As to your earlier post about what it would take for you to back Trump: really, just a list of Supreme Court nominees?
If he were to *court* my vote, yeah...
Because... let's face it... it's likely between Trump vs Clinton.
So, that's a gak sammich with pickle vs gak sammich with mustard.
No, absolutely not. You cannot pretend they are similar gak sandwiches. HRC is dirty, lying politics for sale, but still status quo essentially. She wouldn't be any worse than any other recent president.
Drumpf, on the other hand, is one international incident after another. You are throwing your support behind a man who is so insecure he felt that had to tell the whole world that "there's no problem" with his penis size. FFS.
I know you've been honing your Pavlovain hatred for HRC for years, but you must see that President Drumpf would be an epic disaster.
As to your earlier post about what it would take for you to back Trump: really, just a list of Supreme Court nominees?
If he were to *court* my vote, yeah...
Because... let's face it... it's likely between Trump vs Clinton.
So, that's a gak sammich with pickle vs gak sammich with mustard.
No, absolutely not. You cannot pretend they are similar gak sandwiches. HRC is dirty, lying politics for sale, but still status quo essentially. She wouldn't be any worse than any other recent president.
Drumpf, on the other hand, is one international incident after another. You are throwing your support behind a man who is so insecure he felt that had to tell the whole world that "there's no problem" with his penis size. FFS.
I know you've been honing your Pavlovain hatred for HRC for years, but you must see that President Drumpf would be an epic disaster.
Well then... we disagree on this.
Because, yes, they're both gak sammiches with different condiments.
As to your earlier post about what it would take for you to back Trump: really, just a list of Supreme Court nominees?
If he were to *court* my vote, yeah...
Because... let's face it... it's likely between Trump vs Clinton.
So, that's a gak sammich with pickle vs gak sammich with mustard.
No, absolutely not. You cannot pretend they are similar gak sandwiches. HRC is dirty, lying politics for sale, but still status quo essentially. She wouldn't be any worse than any other recent president.
Drumpf, on the other hand, is one international incident after another. You are throwing your support behind a man who is so insecure he felt that had to tell the whole world that "there's no problem" with his penis size. FFS.
I know you've been honing your Pavlovain hatred for HRC for years, but you must see that President Drumpf would be an epic disaster.
Well then... we disagree on this.
Because, yes, they're both gak sammiches with different condiments.
That is pretty naive to say that HRC is literally the same as trump. I could list examples but pick a page in the past 20 or so and you will find them.
In other news the turtle said that the senate will not consider the SC pick
Within minutes of Obama's news on Garland, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was already declaring his nomination dead on arrival.
"The next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court and have a profound impact on our country, so of course the American people should have a say in the Court's direction," McConnell said in a statement. "The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter when it considers the qualifications of the nominee the next President nominates, whoever that might be."
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, echoed McConnell's sentiments, saying the Senate should punt the nomination to 2017 because it would "get bogged down in politics" this year.
The best thing to do now, he said, is spend the year debating "the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system of government."
As to your earlier post about what it would take for you to back Trump: really, just a list of Supreme Court nominees?
If he were to *court* my vote, yeah...
Because... let's face it... it's likely between Trump vs Clinton.
So, that's a gak sammich with pickle vs gak sammich with mustard.
No, absolutely not. You cannot pretend they are similar gak sandwiches. HRC is dirty, lying politics for sale, but still status quo essentially. She wouldn't be any worse than any other recent president.
Drumpf, on the other hand, is one international incident after another. You are throwing your support behind a man who is so insecure he felt that had to tell the whole world that "there's no problem" with his penis size. FFS.
I know you've been honing your Pavlovain hatred for HRC for years, but you must see that President Drumpf would be an epic disaster.
Well then... we disagree on this.
Because, yes, they're both gak sammiches with different condiments.
Aw, no man. I used to think you were cool.
Anyone else think Drumpf says stupid gak like "We'll torture em!" and "Riot for me!" on purpose? Then he quietly retracts it the next day because his mouthbreathers will only remember that he said it, not that he recanted?
You don't [I]have[I] to vote (we're not Australians, after all), and third party options are always available if you don't like either of the major candidates.
jasper76 wrote: You don't [I]have[I] to vote (we're not Australians, after all), and third party options are always available if you don't like either of the major candidates.
Just sayin...
True... I'm still thinking of just writing in Deadpool.
Anyone else think Drumpf says stupid gak like "We'll torture em!" and "Riot for me!" on purpose? Then he quietly retracts it the next day because his mouthbreathers will only remember that he said it, not that he recanted?
I'm right there with you. Trump is a master at passive-aggression, and his pseudo apologies and take-backs complete with wink-wink do not fool me in the least.
How many times have we heard him say "I would never say that" about one of his quotes?
Anyone else think Drumpf says stupid gak like "We'll torture em!" and "Riot for me!" on purpose? Then he quietly retracts it the next day because his mouthbreathers will only remember that he said it, not that he recanted?
I'm right there with you. Trump is a master at passive-aggression, and his pseudo apologies and take-backs complete with wink-wink do not fool me in the least.
How many times have we heard him say "I would never say that" about one of his quotes?
It is almost literally how the Russian government dealt with the pogroms. Spewing nationalist hatred that they knew would get the people riled up and start hurting people, only to come in a few days later after the incidents and take it all back saying they never meant for it to be like this.
Anyone else think Drumpf says stupid gak like "We'll torture em!" and "Riot for me!" on purpose? Then he quietly retracts it the next day because his mouthbreathers will only remember that he said it, not that he recanted?
I have been thinking something along those lines, yeah. There does seem to be some sort of very specific choices of words and phrasing that aren't just a case of running off the mouth. I first noticed in the KKK interview then Philip De Franco brought it up in a vlog as well. It's like a calculated 'plausible deniability' thing. It's growing to be the scariest thing about it all...
As to your earlier post about what it would take for you to back Trump: really, just a list of Supreme Court nominees?
If he were to *court* my vote, yeah...
Because... let's face it... it's likely between Trump vs Clinton.
So, that's a gak sammich with pickle vs gak sammich with mustard.
Pick one.
.
I agree, it may be a gak sandwich, but one may make you Ill. and one might kill you. Not all gak sandwiches are created equal. Do you really think the gak that Trump is feeding people will in any way not make their lives worse? If not, why not just abstain? Or write in?
'We' don't create jobs. 'We' create demand. Someone has to pony up the capital to start a business to generate product/services to meet the demand. That business provides/creates the jobs."
You just said "we" create the jobs, contradicting yourself.
You missed the word don't between we and create.
Still a bunch of bull. Businesses only hire when they have no other alternative. They don't hire because they have extra money (They just pocket that). The rich are not the job creators...It is the middle class and poor consumers by creating demand that business owners can not handle by themselves.
'We' don't create jobs. 'We' create demand. Someone has to pony up the capital to start a business to generate product/services to meet the demand. That business provides/creates the jobs."
You just said "we" create the jobs, contradicting yourself.
You missed the word don't between we and create.
Still a bunch of bull. Businesses only hire when they have no other alternative. They don't hire because they have extra money (They just pocket that). The rich are not the job creators...It is the middle class and poor consumers by creating demand that business owners can not handle by themselves.
The demand has to be there bro...
And the business need to weigh in whether or not the estimated increase in revenue is worth the extra labor cost.
This entire thread is why trump exists. If anyone is wondering why he is leading, or why he is succeeding only look at how you have referred to his supporters and the american right in general.
When you call someone a flyover country mouthbreathing rube who cannot think for himself outside of yelling bible quotes and racism that HUMAN BEING might get tired of it eventually. Just be glad they are focusing their rage on a political campaign as opposed to tearing down the people who call them idiots and mouthbreathers like they should.
I do not doubt that if it broke down to fighting in the US as it seems it will in a few years these "racist whateverphobic mouth breathers" wouldn't even have to reload.
Not everyone has the advantage of a university indoctrination or 7 years worth of public indoctrination with a bit of literacy taught on the side. Be mindful of that.
The Home Nuggeteer wrote: This entire thread is why trump exists. If anyone is wondering why he is leading, or why he is succeeding only look at how you have referred to his supporters and the american right in general.
When you call someone a flyover country mouthbreathing rube who cannot think for himself outside of yelling bible quotes and racism that HUMAN BEING might get tired of it eventually. Just be glad they are focusing their rage on a political campaign as opposed to tearing down the people who call them idiots and mouthbreathers like they should.
I do not doubt that if it broke down to fighting in the US as it seems it will in a few years these "racist whateverphobic mouth breathers" wouldn't even have to reload.
Not everyone has the advantage of a university indoctrination or 7 years worth of public indoctrination with a bit of literacy taught on the side. Be mindful of that.
Anger at liberals, anger at "indoctrination" public or otherwise, says that violence is okay, and talks about killing people.
Not with my Pinko-eliminator 5000 it can kill damn liberals from dusk til dawn without reloading.
WE TRULY HAVEN'T LEFT THE MCCARTHY ERA OF INSULTS HAVE WE???
Honestly go find some right wing people and observe them, they have newer and better stuff than that.
Come on Dakka, you and statism are better than this.
The Home Nuggeteer wrote: This entire thread is why trump exists. If anyone is wondering why he is leading, or why he is succeeding only look at how you have referred to his supporters and the american right in general.
When you call someone a flyover country mouthbreathing rube who cannot think for himself outside of yelling bible quotes and racism that HUMAN BEING might get tired of it eventually. Just be glad they are focusing their rage on a political campaign as opposed to tearing down the people who call them idiots and mouthbreathers like they should.
I do not doubt that if it broke down to fighting in the US as it seems it will in a few years these "racist whateverphobic mouth breathers" wouldn't even have to reload.
Not everyone has the advantage of a university indoctrination or 7 years worth of public indoctrination with a bit of literacy taught on the side. Be mindful of that.
Spoken like a true trumpeteer! You go girl! Keep fighting the anti intellectual argument, I'm sure it will get you important places someday. Oh, wait, you are thinking the world will end In a matter of days, never mind you have no future, no need to discuss ideas or propositions. Carry on with your dejecetitude.
All the responses I got were exactly what I was expecting.
So does anyone want to take potshots at why Trump is popular?
Could be:
Reality TV tactics, the KKK controlling the entirety of the Republican base, anger at the political establishment, racism, or the fact that white guys are evil?
Spoken like a true trumpeteer! You go girl! Keep fighting the anti intellectual argument, I'm sure it will get you important places someday. Oh, wait, you are thinking the world will end In a matter of days, never mind you have no future, no need to discuss ideas or propositions. Carry on with your dejecetitude.
Alright let's start, so why are people on the right always referred to as dumb?
Does anyone know what the betting money is saying about the chance of a Brokered Convention for the R's? That seems to be the Establishments only hope at the moment.
Second, who would have thought Kasich would outlast soooo many others?
Easy E wrote: Well, this thread was fun while it lasted.
Does anyone know what the betting money is saying about the chance of a Brokered Convention for the R's? That seems to be the Establishments only hope at the moment.
Second, who would have thought Kasich would outlast soooo many others?
Isn't it literally impossible for him to win? I saw somewhere that he would need 112 percent of the delegates to win.
Easy E wrote: Well, this thread was fun while it lasted.
Does anyone know what the betting money is saying about the chance of a Brokered Convention for the R's? That seems to be the Establishments only hope at the moment.
Second, who would have thought Kasich would outlast soooo many others?
Isn't it literally impossible for him to win? I saw somewhere that he would need 112 percent of the delegates to win.
But he made it this far.
Anybody have anything to say on Trump's policy papers/ has anyone read them? (I am not trying to advertise anything, just realize how advertizy that looked, but I live in a smaller area so I haven't heard much on the campaign, I was just wondering what his actual policies are, not people's interpretations of him are.)
What I saw today is that Trump can still reach the mark by getting something like 55% of the remaining delegates.
I still think he's going to make it and we won't see a brokered convention...I think alot of this is just wishful thinking. He's building momentum by taking up all these early states. Motivational for Trump voters, and demotivational for the other dudes' voters.
Easy E wrote: Well, this thread was fun while it lasted.
Does anyone know what the betting money is saying about the chance of a Brokered Convention for the R's? That seems to be the Establishments only hope at the moment.
It depends on the #NeverTrump staying disciplined in voting Not Trump.
It's very dubious that Cruz can get to 1237 before Trump, but he may be able to prevent ANYONE from getting to 1237.
Then, it's a free-for-all.
Second, who would have thought Kasich would outlast soooo many others?
Alright let's start, so why are people on the right always referred to as dumb?
Besides the fact we were warned not to engage with your post by a mod, nothing in your post suggested anything beyond "dumb". So no, I will not engage anymore with you.
Easy E wrote: Well, this thread was fun while it lasted.
Does anyone know what the betting money is saying about the chance of a Brokered Convention for the R's? That seems to be the Establishments only hope at the moment.
It depends on the #NeverTrump staying disciplined in voting Not Trump.
It's very dubious that Cruz can get to 1237 before Trump, but he may be able to prevent ANYONE from getting to 1237.
Then, it's a free-for-all.
Second, who would have thought Kasich would outlast soooo many others?
He wants to be a kingmaker.
Kasich wants to be Veep but I doubt very much that it will happen. Rubio may or may not get that spot if he is willing to join Cruz. I don't think we'll find out for sure before the convention.
Ahtman wrote: Add "Something something Baby Jesus" and I think you got it. To many want to legislate religion on that side at the moment.
Yeah, and that actually touches on the other issue with the Republican platform. To the extent that it exists, it's either impossible to put in place or extremely unpopular with the greater electorate. "Something something Baby Jesus" works great with a large part of the Republican base, but there's little coherent policy that won't piss off most voters.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
CptJake wrote: 'We' don't create jobs. 'We' create demand. Someone has to pony up the capital to start a business to generate product/services to meet the demand. That business provides/creates the jobs. Yes, if demand dries up, the business and the jobs go away. But there is plenty of demand NOT creating jobs, because the demand can't be met while generating enough profit for it to be worth someone dumping in capital and starting the business needed (and providing the jobs) to meet the demand. Inner city 'food deserts' are a good example. There is demand not being met, regardless of the available consumers, and jobs that don't exist to meet that demand regardless of the available consumers. Why? Because for a variety of reasons the profit motive is not great enough for someone to invest in business (which provide jobs...) which leaves the demand unmet.
You guys are actually arguing chicken and the egg here. "The chicken creates the egg." "No, actually the egg creates the chicken."
Ouze wrote: Pretty old for a pick - sacrificial lamb probably.
Back when all this nonsense started I predicted Obama's first pick would be a sacrificial lamb, to make it harder for Republicans to reject his second pick. I'm not wrong so far
Automatically Appended Next Post:
jasper76 wrote: I'd suggest that the idea that Trump has limited support could be on the verge of wishful thinking. If news outlets are to be believed, he is drawing from Republicans, Democrats, and brand new voters.
The other reason for Trump’s unelectability was the assumption that many Republicans would find him unacceptable, he wasn't 'pure' like they'd demanded in past candidates. No matter who Republicans voted for in the primary, they'd flock together to support Rubio, Cruz or Bush, but not Trump. I always thought that was pretty loose, because Republican identity is built around hatred of Democrats, and that doesn't go away just because they're likely to end up nominating the least capable candidate in living memory.
And we're already seeing Republicans here on dakka start to shift their thinking, Trump as a disaster that will destroy the party and/or the nation was last week's headline. Now we're seeing 'must stop Clinton' start to form. Disappointing but predictable.
"This can't happen" is becoming "this shouldn't happen but the odds are increasing all the time".
Automatically Appended Next Post:
jasper76 wrote: You don't [I]have[I] to vote (we're not Australians, after all)
We don't have to vote. We have to turn up. There's a difference
He wants to be king. If it goes to a brokered convention, then he'll be one of three choices, and the other two choices are hated by the party. It's still a longshot, but it's probably got more chance of coming off at this point than Sanders has of winning the Democratic nomination.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
jasper76 wrote: Both Cruz and Trump have been going gaga over Jeff Sessions in the debates....is he on the VP radar?
Sessions is the only Senator to endorse Trump, so that explains why Trump has been talking the guy up. Cruz was talking up Sessions because Sessions is the anti-immigration guy, so mentioning him plays well with voters concerned about immigration. I'm not sure of the timing though, if Cruz mentioning Sessions in the debates came before Sessions endorsed Trump, but I'd assume so.
I've looked at Trump's policies. Some of them sound reasonable, but you don't have to read too far before you start to see inconsistencies
For example, on Tax Policy:
He wants to simplify the tax code. This is a good idea. The UK needs the same thing.
He wants to eliminate inheritance tax because "you've earned that money and paid tax on it when you earned it." Except of course if like him you inherited it.
He wants a zero income tax rate for people earning under $25,000. This is a good idea. He will pay for it by closing tax loopholes for the very rich. That souinds fair. How does eliminating inheritance tax help with that? Only very rich people pay it.
Donald Trump winning the US presidency is considered one of the top 10 risks facing the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The research firm warns he could disrupt the global economy and heighten political and security risks in the US.
However, it does not expect Mr Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton who it sees as "his most likely Democratic contender".
He is rated as riskier than Britain leaving the European Union or an armed clash in the South China Sea.
China encountering a "hard landing" or sharp economic slowdown and Russia's interventions in Ukraine and Syria preceding a new "cold war" are among the events seen as more dangerous.
"Thus far Mr Trump has given very few details of his policies - and these tend to be prone to constant revision," the EIU said in its global risk assessment, which looks at impact and probability.
The EIU ranking uses a scale of one to 25, with Mr Trump garnering a rating of 12, the same level of risk as "the rising threat of jihadi terrorism destabilising the global economy".
"He has been exceptionally hostile towards free trade, including notably Nafta, and has repeatedly labelled China as a 'currency manipulator'," the EIU said.
It warned his strong language directed towards Mexico and China in particular "could escalate rapidly into a trade war".
Mr Trump has called for a "big big wall" to be built on the US-Mexican border, paid for by Mexico, to keep its illegal immigrants and drug dealers out of the United States.
'Innate hostility'
On the campaign trail, Mr Trump has advocated killing the families of terrorists and invading Syria to eradicate the so-called Islamic State group and appropriate its oil.
"His militaristic tendencies towards the Middle East and ban on all Muslim travel to the US would be a potent recruitment tool for jihadi groups, increasing their threat both within the region and beyond," the EIU added.
Critics of Mr Trump have raised similar concerns.
However, the businessman is moving closer to clinching the Republican presidential nominee ticket after winning most of the popular vote.
Mr Trump, who has no prior political experience, has said his supporters would "riot" if he was denied the nomination.
In the event he does win the nomination and presidency, the EIU forecasts that domestic and foreign policymaking will be undermined.
"Innate hostility within the Republican hierarchy towards Mr Trump, combined with the inevitable virulent Democratic opposition, will see many of his more radical policies blocked in Congress," it said.
Kilkrazy wrote: I've looked at Trump's policies. Some of them sound reasonable, but you don't have to read too far before you start to see inconsistencies
For example, on Tax Policy:
He wants to simplify the tax code. This is a good idea. The UK needs the same thing.
He wants to eliminate inheritance tax because "you've earned that money and paid tax on it when you earned it." Except of course if like him you inherited it.
He wants a zero income tax rate for people earning under $25,000. This is a good idea. He will pay for it by closing tax loopholes for the very rich. That souinds fair. How does eliminating inheritance tax help with that? Only very rich people pay it.
Inheritance has already been taxed before it was inherited. You are paying income and property taxes every year while you earn money and acquire property so when you die and pass down the money and property you've accumulated it's already been taxed. The taxes are attached to the wealth not the person. The recipient of the inheritance shouldn't have to pay taxes again and be double taxes just because somebody died. The inherited money and property will still get taxed going forward.
As someone who will likely get hit by inheritance tax...I don't have a problem with it. It only affects multi-million dollar estates and, quite frankly, the recipient did nothing to earn the money.
skyth wrote: As someone who will likely get hit by inheritance tax...I don't have a problem with it. It only affects multi-million dollar estates and, quite frankly, the recipient did nothing to earn the money.
The recipient is irrelevant to the fact that the estate was already taxed as it was created and will continue to be assessed the same annual taxes it already pays. It's double taxation.
Can you really not see the difference between "earning" money by doing a job of work, getting paid for it, and being taxed on the income, and your parents giving a load of money when they die, and not being taxed on it?
Can you really not understand the difference between $25,000 and $5,500,000?
skyth wrote: As someone who will likely get hit by inheritance tax...I don't have a problem with it. It only affects multi-million dollar estates and, quite frankly, the recipient did nothing to earn the money.
The recipient is irrelevant to the fact that the estate was already taxed as it was created and will continue to be assessed the same annual taxes it already pays. It's double taxation.
You could say the same about many other taxes. Sales tax for a start, taxes spending of money you have already been taxed on, but the point of it is (at least in the UK) luxury taxing. You tax people who can afford luxuries. The point of inheritance tax is the reduction on the pooling of wealth. The fact that the money is being taxed twice is irrelevant.
