Mr. Striker,

Welcome aboard the Unz Review.

So glad the Mr. Unz brought you to the Review. I have followed your work over various sites for along time. I think you are the very best voice of the so-called Alt-Right. You are the only one, so far as I have seen, that brings systematic research to you commentary.

I have long ago grown tired of chatterboxes like Spencer, Enoch, etc. With few exceptions, the whole of “The Right Stuff..biz” et al programing comes across as adolescents in the basement with great Internet technological knowledge and skills, but don’t know what to do with it.

I don’t mean to “throw out the baby with the bathwater” (so to speak), there are some good moments in alt media and I always stay tuned; even to the chatterboxes, But generally, the ‘movement’ (as it were) needs more voices like yours; a combination of factual research, ideological perspective and personable style of speaking and writing.

It is interesting, to my mind, that I think of both you and E. Michael Jones in those terms and ‘don’t yah know’, you both show up on my most valuable ‘god-send’ website (Unz Review) at the same time.
……..

As I often end my comment notes: “God Bless Ron Unz”

Trump never intended anyone to better themselves except for the jews.

Trump is their Inside Man.

“The sons and daughters of the supper wealthy are undeserving of all that wealth. They are not quality people – they have not proven themselves. They should not have the power that goes with all that wealth.”

First of all, who are you to decide who is and isn’t deserving of anything? If I’m rich it’s my right to decide if I want to leave all my money for my children, so much for being pro-choice. Secondly, what exactly makes them “worthy” or “unworthy”? And if they’re undeserving of their parent’s wealth, what makes the government worthy to claim that? Or what makes you or poor people worthy of someone else’s success?

I submit that a corporation that does not create value must either receive a government subsidy or it will go out of business. Shareholders either want a dividend/profit or they sell their worthless shares.

I would think that without corporations (with an opportunity to obtain additional financing without contributing unskilled labor), we would still be riding horses. However, corporations controlling corporations is a completely different animal.

The example of East India was more Al Capone than a corporate body.

“Slash military spending and halt aid to Israel . . .”

Sure, and why not free teleporters for everyone while he’s at it?

Seriously, there is not now, and there has not been for decades any real way for a president to do those two things and survive.

Not merely survive politically, but survive.

Nixon was lucky to be forced alive out of office after his foreign policies ran headlong into his own national security state’s opposition.

No president since has dared to reel in the military or to question the nature of our relationship with Israel.

LBJ screamed at McNamara in 1967 to have our fighters recalled after the U.S.S. Liberty’s crew somehow got off a distress signal that they were being attacked by Israel.

LBJ was quoted by Stanley Karnow in December of 1963 that the American generals had “better get me elected, and then they can have their damn (Vietnam) war . . .”

LBJ knew to whom to listen.

Reagan at Reykjavik had his November 1986 anti-nuke summit derailed by the simultaneous revelation of the Iran-Contra affair.

Nixon’s attempt to thaw the Cold War with the USSR and Mao’s China came to nothing after he was Watergated.

As soon as 9/11 happened, George W. Bush abandoned his campaign promise not to get us involved in nation-building, and promptly ordered the destruction of Iraq so we could re-build it!

Both Obama and Clinton talked as if they were men interested in non-military solutions to world affairs, but both involved us in numerous conflicts around the globe, none of which had any importance to America. (Who cares who rules Libya? We got along fine with Gaddafi for decades. What did Obama think he was doing?)
(Who told Clinton that bombing Serbia was in America’s best interest?)

I haven’t even mentioned JFK. That he was murdered by his own national security state is all but certain.
That today’s mainstream media continues aggressively to push the national security state approved narrative of that murder IS certain.

I have the highest respect for Pat Buchanan, but even he has conceded in his writings that America changed for the worse after 11/22/63.

Steve, you and I agree that the solutions you propose are the only responsible ones for America. But for the reasons that I’ve just briefly outlined, they are impossible.

