challenge the Iraq Resolution because Congress had not declared war, but the US Court of Appeals dismissed the case because Congress had not opposed funding the war. The sad reality is that this is what the people had voted for, and the government is still working as intended.
[dead]
Wars are waged through inflation. Allowing the federal government to "print money", essentially write checks on a negative account balance, is funding these forever wars.
If you continue to support reckless taxation, this is what you will get.
IIRC, the US debt is at 39 trillion right now, with no plan to pay it back. Which is logical, because it's unpayable. There's no way in the world that will ever be paid back. I still haven't seen anybody properly analyze how high the debt can go before it actually can't go any higher, but we're going to find out.
Private US wealth is in the range of 200-400 trillion. A blanket 1% annual wealth tax would wipe out the debt in 10-20 years.
75% of US debt is held domestically. So most of that money will go back into the country.
It's highly unlikely a lucrative revenue stream like this would ever go to paying off the debt. But theoretically the money exists.
The problem is that the constitution doesn't allow for a wealth tax. If you remember, we had to pass an amendment to be able to levy a tax on income, and that amendment is clear in that it only applies to income.
Interestingly, it was also promised to be only 1% or so on the richest households, and it has become, er, different.
But more important to the point, as the government already taxes about 20% of income, that is equivalent to holding about 20% of the wealth, as the wealth is just an income generating device and the value of the wealth is the flow of income it generates, of which 20% is already taxed.
What I'd like to know is why people are obsessed about stocks and flows in completely different ways. For example, not caring about the deficit but worrying about the debt, or vice versa, or focusing on taxing wealth but not really caring about taxing income.
I think the idea of taxing income makes a lot of sense, and don't want the government to try to value assets, particularly illiquid assets. And if it was up to me, I would dramatically simplify the tax code to eliminate all deductions and tax all income at the same rate, regardless of source. No reason to have one tax rate for carried interest, another tax rate for dividend payments, a third tax rate for wage income. Treat all income the same, and apply a progressive rate to the total income. Your tax form should not be more than a page long.
> What I'd like to know is why people are obsessed about stocks and flows in completely different ways...focusing on taxing wealth but not really caring about taxing income.
Because wealth grows faster than income.
r > g
It's easy, especially for rich people with lots of wealth, to have low taxable income.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...
> not caring about the deficit but worrying about the debt
Are there people like that? The debt is the sum of all deficits.
I disagree that r > g over long periods, rather there are some periods where it is less and others where it is more and it basically averages out to r = g. If you do not believe that, then you have to think that capital income will be larger than GDP, which is mathematically impossible, as capital income is one component of GDP and the ratio is relatively stable over time.
More importantly, it does not matter at all whether r > g, because both capital income and wage income are taxed. If you don't believe that, try not reporting your capital income and see how that works out.
However, you will say, long term dividend income is taxed at a lower rate, whereas wage income is taxed at a higher rate. Correct! That is why I said that the solution to that is not to impose a wealth tax, but to tax them at the same rate. All market income should be taxed at the same rate, and that solves your r > g non-problem.
You can choose not to realize capital income. Borrow against assets.
If we're treating that as income too, then this is a different conversation.
Personally I feel that by using an asset as collateral the person is essentially “realizing” the gain (the person is formally and contractually saying the asset is worth at least this much and using it to exchange something of value, even if only in case of default) and should pay capital gain tax for however much the gain was based on assessed collateral value minus the cost basis. And the cost basis steps up to the assessed collateral value.
Yes, let's discuss this. By the way, for the r=g, head on over to measuringworth.com, which has long term GDP and interest rate data, and run the calculations, you'll see how r = g over long periods but swings above and below, it doesn't track it exactly. I used to be fascinated by this stuff and generated lots of charts and even had an econ blog but that was a long time ago. The data is out there.
In terms of borrowing against assets to "escape" paying taxes, I wonder if you have a problem with someone who borrows to pay their taxes. It's the same thing. At the end of the day, they will need to pay interest on the loan, and that rate will be more than the risk free rate.
What is strange is that you never hear the opposite argument:
If you want taxation to be based on spending rather than income, then you want consumption taxes. Now a lot of economists hate income taxes as a group and think only consumption should be taxed, in which case you make a billion but only pay taxes on what you spend.
Overall, do you think billionaires would fare better with consumption only taxes or with income only taxes? How many assets pay no interest ever? It's a weird argument to be making, that billionaires escape consumption taxes when they spend down their savings.
But even here, people are making a mistake, because eventually you need to sell assets to dispose of the loan, and that's when you pay taxes on the realized gains, with interest. And the interest rate charged to the billionare will be more than the risk free rate which the government can use to borrow, so if the government just borrows the expected amount of taxes and rolls over the loan, the government will outlive the billionare and when the estate is settled, all that spending, plus interest, will be realized gains (100% gains, remember) and the tax bill will be paid in full.
This is really no different than borrowing to pay your taxes. Sure, in a sense you "avoid" paying taxes, but not really.
So what you really want is to close the income tax loopholes. Treat inheritance income as income. Ban non-profits. Ban "foundations" that don't pay tax, etc. All you need to do is treat all income equally for tax purposes and you are fine. No one can escape taxes, even if they borrow to pay their taxes.
> that rate will be more than the risk free rate.
For rich individuals it could be the risk free rate. Banks can curry favor with rich individuals and gain other business if they do this.
> are making a mistake, because eventually you need to sell assets to dispose of the loan, and that's when you pay taxes on the realized gains, with interest
You seem clued in to this stuff. You really haven't heard of Buy-Borrow-Die?
https://smartasset.com/investing/buy-borrow-die-how-the-rich...
> Treat inheritance income as income
That works too.
Without any funny business (meaning no re-valuation of the debt, which I guess there are strategies for) and assuming an interest rate on the debt of between 3-5%, I figured between 10-20 years before the interest payments eat up most essential services.
Monetize it or default are the only options I think. Monetizing affects everyone while default only (directly) affects bond holders. Monetizing is much easier to obfuscate though so that is probably what will happen.
Perhaps, but the monetization would have to be pretty extreme. And that would send interest rates to the moon, making further borrowing difficult.
While these things are impossible to predict, my guess is that in a couple decades the government will do some sort of technical default. Force Treasury bond holders to exchange their current holdings at par for new bonds with longer maturities and artificially low interest rates. Politicians will be able to claim that no one has lost money since the nominal bond values will remain the same even though the market values will be much lower.
The other thing I expect to happen is that the government will force retirement accounts (both defined benefit pension plans and defined contribution 401k plans) to purchase Treasury bonds. Because of course they're so much "safer" for retirees than risky stocks.
the US has run deficits for years, so it's not reckless taxation in the form I think you mean. "Pay for its bills" would be a novel concept, involving undoing various "give money to rich people" tax cuts.
In the current environment, very unlikely.
Printing money is monetary policy. Running a huge debt is fiscal policy.
You're advocating for more taxation to cover the debt, yes?