The inheritance tax is a tax on a transfer of wealth and new income, just like most other income taxes. The fact taxes may have been paid on the prior acquisition is irrelevant. Saying that the money had already been taxed is nonsensical- all money (except brand new issue) has "been taxed" and the subsequent recipient is taxed for the income. As a practical matter, federal estate taxes affect only a fraction of a percent of adult deaths and the exclusion amount is over $5 million. Additionally, the top rate is at one of its historically lowest points. As a policy matter, inheritance is typically used to persevere large states in the hands of the very wealthy and is the exact opposite of a meritocracy and recalls into the old problems that feudal Europe had with the nobility.
People who argue against a "death tax" are, in reality, voicing concerns for the heirs of the very wealthy not getting enough. It's almost never a real issue as trusts are usually done to bypass the taxes entirely.
skyth wrote: As someone who will likely get hit by inheritance tax...I don't have a problem with it. It only affects multi-million dollar estates and, quite frankly, the recipient did nothing to earn the money.
The recipient is irrelevant to the fact that the estate was already taxed as it was created and will continue to be assessed the same annual taxes it already pays. It's double taxation.
You could say the same about many other taxes. Sales tax for a start, taxes spending of money you have already been taxed on, but the point of it is (at least in the UK) luxury taxing. You tax people who can afford luxuries. The point of inheritance tax is the reduction on the pooling of wealth. The fact that the money is being taxed twice is irrelevant.
We don't have a VAT or federal sales tax. All of our sales taxes are state or local taxes. States typically have laws requiring budgets to be balanced and since only the Feds can print money states find new revenue streams through additional taxes. Sales taxes have probkems with being used for social engineering, i.e. sin taxes, and instances of high sales taxes tend to push certain purchases into other localities. It would be better and much more honest for governments to just set income taxes at the rates they feel are appropriate, stop spreading taxation out to disguise the amount people are paying, and let the electorate sort out rate disputes at the ballot box.
And on other news...Apparently the Republicans are doing whatever they can to keep the Democrats from seeing the witness records from the Bengazi farce hearings...
jmurph wrote: The inheritance tax is a tax on a transfer of wealth and new income, just like most other income taxes. The fact taxes may have been paid on the prior acquisition is irrelevant. Saying that the money had already been taxed is nonsensical- all money (except brand new issue) has "been taxed" and the subsequent recipient is taxed for the income. As a practical matter, federal estate taxes affect only a fraction of a percent of adult deaths and the exclusion amount is over $5 million. Additionally, the top rate is at one of its historically lowest points. As a policy matter, inheritance is typically used to persevere large states in the hands of the very wealthy and is the exact opposite of a meritocracy and recalls into the old problems that feudal Europe had with the nobility.
People who argue against a "death tax" are, in reality, voicing concerns for the heirs of the very wealthy not getting enough. It's almost never a real issue as trusts are usually done to bypass the taxes entirely.
It doesn't matter what the amount is or who it affects the principle remains the same. If the government wanted to tax more of that accumulated wealth they should raise the rates that were applicable while it was being amassed. If the government believes that wealth concentration is bad for the country then they should take legislative action to prevent it from happening instead of taking punitive action against a small fraction of super wealthy people. The fact that most people affected can manage to avoid paying it anyway is just another reason why we shouldn't have it in the first place. What do unenforceable laws accomplish?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kilkrazy wrote: Can you really not see the difference between "earning" money by doing a job of work, getting paid for it, and being taxed on the income, and your parents giving a load of money when they die, and not being taxed on it?
Can you really not understand the difference between $25,000 and $5,500,000?
If somebody worked to build wealth and paid all of the required taxes alon the way then I have no problem accepting the fact that the wealth that was accumulated belongs to the person who worked to accumulate it and that person can spend it however he/she wants when h/she is alive and can bequeath it however he/she wants when he/she dies. The amount of the money involved doesn't suddenly make it ok for the government to take more of it. Working hard to put $25,000 aside to leave to my kids is the same principle of working hard to put $25,000,000 aside for my kids when I die.
I would argue the law is practically unenforceable to protect the interests of the very wealthy. It is not punitive- the receivers are being taxed for income under an estate tax. And at a lesser rate than general income would be taxed with a greater exclusion. If anything, they are being rewarded. Doubly so when you consider that they can just bypass it most of the time anyway.
Why should our tax policy reward a tiny fraction of the population merely for having rich dead relatives? My argument would be to cut out the trusts and corporations in general and impose more general liabilities. The level of legal construction we do in this country is insane and serves only to serve the top echelons. Personal accountability and all that. Of course that will *never* happen and be argued as punishing the "wealth creators" etc. as if they are some benevolent class above the simple peasantry and ignoring the realities of true fee markets (where there is actual risk and competition).
It is immensely disappointing to see such blind admiration of plutocracy and abandonment of meritocracy.
jmurph wrote: I would argue the law is practically unenforceable to protect the interests of the very wealthy. It is not punitive- the receivers are being taxed for income under an estate tax. And at a lesser rate than general income would be taxed with a greater exclusion. If anything, they are being rewarded. Doubly so when you consider that they can just bypass it most of the time anyway.
Why should our tax policy reward a tiny fraction of the population merely for having rich dead relatives? My argument would be to cut out the trusts and corporations in general and impose more general liabilities. The level of legal construction we do in this country is insane and serves only to serve the top echelons. Personal accountability and all that. Of course that will *never* happen and be argued as punishing the "wealth creators" etc. as if they are some benevolent class above the simple peasantry and ignoring the realities of true fee markets (where there is actual risk and competition).
It is immensely disappointing to see such blind admiration of plutocracy and abandonment of meritocracy.
Tell me about it. John Oliver had a wonderful little segment on Estate Tax (and by wonderful, I mostly mean absolutely hilarious). Look at Trump and all the reports that have come out saying he could have made more money just investing the money he inherited. The idea that being rich automatically = will make new jobs, is silly, especially when talking about inherited wealth which more often than not is squandered by the generations that inherit it at a surprising rate. I get that no one really likes being taxed, but almost any time money changes hands outside of me taking out my wallet and giving you a twenty, there's taxes associated with it. Sales tax. Lottery. Game shows. Investment. Business revenues. Property. I don't know why anyone expects inheritance to be some special exception to this.
jmurph wrote: The inheritance tax is a tax on a transfer of wealth and new income, just like most other income taxes. The fact taxes may have been paid on the prior acquisition is irrelevant. Saying that the money had already been taxed is nonsensical- all money (except brand new issue) has "been taxed" and the subsequent recipient is taxed for the income. As a practical matter, federal estate taxes affect only a fraction of a percent of adult deaths and the exclusion amount is over $5 million. Additionally, the top rate is at one of its historically lowest points. As a policy matter, inheritance is typically used to persevere large states in the hands of the very wealthy and is the exact opposite of a meritocracy and recalls into the old problems that feudal Europe had with the nobility.
People who argue against a "death tax" are, in reality, voicing concerns for the heirs of the very wealthy not getting enough. It's almost never a real issue as trusts are usually done to bypass the taxes entirely.
It doesn't matter what the amount is or who it affects the principle remains the same. If the government wanted to tax more of that accumulated wealth they should raise the rates that were applicable while it was being amassed. If the government believes that wealth concentration is bad for the country then they should take legislative action to prevent it from happening instead of taking punitive action against a small fraction of super wealthy people. The fact that most people affected can manage to avoid paying it anyway is just another reason why we shouldn't have it in the first place. What do unenforceable laws accomplish?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kilkrazy wrote: Can you really not see the difference between "earning" money by doing a job of work, getting paid for it, and being taxed on the income, and your parents giving a load of money when they die, and not being taxed on it?
Can you really not understand the difference between $25,000 and $5,500,000?
If somebody worked to build wealth and paid all of the required taxes alon the way then I have no problem accepting the fact that the wealth that was accumulated belongs to the person who worked to accumulate it and that person can spend it however he/she wants when h/she is alive and can bequeath it however he/she wants when he/she dies. The amount of the money involved doesn't suddenly make it ok for the government to take more of it. Working hard to put $25,000 aside to leave to my kids is the same principle of working hard to put $25,000,000 aside for my kids when I die.
The point I am trying to make is that Trump's policy is idiotic and hypocritical.
Inheritance tax starts at $5,500,00, so only the very rich are affected by it, who are the class benefited by tax loopholes that Trump says he wants to close in order to finance tax cuts for people earning under $25,000. So why does he want to get rid of inheritance tax entirely, and how does he think it's going to help close this tax gap?.
jmurph wrote: I would argue the law is practically unenforceable to protect the interests of the very wealthy. It is not punitive- the receivers are being taxed for income under an estate tax. And at a lesser rate than general income would be taxed with a greater exclusion. If anything, they are being rewarded. Doubly so when you consider that they can just bypass it most of the time anyway.
Why should our tax policy reward a tiny fraction of the population merely for having rich dead relatives? My argument would be to cut out the trusts and corporations in general and impose more general liabilities. The level of legal construction we do in this country is insane and serves only to serve the top echelons. Personal accountability and all that. Of course that will *never* happen and be argued as punishing the "wealth creators" etc. as if they are some benevolent class above the simple peasantry and ignoring the realities of true fee markets (where there is actual risk and competition).
It is immensely disappointing to see such blind admiration of plutocracy and abandonment of meritocracy.
Tell me about it. John Oliver had a wonderful little segment on Estate Tax (and by wonderful, I mostly mean absolutely hilarious). Look at Trump and all the reports that have come out saying he could have made more money just investing the money he inherited. The idea that being rich automatically = will make new jobs, is silly, especially when talking about inherited wealth which more often than not is squandered by the generations that inherit it at a surprising rate. I get that no one really likes being taxed, but almost any time money changes hands outside of me taking out my wallet and giving you a twenty, there's taxes associated with it. Sales tax. Lottery. Game shows. Investment. Business revenues. Property. I don't know why anyone expects inheritance to be some special exception to this.
Because Inheritance Tax is the most efficient means to redistribute wealth.
What galls most people is that the system sets an arbitrary line when the tax is kicked in... it smacks of envy.
What galls most people is that the system sets an arbitrary line when the tax is kicked in... it smacks of envy.
No, what galls most people (who are galled) is that a lie has been built up to invest them in protecting the wealth of others with laws that don't benefit them because "wealth makers make jobs," ignoring that the people inheriting wealth didn't make a damn thing, let alone any lofty platitudes about jobs.
Our inheritance tax could probably be lower, but w/e, any level we set it at is going to be arbitrary. All tax levels are functionally arbitrary. I mean, why am I paying 15% on my household at $50,200, but 25% on the $1 I made at $50,201? It's all kind of arbitrary. Welcome to taxes, or anything having to do with laws really. Something being arbitrary is meaningless. It doesn't exist to be non-arbitrary, and probably can't exist without some arbitrariness.
jmurph wrote: The inheritance tax is a tax on a transfer of wealth and new income, just like most other income taxes. The fact taxes may have been paid on the prior acquisition is irrelevant. Saying that the money had already been taxed is nonsensical- all money (except brand new issue) has "been taxed" and the subsequent recipient is taxed for the income. As a practical matter, federal estate taxes affect only a fraction of a percent of adult deaths and the exclusion amount is over $5 million. Additionally, the top rate is at one of its historically lowest points. As a policy matter, inheritance is typically used to persevere large states in the hands of the very wealthy and is the exact opposite of a meritocracy and recalls into the old problems that feudal Europe had with the nobility.
People who argue against a "death tax" are, in reality, voicing concerns for the heirs of the very wealthy not getting enough. It's almost never a real issue as trusts are usually done to bypass the taxes entirely.
It doesn't matter what the amount is or who it affects the principle remains the same. If the government wanted to tax more of that accumulated wealth they should raise the rates that were applicable while it was being amassed. If the government believes that wealth concentration is bad for the country then they should take legislative action to prevent it from happening instead of taking punitive action against a small fraction of super wealthy people. The fact that most people affected can manage to avoid paying it anyway is just another reason why we shouldn't have it in the first place. What do unenforceable laws accomplish?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kilkrazy wrote: Can you really not see the difference between "earning" money by doing a job of work, getting paid for it, and being taxed on the income, and your parents giving a load of money when they die, and not being taxed on it?
Can you really not understand the difference between $25,000 and $5,500,000?
If somebody worked to build wealth and paid all of the required taxes alon the way then I have no problem accepting the fact that the wealth that was accumulated belongs to the person who worked to accumulate it and that person can spend it however he/she wants when h/she is alive and can bequeath it however he/she wants when he/she dies. The amount of the money involved doesn't suddenly make it ok for the government to take more of it. Working hard to put $25,000 aside to leave to my kids is the same principle of working hard to put $25,000,000 aside for my kids when I die.
The point I am trying to make is that Trump's policy is idiotic and hypocritical.
Inheritance tax starts at $5,500,00, so only the very rich are affected by it, who are the class benefited by tax loopholes that Trump says he wants to close in order to finance tax cuts for people earning under $25,000. So why does he want to get rid of inheritance tax entirely, and how does he think it's going to help close this tax gap?.
I doubt Trump has filed his own taxes in decades and isn't even aware of all the inconsistencies and loopholes. Eliminating deductions for higher tax brackets and simply collecting a set percentage of their net earnings would be better than the current system. Doing it for all tax brackets would be ideal.
Trump hasn't been consistent in any of his policies or campaign rhetoric. He's a fast talking narcissistic salesman who doesn't care about being consistent, right or truthful.
While turnout for the Republican primaries has been up a majority of the people participating are choosing somebody other than Trump. This past Tursday Trump averaged 40% of the votes and in previous primaries he averaged 35% of the vote. A plurality of voters are choosing not to vote for him and exit polls of those voters show that they are unlikely to vote for Trump if he wins the nomination.
In terms of popular vote Trump trails Clinton by 1.1 million votes and Clinton is running a pretty mundane campaign and everyone expects her to win. The least compelling Democrat candidate is getting more votes than the most bombastic and media hyped Republican candidate.
As time goes on Trump will become less appealing. He has higher unfavorable a than Hillary it's very difficult for him win over voters and a plurality of Republican voters are deliberately voting for other people even when those other candidates are unlikely to win.
What galls most people is that the system sets an arbitrary line when the tax is kicked in... it smacks of envy.
No, what galls most people (who are galled) is that a lie has been built up to invest them in protecting the wealth of others with laws that don't benefit them because "wealth makers make jobs," ignoring that the people inheriting wealth didn't make a damn thing, let alone any lofty platitudes about jobs.
Our inheritance tax could probably be lower, but w/e, any level we set it at is going to be arbitrary. All tax levels are functionally arbitrary. I mean, why am I paying 15% on my household at $50,200, but 25% on the $1 I made at $50,201? It's all kind of arbitrary. Welcome to taxes, or anything having to do with laws really. Something being arbitrary is meaningless. It doesn't exist to be non-arbitrary, and probably can't exist without some arbitrariness.
So give a reason why your inheritance should be taxed.
So give a reason why your inheritance should be taxed.
Why should anything be taxed?
It's the fact that, *we* make conscious decisions to work towards providing for our children and *we* shouldn't have to accept that the government has a right to redistribute the our wealth upon our death, at some arbitrary number because enough people thinks "you've made enough".
Isn't it *my* property and wealth to dispose of as I see fit while I am alive?
So give a reason why your inheritance should be taxed.
Why should anything be taxed?
It's the fact that, *we* make conscious decisions to work towards providing for our children and *we* shouldn't have to accept that the government has a right to redistribute the our wealth upon our death, at some arbitrary number because enough people thinks "you've made enough".
Isn't it *my* property and wealth to dispose of as I see fit while I am alive?
Technically, you can't even give your adult child anymore than 10,000 a year or so without it being taxed, so no, you can't dispose of wealth while your alive in any way you want without it being taxed after a certain point.
I doubt Trump has filed his own taxes in decades and isn't even aware of all the inconsistencies and loopholes. Eliminating deductions for higher tax brackets and simply collecting a set percentage of their net earnings would be better than the current system. Doing it for all tax brackets would be ideal.
Trump hasn't been consistent in any of his policies or campaign rhetoric. He's a fast talking narcissistic salesman who doesn't care about being consistent, right or truthful.
...
This is the explanation, and it is not an excuse for Trump. He's trying to be a candidiate for president. He should be able to put together a coherent policy if he plans to introduce it in his campaign.
Right... it's galling that upon my death, the Taxman swoops in to take his cut.
I’ve paid the tax on this money when I earned it, on the interest this money has accrued whilst in the bank, paid the tax on my assets such as my home, car and so on. These taxes are paid while I'm alive and actively contributing to society.
But, for the taxman to come after my death... just because I died, just feels wrong and smacks of wealth envy/greed.
Probably a better mechanism is to reclassify inheritances as simply "income", which will still take a large bite into that wealth...
jmurph wrote: I would argue the law is practically unenforceable to protect the interests of the very wealthy. It is not punitive- the receivers are being taxed for income under an estate tax. And at a lesser rate than general income would be taxed with a greater exclusion. If anything, they are being rewarded. Doubly so when you consider that they can just bypass it most of the time anyway.
Why should our tax policy reward a tiny fraction of the population merely for having rich dead relatives? My argument would be to cut out the trusts and corporations in general and impose more general liabilities. The level of legal construction we do in this country is insane and serves only to serve the top echelons. Personal accountability and all that. Of course that will *never* happen and be argued as punishing the "wealth creators" etc. as if they are some benevolent class above the simple peasantry and ignoring the realities of true fee markets (where there is actual risk and competition).
It is immensely disappointing to see such blind admiration of plutocracy and abandonment of meritocracy.
Tell me about it. John Oliver had a wonderful little segment on Estate Tax (and by wonderful, I mostly mean absolutely hilarious). Look at Trump and all the reports that have come out saying he could have made more money just investing the money he inherited. The idea that being rich automatically = will make new jobs, is silly, especially when talking about inherited wealth which more often than not is squandered by the generations that inherit it at a surprising rate. I get that no one really likes being taxed, but almost any time money changes hands outside of me taking out my wallet and giving you a twenty, there's taxes associated with it. Sales tax. Lottery. Game shows. Investment. Business revenues. Property. I don't know why anyone expects inheritance to be some special exception to this.
When the government squanders billions of dollars they call it "stimulus" and claim that it benefits the economy. When people squander a millions of dollars of inheritance or lotto winning then that too should stimulate the economy for our benefit. If it's beneficial why should the government stop it?
It's the fact that, *we* make conscious decisions to work towards providing for our children and *we* shouldn't have to accept that the government has a right to redistribute the our wealth upon our death, at some arbitrary number because enough people thinks "you've made enough".
By that logic, the government shouldn't tax anything because you worked hard for it and how dare they say you have to pay them so they can provide the essential services and securities that maintain an ordered society in which you could have made all that money.
The "*we*" bit reeks a bit of pretentiousness by the way. What? You think no one but millionaires who can afford to leave vast wealth to their children work to provide for their children? Guess all those poor peasants just shouldn't have any money until they've magically elevated themselves into the upper class by their boot straps.
Isn't it *my* property and wealth to dispose of as I see fit while I am alive?
Until you're dead. Then the inheritors have to pay a tax on it
Right... it's galling that upon my death, the Taxman swoops in to take his cut.
I’ve paid the tax on this money when I earned it, on the interest this money has accrued whilst in the bank, paid the tax on my assets such as my home, car and so on. These taxes are paid while I'm alive and actively contributing to society.
But, for the taxman to come after my death... just because I died, just feels wrong and smacks of wealth envy/greed.
Probably a better mechanism is to reclassify inheritances as simply "income", which will still take a large bite into that wealth...
Except, the taxman isn't swooping in on YOUR money/property... he/she is swooping in on you kids' new money/property Quite a difference.
You can't hire your kids without having to pay tax on the money you give them. You can't give your kids more than a small present without having to pay tax on the money you give them. You can't bequest your kids more then 5 million dollars without having to pay tax on the money you give them.
When someone gains wealth, it is taxes. Always had been, always will be. The "it's already been taxed" argument is nonsensical since all money is taxed at every stage.
And sorry, but the biggest determinating factor in being wealthy is not hard work. Hard work is found in all levels of wealth, though it tends to decline as your wealth increases. Hard work only has a hygeine effect on wealth as it is harder to build wealth without it, but it doesn't actively contribute to it.
The primary determination of wealth is luck...either through genetics, upbringing, where you were born, other people taking or not taking actions, etc.
The wealthy shouldn't get preferential tax treatment.
skyth wrote: And sorry, but the biggest determinating factor in being wealthy is not hard work. Hard work is found in all levels of wealth, though it tends to decline as your wealth increases. Hard work only has a hygeine effect on wealth as it is harder to build wealth without it, but it doesn't actively contribute to it.
The primary determination of wealth is luck...either through genetics, upbringing, where you were born, other people taking or not taking actions, etc.
The wealthy shouldn't get preferential tax treatment.
So it's ok for 99% percent of the people who die and bequeath wealth to their descendents to not have that inheritance pay the estate tax but it's ok for the top 1% to have to pay it even though most just hire accountants and lawyers to work around it anyway? It's the exact same principle the only thing changing is the amount and the number of people it affects is tiny so why be punitive towards those people just because?
It's the fact that, *we* make conscious decisions to work towards providing for our children and *we* shouldn't have to accept that the government has a right to redistribute the our wealth upon our death, at some arbitrary number because enough people thinks "you've made enough".
By that logic, the government shouldn't tax anything because you worked hard for it and how dare they say you have to pay them so they can provide the essential services and securities that maintain an ordered society in which you could have made all that money.
No... that isn't the logic.