Of course not but you can’t beat Peak Stupidity of the American people, when to them a tax increase is a tax cut,now the next thing to watch is if the tweet and tweeter will like Reagan and his tax cuts, simply return less to the states,then people can watch their property taxes go thru the roofs as states try to make up the lost revenue…

Only in your dreams>>>

A couple of more things:

A) I’m not tax attorney or accountant. I don’t say that to cover my ass, but to illustrate that, hell, nobody follows this stuff because they use turbo-tax or a tax guy. I do my own, taking about 30-45 minutes each time, and for about a decade I did them at the bar during 1/2 time of the superbowl. I don’t have a business right now, but I do realize things are more complicated then. I have done my own taxes even when I itemized a number of things, taking, perhaps 2 hours (I do tend to round off all numbers to the nearest 10 bucks, and work it out on a cocktail napkin).

What’s my point? People don’t get this if they don’t see the forms and what each part does. Sure, you will see a different amount spit out of turbotax or told to you on the phone by your tax guy, but there are too many other variables each year for you to see right in front of you. THIS! IS! A! WASH! NO! CHANGE!

B) The elimination of the Alternate Minimum tax is a good thing, I’ll give them that. Do you all know that it was designed specifically to nail about 25 or 50 specific people who the government thought weren’t paying enough about 5 – 7 decades ago? The government didn’t like how these people were not “paying their share” by following THE LAW. No, not thousands, 50 people or something! Because the dollar has lost >95% of it’s value since that time, this one make lots of people have to pay the higher of 2 different methods of calculation of each year’s take bill.

A belated Merry Christmas to the House Ways and Means Committee, Kevin Brady presiding. I got your card, and FUCK YOU, too.

I am in agreement with about everyone on Unz, I would hope, that none of this matters compared to the existential problem of the immigration invasion. Once we turn into a 3rd world country, this tax-bracket stuff will be the least of our worries. It’d be wise to note that even the top 10% of immigrants in terms of having-their-shit-together are not your Ron Paul libertarians, and will vote for THE STATE every time.

That being said, I would like to set the record straight on the personal tax standard deduction thing. The Peak Stupidity blog does not normally get all wonky and shit, but I put in the basics of why this is nothing but a wash for the lower-to-middle middle-class taxpayer. I am luckily not living in the NE, say New Jersey, and have no plans to even visit the place, but for families like that of Radical Center, yeah, you or your Mom are losing out on the itemizing part. I mean that it’s a wash for families that don’t have businesses with lots of deductions or have houses paid off hence no itemizing.

Let me lay it out quickly with one word: EXEMPTIONS!. Oh, one more word: GONE! Did you hear that from any talking heads on TV (PERSONAL EXEMPTIONS (@ $4,000 per family member) – GONE!)? No, I would not have, as I don’t watch TV, but I looked up stuff for 10 minutes after I read enough to give a crap about this tax bill. I turns out that:

The personal exemption of $4,000 each is gone. This and the standard deduction are “top line” items (I explain this in my post). Therefore, for a family of 3, the $12,000 increase in the standard deduction is almost exactly-evenly wiped out by the removal of 3 X $4,000 in exemptions. For more than 3 your family loses on this. For a couple with no kid, you gain a $4,000 off the top (about $1,000 actual savings if you make together over $75,000 (25% taxes on the margin).

Now, I will add one more thing. Oh, lucky day! The child credit (bottom-line item) has gone up by $600, meaning about equivalent to a top-line reduction of 4X that, about $2,400 (again if you are in the 25% on-the-margin bracket). Between the doubling of the standard deduction, the elimination of the exemptions, and the increase by $600 in the child credit, it’s one big ball of NOTHING.

OK, I’m not gonna make this comment into a thesis, but listen, this whole thing is basically no cut at all for any family in the lower or middle of the middle-class. Is Peak Stupidity the only place you can read that? I dunno, it took me 10 minutes to figure out what I should have already known – we are not gonna get any Christmas presents from our Feral Gov’t evah!

Yawn. You lost.

