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Trump’s plan removes over 50% of the households from paying the tax. That helps working people a great deal.
Trump’s tax plan helps Trump and people like him a hell of a lot more than it helps working people. As in, millions of dollars more per person in the millionaire and billionaire class. Why not just cut taxes on people in the working class? Why extend that to millionaires and billionaires? They’ve already gobbled up the vast majority of all tax cuts since 1964.
That’s a drop of 91% down to 25%, since that time. Working people have seen a tiny fraction of that drop and, obviously, since they don’t make but a tiny fraction as much to begin with, any tax cut for them is a fraction of a fraction as much in total dollars.
Trump is lying to his supporters and scamming them for his own personal benefit.
Well, I have to take some of that back. I’m doing the test right now, and it must not be the same one I remember. Might not have clicked on the correct link. Or they may have changed it recently.
It’s still okay, but a lot shorter, and doesn’t seem to have any extended options. The one I remember did.
Anyway, no biggie.
You are using material that was deliberately misconstrued for political gain. I’m not saying you did the work. I’m saying your sources did.
Okay. I appreciate the clarification. Thanks.
But my sources show full video and audio, plus complete transcripts. Sometimes those sources are just the TV networks. As in, I watched him say these things, live, and then saw them again on news broadcasts. These are just his own words, from his own mouth. From his own speeches and rallies. Are you saying that the video and audio and transcripts of those speeches and rallies, delivered in full, are somehow altered before we see them on the TV, or hear them on the radio, etc?
Or that his proposals on his own website, like this one for taxation, are altered for political gain:
If you are single and earn less than $25,000, or married and jointly earn less than $50,000, you will not owe any income tax. That removes nearly 75 million households – over 50% – from the income tax rolls. They get a new one page form to send the IRS saying, “I win,” those who would otherwise owe income taxes will save an average of nearly $1,000 each.
All other Americans will get a simpler tax code with four brackets – 0%, 10%, 20% and 25% – instead of the current seven. This new tax code eliminates the marriage penalty and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) while providing the lowest tax rate since before World War II.No business of any size, from a Fortune 500 to a mom and pop shop to a freelancer living job to job, will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes. This lower rate makes corporate inversions unnecessary by making America’s tax rate one of the best in the world.
No family will have to pay the death tax. You earned and saved that money for your family, not the government. You paid taxes on it when you earned it.
Look closely at his tax proposal. That massive cut in the top rate — from 39.6% to 25% — will add tens of millions to his own bank account, as will the end of the estate tax, which currently only applies to estates larger than 5.4 million.
And the part I bolded and italicized about business taxes? That is, at best, disingenuous. Businesses aren’t taxed on their income. They’re taxed on their profits. A huge difference.
Also, with his massive tax cuts for businesses, huge estates, capital gains, and so on, how on earth will he balance the budget as promised in eight years? Every credible economist says he will actually blow up the deficit and add at least 10 trillion more to the debt, from his tax plan alone.
I’ve now completed the first two seasons, and am well into Season Three. The ability to watch back to back episodes is addictive — and really bad for my time management.
Just finished an episode with one of the best dialogues between Littlefinger and Varys. Video of scene follows. Trigger warning, just in case: One of the images especially is very graphic and unsettling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRS8a8HjqFs
Lord Varys: I did what I did for the good of the realm.
Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish: The realm. Do you know what the realm is? It’s the thousand blades of Aegon’s enemies, a story we agree to tell each other over and over, until we forget that it’s a lie.
Lord Varys: But what do we have left, once we abandon the lie? Chaos? A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.
Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish: Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.
I know those are just estimates, and that the political figures cited didn’t actually take the test . . . But Sanders and Stein seem off to me.
I base that on several factors. But, perhaps the biggest tell: I’ve frequented another political forum for years. Most of its regulars are “liberals,” and I’ve been jousting with them — and with conservatives there — for awhile. Not long ago I managed to persuade about a dozen to take the political compass test. The basic range for liberals there was/is in the minus 4s and 5s, up into the minus 6s. In recent weeks, many of same posters who scored as high as the minus 6 range have come down fairly hard against Sanders, and for Clinton, and mostly because they see Sanders as “extreme” — and complain endlessly about his supporters, too. They see Stein as even more “extreme.” A few of them see me as far more extreme than either of them, of course.
;>)
Anyway . . . to make a long story short. If mainstream liberals chart roughly halfway over and halfway down (within the left-bottom quadrant), then I think it’s fair to assume Sanders and Stein would score at least as well, if not better — with Stein further left and further down than Sanders. Sanders, while advocating for Social Democratic or FDR-New-dealish policies, does identify as “democratic socialist.” I’d say Stein is a bit to his left. But that’s really a guess.
No way to know for sure, until they actually take the test, which is doubtful — and we’d never know about it anyway. But I don’t think that’s a good charting for them.
(from the 2nd thoughts file). As the moderator, I want to caution zn on being too argumentative. Anyone can think anything about Harold Bloom they want to…let a thousand Blooms…uh…flower.
ZN,
Thanks. But you are risking the entire space-time continuum with this, I hope you know. And we’ve already been through all of that. If you insist on continuing down this, um, er, continuum, we will be forced to call for an intervention, get JJ Abrams involved, so he can set up a new worm hole to fix the old one you seem intent on exploding.
You should be ashamed.
. He’s perhaps the best-read, most erudite reader of the Bard alive today.
Take my word for this.
No.
Nothing wrong with Bloom, I like Bloom. But he’s not the best Shakespeare scholar or however you want to put that.
.
Didn’t say the best. I said the best-read and most erudite. I stand by that. The man is a voracious reader, and has been for well over half a century. Tremendous intellectual range as well.
A demonstrator protesting the shooting death of Alton Sterling is detained by law enforcement in Baton Rouge on July 9, 2016. (Jonathan Bachman/Reuters)
Amazing photo. Beauty in the midst of tragedy, brutality, violence.