The "*we*" bit reeks a bit of pretentiousness by the way. What? You think no one but millionaires who can afford to leave vast wealth to their children work to provide for their children? Guess all those poor peasants just shouldn't have any money until they've magically elevated themselves into the upper class by their boot straps.
No where in my written sentence stated nor implied that poor people shouldn't have money. You are tugging that goalpost pretty hard...
Isn't it *my* property and wealth to dispose of as I see fit while I am alive?
Until you're dead. Then the inheritors have to pay a tax on it
Eh, it's at best a fairly low brow pop culture reference that I fully expected would fly over some heads
It's the exact same principle the only thing changing is the amount and the number of people it affects is tiny so why be punitive towards those people just because?
At every point that money is taxed, having more is taxed more because duh, a millionaire can afford to give more to society that the local burger flipper at Wendy's and most people aren't going to shed a tear that a millionaire had to pay more than the burger flipper because they're a millionaire and complaining about paying more just reeks of greed and envy.
There's obviously only one choice. The oppressed must rise up and overthrow the corrupt government that treats their vast stores of money differently from everyone else's measily piggy banks! How dare the huddled masses tell the mighty they shouldn't be free to do as they please! Shame on them!
CptJake wrote: 'We' don't create jobs. 'We' create demand. Someone has to pony up the capital to start a business to generate product/services to meet the demand. That business provides/creates the jobs. Yes, if demand dries up, the business and the jobs go away. But there is plenty of demand NOT creating jobs, because the demand can't be met while generating enough profit for it to be worth someone dumping in capital and starting the business needed (and providing the jobs) to meet the demand. Inner city 'food deserts' are a good example. There is demand not being met, regardless of the available consumers, and jobs that don't exist to meet that demand regardless of the available consumers. Why? Because for a variety of reasons the profit motive is not great enough for someone to invest in business (which provide jobs...) which leaves the demand unmet.
You guys are actually arguing chicken and the egg here. "The chicken creates the egg." "No, actually the egg creates the chicken."
Your Eco 101 was different. I could start up a factory and generate 10s of thousands of horse buggies or millions of vacuum tube radios, creating a massive supply of them. That supply would not create a demand for those items.
Neither is arguing that inherited wealth should suddenly be given some special reprieve because it is inherited, especially since none of the platitudes usually thrown around to protect vast sums of wealth from those mean IRS paper pushers like "hard work" don't even apply to inherited wealth, which the inheritors didn't work for
No where in my written sentence stated nor implied that poor people shouldn't have money.
I apparently made a typo replace money with children
skyth wrote: And sorry, but the biggest determinating factor in being wealthy is not hard work. Hard work is found in all levels of wealth, though it tends to decline as your wealth increases. Hard work only has a hygeine effect on wealth as it is harder to build wealth without it, but it doesn't actively contribute to it.
The primary determination of wealth is luck...either through genetics, upbringing, where you were born, other people taking or not taking actions, etc.
The wealthy shouldn't get preferential tax treatment.
So it's ok for 99% percent of the people who die and bequeath wealth to their descendents to not have that inheritance pay the estate tax but it's ok for the top 1% to have to pay it even though most just hire accountants and lawyers to work around it anyway? It's the exact same principle the only thing changing is the amount and the number of people it affects is tiny so why be punitive towards those people just because?
That's an interesting binary choice there...
It could be improved by getting rid of the trust, etc options and lowering the ceiling a bit. But the decendants did nothing to earn the money so it should be taxed. Plus at that level, the majority was likely not earned through hard work and thus likely taxed at a lower level than money earned through actual hard work.
Not sure how inheritance tax is any different than being taxed on lottery winnings. Being born lucky is basically winning the lottery and they tax the hell out of lottery winnings.
skyth wrote: And sorry, but the biggest determinating factor in being wealthy is not hard work. Hard work is found in all levels of wealth, though it tends to decline as your wealth increases. Hard work only has a hygeine effect on wealth as it is harder to build wealth without it, but it doesn't actively contribute to it.
The primary determination of wealth is luck...either through genetics, upbringing, where you were born, other people taking or not taking actions, etc.
The wealthy shouldn't get preferential tax treatment.
So it's ok for 99% percent of the people who die and bequeath wealth to their descendents to not have that inheritance pay the estate tax but it's ok for the top 1% to have to pay it even though most just hire accountants and lawyers to work around it anyway? It's the exact same principle the only thing changing is the amount and the number of people it affects is tiny so why be punitive towards those people just because?
That's an interesting binary choice there...
It could be improved by getting rid of the trust, etc options and lowering the ceiling a bit. But the decendants did nothing to earn the money so it should be taxed. Plus at that level, the majority was likely not earned through hard work and thus likely taxed at a lower level than money earned through actual hard work.
Basing the reason for taxing estates based solely on the amount of money involved is flawed. Either estates should be taxed or they shouldn;t. The government is fine with not levying the estate tax against the vast majority of inheritances so why are all the reasons that apply to supporting that decision suddenly no longer applicable just because an estate is worth more? If it's ok to tax an inheritance simply because the people inheriting it didn't earn it then why don't we tax every inheritance whether it's $200 or $200,000,000? The descendents didn't earn the $200 either so why shouldn't the government get some of it?
skyth wrote: Lottery winnings are taxed at a higher rate than inheritance.
Not the point i was trying to make
Both are parties receiving large sums of money due to basically luck, but one deserves to be taxed and one doesnt? Not sure I see why inheritance shouldnt be taxed if its the equivalent of winning the life lottery.
I was supporting your point...As you are taxed less for inheriting money as opposed to winning it yourself. They should be equivalently taxed really...but inheritance gets the better deal and still people complain about it...
skyth wrote: I was supporting your point...As you are taxed less for inheriting money as opposed to winning it yourself. They should be equivalently taxed really...but inheritance gets the better deal and still people complain about it...
LordofHats wrote: Eh, it's at best a fairly low brow pop culture reference that I fully expected would fly over some heads
It's the exact same principle the only thing changing is the amount and the number of people it affects is tiny so why be punitive towards those people just because?
At every point that money is taxed, having more is taxed more because duh, a millionaire can afford to give more to society that the local burger flipper at Wendy's and most people aren't going to shed a tear that a millionaire had to pay more than the burger flipper because they're a millionaire and complaining about paying more just reeks of greed and envy.
There's obviously only one choice. The oppressed must rise up and overthrow the corrupt government that treats their vast stores of money differently from everyone else's measily piggy banks! How dare the huddled masses tell the mighty they shouldn't be free to do as they please! Shame on them!
Everyone who earns income pays income tax, everyone who owns property pays property tax, everyone who buys stuff pays sales tax, but only a tiny percentage of people who get an inheritance pay the estate tax. If the government can't convince people on its merits that it's a tax that should apply to everyone then it's not a tax that should be levied. Everyone who lives in a society benefits from that society and owes a contribution to that society to keep it functioning.
But not everyone can afford to help. Plus inheritance is something that is completely unearned and should be treated differently.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Plus your examples are not correct. Not all income pays income tax not all property pays property tax and not all purchases pay sales tax...And with good reason.
skyth wrote: But not everyone can afford to help. Plus inheritance is something that is completely unearned and should be treated differently.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Plus your examples are not correct. Not all income pays income tax not all property pays property tax and not all purchases pay sales tax...And with good reason.
Property that is subject to tax is taxes regardless of who owns it, items that require sales tax are taxes regardless of who buys them and paychecks are going to have withholdings even if you qualify to get it all back.
Again, you're not addressing the argument: If we should tax inheritance because it's unearned income why don't we tax all inheritances since they're all equally unearned? If the primary reason to tax an inheritance is the simple fact that it's an inheritance then all inheritances are equally deserving of being taxed.
Everyone who earns income pays income tax, everyone who owns property pays property tax, everyone who buys stuff pays sales tax, but only a tiny percentage of people who get an inheritance pay the estate tax.
The government probably operates at a loss processing many income and property taxes, because it just gives huge sums of money back to the taxed because they don't have any money. The government would save money not taxing large numbers of the populace, because processing documents for money you're just going to give back is the definition of waste. The reality though is that we aren't structured in a way that allows the government to know how much money its keeping and giving back till taxes are filled and processed (I don't know that a system can exist to correct that innate problem), so that loss is just part of year to year operation of the system.
Inheritance is completely different. Because of all those other taxes that have been filed (income, property, capital gains etc etc) the government actually knows to a degree what your estate is worth, and can actually choose not to tax estates that aren't worth it. Why the hell would we waste money processing a tax on a $200 inheritance? The processing alone must cost the government vastly more than $200, let alone whatever % of that 200 its supposedly keeping. You're literally arguing for government waste.
We could probably lower the current threshold for inheritance tax by a lot, and I have no real issue with that, but then again the whole reason inheritance tax is the way it is right now is because the rich constantly complain about it, and unable to get rid of it they've just used lobbying and campaign finance to ensure the system is filled with holes that allow them to escape paying, assuming they would presumably pay anything anyway because we've set the threshold so high.
Everyone who lives in a society benefits from that society and owes a contribution to that society to keep it functioning.
And people who not only benefit more, but can afford to pay more, should. Vast wealth is of greater utility in an ordered society. This is where that "you didn't build that" speech people are always making fun of comes in, which is where I quip that people making fun of "you didn't build that" are saying far more about themselves than they ever will about who uttered the words to begin with.
skyth wrote: But not everyone can afford to help. Plus inheritance is something that is completely unearned and should be treated differently.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Plus your examples are not correct. Not all income pays income tax not all property pays property tax and not all purchases pay sales tax...And with good reason.
Property that is subject to tax is taxes regardless of who owns it
False. Plus not all property is taxed.
, items that require sales tax are taxes regardless of who buys them
False
and paychecks are going to have withholdings even if you qualify to get it all back.
False.
Again, you're not addressing the argument: If we should tax inheritance because it's unearned income why don't we tax all inheritances since they're all equally unearned? If the primary reason to tax an inheritance is the simple fact that it's an inheritance then all inheritances are equally deserving of being taxed.
If you paid attention, you would have noticed I addressed that with my first sentence.
skyth wrote: But not everyone can afford to help. Plus inheritance is something that is completely unearned and should be treated differently.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Plus your examples are not correct. Not all income pays income tax not all property pays property tax and not all purchases pay sales tax...And with good reason.
Property that is subject to tax is taxes regardless of who owns it
False. Plus not all property is taxed.
, items that require sales tax are taxes regardless of who buys them
False
and paychecks are going to have withholdings even if you qualify to get it all back.
False.
Again, you're not addressing the argument: If we should tax inheritance because it's unearned income why don't we tax all inheritances since they're all equally unearned? If the primary reason to tax an inheritance is the simple fact that it's an inheritance then all inheritances are equally deserving of being taxed.
If you paid attention, you would have noticed I addressed that with my first sentence.
So your position is that its ok for the government to not tax unearned inheritances as long as the amount being inherited is less than whatever amount you think is excessive wealth? So in your view the government should not tax all inheritances because it's unearned income but that the government should instead determine which people deserve untaxed inheritances and which don't?
Also, every paycheck and W-2 I ever got while working jobs that paid minimum wage or less had withholdings withheld even though I got most of it back in my refund.
Everyone who earns income pays income tax, everyone who owns property pays property tax, everyone who buys stuff pays sales tax, but only a tiny percentage of people who get an inheritance pay the estate tax.
The government probably operates at a loss processing many income and property taxes, because it just gives huge sums of money back to the taxed because they don't have any money. The government would save money not taxing large numbers of the populace, because processing documents for money you're just going to give back is the definition of waste. The reality though is that we aren't structured in a way that allows the government to know how much money its keeping and giving back till taxes are filled and processed (I don't know that a system can exist to correct that innate problem), so that loss is just part of year to year operation of the system.
Inheritance is completely different. Because of all those other taxes that have been filed (income, property, capital gains etc etc) the government actually knows to a degree what your estate is worth, and can actually choose not to tax estates that aren't worth it. Why the hell would we waste money processing a tax on a $200 inheritance? The processing alone must cost the government vastly more than $200, let alone whatever % of that 200 its supposedly keeping. You're literally arguing for government waste.
We could probably lower the current threshold for inheritance tax by a lot, and I have no real issue with that, but then again the whole reason inheritance tax is the way it is right now is because the rich constantly complain about it, and unable to get rid of it they've just used lobbying and campaign finance to ensure the system is filled with holes that allow them to escape paying, assuming they would presumably pay anything anyway because we've set the threshold so high.
Everyone who lives in a society benefits from that society and owes a contribution to that society to keep it functioning.
And people who not only benefit more, but can afford to pay more, should. Vast wealth is of greater utility in an ordered society. This is where that "you didn't build that" speech people are always making fun of comes in, which is where I quip that people making fun of "you didn't build that" are saying far more about themselves than they ever will about who uttered the words to begin with.
The federal government has been operating at a loss for decades because the majority of the money it spends is borrowed and taxes are just used to pay the debt service.
The federal government has been operating at a loss for decades because the majority of the money it spends is borrowed and taxes are just used to pay the debt service.
You're entire response to Skyth was answered by my post, which you apparently didn't bother to actually read.
This is why I mostly fall back on snarky pop culture references. At least those are fun.
I'm not arguing for equality I'm arguing for consistency. Either inheritances should be taxed or they shouldn't. The government should be targeting a specific minority of people and forcing them to pay a punitive tax that nobody else has to pay on a transaction that is undertaken by a large segment of the populace.
If you want a progressive estate tax that affects everyone I could understand that but I don't see the benefit in having the government telling people that inheritances aren't taxable for most people but are punitively taxed for a select minority. The government shouldn't play favorites or engage in convoluted social engineering schemes.
skyth wrote: But not everyone can afford to help. Plus inheritance is something that is completely unearned and should be treated differently.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Plus your examples are not correct. Not all income pays income tax not all property pays property tax and not all purchases pay sales tax...And with good reason.
Property that is subject to tax is taxes regardless of who owns it
False. Plus not all property is taxed.
, items that require sales tax are taxes regardless of who buys them
False
and paychecks are going to have withholdings even if you qualify to get it all back.
False.
Again, you're not addressing the argument: If we should tax inheritance because it's unearned income why don't we tax all inheritances since they're all equally unearned? If the primary reason to tax an inheritance is the simple fact that it's an inheritance then all inheritances are equally deserving of being taxed.
If you paid attention, you would have noticed I addressed that with my first sentence.
So your position is that its ok for the government to not tax unearned inheritances as long as the amount being inherited is less than whatever amount you think is excessive wealth?
Yep. I'm very fine with a progressive tax structure. It also comes down to family homes and heirlooms...Stuff that is not easy to liquidate to pay the taxes. The limit is partially an allowance for that. Higher wealth means that there is more liquidity and less 'heirloom' type things proportionately. Could the limit be lower? Sure.
I mean, we have the standard deduction and exemptions for a good and similar reason.
Also, every paycheck and W-2 I ever got while working jobs that paid minimum wage or less had withholdings withheld even though I got most of it back in my refund.
Then you had your withholdings set up wrong unless you wanted to get a refund at the end of the year. Regardless, you didn't pay any actual income tax.
The federal government has been operating at a loss for decades because the majority of the money it spends is borrowed and taxes are just used to pay the debt service.
You're entire response to Skyth was answered by my post, which you apparently didn't bother to actually read.
This is why I mostly fall back on snarky pop culture references. At least those are fun.
You're two different people, why would I attribute your responses to somebody else?
It would be easier for the federal government to evaluate how much money they are keeping or refunding people if everyone filed taxes quarterly like self employed people instead of annually. It would also be easier if the IRS just sent people invoices instead of taking all the money upfront and then figuring out how much to give back.
Prestor Jon wrote: a transaction that is undertaken by a large segment of the populace.
I was unaware that most people had $5,000,000 in their bank accounts.
Wow. That whole "wealth inequality" thing is a real myth ain't it?
You really didn't understand that I was saying that a large segment of the population receives some form of inheritance when a parent or family member dies but the government only wants to tax a very specific subset of that group? Really?
If you want to understand the angry support for Donald Trump, seek out your local German Idealist philosopher. And to help you face your own responsibility, contact your friendly neighborhood Existentialist. Leaving aside G. W. F. Hegel’s concept of thesis provoking antithesis and leading to synthesis, which may apply ferociously this election year, Hegel offered one of our most valuable insights into the individual and his relationship to society: the concept of Anerkennung, or “recognition.”
Simply put, Hegel proposed that all humans crave recognition from other humans. He didn’t mean they expected adulation, but only that the individual requires the validation he receives when other men acknowledge his shared humanity (however humble his station). The janitor would like you to say, “Good morning!” as you rush past. Donald Trump possessed the genius to grasp the craving for recognition in a huge swathe of the electorate ignored or actively insulted by the (previously) reigning political parties.
Dismissed by the custodians of wealth; badgered by the politically correct; and taken for granted by those who make our laws; forgotten millions were ripe for Trump’s message — which reduces neatly to “You matter!” Those of us who value developed ideas miss Trump’s essence. His stage persona embodies the anger of those who feel left behind, who feel threatened, who feel cheated, and who feel the basic human need to blame somebody else, whether a horned devil or a government, for their disappointments.
The unnerving dynamism of a Trump-for-president rally comes from the symbiosis between the would-be candidate’s narcissism (the need for recognition run amok), fed enthusiastically by the crowd, and his willingness to absolve the crowd’s members of social or personal guilt (Trump’s cadenced repetitions are those of a skillful preacher). Whereas other candidates, of either party, ask us to blame ourselves or take responsibility, Trump tells his followers “Nothing’s your fault. It’s them, it’s them, it’s them.”
Trump gives his supporters recognition by the private plane-load. In turn, his enchanted acolytes have no ears for his contradictions, hypocrisy, and vacuity. Nothing matters except the cult-like faith of those who believe that, at last, a candidate speaks on their behalf — and offers them that lip-smacking dish, revenge.
The greatest mistake political commentators have made in regard to Trump has been to believe that logic and substance must triumph. Populist movements are never about the rational side of existence. They’re about the inchoate revolt of the unrecognized. The great mass movements of the 20th century had varying degrees of ideological coherence, but all appealed viscerally to the “forgotten man.” We, the fortunate, created Trump when we failed to shake the hand of the repairman. RELATED: Trumpism: ‘It’s the Culture, Stupid’
To collectivize and simplify a message of Existentialist philosophy, our humanity lies in our freedom to choose. Attacked by a furious dog, we still have the choice of fighting back, attempting to placate the beast, or running away. Our choices when assailed by life’s dilemmas validate our worth as human beings. But the odious Sartre and admirable Camus also recognized that the reality of our lives, from laws to family ties, constrains our choices — we do not exist in isolation. But when the constraints become intolerable — when the walls close in — the individual of character rebels, despite the consequences.
The political, intellectual, financial, and cultural elites of the United States of America intolerably constrained the choices available to tens of millions of citizens they disdained. The political parties gave only the illusion of choice. The intelligentsia mocked the white working man and the working woman without a college degree (feminists must be slender and articulate). Financial elites exploited and discarded the paycheck poor. And our cultural elites championed those who live on government hand-outs while stereotyping the working class and lower-middle class as boorish, benighted, and bigoted.
How can believing Christians support Trump, whose demonstrated values run counter to every teaching of the Sermon on the Mount? For those weary of unanswered prayers, he offers an electoral catharsis, an End of Days for unacceptable compromises in Congress. In all these cases, those in power mocked, badgered, and dismissed the many who now imagine a savior in Trump. We refused to recognize the validity of our fellow citizens who couldn’t afford a Tesla.
We did our best to deny our fellow Americans a public voice and reasonable choices. So we should not be surprised when they shout in support of an unreasonable choice. Now the rest of us, we who, with a muttered curse, race past the battered pick-up blocking traffic, may face a terrible choice of our own in November.
That dynamic could also be said a bit about Sanders' rise as well... no?
Prestor Jon wrote: You're two different people, why would I attribute your responses to somebody else?
Because I explained in more words why the argument your throwing out is nonsense. Inheritance tax is not the same thing as income, property, capital gains, or <insert other basic level taxes as they apply>. The government has no choice but to do things like withhold earnings and process paperwork wastefully under the current tax system. That's the way it's structured. The government however can choose not to waste money processing pointlessly inheritances that are just going to result in a net loss, because previously processed taxes provide a framework that allows a distinction to be made.
And that's just the pragmatic reasons for why $200 is treated differently from $200,000,000. There's also the obvious difference that $200,000,000 is 1,000,000x as much money $200, and its bonkers to think those two sums would ever be handled in a "consistent" manner by any administrative body.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Prestor Jon wrote: You really didn't understand that I was saying that a large segment of the population receives some form of inheritance when a parent or family member dies but the government only wants to tax a very specific subset of that group? Really?
You're the one who asked why $200 is treated differently than $200,000,000.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you want to have an intelligent conversation, ask intelligent questions. It was probably a waste to try explaining it in the first place. No one should need the difference between 2 zeros and 8 zeros explained.
That dynamic could also be said a bit about Sanders' rise as well... no?
That was probably one of the best candid articles I've seen written about Trump the entire primary season, and I think it does apply to Sanders as well.