1%? A large segment of the population owns stock through IRAs and 401k’s. They will benefit as well. A large percentage of my net worth is tied up in IRAs, which benefit from a rising stock market. I had the good foresight to get out of the market in January of 2008 and didn’t get back in until 2010 so I never went through the 201k experience. That was luck as much as anything else.

Except for a three year period when I had 2-3 kids in college I always put a minimum of 5% into a 401k, with an equal employer match. Once the last kid left school I always maxed out my contribution. My income was never in the top 10%, much less the top 1%.

Where’s the time preference and delayed gratification we HBDers are always writing about in iSteve? If you think corporations are getting an unfair break, back up your beliefs by buying stock in the biggest offenders.

It’s interesting that you acknowledge that states with no or low state income tax will attract more residents than those with high state income tax but dismiss the idea that a country doing the same with the corporate income tax rate (i.e., lowering it to make it competitive with other developed countries) will have any effect on luring companies back to our shores.

So if Trump is a “pretty crappy businessman” and there’s “no obvious connection between business acumen and political skill”, does that make Trump a political genius?

Corporations – all of which are Globali$t, disloyal to ordinary Americans – are going to invest their new tax savings in more Open Border$ Cheap Labor Lobby lawyers and propaganda and such, and they’re also going to invest those savings in more and more sophisticated computer automation, both of which will put and keep ever more Americans out of work.

Yes, trickle down economics seems to have been an obvious failure. The rich have made it clear they care little for the economic well-being of their fellow Americans.

You can’t avoid the issues unless you address them anymore than we can avoid what’s coming, trillions upon trillions in debt, trillions in the time bomb known as dirivitives, war drums beating in the distance and Trump wants to add another trillion or two to those many trillions that we will never be able to pay.No I didn’t vote for Trump because for the first time in 60 years of voting I stayed home and yes I know the right wing will say he did a hell of a job and like Bush vote him in for another four years well if there’s anything left to vote for that is

Radical center

If you are not a leftist troll, well you have my apology. I must say I very much enjoyed your response, I do believe you come from New Jersey or at least the North East.

That said, I come from New Jersey, so yeah I know the taxes, and guess what. 10 to 12 thousand is just in line with what I expected…which is not 20 grand (which you very strongly implied). So in fact I was correct. Your mother, as a “qualified widow” will get her standard deduction near doubled. any loss in the deductions of local taxes will be made up in that. Your condemnation of the Trump’s Tax plan was wrong.

As in incorrect, Errant. Funny how you do not care to address that.

It is also funny how you assumed the second half of my diatribe applied to you. Which is why I still doubt your background. In your assumption I was talking about you, (which was only the part related to local tax deductions). There was a lot of rage there, frankly you indicate so much of it and aim it at Trump. Hmmmm…. Change takes time, the tides are with the right at the moment. The tax plan was a huge win. Trump fights and no president has ever faced headwinds like this. Give it time young Jedi and you may yet see good things.

Said another way, while the left is surely made up of dissatisfied utopians who are stunted, the same exists on the right as well. Those who expect perfection on this world, find scapegoats for all the ills of the world and generally find fault with everyone else, sure that the world would be just grand if they ran it. Unrealistic. Now is the time fro folks who have some interest in our escaping a complete collapse to celebrate. We may not win long term, but we now have a better chance of avoiding all of the issues you raised.

so finally,

Merry Christmas and good wishes towards all your.

Bob’s your Uncle.

Diversity lottery visas continue, despite recent talk talk talk.
Chain migration continues, despite recent talk talk talk.

And also despite tweet, tweet, tweet. And let’s not forget for all of his bluster he just appointed a blonde bimbo to head DHS who opposes the wall and supports DACA amnesty.

IMO he has done some good things, but after Obama there was no where to go but up. But he still hasn’t driven a very hard bargain with Congress when it comes to immigration issues. I hope that changes because we’re out of time and we don’t have several more election cycles to reverse demographic displacement policies currently in place.