I think the reason Sanders hasn't blown up in the same manner as Trump is probably two fold. The innate conflicts that give Trump so much popularity in the electorate, are also conflicts now innate to the Republican party itself. The party's structure is more sensitive to grass roots momentum, as we learned from the Tea Party. Those issues haven't crept as deeply in the Democratic Party due to it's structure (the much discussed super delegates for example).
Second, I think there's also the ideological issue. The Republicans have made personal responsibility a major calling card, which means that when the party fails to live up to that card, there's going to be much bigger backlash. A beast of their own making so to speak. The Democrats also espouse personal responsibility, but they espouse it different with a larger focus on systems and their platform comes packaged with support for welfare systems and the social safety net. That I think placates the people on that side of the line, whose counterparts on the other side are throwing their arms up in the air like they just don't care.
I think a big part of why Trump is such a sensation isn't just that he talks crazy stuff, but he has so many people listening to it. Sanders has lots of support (easily far more than I think anyone was expecting him to have), but it's just not as sensational. Plus, damning Wall Street is pretty hip for something politicians have been doing for decades. Trumps popularity could also have as much to do with internal part shock as anything. All the people rallying "we have to stop Trump" have probably made even more of a spectacle out of him. Comparatively, the Dems haven't been on a "we have to stop Bernie" binge, and Hillary has been fairly tame in her dealings with him.
Property that is subject to tax is taxes regardless of who owns it,
Explain to me then, how is it that Walmart owns property in Oregon, yet hasn't paid property taxes since putting a building on it?
Also... without quoting the person, here's the best guess reason that I have why the 1% are supposed to pay inheritance tax, but us mere plebs do not:
The average funeral costs 7-10k (USD)... how many of us can legitimately pay that right out of pocket right now? The simple fact is, for most poorer people, paying for a funeral can break them for months or even years. Often times, people won't see a single dime of their parents' "inheritance" because after its been liquidated, it goes straight to the funeral costs. Despite what people say about Gov't and the tax collectors, they aren't completely heartless bastards
Property that is subject to tax is taxes regardless of who owns it,
Explain to me then, how is it that Walmart owns property in Oregon, yet hasn't paid property taxes since putting a building on it?
Also... without quoting the person, here's the best guess reason that I have why the 1% are supposed to pay inheritance tax, but us mere plebs do not:
The average funeral costs 7-10k (USD)... how many of us can legitimately pay that right out of pocket right now? The simple fact is, for most poorer people, paying for a funeral can break them for months or even years. Often times, people won't see a single dime of their parents' "inheritance" because after its been liquidated, it goes straight to the funeral costs. Despite what people say about Gov't and the tax collectors, they aren't completely heartless bastards
A quick Google search resulted in this article that says Walmart pays property taxes:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Asking why we do not do the same thing with $200 and $2 million is asking why we do not do the same thing with two different things.
How do you define a "large segment of the population"? According to a 2012 study, roughly half of Americans die with virtually no assets. That seems pretty large.
Even for those who do get something, the difference between the top fraction (1%) and the rest I pretty appalling. Those in the middling wealth ranges—$25k-$50k, $50k-$100k, and $100k-$250k—have received inheritances of $14.8k, $22.5k, and $51.4k respectively. The top 1% average $2.7 million in inheritance. Those with over $1 million in wealth received average inheritances over $3 million.
So you can definitely see the skew here- it's not even the top 1% (as that is an average) it's a fraction of that.
Just like our income tax, we use a system with some exclusion. Unlike or income tax you get a $5 mil freebie. Who does that necessarily benefit? And, again, that is before you get into trusts designed to circumvent even that. Or gifts, access to better schools, etc.
I say just treat it as straight up income. That's what it is, after all.
d-usa wrote: You can't hire your kids without having to pay tax on the money you give them. You can't give your kids more than a small present without having to pay tax on the money you give them. You can't bequest your kids more then 5 million dollars without having to pay tax on the money you give them.
When someone gains wealth, it is taxes. Always had been, always will be. The "it's already been taxed" argument is nonsensical since all money is taxed at every stage.
Agree. If Paris Hilton wasn't rich, she'd just be what the locals call 'poor', and humiliating sex tapes about average every day poor people isn't anywhere near as entertaining as sex tapes about celebutantes
So give a reason why your inheritance should be taxed.
Because my kids should pull on their own bootstraps like I did?
Also, because there's a 99% chance that the government will do something better with the money than people like Paris Hilton.
From that perspective, why not have the Gov't control all of everyone's money and property? Surely citizens can't be trusted to be responsible enough, and the gov't can easily find something 'better' to do with your country's wealth, right?
At one location.... And from further looking up, that particular location is newer than the specific one I was referring to... So it would seem that the State of Oregon has gotten a bit wiser in dealing with the evil smiley-face, and gets them to pay for stuff up front.
I think we can probably take it as a given that any business that can afford an army of lawyers will put at least some of them to work trying to find ways to help the business not pay the fees its supposed to. Not just Wal-Mart
A Town Called Malus wrote: Also, because there's a 99% chance that the government will do something better with the money than people like Paris Hilton.
Do you understand you are embracing one of the fundamental tenets of Marxist Communism when you suggest the government should take and spend Paris Hilton's money because she wouldn't do it right?
LordofHats wrote: Eh, it's at best a fairly low brow pop culture reference that I fully expected would fly over some heads
It's the exact same principle the only thing changing is the amount and the number of people it affects is tiny so why be punitive towards those people just because?
At every point that money is taxed, having more is taxed more because duh, a millionaire can afford to give more to society that the local burger flipper at Wendy's and most people aren't going to shed a tear that a millionaire had to pay more than the burger flipper because they're a millionaire and complaining about paying more just reeks of greed and envy.
There's obviously only one choice. The oppressed must rise up and overthrow the corrupt government that treats their vast stores of money differently from everyone else's measily piggy banks! How dare the huddled masses tell the mighty they shouldn't be free to do as they please! Shame on them!
Everyone who earns income pays income tax, everyone who owns property pays property tax, everyone who buys stuff pays sales tax, but only a tiny percentage of people who get an inheritance pay the estate tax. If the government can't convince people on its merits that it's a tax that should apply to everyone then it's not a tax that should be levied. Everyone who lives in a society benefits from that society and owes a contribution to that society to keep it functioning.
Whilst I disagree with your premise, Eeveryone doesn't pay all those other taxes anyway so your point is invalid.
All taxes are conceptually a fundamental aspect of socialist ideals, and a tacit assumption that the government has to take your money because you're too dumb to use it properly. "b-but that's socialist!" is not a self-evidently valid criticism of his point.
LordofHats wrote: I think we can probably take it as a given that any business that can afford an army of lawyers will put at least some of them to work trying to find ways to help the business not pay the fees its supposed to. Not just Wal-Mart
That's my ultimate point, however, as is readily apparent, I detest that company, and it tends to be the low-hanging fruit, so I tend to use it as an example.
It's a luxury that a company like say, Stewart's Meat Shoppe (local butcher in my area) or Billy-Ray's Auto-Wrecking cannot have.
BlaxicanX wrote: All taxes are conceptually a fundamental aspect of socialist ideals, and a tacit assumption that the government has to take your money because you're too dumb to use it properly. "b-but that's socialist!" is not a self-evidently valid criticism of his point.
Taxes are conceptually a way for government to get the money needed to operate.
Otherwise good luck getting your neighbours in your street to club together to fund a new aircraft carrier for the navy. It's hard enough getting four co-owners of an apartment building to club together to repair a leaking roof.
BlaxicanX wrote: All taxes are conceptually a fundamental aspect of socialist ideals, and a tacit assumption that the government has to take your money because you're too dumb to use it properly. "b-but that's socialist!" is not a self-evidently valid criticism of his point.
Taxes are conceptually a way for government to get the money needed to operate.
Otherwise good luck getting your neighbours in your street to club together to fund a new aircraft carrier for the navy. It's hard enough getting four co-owners of an apartment building to club together to repair a leaking roof.
At one location.... And from further looking up, that particular location is newer than the specific one I was referring to... So it would seem that the State of Oregon has gotten a bit wiser in dealing with the evil smiley-face, and gets them to pay for stuff up front.
Often state officials agree to give tax breaks to certain business in order to get them to operate in the state. Sometimes it's in the form of waiving certain taxes for a set time period or reducing rates. I know my state offered big tax breaks to the movie industry to help get them to film the Hunger Games movies here at old textile mills.
Govts like to set tax rates high and then give people and corporations deductions, credits etc. to incentive behavior or leave rates high to disincentivize other behaviors.
>Govts like to set tax rates high and then give people and corporations deductions, credits etc. to incentive behavior or leave rates high to disincentivize other behaviors.
Which is part of the reason why we have incoherent tax systems. Politicians love to try to steer behavior with tax incentives.
It's probably a good idea for conservatives to at least test the waters with a third party. Conservatives do deserve a party, and if Trump actually gets elected POTUS, you can kiss alot of very long-standing, staple conservative issues like free trade, entitlement reform, and religion goodbye forever as priorities of the new Republican party.
It's probably a good idea for conservatives to at least test the waters with a third party. Conservatives do deserve a party, and if Trump actually gets elected POTUS, you can kiss alot of very long-standing, staple conservative issues like free trade, entitlement reform, and religion goodbye forever as priorities of the new Republican party.
It's probably a good idea for conservatives to at least test the waters with a third party. Conservatives do deserve a party, and if Trump actually gets elected POTUS, you can kiss alot of very long-standing, staple conservative issues like free trade, entitlement reform, and religion goodbye forever as priorities of the new Republican party.
Trying the "third party" route is a surefire way to fail. How do you expect to win? The best you would do is draw votes away from the Republican and give the election to the Democrat.
jmurph wrote: >Govts like to set tax rates high and then give people and corporations deductions, credits etc. to incentive behavior or leave rates high to disincentivize other behaviors.
Which is part of the reason why we have incoherent tax systems. Politicians love to try to steer behavior with tax incentives.
Totally agree with you on that. It's a big impediment to simplifying tax codes too. Politicians want complex tax codes they can mess with to curry favor and play political games with and not nearly enough focus on figuring out how much money we need to cover essential govt functions and figuring out the best way to get it.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Breotan wrote: Trying the "third party" route is a surefire way to fail. How do you expect to win? The best you would do is draw votes away from the Republican and give the election to the Democrat.
Maybe that's the point. I'm sure there are some people in the Republican Party hierarchy that view candidate Trump or President Trump as an extinction level event for the Republican Party. Better to run a 3rd party candidate to pull votes away from Trump and let Clinton win and continue being obstructionist and playin to the base.
Breotan wrote: Trying the "third party" route is a surefire way to fail. How do you expect to win? The best you would do is draw votes away from the Republican and give the election to the Democrat.
Your operating under the assumption that Trump is a conservative. He's taken the party over, and if he gets elected, the Party platform will be permanently redefined. Everyone deserves to have candidates to vote for that reflect their own priorities. That's my opinion anyway.
EDIT: Prestor Jon made the point better than I did.
BlaxicanX wrote: All taxes are conceptually a fundamental aspect of socialist ideals, and a tacit assumption that the government has to take your money because you're too dumb to use it properly. "b-but that's socialist!" is not a self-evidently valid criticism of his point.
Taxes are conceptually a way for government to get the money needed to operate.
Otherwise good luck getting your neighbours in your street to club together to fund a new aircraft carrier for the navy. It's hard enough getting four co-owners of an apartment building to club together to repair a leaking roof.
My gran lived on a private road, so the residents of the road were responsible for organising repairs to the road etc. For all of my memory that road has been in need of completely re-tarmacing. 20 years and it still isn't done
BlaxicanX wrote: All taxes are conceptually a fundamental aspect of socialist ideals, and a tacit assumption that the government has to take your money because you're too dumb to use it properly. "b-but that's socialist!" is not a self-evidently valid criticism of his point.
Taxes are conceptually a way for government to get the money needed to operate.
Otherwise good luck getting your neighbours in your street to club together to fund a new aircraft carrier for the navy. It's hard enough getting four co-owners of an apartment building to club together to repair a leaking roof.
I was too lazy to edit my post and quote who I was responding to- you and I are essentially in agreement.
BlaxicanX wrote: All taxes are conceptually a fundamental aspect of socialist ideals, and a tacit assumption that the government has to take your money because you're too dumb to use it properly. "b-but that's socialist!" is not a self-evidently valid criticism of his point.
Taxes are conceptually a way for government to get the money needed to operate.
Otherwise good luck getting your neighbours in your street to club together to fund a new aircraft carrier for the navy. It's hard enough getting four co-owners of an apartment building to club together to repair a leaking roof.
My gran lived on a private road, so the residents of the road were responsible for organising repairs to the road etc. For all of my memory that road has been in need of completely re-tarmacing. 20 years and it still isn't done
If your gran and the other residents along the road didn't feel the need to pay for resurfacing the road then it didn't need to get done. Their road their choice if they're happy then everything is copacetic.
BlaxicanX wrote:
All taxes are conceptually a fundamental aspect of socialist ideals, and a tacit assumption that the government has to take your money because you're too dumb to use it properly. "b-but that's socialist!" is not a self-evidently valid criticism of his point.
Taxes are conceptually a way for government to get the money needed to operate.
Otherwise good luck getting your neighbours in your street to club together to fund a new aircraft carrier for the navy. It's hard enough getting four co-owners of an apartment building to club together to repair a leaking roof.
My gran lived on a private road, so the residents of the road were responsible for organising repairs to the road etc. For all of my memory that road has been in need of completely re-tarmacing. 20 years and it still isn't done
If your gran and the other residents along the road didn't feel the need to pay for resurfacing the road then it didn't need to get done. Their road their choice if they're happy then everything is copacetic.
Now try that on a National scale - lets say anywhere from a population of 5-330 million. See how it works out and watch the whinging/riots that goes with when road xyz has potholes and "da guvament shud fix dat". Give me a break
Breotan wrote: Trying the "third party" route is a surefire way to fail. How do you expect to win? The best you would do is draw votes away from the Republican and give the election to the Democrat.
Maybe that's the point. I'm sure there are some people in the Republican Party hierarchy that view candidate Trump or President Trump as an extinction level event for the Republican Party. Better to run a 3rd party candidate to pull votes away from Trump and let Clinton win and continue being obstructionist and playin to the base.
Arguably, "being obstructionist and playin to the base" is what inevitably lead to the rise of Trump.
Breotan wrote: Trying the "third party" route is a surefire way to fail. How do you expect to win? The best you would do is draw votes away from the Republican and give the election to the Democrat.
Maybe that's the point. I'm sure there are some people in the Republican Party hierarchy that view candidate Trump or President Trump as an extinction level event for the Republican Party. Better to run a 3rd party candidate to pull votes away from Trump and let Clinton win and continue being obstructionist and playin to the base.
Arguably, "being obstructionist and playin to the base" is what inevitably lead to the rise of Trump.
It didn't seem to hurt them in the last couple mid term elections and their incumbents are doing well enough.
The thing everyone has to realise about inheritance tax in the US is that the rate is actually really high compared to most of the rest of the world. It's also a tax that can be minimised to close to nothing if unless the wealthy person is a complete idiot, or they actually choose to pay the tax. For anyone who wants to minimise tax and is smart enough to hire someone who's read a 30 page chapter on estate planning, you can reduce the inheritance tax down to very little with some tax structures. Just use one of a bunch of acronyms, ILIT, GRAT or CLT and you'll end up paying something closer to 15%.
And that's actually the big problem with inheritance tax - as a tax on capital it's very easy to minimise the tax just by shifting your capital around and putting it behind legal structures. So government gets nothing like the money it would have wanted, but it does distort the market, producing byzantine trusts within shell companies that add unnecessary complexity and even make capital a lot less mobile than it ought to be.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kilkrazy wrote: Can you really not see the difference between "earning" money by doing a job of work, getting paid for it, and being taxed on the income, and your parents giving a load of money when they die, and not being taxed on it?
You're getting caught looking just at just the transfer from parent to child. But transfers take place all the time, and they aren't taxed. I give you a present, there's no tax. The basic structure of every tax system is that you tax income. It then becomes clearly unfair to tax income, then tax it again when it is transferred to another person.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
jasper76 wrote: Come on, people. Everybody knows being born is hard work.
You're adding a moral argument where no such thing exists. If you think wealthy people should carry a larger share of the burden, then argue for higher tax rates at high income. Don't argue for taxing income and then taxing it again, once as income once as capital, because you'd like rich people to pay more tax.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Steve steveson wrote: You could say the same about many other taxes. Sales tax for a start, taxes spending of money you have already been taxed on, but the point of it is (at least in the UK) luxury taxing. You tax people who can afford luxuries. The point of inheritance tax is the reduction on the pooling of wealth. The fact that the money is being taxed twice is irrelevant.
The issue with double taxation is not that money is taken twice. Given that, more or less, everyone earns their money and spends it, a system with a 28% average income tax and no sales tax is the same as a system with a 20% average income tax and 10% sales tax.
Double taxation becomes an issue when it opens the door to inconsistent treatment. I earn money, you earn money, and we both pay tax. But if I earn money, then die and give it to my kids, I get another whole tax levied on that money that you don't pay. It's double taxation for me, single taxation for you. Pretty clearly unfair.
There's also another issue that it inheritance tax works weirdly based on how many kids you've got. The basic idea is that trust fund kids should have to pay a bit to government, as they didn't earn that money. But it doesn't tax the amount each beneficiary gets, it just taxes the total estate. So if I have one kid, and leave them an estate worth $5m, there's no tax, despite my kid getting set up for life with $5m. But if I have $10m and four kids, that estate is taxed - inheriting $2.5m is nothing to sneeze at, but it's weird it gets taxed when the child of that other person got $5m untaxed.
sebster wrote: I give you a present, there's no tax. The basic structure of every tax system is that you tax income. It then becomes clearly unfair to tax income, then tax it again when it is transferred to another person.
Not in the US (unless you're a spouse as far as I know). It's less talked about but large sum transfers between private persons are subject to gift tax. It actually came about to prevent people from giving their wealth away while alive/dying to circumvent the inheritance tax. This is of course why many wealth families have charities run by family members, as this offers an out both for estate and gift tax With gift tax however it's the giver who gets the tax, which I actually think makes less sense than the receiver paying the tax but I don't write the tax code XD
If I did write the tax code, it would require all IRS personel to wear powdered wigs!
jmurph wrote: The inheritance tax is a tax on a transfer of wealth and new income, just like most other income taxes.
No, income taxes require an amount to be earned, for their to be some use of labour, skill in order to be earned.
But then the US taxes gambling winnings and gifts, so really the problem starts to become one of a gakky tax code with no basic tax concepts.
Saying that the money had already been taxed is nonsensical- all money (except brand new issue) has "been taxed" and the subsequent recipient is taxed for the income.
You're getting confused talking about individual dollars, it isn't the notes and coins themselves, but the income producing transaction that matters.
People who argue against a "death tax" are, in reality, voicing concerns for the heirs of the very wealthy not getting enough. It's almost never a real issue as trusts are usually done to bypass the taxes entirely.
No, it's actually a technical matter of what makes for good tax policy. This argument that 'the rich needs to pay more, this makes the rich pay more therefore it is good' ignores the reality of how taxes operate in the real world, without considering there are plenty of good, tax effective ways to tax the rich more.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
whembly wrote: Because Inheritance Tax is the most efficient means to redistribute wealth.
No, it's a terrible way to redistribute wealth. Any tax based on capital is terrible - easy to avoid and horribly subjective (I say my dead father's factory is worth $5m, govt says its worth $10m and so its off to court we go).
What galls most people is that the system sets an arbitrary line when the tax is kicked in... it smacks of envy.
No, the limit smacks of redistributing wealth away from people with many millions, because it's a basic reality of capitalism that immense wealth pools at the top, and so it becomes a basic part of every developed economy to re-distribute.
You love moralistic, loaded words like envy, but that's just applying judgement where none exists. We don't take from the rich because we're envious - making them pay a 15% tax and they'll still have loads more money, if it was about envy we'd take everything. No, it's a simple product of deciding that as a society we will pay for basic goods and services for those who can't afford them, and to pay for that we'll take money based on what people can pay, and the rich can pay more.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
CptJake wrote: Your Eco 101 was different. I could start up a factory and generate 10s of thousands of horse buggies or millions of vacuum tube radios, creating a massive supply of them. That supply would not create a demand for those items.
Sure, you could, if you decided to be an idiot. Most people, most business owners, don't decide to be idiots. They respond to the demand that exists, provide the products that people will buy. That's such a basic thing we won't even see it stated in economic models as an assumption, because holy crap of course it isn't.
Do you seriously not understand this, or are you just giving smart alec answers? Because if it's the latter I'll crack out the Econ 101 and go through a widgets and sputniks example and we can all refresh our highschool economics. But if it's the latter and you just don't want to admit you got caught up arguing one side of a very argument, then just say that and we can move on.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
WrentheFaceless wrote: Not sure how inheritance tax is any different than being taxed on lottery winnings. Being born lucky is basically winning the lottery and they tax the hell out of lottery winnings.
The point, though, is that lottery winnings shouldn't be taxed either. Taxing dumb luck is ridiculous. Should I get a tax deduction for playing the lotto and losing? If we have a private bet for $100k on the outcome of a coin toss, should the winner be taxed? Should the loser by given a tax deduction?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Prestor Jon wrote: The federal government has been operating at a loss for decades because the majority of the money it spends is borrowed and taxes are just used to pay the debt service.