The old propaganda line right vs left and there is not a nickles worth of difference between them…but you knew that right… as you go trolling along…

Bad policy, but good politics. The Repubes are only going to lose votes in states they would never win. Until the locusts decamp to low-tax states and turn them purple or blue.

Trump needs to push for more abortions now.

Yeah, we’re winning so much that my country continues to become more Third World every month despite our boy’s rhetoric and tough tweets.

Diversity lottery visas continue, despite recent talk talk talk.

Chain migration continues, despite recent talk talk talk.

No massive daily raids on construction sites and day labor centers as there should be.
No tenfold increase in deportations as there should be.
No imprisonment of people who hire illegal aliens instead of our countrymen, and no lethal force against aliens who try to resist apprehension and deportation.

Sanctuary cities — part of our fifth column whose mayors and city councils and police chiefs should be prosecuted and then executed (let Steinle’s parents take the shot) — haven’t been much affected or even gotten nearer to being defunded and drastically punished.

The guy we both voted for, spends more effort and political capital kissing israel’s ass, threatening Iran for no good reason, threatening North Korea unnecessarily, than actually trying to close the goddamn borders and force resources away from military contractors and connected bankers/financiers and African/Mexican/homo/barren-bitter-chuck federal “workers” towards regular normal Americans who work or want to work and raise families and love this decaying country with all our heart.

Yeah, winning, RAH RAH. Learn Spanish, motherfucker, because The Don ain’t doing anything real to prevent that from becoming a necessity in the whole country as opposed to just SoCal, the Southwest, and Texas.

See my comment at number 21, and hundreds of other places for years. Then go find an actual leftist to attack. And don’t forget to go fuck yourself. I mean that in the nicest Jersey Italian fashion, and in a good Christian way, of course, “Bob’s your aunt.”

Apparently you haven’t read any of my many, many comments here on unz or elsewhere. AT ALL. EVER. Check out my views and proposals on both illegal and legal immigration, for example. Gun rights. Federal versus state and local power, Tenth Amendment. Needless wars and the military industrial complex and the role of Israel and its domestic lobby in pushing us into wars that harm america’s economy and waste our boys’ lives and engender resentment by hundreds of millions abroad. And on and on.

Leftist? Hillary supporter? Attack someone who deserves it. Pay attention, man. You’re embarrassing yourself. I voted for Trump, dick.

I don’t even believe that we should have a federal income tax. But so long as we do, I don’t like non-wealthy people, or productive honest wealthy people like successful small businesspeople, getting screwed for the sake of the very wealthy OR for the sake of the often slothful long-term low-income people through the tax code.

As for property tax and income tax not coming out to twenty grand per year for a very non-wealthy in northern New Jersey, and it’s not New York, you haven’t got a clue, apparently. Great that you live elsewhere and haven’t spoken with ANYONE who lives in good parts of NJ, but you are utterly out of touch.

My mother pays more than one thousand dollars PER MONTH on property tax — PER MONTH, NOT PER YEAR — and she hardly lives in a mansion. Never has.

NJ has long has the highest residential property taxes of any State in the entire country and I believe on average still does.

My family vigorously opposed the welfarist Jewish/African (and now Latino)/slacker/government-employee mooches who kept electing people who increased spending, income tax, sales tax, and especially property tax mindlessly over the decades. They worked hard, always voted, advocated with friends and neighbors, contacted their reps regularly, donated to campaigns what relatively little they could, and we LOST. Big time.

Now we need to be lectured and lumped in with un-American scum by some totally uninformed prick like you who implies that you don’t believe my explanation of how much regular upper-middle-class people shell out in taxes where I was born and raised? Get out more and learn about different parts of the country before making comments like yours.

And I don’t think trump is a meanie. I think he’s a sellout pussy who should have used executive orders, as promised, to end DACA immediately. He also should have made ending birthright citizenship, family reunification, and diversity lottery visas into his TOP priority, holding everything else hostage until he got some of that done, but he hasn’t.

Merry Christmas, fuckwit.

Wow, what a lot of crying and lying by the left.