Right now about 1/7 of spending is debt funded, 6/7 are paid for by taxes. As 1/7 is not a majority, it must be concluded that you have no idea what you're talking about.
And 7.6% of revenue is used to pay interest on debt, making your statement that taxes are just to pay the debt service is utter nonsense.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
whembly wrote: That dynamic could also be said a bit about Sanders' rise as well... no?
That was really good, thanks. As to whether it applies to Sanders or not, I'm not sure its the right question. I'm not saying it doesn't apply, more that the question doesn't lead to any great insight in to Sanders' appeal.
I mean, really, Sanders is telling people they can have cheaper education and free health. For people concerned about those things, it isn't hard to see the appeal. Whether those things are practical is a whole other debate, but in terms of establishing Sanders appeal it's pretty straightforward.
Whereas with Trump, there was a whole question of exactly what it was that was appealing to people. The easy answer was racism, because Trump said some racist things. But it's a cheap answer really, and one that doesn't really line up with voter feedback. But if we look at the rest of his platform, there's just not much there, and if we ask Trump voters to explain his policies, there's even less there.
That's where your posted article is excellent, I don't agree with all of it, but it does get at what is probably the centre of Trump's appeal - 'it's the culture, stupid'. Trump doesn't talk and act like a politician, he talks and acts like a regular blowhard sounding off about politics. For the most part he wouldn't be out of place on dakka.
There's a great term 'affinity fraud'. It describes the trick of con men to make themselves appear to be just the same as you, because then you're more likely to believe them. Bernie Madoff got away with his scam for decades because he was just like the wealthy elite he took money from - were he an outsider they almost certainly would have looked much harder, much sooner.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LordofHats wrote: That was probably one of the best candid articles I've seen written about Trump the entire primary season, and I think it does apply to Sanders as well.
I think the reason Sanders hasn't blown up in the same manner as Trump is probably two fold.
Sanders is winning about 40%, the same as Trump. The difference is that the Democrats have a single inside candidate, while the Republicans were split among many.
whembly wrote: Because Inheritance Tax is the most efficient means to redistribute wealth.
No, it's a terrible way to redistribute wealth. Any tax based on capital is terrible - easy to avoid and horribly subjective (I say my dead father's factory is worth $5m, govt says its worth $10m and so its off to court we go).
Okay... now wasn't it a few years ago that you and I tussled over this very topic? You arguing the virtue of this and me bitching about it?
LordofHats wrote: Not in the US (unless you're a spouse as far as I know). [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_tax_in_the_United_States"]
You know, I actually thought about saying something gifts up to a certain amount, then decided against it because then that'd just lead back to 'and there's inheritance tax up to a certain amount', and thought it'd be cleaner to say 'birthday gift', because most people understand birthday gifts as being under $10,000.
It was a nice solution, or would have been if I'd remembered to go back and add 'birthday' to my answer before posting
It actually came about to prevent people from giving their wealth away while alive/dying to circumvent the inheritance tax. This is of course why many wealth families have charities run by family members, as this offers an out both for estate and gift tax With gift tax however it's the giver who gets the tax, which I actually think makes less sense than the receiver paying the tax but I don't write the tax code XD
Yep. And having a gift tax that works to enforce the inheritance tax doesn't make the inheritance tax okay, it just shows why both taxes are bad.
If I did write the tax code, it would require all IRS personel to wear powdered wigs!
I'd make them all wear berets and Che Guevara shirts.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
whembly wrote: Okay... now wasn't it a few years ago that you and I tussled over this very topic? You arguing the virtue of this and me bitching about it?
I'm too lazy to look back though...
I don't think so, I've never liked inheritance tax. It's a dysfunctional way of generating tax revenue.
If you look at my (admittedly many) posts to different people, you'll see I'm coming down pretty strongly against the tax. I was just picking you up on one argument - that inheritance tax is efficient. It isn't because the value of any piece of capital other than stocks is so subjective, and because capital can be structured in so many ways to avoid capital taxes.
Then there was that other bit where you were saying it was envy to tax the rich. We've tussled on that many times
That dynamic could also be said a bit about Sanders' rise as well... no?
That was probably one of the best candid articles I've seen written about Trump the entire primary season, and I think it does apply to Sanders as well.
Kinda makes you cry that Trump's the perfect opponent for Clinton or Sanders.
I think the reason Sanders hasn't blown up in the same manner as Trump is probably two fold. The innate conflicts that give Trump so much popularity in the electorate, are also conflicts now innate to the Republican party itself. The party's structure is more sensitive to grass roots momentum, as we learned from the Tea Party. Those issues haven't crept as deeply in the Democratic Party due to it's structure (the much discussed super delegates for example).
Indeed... I believe it's that the vast majority of the EARLY primary/caucus events are "open", which makes it harder for the more conservative candidate to succeed in the GOP. The irony is that, it is becauseof these open primary/caucus' that fueled Trump's rise.
Second, I think there's also the ideological issue. The Republicans have made personal responsibility a major calling card, which means that when the party fails to live up to that card, there's going to be much bigger backlash. A beast of their own making so to speak.
Yeah, there's something to that. McConngal, et. el in 2010/12 claimed they could stop Obama's policies via Congress' Powah of da Purse™. Obviously, they haven't been successful and thus are paying the price.
The Democrats also espouse personal responsibility, but they espouse it different with a larger focus on systems and their platform comes packaged with support for welfare systems and the social safety net. That I think placates the people on that side of the line, whose counterparts on the other side are throwing their arms up in the air like they just don't care.
Yup... great summary.
I think a big part of why Trump is such a sensation isn't just that he talks crazy stuff, but he has so many people listening to it. Sanders has lots of support (easily far more than I think anyone was expecting him to have), but it's just not as sensational. Plus, damning Wall Street is pretty hip for something politicians have been doing for decades. Trumps popularity could also have as much to do with internal part shock as anything. All the people rallying "we have to stop Trump" have probably made even more of a spectacle out of him. Comparatively, the Dems haven't been on a "we have to stop Bernie" binge, and Hillary has been fairly tame in her dealings with him.
Trump's rise can be blamed on the establishment GOP's lack of success of delivering on their promise.
I really think Bernie's rise is that, he's different from the usual brand of Democrats over the years.
whembly wrote: That dynamic could also be said a bit about Sanders' rise as well... no?
That was really good, thanks. As to whether it applies to Sanders or not, I'm not sure its the right question. I'm not saying it doesn't apply, more that the question doesn't lead to any great insight in to Sanders' appeal.
I mean, really, Sanders is telling people they can have cheaper education and free health. For people concerned about those things, it isn't hard to see the appeal. Whether those things are practical is a whole other debate, but in terms of establishing Sanders appeal it's pretty straightforward.
I see what you mean and by that extension, it could be argued that the "Socialsm/European" model is being viewed more favorably than in the past. Hence why Sanders is doing so well, and may encourage other politicians of his mold to step forward.
Whereas with Trump, there was a whole question of exactly what it was that was appealing to people. The easy answer was racism, because Trump said some racist things. But it's a cheap answer really, and one that doesn't really line up with voter feedback. But if we look at the rest of his platform, there's just not much there, and if we ask Trump voters to explain his policies, there's even less there.
I don't think it's racism as in "derp, derp, we hate 'dem Mexican folks"... but more on a nationalist fervor.
Things aren't looking so hot for the folks on the ground here in the US.
Yeah... go ahead and roll your eyes... but, I'm telling you, that's the perception.
The vast majority of the electorate doesn't really care what goes on Washington. They just want to be left alone and have opportunity to succeed. When that doesn't happen, and it's out of your control. It's very easy to pin the blame on: -Washington Establishment (Trump's & Cruz's message) -Mexico -China
However wrong it is, it's still resonating with the voters. Give Trump kudos in tapping into this... he's naturally savvy in this regard.
That's where your posted article is excellent, I don't agree with all of it, but it does get at what is probably the centre of Trump's appeal - 'it's the culture, stupid'. Trump doesn't talk and act like a politician, he talks and acts like a regular blowhard sounding off about politics. For the most part he wouldn't be out of place on dakka.
Indeed. I just have a mental image of him being this un-PC blowhard, endearing himself to his Trumpkins, then privately his lawyers/handlers coaching him to walkback/spin his statement the next day. His supporters don't care... because, they're that pissed off and simply want something different.
There's a great term 'affinity fraud'. It describes the trick of con men to make themselves appear to be just the same as you, because then you're more likely to believe them. Bernie Madoff got away with his scam for decades because he was just like the wealthy elite he took money from - were he an outsider they almost certainly would have looked much harder, much sooner.
I totally believe the Trump supporters are being conned.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LordofHats wrote: That was probably one of the best candid articles I've seen written about Trump the entire primary season, and I think it does apply to Sanders as well.
I think the reason Sanders hasn't blown up in the same manner as Trump is probably two fold.
Sanders is winning about 40%, the same as Trump. The difference is that the Democrats have a single inside candidate, while the Republicans were split among many.
The Super Delegates is the key difference.
Plus, Trump may not be able to reach the 1237 delegate needed.
See page one in this thread... my pipe-dream may become a reality.
whembly wrote: Okay... now wasn't it a few years ago that you and I tussled over this very topic? You arguing the virtue of this and me bitching about it?
I'm too lazy to look back though...
I don't think so, I've never liked inheritance tax. It's a dysfunctional way of generating tax revenue.
If you look at my (admittedly many) posts to different people, you'll see I'm coming down pretty strongly against the tax. I was just picking you up on one argument - that inheritance tax is efficient. It isn't because the value of any piece of capital other than stocks is so subjective, and because capital can be structured in so many ways to avoid capital taxes.
Then there was that other bit where you were saying it was envy to tax the rich. We've tussled on that many times
Hmmmm, I could've swore that's how it went.
Anyhoo... yeah, it's a crummy thing as most of the structured wealth would be designed to mitigate that tax anyways.
I'd just rather classify gaining "new stuff" (inheritence) as simply income, and thus it'll be tax accordingly in whichever bracket you land.
That's more fair in my mind then having a system that says: Nah... you made enough, gimmie moar.
That's an extremely distasteful mindset imo.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And like that Sierra Mist commercial...
It's kinda like this:
Like I said, do you want a gak sammich with mustard? Or a gak sammich with pickles?
sebster wrote: Yep. And having a gift tax that works to enforce the inheritance tax doesn't make the inheritance tax okay, it just shows why both taxes are bad.
I think that'll depend on how we want to define bad. In the sense of have a straightforward and effective tax code most definitely. If I really were allowed to write the tax code, along with a mandate for powdered wigs, I wonder how much simpler things would be if we just dropped all this capital gains, inheritance, gift etc etc nonsense, called it all income and taxed it*. Oh how much simpler it would be.
On the other hand, I live in a country with a long history of the wealthy getting a tax code that's pretty much been tailored for them to circumvent. That we tax inheritance at all is amazing to me. A testament to how hard it is to get rid of policy once it's in place. Being able to pass on wealth is a luxury few people actually get to enjoy in the US. More often than not, the only thing passed on to children by their parents is bills and funeral costs. That people with the privilege of actually inheriting significant sums have to pay a tax on it is completely fair. It's a privilege the wealthiest have in a stable society that they should pay more to support. I suppose I ultimately don't care how exactly that payment is made, but for now this is all we really got.
Reality is that politics is a mix of stupidity and pragmatic, and smart policy making hardly ever materializes in the sphere of realpolitik. To reference a film we get the policies that we need, not the ones we deserve.
*Of course, the reason we have all these tax classifications is probably somewhat connected to the US' odd road towards an income tax. Constitution really made that one a convoluted mess of a thing.
whembly wrote: I see what you mean and by that extension, it could be argued that the "Socialsm/European" model is being viewed more favorably than in the past. Hence why Sanders is doing so well, and may encourage other politicians of his mold to step forward.
This is what I wonder, that we might see a more radicalised version of the Democrats in future, much as we've seen a more radicalised version of Republicans. This is a mixed blessing, it's good for parties to have clear policy positions that voters like, but it also brings a partisan approach that really doesn't work well given the US political model.
I don't think it's racism as in "derp, derp, we hate 'dem Mexican folks"... but more on a nationalist fervor.
Things aren't looking so hot for the folks on the ground here in the US.
Yeah... go ahead and roll your eyes... but, I'm telling you, that's the perception.
Things aren't good on the ground for lots of people, no argument there. Perhaps the bigger point is that things haven't been good for lots of people, for a long time - people can tolerate hard times as long as they believe it'll be better if they continue, even if it is their kids who will have it better. But there's lots of regions where that isn't a sensible thing to believe.
And they haven't been good for a long time, and that's even more serious - people can tolerate and no party has done a very good job explaining how they might make it better. Which opens the door for Trump to come in, even if his answer is completely terrible, it's going to attract voters.
The vast majority of the electorate doesn't really care what goes on Washington. They just want to be left alone and have opportunity to succeed.
I think 'they want to be left alone and have opportunity' betrays your conservative bias . The vast majority want economic security and to believe things are getting easier. I don't think they much care how that comes about, whether government is involved or not.
I totally believe the Trump supporters are being conned.
You ever watch one of those shows where they meet some lady who is being catfished and she won't believe it, and you feel bad for her because she's being conned over her loneliness, but at the same time she refuses to see the obvious and you kind of want her to get the rude shock to wake her up out of her stupor? That's kind of how I feel about Trump.
The Super Delegates is the key difference.
It isn't super delegates. Clinton is more on track to win a majority of pledged delegates comfortably. The difference is that Sanders gets 40%, Clinton gets 60%. Whereas Trump gets 40%, and Cruz gets 25%, Rubio gets 15%, Bush gets 10%, Kasich gets 10%.
In a two horse race 40% is a losing score, in a 5 horse race that's slowly become a 3 horse race, 40% is probably enough.
Anyhoo... yeah, it's a crummy thing as most of the structured wealth would be designed to mitigate that tax anyways.
I'd just rather classify gaining "new stuff" (inheritence) as simply income, and thus it'll be tax accordingly in whichever bracket you land.
If someone was walking along the road and found a diamond worth $50k, would you tax them? If not, why not?
That's more fair in my mind then having a system that says: Nah... you made enough, gimmie moar.
That's an extremely distasteful mindset imo.
If inheritance was taxed as income as you suggest, you'd be taxing people who receive larger inheritances more, because it'd become part of the existing progressive tax scheme.
And like that Sierra Mist commercial...
The image didn't work for me.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LordofHats wrote: I think that'll depend on how we want to define bad.
We measure it by whatever my opinion is, obviously
In the sense of have a straightforward and effective tax code most definitely. If I really were allowed to write the tax code, along with a mandate for powdered wigs, I wonder how much simpler things would be if we just dropped all this capital gains, inheritance, gift etc etc nonsense, called it all income and taxed it. Oh how much simpler it would be.
There's been proposals for what they call transactional tax (not to be confused with a transaction tax). It's a system that would record every instance of money coming in, whether it was an asset sale, salary, inheritance, whatever. And you'd be taxed on that no matter what. It's an interesting concept, but has a lot of flaws. Capital gains, for instance, need to be taxed on the difference between sale and purchase price, with a CPI factor accounted for. And then there's the argument that inheritance shouldn't be taxed at all. Or lottery winnings - if I can't claim a deduction for a losing ticket, what right has government got to tax my winning ticket?
On the other hand, I live in a country with a long history of the wealthy getting a tax code that's pretty much been tailored for them to circumvent. That we tax inheritance at all is amazing to me. A testament to how hard it is to get rid of policy once it's in place. Being able to pass on wealth is a luxury few people actually get to enjoy in the US. More often than not, the only thing passed on to children by their parents is bills and funeral costs. That people with the privilege of actually inheriting significant sums have to pay a tax on it is completely fair. It's a privilege the wealthiest have in a stable society that they should pay more to support. I suppose I ultimately don't care how exactly that payment is made, but for now this is all we really got.
Reality is that politics is a mix of stupidity and pragmatic, and smart policy making hardly ever materializes in the sphere of realpolitik. To reference a film we get the policies what we need, not the ones we deserve.
As I understand it inheritance tax has grown and faded a bunch of times. I think that's the kind of dynamic that explains US tax and many other bits of legislation - a big change driven by populism through the ballot box, then slowly minimised and refit by lobbying force, until you later get another big change.
The result of that is, as you say, a mix of stupidity and pragmatism.
The result of that is, as you say, a mix of stupidity and pragmatism.
Well as these posts have been made, I have also considered that the US has something of a cluster feth history on taxes, especially income tax. The US had tried before the 20th century to implement income tax, but the Supreme Court ruled that taxes on income from property deriving from rent, interest, and dividends constituted direct tax. The Court had previously defined 'direct tax' as ""taxes on lands and buildings, and general assessments, whether on the whole property of individuals or on their whole real or personal estate." I'm actually not sure what the logic of the former decision was, but regardless income from wages was declared an indirect tax, while income from property was direct tax. The US Constitution specifies that direct taxes be apportioned by the states according to their number, which made income tax impractical. It's also impossible to have a progressive income tax (which was what we wanted at the time) apportioned to states by their number while maintaining uniformity across the nation (required by the Taxes and Spending clause), which would make any income tax adhering to the court case unconstitutional on its face.
Till the 16th amendment comes along and specifies congress can tax any income from any source without regards to apportionment (1913). There have been subsequent court cases continuing to define 'income' 'gifts' 'inheritance' and 'capital gains' as it pertains to the US tax code at various points in time, so maybe we've kind of hosered ourselves a little bit with all the legalese when it comes to tax policy. Throwing road blocks up in our own way as it may be.
LordofHats wrote: Well as these posts have been made, I have also considered that the US has something of a cluster feth history on taxes, especially income tax.
US taxes are a horrendous mess. The troubled constitutional history plays in to it, but the basic of it is that you have a tax system that is basically 10,000 pages of special cases, at no point was there ever reform put in place to build an income tax system around a simple general principle. Something like 'income is anything received in compensation for work or skill, or generated from the use or renting of assets, deductions are any expenditures in the pursuit of income, and income less deductions is measured against the tax rates to give tax payable for the year.' From there you can add special exemptions for depreciation, increased deductions for research etc, but that one basic structure should make almost most tax matters clear.
It's worth noting the US does terribly on the tax portion of the 'ease of doing business' score each year. Not because taxes are high, effective tax rates aren't, but because the cost of completing tax returns in the US is so high.
Just a couple notes. You can get a deduction for gambling (including lottery) losses (Up to the amount you win throughout the year). Professional gamblers can take the entire loss.
The $100k coin flip winning is taxable.
If you find a $50k diamond you aren't taxed on it, but if you sell it, the basis is $0 so you are taxed on the entirety of the gain.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And like that Sierra Mist commercial...
It's kinda like this:
Like I said, do you want a gak sammich with mustard? Or a gak sammich with pickles?
Those are our choices...
There are degrees of hell. Trump has damned himself more times than your Emailgate or That-one-place-in-Libya-that-must-not-be-named-gate has managed to dig up on Clinton, and it's not for a lack of trying on the Republican side.
Prestor Jon wrote: Everyone who earns income pays income tax, everyone who owns property pays property tax, everyone who buys stuff pays sales tax, but only a tiny percentage of people who get an inheritance pay the estate tax. If the government can't convince people on its merits that it's a tax that should apply to everyone then it's not a tax that should be levied. Everyone who lives in a society benefits from that society and owes a contribution to that society to keep it functioning.
But everyone in the US has the chance to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and earn the extraordinary income it takes to have to pay that estate tax. In a way, you can say, the taxpayers.... trickle up.
CptJake wrote: Your Eco 101 was different. I could start up a factory and generate 10s of thousands of horse buggies or millions of vacuum tube radios, creating a massive supply of them. That supply would not create a demand for those items.
Sure, you could, if you decided to be an idiot. Most people, most business owners, don't decide to be idiots. They respond to the demand that exists, provide the products that people will buy. That's such a basic thing we won't even see it stated in economic models as an assumption, because holy crap of course it isn't.
Do you seriously not understand this, or are you just giving smart alec answers? Because if it's the latter I'll crack out the Econ 101 and go through a widgets and sputniks example and we can all refresh our highschool economics. But if it's the latter and you just don't want to admit you got caught up arguing one side of a very argument, then just say that and we can move on.
That was my point. Which you argued against with your chicken/egg analogy. Creating supply does not create demand. It is NOT a chicken/egg thing.
jasper76 wrote: Come on, people. Everybody knows being born is hard work.
You're adding a moral argument where no such thing exists. If you think wealthy people should carry a larger share of the burden, then argue for higher tax rates at high income. Don't argue for taxing income and then taxing it again, once as income once as capital, because you'd like rich people to pay more tax.
Or, you know, I could have been just trying to make a joke and add some humor to one of the most boring political issues on the menu
This is a law that we passed in the US. If you feel that the children of the rich in the United States and/or elsewhere should not be taxed in this manor, then by all means continue to attempt to persuade others, get a petition going, do what you feel you need to do to protect them.
Like I said, do you want a gak sammich with mustard? Or a gak sammich with pickles?
Those are our choices...
Now, now, whembley. We've already discussed this. You can stay home. That doesn't require you to do anything at all. You can also vote for a Third Party. All that takes is a drive to the voting booth and a little courage to vote in harmony with your conscience.
David Duke suggested this week that comparisons of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler could help rehabilitate the former German leader's image.
Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who backs Trump, argued Tuesday on his radio show that "the reason there’s a war on Donald Trump is because there’s a war on the real America.
“There’s a war on the European-American majority of the United States of America," Duke said on his program, which was highlighted by Mediaite.
Duke went on to suggest that Trump's critics "might be rehabilitating that fellow with the mustache back there in Germany," citing the fight against communism.
"I saw a commercial against Donald Trump, a really vicious commercial, comparing what Donald Trump said about preserving America and making America great again to Hitler in Germany preserving Germany and making Germany great again and free again and not beholden to these communists on one side, politically who were trying to destroy their land and their freedom, and the Jewish capitalists on the other, who were ripping off the nation through the banking system."
Trump has faced continued blowback from Republicans and others for failing to forcefully disavow the former KKK leader last month. The businessman has also decried repeated comparisons between himself and the Nazi leader.
And it is still a ridiculous argument that the money was 'already taxed'. My income was already taxed because it is paid through people buying things from money that they already paid tax on. The entire tax code (other than property taxes) is based on wealth changing hands. Inheritance fits right in with that.
One of the few quibbles I have with the tax code, in general-aside from the specific stuff put in to help certain people-is the 2% AGI limitation on work-related expenses. That and if your girlfriend's child that you are supporting not being counted as a qualifying child are my two big bogeymen.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that "making Germany great again" isn't the *only* thing that Hitler is known for.
I mean, it's pretty easy to recover your image from improving a nation's prosperity, but not so much for ethnic cleansing.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, jumping waaaaay back to when the US bombed an MSF hospital in Aghanistan; it looks like the personnel involved are going to be punished:
BBC NEWS wrote:
The US military has disciplined more than a dozen service members after an air strike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Afghanistan killed 42 people last year.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that the clinic was targeted by mistake, but no personnel will face criminal charges.
The Associated Press reported that the sanctions, which were not made public, were mostly administrative.
Some received formal reprimands while others were suspended from duty.
Both officers and enlisted personnel were disciplined, but no generals were punished.
A spokeswoman for MSF said the medical charity would not comment until the Pentagon made the details public.
US officials said the Doctors Without Borders hospital was targeted by mistake
The disciplinary action was the result of a Pentagon investigation into the attack. A report on that investigation is expected to be made public next week.
In October, a US gunship fired on the hospital in the city of Kunduz. Taliban fighters had recently retaken the city after US-led forces drove them out in 2001.
Afghan officials said the building had been taken over by Taliban fighters, but no evidence has been found to back those claims.
MSF said the incident constituted "violations of the rules of war". The hospital was destroyed and MSF pulled out of Kunduz after the attack.
Army Gen John Campbell, the top US commander in Afghanistan at the time, called the incident a "tragic but avoidable accident caused primarily by human error".
US President Barack Obama apologised for the air strike, which was one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the 15-year Afghan conflict.
Goliath wrote: To be fair, I'm pretty sure that "making Germany great again" isn't the *only* thing that Hitler is known for.
So you saying Trump should grow a moustache, it's a fair point.
I'm not entirely convinced that he's capable of growing hair above the armpits, but yes. A presidential candidate with a ginger toothbrush moustache wig is something that needs to happen as soon as feasibly possible.
I know that Manning and Snowden are not everybody's favourite people on Dakka, but there's an interesting article in today's Guardian newspaper about how the US government is cranking up its monitoring of employees to prevent future leaks.
This programme, called the insider threat programme, seems like a common sense thing on the surface.
Scratch beneath, though, and in my opinion, it's like something out of 1950s America! I'm half expecting the US government to put together Nixon's plumbers again!
On a more serious note, who watches the watchmen?
The American people have a right to know if their 4th amendment rights are being gakked on from a great height.
Re-reading the Pentagon Papers case at SCOTUS back in the day, it strikes me what a great act that was for American democracy and accountability, but Obama seems hell-bent on preventing anything similar from happening in the future.
Expect more of the same from Clinton if she is elected.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I know that Manning and Snowden are not everybody's favourite people on Dakka, but there's an interesting article in today's Guardian newspaper about how the US government is cranking up its monitoring of employees to prevent future leaks.
This programme, called the insider threat programme, seems like a common sense thing on the surface.
Scratch beneath, though, and in my opinion, it's like something out of 1950s America! I'm half expecting the US government to put together Nixon's plumbers again!
On a more serious note, who watches the watchmen?
The American people have a right to know if their 4th amendment rights are being gakked on from a great height.
Re-reading the Pentagon Papers case at SCOTUS back in the day, it strikes me what a great act that was for American democracy and accountability, but Obama seems hell-bent on preventing anything similar from happening in the future.
Expect more of the same from Clinton if she is elected.
I don't see Trump or Cruz changing it either though.
Here's an update on Hillary's #Emailgate distilled in one nice post, with links galores:
Hillary Has an NSA Problem The FBI has been investigating Clinton for months—but an even more secretive Federal agency has its own important beef with her.
For a year now, Hillary Clinton’s misuse of email during her tenure as Secretary of State has hung like a dark cloud over her presidential campaign. As I told you months ago, EmailGate isn’t going away, despite the best efforts of Team Clinton to make it disappear. Instead, the scandal has gotten worse, with never-ending revelations of apparent misconduct by Ms. Clinton and her staff. At this point, EmailGate may be the only thing standing between Hillary and the White House this November.
Specifically, the Federal Bureau of Investigation examination of EmailGate, pursuant to provisions of the Espionage Act, poses a major threat to Ms. Clinton’s presidential aspirations. However, even if the FBI recommends prosecution of her or members of her inner circle for mishandling of classified information—which is something the politically unconnected routinely do face prosecution for—it’s by no means certain that the Department of Justice will follow the FBI’s lead.
What DoJ decides to do with EmailGate is ultimately a question of politics as much as justice. Ms. Clinton’s recent statement on her potential prosecution, “it’s not going to happen,” then refusing to address the question at all in a recent debate, led to speculation about a backroom deal with the White House to shield Hillary from prosecution as long as Mr. Obama is in the Oval Office. After mid-January, however, all bets would be off. In that case, winning the White House herself could be an urgent matter of avoiding prosecution for Ms. Clinton.
That said, if DoJ declines to prosecute after the Bureau recommends doing so, a leak-fest of a kind not seen in Washington, D.C., since Watergate should be anticipated. The FBI would be angry that its exhaustive investigation was thwarted by dirty deals between Democrats. In that case, a great deal of Clintonian dirty laundry could wind up in the hands of the press, habitual mainstream media covering for the Clintons notwithstanding, perhaps having a major impact on the presidential race this year.
Neither is the FBI the only powerful Federal agency that Hillary Clinton needs to worry about as she plots her path to the White House between scandals and leaks. For years, she has been on the bad side of the National Security Agency, America’s most important intelligence agency, as revealed by just-released State Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents, though redacted, detail a bureaucratic showdown between Ms. Clinton and NSA at the outset of her tenure at Foggy Bottom. The new Secretary of State, who had gotten “hooked” on her Blackberry during her failed 2008 presidential bid, according to a top State Department security official, wanted to use that Blackberry anywhere she went.
That, however, was impossible, since Secretary Clinton’s main office space at Foggy Bottom was actually a Secure Compartment Information Facility, called a SCIF (pronounced “skiff”) by insiders. A SCIF is required for handling any Top Secret-plus information. In most Washington, D.C., offices with a SCIF, which has to be certified as fully secure from human or technical penetration, that’s where you check Top Secret email, read intelligence reports, and conduct classified meetings that must be held inside such protected spaces.
But personal electronic devices—your cellphone, your Blackberry—can never be brought into a SCIF. They represent a serious technical threat that is actually employed by many intelligence agencies worldwide. Though few Americans realize it, taking remote control over a handheld device, then using it to record conversations, is surprisingly easy for any competent spy service. Your smartphone is a sophisticated surveillance device—on you, the user—that also happens to provide phone service and Internet access.
As a result, your phone and your Blackberry always need to be locked up before you enter any SCIF. Taking such items into one represents a serious security violation. And Hillary and her staff really hated that. Not even one month into the new administration in early 2009, Ms. Clinton and her inner circle were chafing under these rules. They were accustomed to having their personal Blackberrys with them at all times, checking and sending emails nonstop, and that was simply impossible in a SCIF like their new office was.
This resulted in a February 2009 request by Secretary Clinton to NSA, whose Information Assurance Directorate (IAD for short: see here for an explanation of Agency organization) secures the sensitive communications of many U.S. Government entities, from Top Secret computer networks, to White House communications, to the classified codes that control our nuclear weapons.
IAD had recently created a special, custom-made secure Blackberry for Barack Obama, another technology addict. Now Ms. Clinton wanted one for herself. However, making the new president’s personal Blackberry had been a time-consuming and expensive exercise. NSA was not inclined to provide Secretary Clinton with one of her own simply for her convenience: there had to be clearly demonstrated need.
And that seemed dubious to IAD since there was no problem with Ms. Clinton checking her personal email inside her office SCIF. Hers, like most, had open (i.e. unclassified) computer terminals connected to the Internet, and the Secretary of State could log into her own email anytime she wanted to right from her desk.
But she did not want to. Ms. Clinton only checked her personal email on her Blackberry: she did not want to sit down at a computer terminal. As a result, NSA informed Secretary Clinton in early 2009 that they could not help her. When Team Clinton kept pressing the point, “we were politely told to shut up and color” by IAD, explained the State security official.
The State Department has not released the full document trail here, so the complete story remains unknown to the public. However, one senior NSA official, now retired, recalled the kerfuffle with Team Clinton in early 2009 about Blackberrys. “It was the usual Clinton prima donna stuff,” he explained, “the whole ‘rules are for other people’ act that I remembered from the Nineties.” Why Ms. Clinton would not simply check her personal email on an office computer, like every other government employee less senior than the president, seems a germane question, given what a major scandal EmailGate turned out to be. “What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it?” the former NSA official asked, adding, “I wonder now, and I sure wish I’d asked about it back in 2009.”
He’s not the only NSA affiliate with pointed questions about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were really up to—and why they went to such trouble to circumvent Federal laws about the use of IT systems and the handling of classified information. This has come to a head thanks to Team Clinton’s gross mishandling of highly classified NSA intelligence.
As I explained in this column in January, one of the most controversial of Ms. Clinton’s emails released by the State Department under judicial order was one sent on June 8, 2011 to the Secretary of State by Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary’s unsavory friend and confidant who was running a private intelligence service for Ms. Clinton. This email contains an amazingly detailed assessment of events in Sudan, specifically a coup being plotted by top generals in that war-torn country. Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only twenty-four hours before.
To anybody familiar with intelligence reporting, this is unmistakably signals intelligence, termed SIGINT in the trade. In other words, Mr. Blumenthal, a private citizen who had enjoyed no access to U.S. intelligence for over a decade when he sent that email, somehow got hold of SIGINT about the Sudanese leadership and managed to send it, via open, unclassified email, to his friend Hillary only one day later.
NSA officials were appalled by the State Department’s release of this email, since it bore all the hallmarks of Agency reporting. Back in early January, when I reported this, I was confident that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from highly classified NSA sources, based on my years of reading and writing such reports myself, and one veteran Agency official told me it was NSA information with “at least 90 percent confidence.”
Now, over two months later, I can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011 email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeed based on highly sensitive NSA information. The Agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthal’s highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.
Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence. Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program or SAP, several of which from CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.
Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from their reports. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” one of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.
How Sid Blumenthal got his hands on this information is the key question, and there’s no firm answer yet. The fact that he was able to take four separate highly classified NSA reports – none of which he was supposed to have any access to – and pass the details of them to Hillary Clinton via email only hours after NSA released them in Top Secret / Special Intelligence channels, indicates something highly unusual—as well as illegal—was going on.
Suspicion naturally falls on Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA senior official who was Mr. Blumenthal’s intelligence fixer, his supplier of juicy spy gossip, who conveniently died last August before EmailGate became front-page news. However, he, too, had left Federal service years before and should not have had any access to current NSA reports.
There are many questions here about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were up to, including Sidney Blumenthal, an integral member of the Clinton organization, despite his lack of any government position. How Mr. Blumenthal got hold of this Top Secret-plus reporting is only the first question. Why he chose to email it to Ms. Clinton in open channels is another question. So is: How did nobody on Secretary Clinton’s staff notice that this highly detailed reporting looked exactly like SIGINT from NSA? Last, why did the State Department see fit to release this email, unredacted, to the public?
These are the questions being asked by officials at NSA and the FBI right now. All of them merit serious examination. Their answers may determine the political fate of Hillary Clinton—and who gets elected our next president in November.
CptJake wrote: That was my point. Which you argued against with your chicken/egg analogy. Creating supply does not create demand. It is NOT a chicken/egg thing.
Yes, it's chicken and the egg. Because by creating supply you are paying people. You're buying raw materials, you're paying wages. The cost of your production is someone else's income, and the profit left over is your income. And all that income becomes expenditure, becomes new demand, when it is spend by the people who received that income. This is one the most basic, fundamental elements of economics. One person's expenditure is another person's income. That person's income becomes their expenditure, which in turn becomes someone else's income, and so on.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
jasper76 wrote: Or, you know, I could have been just trying to make a joke and add some humor to one of the most boring political issues on the menu
It was a joke with a fairly specific argument behind it, you have to admit that
This is a law that we passed in the US. If you feel that the children of the rich in the United States and/or elsewhere should not be taxed in this manor, then by all means continue to attempt to persuade others, get a petition going, do what you feel you need to do to protect them.
I think I'm wildly optimistic about my chances of changing opinions on dakka. I'd have many thousands of times more optimistic to think I'd have an impact on US tax laws.
But in my wild optimism re dakka, I am going to try and see that there's no value in supporting taxes that are very expensive to determine and easy to minimise. While the goal of greater income equality is admirable, that can be achieved by just charging higher taxes at high income levels, it doesn't need bad taxes.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
skyth wrote: And it is still a ridiculous argument that the money was 'already taxed'. My income was already taxed because it is paid through people buying things from money that they already paid tax on.
You're confusing the path of a single dollar with what double taxation actually means. It refers to an instance of earning a dollar. I wash your car, you pay me $1. The govt takes 20%. I die, and govt takes 15% of the remaining 80c. That's double taxation.
The entire tax code (other than property taxes) is based on wealth changing hands. Inheritance fits right in with that.
When it is well defined, a tax system is based around instances of earning, when someone does work for remuneration, or property he owns generates income - that is what should be taxed. Not wealth changing hands, taxing windfall gains is as ridiculous as taxing birthday presents.
CptJake wrote: That was my point. Which you argued against with your chicken/egg analogy. Creating supply does not create demand. It is NOT a chicken/egg thing.
Yes, it's chicken and the egg. Because by creating supply you are paying people. You're buying raw materials, you're paying wages. The cost of your production is someone else's income, and the profit left over is your income. And all that income becomes expenditure, becomes new demand, when it is spend by the people who received that income. This is one the most basic, fundamental elements of economics. One person's expenditure is another person's income. That person's income becomes their expenditure, which in turn becomes someone else's income, and so on.
It's also a basic, fundamental, rule of business that you don't hire someone unless you have no other choice. That is why consumers, rather than businesses, create jobs.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
skyth wrote: And it is still a ridiculous argument that the money was 'already taxed'. My income was already taxed because it is paid through people buying things from money that they already paid tax on.
You're confusing the path of a single dollar with what double taxation actually means. It refers to an instance of earning a dollar. I wash your car, you pay me $1. The govt takes 20%. I die, and govt takes 15% of the remaining 80c. That's double taxation.
The entire tax code (other than property taxes) is based on wealth changing hands. Inheritance fits right in with that.
When it is well defined, a tax system is based around instances of earning, when someone does work for remuneration, or property he owns generates income - that is what should be taxed. Not wealth changing hands, taxing windfall gains is as ridiculous as taxing birthday presents.
Only says you. The tax system, as current, is based around wealth changing hands. It is not double taxation when money is inherited, as it is going to someone else. I see no reason NOT to tax windfalls, as the person receiving the income didn't do anything to earn it.
Besides, I don't see any better way of addressing the wealth gap. It's already getting worse and worse as time goes on.
The problem with not taxing transfers of wealth as income is that if you only define income as income from earnings and property, you leave out a lot. Would investment income qualify? Dividends? Appreciation?
Imagine this scenario: Ronald Frump had a very wealthy father who passes and Ronald inherits millions of dollars of property and cash tax free. The property assets increase in value to billions. Dividends and selling off the occasional minor asset keep cash up without impacting overall wealth. He lives like a king but has, under an income scheme, earned little or nothing. Under realized income, he gets taxed for the inheritance, taxed for the increases in value, taxed for the dividends, etc.
Now, in reality, Frump probably still dodges a lot of taxes, but that is a flaw in the current implementation, not the basis.
This election really has me bummed-out. Just once I'd like a candidate that I can vote for, not against.
Let's just face it, it's going to come down to Trump vs. Clinton. That's like choosing which guy gets to butt rape you in prison. At least with Trump I feel like he's going to say it to my face first and give me time to lube my rear. With Clinton it's almost like she'll jump on top in my sleep and demand a "thank you" when she's done.
cuda1179 wrote: This election really has me bummed-out. Just once I'd like a candidate that I can vote for, not against.
Let's just face it, it's going to come down to Trump vs. Clinton. That's like choosing which guy gets to butt rape you in prison. At least with Trump I feel like he's going to say it to my face first and give me time to lube my rear. With Clinton it's almost like she'll jump on top in my sleep and demand a "thank you" when she's done.
Such cynicism.
This is the President, Supreme commander of the armed forces, Head of State, and leader of the free world that you are choosing. Please think seriously about it.
Clinton is an accomplished administrator, career politician and states-person whose main negatives are that she is a Democrat and doesn't pass the "I'd happily have a pint with her..." text.
Trump is a sad sack, narcissistic, racist, business failure with no relevant experience whose main positives are that he is anti-establishment (which guarantees he won't get on with anyone in Washington) and apparently has a huge penis.
cuda1179 wrote: This election really has me bummed-out. Just once I'd like a candidate that I can vote for, not against.
Let's just face it, it's going to come down to Trump vs. Clinton. That's like choosing which guy gets to butt rape you in prison. At least with Trump I feel like he's going to say it to my face first and give me time to lube my rear. With Clinton it's almost like she'll jump on top in my sleep and demand a "thank you" when she's done.
Such cynicism.
This is the President, Supreme commander of the armed forces, Head of State, and leader of the free world that you are choosing. Please think seriously about it.
Clinton is an accomplished administrator, career politician and states-person whose main negatives are that she is a Democrat and doesn't pass the "I'd happily have a pint with her..." text.
Trump is a sad sack, narcissistic, racist, business failure with no relevant experience whose main positives are that he is anti-establishment (which guarantees he won't get on with anyone in Washington) and apparently has a huge penis.
He lies about everything all day long. Except his dong. There's "no problem".
Clinton is an accomplished administrator, career politician and states-person whose main negatives are that she is a Democrat and doesn't pass the "I'd happily have a pint with her..." text.
No, she's not an accomplished administrator. She's someone who zero respect for the laws of the country, security protocols, and an ego the size of the moon. That's not someone we want running the country.
Career politician isn't a good thing, not when you've got such a stained record.
Her main accomplishment is "look how many rules I've broken without getting in trouble!"
cuda1179 wrote: This election really has me bummed-out. Just once I'd like a candidate that I can vote for, not against.
Let's just face it, it's going to come down to Trump vs. Clinton. That's like choosing which guy gets to butt rape you in prison. At least with Trump I feel like he's going to say it to my face first and give me time to lube my rear. With Clinton it's almost like she'll jump on top in my sleep and demand a "thank you" when she's done.
Such cynicism.
This is the President, Supreme commander of the armed forces, Head of State, and leader of the free world that you are choosing. Please think seriously about it.
Clinton is an accomplished administrator, career politician and states-person whose main negatives are that she is a Democrat and doesn't pass the "I'd happily have a pint with her..." text.
Do tell... what has she really accomplished in some meaningful way that'll foretell how good of a President she'll be?
Her glaring negative is she's absolutely untrustworthy and shady as feth.
Trump is a sad sack, narcissistic, racist, business failure with no relevant experience whose main positives are that he is anti-establishment (which guarantees he won't get on with anyone in Washington) and apparently has a huge penis.
Not sure you can really call him a "business failure".
I think the 'no relevant experience' claim is crap too. Running a big business, participating in major negotiations, making high level decisions are all relevant experiences.
Trump is a sad sack, narcissistic, racist, business failure with no relevant experience whose main positives are that he is anti-establishment (which guarantees he won't get on with anyone in Washington) and apparently has a huge penis.
So he said...but he also has Deadpool baby-hand fingers.
Not sure you can really call him a "business failure".
Well, he's certainly an expert at gaming the system and getting people to invest in him, I can't call him on that. The actual results have been more...hit or miss. Trump Shuttles? Trump Ocean Resort Baja? Trump Steaks?
Clinton is an accomplished administrator, career politician and states-person whose main negatives are that she is a Democrat and doesn't pass the "I'd happily have a pint with her..." text.
No, she's not an accomplished administrator. She's someone who zero respect for the laws of the country, security protocols, and an ego the size of the moon. That's not someone we want running the country.