Radical center

Your mother in her 70s lives in a home where the local taxes on real estate and income are close to 20,000 per year. Right……does not sound correct but I will give you that, might be true in New York.

Guess what, her standard deduction went from 12,600 dollar to 24,000 or 25,000 (assuming a qualified widow), so it seems to me the additional 12,000 plus offset that 10,000 loss in local tax deduction, more or less, which means she might actually be better off with the new plan unless the local taxes on property and income exceed 22,000.

But you knew that, didn’t you. You just do not like Trump, the meanie.

As for all the dolts or leftist trolls that cannot figure out that lowering the corporate rate to 21 % makes it far more advantageous for companies to do business here: guess what? You will see more industry here and more investment in the US. An awful lot of US companies have left the US because of the 34.5 % rate. You folks seem to feel the tax rate will make no difference, why do you suppose the other nations we trade with are yowling about this, in particular Germany?

Look a lower corporate rate means companies can do project that simply make no sense otherwise. Companies have to hire folks to do such things. As it makes the US , by 1.5 % the more favorable tax rate in the industrial world, a lot of hiring will occur. If this is combined with a border wall and more restrictive immigration, you will see wage pressures and the working folks will see more of the pie.

Buy you leftist really know that, don’t you. You are just pissed that you dear little Hillary was shown to be a vapid turd, the leftist dream of an effective single party state is gone and the plan of reducing the US to a Brail or Venezuela like existence with you and your other stunted statists utopians on top has ended, or at least it is more likely so.

Keep publishing your attacks, it is very enjoyable to those on the Trump Train. We swim in your tears of frustration.

Go Trump Go, no we are not tired of winning yet.

P.S. No actual 19th century liberals were insulted in this note, just the dissatisfied dwarves that have utopian dreams of changing the US to their idiotic fantasy (with them on top of course), hoping by changing the world around them they can fill that hole inside them.

The Reagan tax cuts (they actually had bi-partisan support, which shows how things have changed) were designed to deal with a specific problem: stagflation. Since we have not had stagflation for decades, subsequent tax cuts cannot be justified by appeals to Reagan. The fundamental problem is that neither party is willing to make the policy changes which would repatriate the productive economy the current policies have sent overseas. The Republicans pretend we can revive the economy with tax cuts and the Democrats pretend we can ameliorate the damage done to the working class with freebies paid for with increased taxation.

Corporations – all of which are Globali$t, disloyal to ordinary Americans – are going to invest their new tax savings in more Open Border$ Cheap Labor Lobby lawyers and propaganda and such, and they’re also going to invest those savings in more and more sophisticated computer automation, both of which will put and keep ever more Americans out of work.

Meanwhile, this bill’s tax cuts for us plebs are grandfathered to end.

Some kinds of cuts help, other kinds of cuts make you bleed.

Most of all, I would wager that most of the Americans who voted to elect President Trump did not have the GOP $ellout E$tabli$hment’$ desideratum of tax rejiggering as their number one priority. Anyone care to guess what those voters’ actual Number One Priority was?

I’m for the drilling, and it does matter to me, though not a top priority.

I’m also for renegotiating NAFTA, especially with Mexico, but I doubt that that will amount to much.

I’d like the President to gradually bring our troops home, stay out of war with Iran, cooperate with Russia whenever possible rather than badgering and encroaching on them, BUILD THE DAMN WALL and stop the flood of both legal and illegal Third Worlders into my country, and make at least small reductions in military and domestic spending. Looking dubious so far.

The Dems are slime. But Trump gave them real ammunition, for a change, by passing this tax bill.

My mother, a native-born patriotic American citizen in her 70s, now living alone, recently retired after a long career of hard work, not having an easy time paying for the same house she was living in while working, and far from wealthy in terms of income or net worth, will be hit with a noticeable income-tax INCREASE under this bill.

We could have supported a phase-out of the deduction for state and local taxes, but not this sudden $10,000 annual cap.