Those exact check boxes are also valid descriptors for Trump, FWIW.
For too long Americans have swallowed the bitter pill of voting for the lesser of two evils and watching their country slide into a morass of corruption. But now, we have the opportunity to vote for a true outsider and bring real change to this country. A candidate not bound to any party or the factions that have brought us here.
Grey Templar wrote: .......someone who zero respect for the laws of the country, security protocols, and an ego the size of the moon. That's not someone we want running the country.
Drumpf to a tee.
Look, guys, you are going to have to hold your nose and choose a President, and the rest of us are going to have to put up with it. Don't choose Drumpf.
Grey Templar wrote: .......someone who zero respect for the laws of the country, security protocols, and an ego the size of the moon. That's not someone we want running the country.
Drumpf to a tee.
Look, guys, you are going to have to hold your nose and choose a President, and the rest of us are going to have to put up with it. Don't choose Drumpf.
Trump is definitely terrible. But lets not pretend that Hillary is better.
CptJake wrote: I think the 'no relevant experience' claim is crap too. Running a big business, participating in major negotiations, making high level decisions are all relevant experiences.
He does have business experience. He has zero governmental, military, or foreign policy experience. I guess its possible that a swath of population has formed that may actually think lack of experience in these areas is positive quality in a presidential candidate, but when detractors say he is not inexperienced, I think this is what they're talking about.
Hillary changes her "public opinion" repeatedly to appease the masses. She has remade herself in the last 4 months to align more with Sanders to suck in some of his votes. What she really thinks, who knows?
I have trouble voting for anyone that 1. Defends and admitted child rapist. 2. Manages to get his conviction overturned due to a technicality. 3. Immediately after the court proceeding gets caught making a crude joke about the rape victim. That's the Hillary I'm afraid of.
I'm also wary of he ability to declared "incompetent" as legal counsel and her loose ties with known domestic terrorists. Let's also add it that she was all on board for a cap-and-trade emissions law that would have HUGELY benefitted a bank she had stock in.
CptJake wrote: I think the 'no relevant experience' claim is crap too. Running a big business, participating in major negotiations, making high level decisions are all relevant experiences.
He does have business experience. He has zero governmental, military, or foreign policy experience. I guess its possible that a swath of population has formed that may actually think lack of experience in these areas is positive quality in a presidential candidate, but when detractors say he is not inexperienced, I think this is what they're talking about.
We all ready elected a President with practically no governmental experience to two terms. All Obama has was a half term as a Senator, and a lot of that was spent campaigning.
What I am really surprised about is that Sanders agrees with Trump's foreign policy plan with regards to North Korea. Basically, have China deal with them. They are they one with the most influence over that little dictatorship.
Using China to deal with North Korea has been every US politician's position since I've been alive. Is there something particular in the details of the Trump/Sanders position I don't know about?
As far as Obama goes, is your argument that because we elected Obama with no experience, and he did such an outstanding job that we should do it again with Trump?
(FWIW, by the time Obama was reelected, he had 3.5 or so years of experience as President of the United States, so the argument is only really applicable to his first term)
jasper76 wrote: Using China to deal with North Korea has been every US politician's position since I've been alive. Is there something particular in the details of the Trump/Sanders position I don't know about?
Really... you'd need the UN involved, and massive amount of money to "deal" with NK. Especially with the reunitification ideas of the separate Korean states.
As far as Obama goes, is your argument that because we elected Obama with no experience, and he did such an outstanding job that we should do it again with Trump?
Actually it is better...
By and large, Trump voters want "their very own" Obama.
cuda1179 wrote: Hillary changes her "public opinion" repeatedly to appease the masses. She has remade herself in the last 4 months to align more with Sanders to suck in some of his votes. What she really thinks, who knows?
I have trouble voting for anyone that 1. Defends and admitted child rapist. 2. Manages to get his conviction overturned due to a technicality. 3. Immediately after the court proceeding gets caught making a crude joke about the rape victim. That's the Hillary I'm afraid of.
I'm also wary of he ability to declared "incompetent" as legal counsel and her loose ties with known domestic terrorists. Let's also add it that she was all on board for a cap-and-trade emissions law that would have HUGELY benefitted a bank she had stock in.
Errrr, shouldn't a politician who wants to represent the people of their country align their personal beliefs with the majority of the population?
It would be a very bad and undemocratic politician who ignored the wishes of the very people who elected them because they felt that X was better than Y.
cuda1179 wrote: Hillary changes her "public opinion" repeatedly to appease the masses. She has remade herself in the last 4 months to align more with Sanders to suck in some of his votes. What she really thinks, who knows?
I have trouble voting for anyone that 1. Defends and admitted child rapist. 2. Manages to get his conviction overturned due to a technicality. 3. Immediately after the court proceeding gets caught making a crude joke about the rape victim. That's the Hillary I'm afraid of.
I'm also wary of he ability to declared "incompetent" as legal counsel and her loose ties with known domestic terrorists. Let's also add it that she was all on board for a cap-and-trade emissions law that would have HUGELY benefitted a bank she had stock in.
Errrr, shouldn't a politician who wants to represent the people of their country align their personal beliefs with the majority of the population?
It would be a very bad and undemocratic politician who ignored the wishes of the very people who elected them because they felt that X was better than Y.
No. Generally you want each politician to have a set of beliefs. Then the citizens elect the one that aligns with what they want.
Some mutability is good, but not to the level that Clinton waffles around.
Trumps complete lack of experience in government at any level is a concern for me. Obama was an unusually inexperienced president, and he'd been in elected office for a decade, with significant public service prior to that. Trump has altered between being a business owner and an entertainer, with the latter being his focus more recently. (Reagan was an actor, but he was also president of SAG and governor of California before becoming president).
I've seen people dislike Hilary for generally vague reasons for over two decades. I'll concede that she's not the trust inspiring person, but given the inherent inability of a president to always tell the truth, I don't see it as a huge drawback. Obviously others do, which is their right.
She's nakedly ambitious, which alienates a lot of people. She's a popular candidate with a center-left platform in a country that's shifting very slightly to the left. She's got enough of a resume, and I think she has the ability to compromise and be flexible in running the country.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grey Templar wrote: No. Generally you want each politician to have a set of beliefs. Then the citizens elect the one that aligns with what they want.
Some mutability is good, but not to the level that Clinton waffles around.
Man, people are idiots, myself included. I'm not sold that we should all come up with a list of views on incredibly complex, inherently unknowable issues, and then try to match them to a candidate.
Grey Templar wrote: No. Generally you want each politician to have a set of beliefs. Then the citizens elect the one that aligns with what they want.
Some mutability is good, but not to the level that Clinton waffles around.
Man, people are idiots, myself included. I'm not sold that we should all come up with a list of views on incredibly complex, inherently unknowable issues, and then try to match them to a candidate.
Well you'll never have a perfect match of course. but that's better than having something you just really have no idea on.
Hillary is fickle and waffling on issues. This instability isn't a good thing. On top of all the other bad things she'd bring into the picture. Really her only consistent feature is her ability to lie and her ambition.
MrDwhitey wrote: How would Hillary succeed where Trump would fail? I feel silly adding on this that this isn't a trap/trick question, I just don't get it.
Because Hillary is an "insider". Everyone in Washington hates Trump. Everyone.
Grey Templar wrote: Really her only consistent feature is her ability to lie and her ambition.
Her chief weapon is lies! Lies and ambition, two chief weapons, lies and ambition, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among her chief weapons are: lies, ambition, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to Wall Street!
I don't see Hillary trying to roll back gay rights or religious freedom. (Real religious freedom, not legalizing being able to punish someone else for not following your religion).
As long as she's our liar, I'm comfortable with it.
She doesn't need money, and there's nothing to run for after POTUS. She'll want a legacy, which could be interesting to watch, but while she's into self glorification, she's chosen public service as the outlet for that. She was effective as secretary of state, and has generally shown a non-ideological, pragmatic view of foreign policy.
cuda1179 wrote: Hillary changes her "public opinion" repeatedly to appease the masses. She has remade herself in the last 4 months to align more with Sanders to suck in some of his votes. What she really thinks, who knows?
I have trouble voting for anyone that 1. Defends and admitted child rapist. 2. Manages to get his conviction overturned due to a technicality. 3. Immediately after the court proceeding gets caught making a crude joke about the rape victim. That's the Hillary I'm afraid of.
I'm also wary of he ability to declared "incompetent" as legal counsel and her loose ties with known domestic terrorists. Let's also add it that she was all on board for a cap-and-trade emissions law that would have HUGELY benefitted a bank she had stock in.
Do you have links explaining what you're talking about?
I'm always surprised that "she's ambitious" is considered a drawback.
You have to be a narcissist and ambitious to think that you would be the best person to become POTUS. How many people thought that God Himself chose them for the job this time around?
Here is some other reasons I hope Hillary looses. She is backing Loretta Lynch in her plans to press charges against climate change deniers. While I don't necessarily agree with climate change denial prosecuting "thought crime" is a travesty.
Also, Obama will have appointed three Supreme Court Justices. The next President will be in line to appoint to or three more. The next President needs to appoint people that are a little right of center to re-balance the Supreme Court. I prefer the Court to have 4 Conservatives, 4 liberals, and one swing vote. Which is what we've had up until recently.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
d-usa wrote: I'm always surprised that "she's ambitious" is considered a drawback.
You have to be a narcissist and ambitious to think that you would be the best person to become POTUS. How many people thought that God Himself chose them for the job this time around?
there's a theory, that I won't argue for, but certainly won't try to dispute, which states that openly ambitious women are seen as inherently less capable or trustworthy. It's pretty well supported by social science.
MrDwhitey wrote: She was a lawyer who got assigned an alleged* rapist in 1975. She successfully defended the man because it was her job as his lawyer.
About the joke I have no idea.
*I'm pretty damn sure he was a rapist though.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with her defending that scum, or even winning. Disparaging the victim after the fact is a cheap shot. If she were a man I wouldn't have blamed someone for punching her.
cuda1179 wrote: Here is some other reasons I hope Hillary looses. She is backing Loretta Lynch in her plans to press charges against climate change deniers. While I don't necessarily agree with climate change denial prosecuting "thought crime" is a travesty.
Also, Obama will have appointed three Supreme Court Justices. The next President will be in line to appoint to or three more. The next President needs to appoint people that are a little right of center to re-balance the Supreme Court. I prefer the Court to have 4 Conservatives, 4 liberals, and one swing vote. Which is what we've had up until recently.
Picking a president based on their SCOTUS picks is actually one of the best reasons, in my opinion. Personally, I'm fine with a liberal bench, but that's why we vote, isn't it?
MrDwhitey wrote: She was a lawyer who got assigned an alleged* rapist in 1975. She successfully defended the man because it was her job as his lawyer.
About the joke I have no idea.
*I'm pretty damn sure he was a rapist though.
It's the job of all defense attorneys to make sure that the state did their job correctly when it comes to investigating and prosecuting crimes. They don't defend guilty people to get them off, they defend them to make sure the constitution was followed.
cuda1179 wrote: Here is some other reasons I hope Hillary looses. She is backing Loretta Lynch in her plans to press charges against climate change deniers. While I don't necessarily agree with climate change denial prosecuting "thought crime" is a travesty.
Also, Obama will have appointed three Supreme Court Justices. The next President will be in line to appoint to or three more. The next President needs to appoint people that are a little right of center to re-balance the Supreme Court. I prefer the Court to have 4 Conservatives, 4 liberals, and one swing vote. Which is what we've had up until recently.
Picking a president based on their SCOTUS picks is actually one of the best reasons, in my opinion. Personally, I'm fine with a liberal bench, but that's why we vote, isn't it?
SCOTUS appointments are always in the mix, but this time it is just a very obvious part of the campaign. Which is why the GOP wants to make it a campaign issue instead of holding hearings or votes.
Oh, I know d-usa. Should've mentioned that in my post.
I remember a pretty good post on reddit by a defense lawyer discussing that very thing.
His views were it was his job to do his best to defend his client, regardless of who they were. And his view that the prosecutor should also bring their best, with the idea that once his client was convicted, if they were a real witch there'd be less to no means of them trying to get off from a technicality raised by his previous defense.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
On the first, the right to object on the grounds of religion. See the bakery that refused to make a cake for the gay couple and got in trouble, when really you should have the right to deny service for any reason. If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer. I fear Hillary would take this even further.
On the fourth, Hillary is a fan of big government. Especially when it comes to privacy infringement. I don't trust her to not expand government privacy intrusions.
MrDwhitey wrote: She was a lawyer who got assigned an alleged* rapist in 1975. She successfully defended the man because it was her job as his lawyer.
About the joke I have no idea.
*I'm pretty damn sure he was a rapist though.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with her defending that scum, or even winning. Disparaging the victim after the fact is a cheap shot. If she were a man I wouldn't have blamed someone for punching her.
Is there a link or anything to her disparaging the victim? I found a story in which the victim claimed she was put through hell, but it also noted that the defendant took a plea deal, which usually occurs prior to trial.
On the first, the right to object on the grounds of religion. See the bakery that refused to make a cake for the gay couple and got in trouble, when really you should have the right to deny service for any reason. If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer. I fear Hillary would take this even further.
This is a complex issue, in that I feel that it's a violation of the first amendment, but because it's compelled speech. I think that cake decorators and florists are artistic enough that their work classifies as speech (and would), so that forcing a person create the message for a client they disagree with is inappropriate. I have no problem with laws that require business to offer "off the shelf" goods and services to all customers, regardless of sexuality. Religious freedom is simply the dogwhistle for being anti-gay rights, and I don't buy it. Making a cake for a gay wedding isn't against any Christian belief I'm familiar with.
Those laws won't survive the inevitable SCOTUS challenge anyway, so Hilary's not going to be the one to erode that.
On the fifth, Hillary is a fan of big government. Especially when it comes to privacy infringement. I don't trust her to not expand government privacy intrusions.
I don't trust any president not to expand government privacy. I think if we elected Cory Doctorow, eventually he'd start toying with intrusions. Power, corruption, etc.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
On the first, the right to object on the grounds of religion. See the bakery that refused to make a cake for the gay couple and got in trouble, when really you should have the right to deny service for any reason. If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer. I fear Hillary would take this even further.
And that doesn't impinge on your freedom of religion at all. Freedom of religion does not mean the ability to punish someone who doesn't follow the tenets of your religion. You are allowed to have whatever religious beliefs you want. Your beliefs cannot impact anyone else.
Or in other words, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.
On the fifth, Hillary is a fan of big government. Especially when it comes to privacy infringement. I don't trust her to not expand government privacy intrusions.
Ummm...Fifth Amendment is the right to not be forced to incriminate yourself.
I don't trust Trump not to expand government privacy intrusions either (Or Cruz for that matter). Cruz would absolutely butcher the religious protections of the First amendment. Trump would butcher the speech part (He wants to roll back Libel laws so he can sue anyone who says anything he doesn't like about him).
Grey Templar wrote: If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer.
We've been down that road before. And people seriously need to read the laws of the land. You're not allowed to deny service in public accommodations based on sex. Federal law says it. Oregon Law says it. At this point most states have a public accommodations law. So no. They had no right to deny service. We've been down that road before. We already know where it goes.
I fear Hillary would take this even further.
What doomsday scenario is Hillary going to usher in? How is she even remotely related to the case you cited?
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
On the first, the right to object on the grounds of religion. See the bakery that refused to make a cake for the gay couple and got in trouble, when really you should have the right to deny service for any reason. If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer. I fear Hillary would take this even further.
And that doesn't impinge on your freedom of religion at all. Freedom of religion does not mean the ability to punish someone who doesn't follow the tenets of your religion. You are allowed to have whatever religious beliefs you want. Your beliefs cannot impact anyone else.
Or in other words, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.
Incorrect.
Its infringing on my religious freedom to be forced to participate in something which is morally repugnant to my religion.
By refusing to bake a gay couple a wedding cake, I am not preventing them from getting married or having a cake. They can go take their business elsewhere. I'm just refusing to participate in what I feel to be wrong, and I shouldn't be retaliated against for doing that. I am not forcing them to follow my religion, I'm just refusing to take their money.
Ummm...Fifth Amendment is the right to not be forced to incriminate yourself.
I don't trust Trump not to expand government privacy intrusions either (Or Cruz for that matter). Cruz would absolutely butcher the religious protections of the First amendment. Trump would butcher the speech part (He wants to roll back Libel laws so he can sue anyone who says anything he doesn't like about him).
Derp, I meant the 4th. Looked it up and somehow got the next number.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
On the first, the right to object on the grounds of religion. See the bakery that refused to make a cake for the gay couple and got in trouble, when really you should have the right to deny service for any reason. If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer. I fear Hillary would take this even further.
And that doesn't impinge on your freedom of religion at all. Freedom of religion does not mean the ability to punish someone who doesn't follow the tenets of your religion. You are allowed to have whatever religious beliefs you want. Your beliefs cannot impact anyone else.
Or in other words, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.
Incorrect.
Its infringing on my religious freedom to be forced to participate in something which is morally repugnant to my religion.
By refusing to bake a gay couple a wedding cake, I am not preventing them from getting married or having a cake. They can go take their business elsewhere. I'm just refusing to participate in what I feel to be wrong, and I shouldn't be retaliated against for doing that.
Sorry, but again, you have no right to force someone else to follow your religion. Being a public business means you can't pick and choose who you serve based on them not matching your religion.
Grey Templar wrote: If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer.
We've been down that road before. And people seriously need to read the laws of the land. You're not allowed to deny service in public accommodations based on sex. Federal law says it. Oregon Law says it. At this point most states have a public accommodations law. So no. They had no right to deny service. We've been down that road before. We already know where it goes.
My private business isn't a public accommodation. Especially when you are dealing with customized product.
Or do you think it would also be illegal for someone to refuse to make a cake for a KKK meeting that had racial slurs on it?
Grey Templar wrote: If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer.
We've been down that road before. And people seriously need to read the laws of the land. You're not allowed to deny service in public accommodations based on sex. Federal law says it. Oregon Law says it. At this point most states have a public accommodations law. So no. They had no right to deny service. We've been down that road before. We already know where it goes.
Or do you think it would also be illegal for someone to refuse to make a cake for a KKK meeting that had racial slurs on it?
There's no law against making a cake with racial slurs far as I know, and it would be illegal to refuse to make a cake for the KKK far as I know (given the realities of life though, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something you could get away with). Americans are very happy to ignore the rights of people we don't like, and if society in general doesn't like them we generally go on ignoring them. That's why we have public accommodation laws in the first place.
Grey Templar wrote: If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer.
We've been down that road before. And people seriously need to read the laws of the land. You're not allowed to deny service in public accommodations based on sex. Federal law says it. Oregon Law says it. At this point most states have a public accommodations law. So no. They had no right to deny service. We've been down that road before. We already know where it goes.
Or do you think it would also be illegal for someone to refuse to make a cake for a KKK meeting that had racial slurs on it?
There's no law against making a cake with racial slurs far as I know, and it would be illegal to refuse to make a cake for the KKK far as I know (given the realities of life though, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something you could get away with). Americans are very happy to ignore the rights of people we don't like, and if society in general doesn't like them we generally go on ignoring them. That's why we have public accommodation laws in the first place.
Well, as long as you have legitimate reasoning, you often can refuse. In this instance, you wouldn't be able to refuse service to members of the KKK, bht would be able to refuse to put racial slurs on it. At least to my vauge understanding.
Grey Templar wrote: Unless you can show a real religious reason to refuse service to a black person wanting a custom cake then you are making a false equivalence.
That's not even remotely a false equivalence. It's the exact same thing. Discrimination is discrimination, whether it's based in religion, racism, nativism, sexism, or powdered wigism (no shirt, no shoes, NO WIG, no service!).
Besides. Llaws banning you from discriminating on people based on sexual orientation also (usually far as I know) ban you from discriminating on people based on race, creed, sex, disability, and national origin.
What if there are four other Bakers in town, but you all go to the same church and have identical feels on gay people?
What if you call all the other bakers up, and tell them not to serve the gay couple, or else more of them will come.
Now replace gay with black. Welcome to Mississippi 1960. I'd rather not return to that.
Unless you can show a real religious reason to refuse service to a black person wanting a custom cake then you are making a false equivalence.
As for other bakers and proximity, those details are irrelevant.
Not a false equivalent as people claimed during the 60's that they had religious reasons to discriminate against blacks.
I agree the the details are irrelevant, for other reasons
And those people didn't have a leg to stand on. Nowhere in the Bible does it say blacks are inferior or anything, it says the exact opposite actually.
Being gay on the other hand is a well documented affront against God.
Depends. It could also be talking about male on male rape, which was used to assert dominance and humiliate.
But that's beside the point, as religious beliefs are what you say they are. The law can't say "your religious beliefs are wrong", as there is no way to prove that they aren't your religious beliefs.
Grey Templar wrote: Unless you can show a real religious reason to refuse service to a black person wanting a custom cake then you are making a false equivalence.
You're going to jump through mental hoops trying to defend the right to discriminate against people. Then people will get mad and start violating Rule #1. Then you'll make yourself look worse and worse as you get more desperate. People will start piling on and it will get ugly so we should just drop it now and move on.
What if there are four other Bakers in town, but you all go to the same church and have identical feels on gay people?
What if you call all the other bakers up, and tell them not to serve the gay couple, or else more of them will come.
Now replace gay with black. Welcome to Mississippi 1960. I'd rather not return to that.
Unless you can show a real religious reason to refuse service to a black person wanting a custom cake then you are making a false equivalence.
As for other bakers and proximity, those details are irrelevant.
Not a false equivalent as people claimed during the 60's that they had religious reasons to discriminate against blacks.
I agree the the details are irrelevant, for other reasons
And those people didn't have a leg to stand on. Nowhere in the Bible does it say blacks are inferior or anything, it says the exact opposite actually.
Being gay on the other hand is a well documented affront against God.
The joy of the Bible is that it is subjective. They don't need to point to a specific passage. The rule of religious belief is that if they believe it, it's their religion. They don't have to provide a source.
I believe that they claimed being black was the mark that God put on Caine. Regardless, being gay is not a well documented affront against God, it's just misreading passages and claiming that they mean what they person reading them wants them to say. I would say it is un-Christlike to exclude gays from being served.
What if there are four other Bakers in town, but you all go to the same church and have identical feels on gay people?
What if you call all the other bakers up, and tell them not to serve the gay couple, or else more of them will come.
Now replace gay with black. Welcome to Mississippi 1960. I'd rather not return to that.
Unless you can show a real religious reason to refuse service to a black person wanting a custom cake then you are making a false equivalence.
As for other bakers and proximity, those details are irrelevant.
Not a false equivalent as people claimed during the 60's that they had religious reasons to discriminate against blacks.
I agree the the details are irrelevant, for other reasons
And those people didn't have a leg to stand on. Nowhere in the Bible does it say blacks are inferior or anything, it says the exact opposite actually.
Being gay on the other hand is a well documented affront against God.
Well I sure hope they also choose to be consistant and also refuse service to Atheists, Pagans, Satanists, Buhdists, Sikhs, etc.
Also anyone who has ever sinned ever without seeking forgiveness, as all sinners are an affront to god.
If they aren't refusing service to all of them too, then it isn't for religious reasons but for that of personal bigotry.
Well, getting historical about it, there were lots of ways people in the south used religion to justify racism, slavery, and Jim Crow. Being black was the mark of Caine. God separated the racism himself* Some associated the history of the Church with being 'white' as most Jews were identified as white, and Gentile as a word to this day continues to be used in a context that implies people from the Hellenic world, which is usually taken as implying white.
Religion was just part of it though. There was also ethnic culture. Economics. Politics. Power. It's so macabre, but Southern culture between the Civil War and desegregation is so freaking fascinating. Mind blowing and kind of disgusting, but so freaking fascinating (this is how people end up with dark senses of humor btw).
*I actually find this one kind of funny. Read a hilarious excerpt from a book written in response to Brown v Board talking about how "god put the whites here, and the blacks here, and the yellows here, and the reds here. Obviously he didn't want us living together!"
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
jasper76 wrote: Does anyone think there would be public support for a two term limit for Senators and Congressmen?
I worry it would make "politics for sale" even worse as they scramble to ensure there is cushy jobs of private sector boards waiting for them after their terms are up.
That and the nature of Congressman is that having long serving people actually works out in a number of ways. You have people who've been sitting on committees for years. They (supposedly) can become extremely well versed in subjects their committees deal with, which is good when you're writing laws, managing funding, and dealing with professional experts. Functionally, things don't always work out that way, but that has little to do with terms and lack of limits, and more to do with political culture. The problems with Congress might actually be helped by lengthening terms and allowed recalls at the Federal level. I would hope such a change would lead to less campaigning (and thus less lobby influence) and more governing. Especially in the House.
Functionally, I don't think term limits actually solve many problems. Remember, we didn't have any prior to FDR, and the only reason we put up a presidential term limit is because of our historic distrust of executive power (founded and unfounded).
jasper76 wrote: Does anyone think there would be public support for a two term limit for Senators and Congressmen?
I worry it would make "politics for sale" even worse as they scramble to ensure there is cushy jobs of private sector boards waiting for them after their terms are up.
It's tricky, because corruption and time in power go hand in hand. I kind of like the idea of having elder statesmen in the Senate, but I'm not sure the current system is really playing that idea out. I don't like the idea of unlimited terms, particularly in the House , but also in the Senate. I couldn't say what number of terms would work for me, maybe more than 2, but some kind of limit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I should say I also agree with the current 2 term limit on the POTUS.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
On reflection, the biggest problem that the US will face is who do they want to represent them on the world stage.
I don't think either candidate is ideal, but I think Trump would be embarrassing.
The man is likely to litter the international stage with gaffes and embarrassments, as he seems to just say what is on his mind at that particular moment.
He might be able to put the car salesman routine over the punters back home, but against serious international statesman and opponents, he's not likely to be anywhere near as succesful . Putin would love to have him as an opponent, he is almost a caricature of capitalism. I doubt he is as politically astute or capable as Putin, it seems that any face to face confrontation would likely to be very one sided.
In fact, if it wouldn't be so likely to endanger the stability of the international community, I would love to see them go head to head.
Grey Templar wrote: If I am running a business there should be nothing which compels me to serve a particular customer.
We've been down that road before. And people seriously need to read the laws of the land. You're not allowed to deny service in public accommodations based on sex. Federal law says it. Oregon Law says it. At this point most states have a public accommodations law. So no. They had no right to deny service. We've been down that road before. We already know where it goes.
I still think its wrong to force someone to do something which deeply violates their religious beliefs.
It has more to do with contract rights than religious views. Ultimately the only action the bakers were asked to undertake was to bake a cake which clearly wasn't a violation of their religious views. Baking the cake didn't make the bakers gay and baking isn't a gay activity.
The issue is if the government has the power to infringe on your right to contract as you see fit. Do I have the right to be the sole determiner of who I chose to contract my labor? Can I agree to work or not work for whomever I want? Do I get to choose who I take on as clients for services I offer or who I choose to whom I sell the goods I produce?
Doing away with the institutionalized racism of segregation needed to be done but it didn't have to include the erosion of a foundational principle of individual liberty.
I thought this was a good little interview...gave me a driveway moment
"Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow dissects Trump's acquisition of the Taj Mahal casino/hotel, which went into bankruptcy a year after it opened."
I still think its wrong to force someone to do something which deeply violates their religious beliefs.
I agree, which is why it's important to remember the missing piece of the puzzle: the law doesn't say that Sally the Baker has to bake a wedding cake for gay weddings, it says that Sally's Bakery, LLC, a distinct legal entity, has to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding. Businesses exist independently of their owners and workers, even when they are all the same person. If Sally doesn't want to personally bake a cake, even for a legitimate reason, she either needs to come up with an excuse (hey, I'm booked that weekend), or have another employee or contractor take care of it. Does that sound crappy? It's the price you pay for being a commercial entity.
And that leads the other issue: these are not only corner cases, but they feature people that seem, frankly, pretty committed to becoming martyrs. That's fine, but there's a million ways to get rid of a client or customer you don't want to do business with that don't involve saying "I don't do gay weddings."
And finally, this is really mean and judgmental, but most people don't believe the "being party to a gay wedding violates my beliefs" line. We just don't. You may really think that, but we're all pretty much assuming you're just bummed you can't say "no homo."
I still think its wrong to force someone to do something which deeply violates their religious beliefs.
I agree, which is why it's important to remember the missing piece of the puzzle: the law doesn't say that Sally the Baker has to bake a wedding cake for gay weddings, it says that Sally's Bakery, LLC, a distinct legal entity, has to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding. Businesses exist independently of their owners and workers, even when they are all the same person. If Sally doesn't want to personally bake a cake, even for a legitimate reason, she either needs to come up with an excuse (hey, I'm booked that weekend), or have another employee or contractor take care of it. Does that sound crappy? It's the price you pay for being a commercial entity.
And that leads the other issue: these are not only corner cases, but they feature people that seem, frankly, pretty committed to becoming martyrs. That's fine, but there's a million ways to get rid of a client or customer you don't want to do business with that don't involve saying "I don't do gay weddings."
And finally, this is really mean and judgmental, but most people don't believe the "being party to a gay wedding violates my beliefs" line. We just don't. You may really think that, but we're all pretty much assuming you're just bummed you can't say "no homo."
You're also missing another key part of the picture. The law is clear that in the case of Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships(which I believe the bakery in this case was) they are legally indistinct from the owner. Sally's Bakery is for all legal purposes the same as Sally the Baker.
So no, businesses do not always exist independently of their owners. And we're all aware that businesses were recently given all the rights of personhood in a recent controversial court ruling. So either way, religious rights were violated.
You're also missing another key part of the picture. The law is clear that in the case of Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships(which I believe the bakery in this case was) they are legally indistinct from the owner. Sally's Bakery is for all legal purposes the same as Sally the Baker.
So no, businesses do not always exist independently of their owners. And we're all aware that businesses were recently given all the rights of personhood in a recent controversial court ruling. So either way, religious rights were violated.
I'm pretty sure that the LLC, PLLC, INC, Co. or whatever would say otherwise... which is exactly what Polonius said....
To my knowledge, the only legal way in which to discriminate against a person or a group of people is to open your business as a "Private Club," though I'm sure those dakkaites with more legal training can verify or deny this.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
To my knowledge, the only legal way in which to discriminate against a person or a group of people is to open your business as a "Private Club," though I'm sure those dakkaites with more legal training can verify or deny this.
(to expand) This is true under federal law, but not necessarily all state laws. There was a men's club in Minnesota (or maybe Oregon... not sure), but they got sued by women, and the state SCOTUS ruled that because the activities of the club included making money via local businesses, that they could not bar women from membership per the state's public accommodations law.
Something like that anyway... There's going to be some differences state to state on exactly what kinds of things a 'public accommodation' can and can't do as far as denying services, and what constitutes a 'public accommodation.' The Oregon law, under which said Christian bakers were sued, is pretty much a copy paste job of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964/1968 rolled into one law. The Federal law exempts private clubs and religious groups. I think a few states do not exempt private clubs at all.
Ok, I don't know if this is a true story or not, but evidently Trump's bodyguards almost got into a rumble with a bunch of Rolling Stones' roadies back in 1989. Funny story nonetheless.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States
So... you'd rather a group people are prevented to have a say 60-90 before the elections?
That's what the case boiled down to.
The government actually argued that they have the power to ban books!
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States
So... you'd rather a group people are prevented to have a say 60-90 before the elections?
That's what the case boiled down to.
The government actually argued that they have the power to ban books!
So you argue that goldman sachs should be able to donate millions of dollars to candidates?
I know you have a hard on to see HRC destroyed but this is ridiculous whembly
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States
So... you'd rather a group people are prevented to have a say 60-90 before the elections?
That's what the case boiled down to.
The government actually argued that they have the power to ban books!
So you argue that goldman sachs should be able to donate millions of dollars to candidates?
I know you have a hard on to see HRC destroyed but this is ridiculous whembly
As long as we're aware where it comes from... yeah.
Otherwise, it becomes an "Incumbent Protection Act"... which was what McCain-Feingold (BCRA) was really about.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States
So... you'd rather a group people are prevented to have a say 60-90 before the elections?
That's what the case boiled down to.
The government actually argued that they have the power to ban books!
So you argue that goldman sachs should be able to donate millions of dollars to candidates?
I know you have a hard on to see HRC destroyed but this is ridiculous whembly
As long as we're aware where it comes from... yeah.
Otherwise, it becomes an "Incumbent Protection Act"... which was what McCain-Feingold (BCRA) was really about.
So you are saying that a company board of 10 or 20 has an equal voice to the actual people.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States
So... you'd rather a group people are prevented to have a say 60-90 before the elections?
That's what the case boiled down to.
The government actually argued that they have the power to ban books!
So you argue that goldman sachs should be able to donate millions of dollars to candidates?
I know you have a hard on to see HRC destroyed but this is ridiculous whembly
As long as we're aware where it comes from... yeah.
Otherwise, it becomes an "Incumbent Protection Act"... which was what McCain-Feingold (BCRA) was really about.
So you are saying that a company board of 10 or 20 has an equal voice to the actual people.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States
So... you'd rather a group people are prevented to have a say 60-90 before the elections?
That's what the case boiled down to.
The government actually argued that they have the power to ban books!
So you argue that goldman sachs should be able to donate millions of dollars to candidates?
I know you have a hard on to see HRC destroyed but this is ridiculous whembly
As long as we're aware where it comes from... yeah.
Otherwise, it becomes an "Incumbent Protection Act"... which was what McCain-Feingold (BCRA) was really about.
So you are saying that a company board of 10 or 20 has an equal voice to the actual people.
Grey Templar wrote: I fear Hillary will try to erode the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments. And I feel she will be the most likely to succeed in doing so.
She's a progressive, so eroding the 2nd Amendment is part of her shtick, but what aspects of the 1st and 5th do you see her eroding? I'm curious, because she is more authoritarian than people might initially realize.
If she could, she'd have Citizens United overturned.
Now, before everyone jumps in and screams "BUT CORPORATION AIN'T PEOPLE!", please do research what Citizens United was truly about.
Whembly we have been over it, sure it wasn't about people. But it allowed for corporations to pour millions of dollars into the political election process.
The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations. By allowing unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, the decision has "re-shaped the political landscape" of the United States
So... you'd rather a group people are prevented to have a say 60-90 before the elections?
That's what the case boiled down to.
The government actually argued that they have the power to ban books!
So you argue that goldman sachs should be able to donate millions of dollars to candidates?
I know you have a hard on to see HRC destroyed but this is ridiculous whembly
As long as we're aware where it comes from... yeah.
Otherwise, it becomes an "Incumbent Protection Act"... which was what McCain-Feingold (BCRA) was really about.
So you are saying that a company board of 10 or 20 has an equal voice to the actual people.
Just look at the top 10 groups and the last two columns.
What do you see?
I think you missed the point.
Unions donate large amounts of money because they're able to collect large amounts of money from their members, whom the union represents.
Exactly, I am pretty sure I am okay with nurses, teachers and laborers having their voices heard more than some schmucks sitting in a board room because they want to de regulate everything so they can make a few more million each and screw over everyone else.
Just look at the top 10 groups and the last two columns.
What do you see?
I think you missed the point.
Unions donate large amounts of money because they're able to collect large amounts of money from their members, whom the union represents.
Exactly, I am pretty sure I am okay with nurses, teachers and laborers having their voices heard more than some schmucks sitting in a board room because they want to de regulate everything so they can make a few more million each and screw over everyone else.
You can't state on the one hand, say it's okay for Unions to engage in the political process and on the other denounce Corporate spending in the political sphere.
Doesn't compute.
Fact of the matter, the Citizen United ruling allowed a more liberalized funding streams for PACs / SuperPACs.
Which benefited organizations like those Union groups as well...
Just look at the top 10 groups and the last two columns.
What do you see?
I think you missed the point.
Unions donate large amounts of money because they're able to collect large amounts of money from their members, whom the union represents.
Exactly, I am pretty sure I am okay with nurses, teachers and laborers having their voices heard more than some schmucks sitting in a board room because they want to de regulate everything so they can make a few more million each and screw over everyone else.
You can't state on the one hand, say it's okay for Unions to engage in the political process and on the other denounce Corporate spending in the political sphere.
Doesn't compute.
Fact of the matter, the Citizen United ruling allowed a more liberalized funding streams for PACs / SuperPACs.
Which benefited organizations like those Union groups as well...
When those groups represent millions of people instead of hundreds it is more palatable
There's a pretty strong story going around that Republicans have told Obama they'll confirm Garland in the lame duck congress, if a Democrat wins the presidency. Which is a bit like telling the enemy you'll surrender if they defeat your army and take your capital. But more importantly it shows how completely dishonest the Republicans are in refusing confirmation hearings, it was never about 'letting the people decide', it was just about hoping that a Republican would win the presidency and pick someone different.
Anyhow, I said a few pages back we were seeing the first signs of Republicans rationalising Trump as the lesser of two evils, in order to turn up and vote like they always do. That rationalisation appears in full force now.
It makes me wonder if there could possibly be a candidate horrible enough that they wouldn't all fall in line.
skyth wrote: It's also a basic, fundamental, rule of business that you don't hire someone unless you have no other choice. That is why consumers, rather than businesses, create jobs.
Yes, and it's a basic, fundamental reality that people need an income to spend money. That's why it's chicken and the egg, whatever sales the business have is either expenditure that goes to suppliers or employees or is profit. Either way it is spent by employees, it becomes demand. You and Capt Jake are arguing different sides but you're both making the same mistake, picking one side of the mechanic and claiming that's the only side that matters.
Only says you. The tax system, as current, is based around wealth changing hands.
No, the US system isn't based around wealth changing hands. It is based by default on income. When you sell an asset you aren't taxed on the sale price, you're taxed on the sale price less the purchase price - how much the asset grew over it's life, which is it's profit, a form of income.
The issue, of course, is that the US system deviates from that default position regularly, because it is a bad, inconsistent tax system.
Besides, I don't see any better way of addressing the wealth gap. It's already getting worse and worse as time goes on.
Higher marginal tax rates. That should be obvious, even if I hadn't mentioned it multiple times in this thread.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
jmurph wrote: The problem with not taxing transfers of wealth as income is that if you only define income as income from earnings and property, you leave out a lot. Would investment income qualify? Dividends? Appreciation?
Yes, dividends, rent, interest, capital gains... these are all income. This is clearly defined in existing tax codes. Your question isn't a real question.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grey Templar wrote: Some mutability is good, but not to the level that Clinton waffles around.
So it's just "flip flopper!" again. That was pretty boring about half way through 2004. Come on, this is only fun when everyone puts in effort. If you're going to invent reasons to hate someone, show some imagination.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
d-usa wrote: I'm always surprised that "she's ambitious" is considered a drawback.
You have to be a narcissist and ambitious to think that you would be the best person to become POTUS. How many people thought that God Himself chose them for the job this time around?
Personally I only want aimless, lazy drifters for President.
I think the 'she's ambitious' thing is an emotional reaction, a vague and fairly poorly thought through reaction against Clinton, because as you say obviously everyone who goes runs for President is hardworking. Except Fred Thompson, who was by all reports a lazy gak.
Anyhow, I think the real thing that's driving that dislike of Clinton is that she's a bulldog. When she fights she fights to win. That 70s legal case is a decent example - she has to give a defense because she's the appointed lawyer, but she didn't just give a good defense, she fought to win. I can see how that can mean people won't like someone.
Of course, being President isn't about being liked. Carter was a true gentleman, and the presidency didn't really work out for him. On the other hand Johnson got real stuff done, and the basic reason is that if you didn't fall in to line like he wanted you to, he fethed you over good and proper. Clinton has given every indication of being the second kind. Not as much as Johnson, not by a long shot, more like a less genial version of her husband, or perhaps just like her husband, if her husband had had another 24 years in Washington before he got the job.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Polonius wrote: Religious freedom is simply the dogwhistle for being anti-gay rights, and I don't buy it.
538 did an interesting bit that looked at how often 'gay marriage' was used in the past set of primaries by Republicans. Its dropped massively this time around, replaced by 'religious freedom'. Because exactly as you said religious freedom is a dog whistle for people pissed off that gay people are allowed to marry now.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grey Templar wrote: And those people didn't have a leg to stand on. Nowhere in the Bible does it say blacks are inferior or anything, it says the exact opposite actually.
Being gay on the other hand is a well documented affront against God.
I don't think you realise the path you're wandering down here. I mean, you're just plain wrong about racism have less of a place in the bible than homophobia, but that debate is both irrelevant and boring. The bigger issue here is that by arguing that one thing is religious freedom because it is in the bible, while another thing isn't, you're inviting the courts to open your book and decide for you what your religion does and doesn't say. That's the opposite of religious freedom.
That's why if someone says 'I think my religion requires me to be a racist jerk' we have to say 'you're wrong, but you have the same religious protections as someone who thinks their religion doesn't make them a jerk'. Because the alternative is state sanctioned religion.
The new testament says you should cut off your hands and gouge out your eyes if they should lead you astray. And I am pretty sure there has only been one perfect man in Christianity. And there are a lot of christians out there who are whole bodied. So citing something as being well documented in the bible is not a good reason for something
Its a great source. But funnily enough when you speculated a while back that oil and gas money was behind the Democrat's support of closing coal mining, and I used opensecrets to show you oil and gas money goes 91% to Republicans. You didn't respond.
" It is a metric mathematical scientific algorithm of tyranny that is extremely sophisticated and can even predict the future."
Trump's Press Secretary people! Wake up sheeple! OTHER BUZZWORDS!!!!!!
I will admit, in my early 20s I may have thought Jones was telling the truth for about a month. Then I realized he was a snake oil peddler, a demagogue and had a messiah complex haha.
I've seen Trumpette's cite Infowars enough to not be surprise by this lol.
They only people I've ever met that other than Trumpettes that can not be shifted from their views are people who are deeply religious and conspiracy theorists. The deeply religious at least makes sense to me but Trumpettes are too similar to conspiracy theorist for my own comfort. Of course, most that I know and have met hold a fair few conspiracy theory beliefs.
Its a great source. But funnily enough when you speculated a while back that oil and gas money was behind the Democrat's support of closing coal mining, and I used opensecrets to show you oil and gas money goes 91% to Republicans. You didn't respond.
I missed that and I admitted that I was speculating...