A phase-in period of a few years would have given people in the higher-tax States time to adjust their affairs, especially by selling their homes and moving to lower-tax States where the deduction cap wouldn’t hurt them so much. Say, a cap of $20,000 on the state/local-tax deduction in 2018, then $15,000 in 2019, then $10,000 in 2020, etc.

To hurt her further, her house will not fetch the same price that it would have because

The Republicans claimed that they “couldn’t afford” to ensure that no regular American pays higher taxes, such as my mother, yet they apparently COULD afford to lower the rate for the very top bracket.

Aaaaand, as a kicker, the individual income tax rate cuts are sunsetted, while the corporate tax cuts are putatively permanent. I’m all for corporate tax reduction, but not when their tax relief is larger or longer-lasting than any direct tax relief to many hard-working Americans.

Hey, at least the tax code still has SEVEN individual income tax brackets and is terribly complicated.

Bad policy and bad politics, as well.

Lower corporate tax won’t mean squat,all those jobs sent out of the country will remain out of the country as well as any growth from them,the only place lower corporate tax will make a difference are in fixed corporations that can’t be moved like Trumps casino’s.If anyone is dumb enough to swallow that old right wing line of lower taxes means more growth then we should be swimming in well paid jobs instead of the Fed. having to endlessly goose wall street with cheap money, and we would’nt have a $20/$21 trillion dollar debt,hell you could cut corporate tax to zero and it still would’nt beat the 35/50 cent an hour from the third world countries and the off-shore accounts to park their profits in…

“There is also no obvious connection between business acumen and political skill.”

Yeah, I’ll bet most real estate developers don’t even know who their local politicians are. No connection whatsoever.

I usually enjoy Pat’s columns but with this one he has gone of the rails.

The best example of this is his following statements…

“As Democrats have denounced the tax bill for exploding the debt by $1.5 trillion, how do they propose to pay for all the free stuff, including free tuition and infrastructure, that they will have on offer?

There are only two options: borrowing and growing the national debt themselves or raising taxes, as Mondale promised to do.”

This is completely untrue and many reputable analysts have shown that way too much money is being given to US military contractors and the Pentagon along with ridiculous amounts of monies being forwarded to Israel.

Slash military spending and halt aid to Israel and there will be more than enough monies to provide for everything that the welfare of the general public requires.

Both the military and Israel are sucking the financial life blood out of the United States. The military can no longer produce quality weapon systems art reasonable costs, can no longer train American youth to be quality soldiers, airmen\airwomen, or sailors, all the while increasingly relying on high-technologies that are so poorly developed they do not even meet their own specifications. And there has been absolutely no ROI as far as the monies going to Israel are concerned. In fact, supporting that state costs much more than just the paychecks it gets from the US every year…

Good article. I’m optimistic about this tax cut. Confidence is already sky high and the economy is accelerating. The lower corporate tax rates should invite investment; and since people follow fads, investment by a few big players may produce an avalanche.

Politically, if the economy continues to improve over 2018, the Democrats will get crushed. Moreover, judging by today’s tweet, Trump intends to bludgeon the Democrats with his proposed infrastructure bill. A good infrastructure bill would put the knee-jerk Trump-hating Democrats in a dreadful spot.

Things are looking good! What a time to be alive.

Very likely. Great comment. Thanks.

Nice summary, Pat.

The next hit on the Democrats will be sacking bureaucrats until that $1.5 trillion hole is plugged—unless some liberal justice dies first.

Great comment!

Well said! Excellent comment. Thanks.

Companies will take the extra cash and do massive stock buybacks, thus enriching the 1% ever further and doing nothing for jobs or salaries.
This is a fundamentally different corporate era than the Reagan days.

Trump’s a money man, he knows how to make money

For Christ’s sake, if there is one thing everyone should be able to agree on, it is that Trump is a pretty crappy businessman. He inherited a lot of money and failed miserably as a real estate developer, and is even now heavily in debt. But he is brilliant at manipulating the media, and The Apprentice generated enough money and publicity to keep the Trump name. Those are all pretty basic facts.

There is also no obvious connection between business acumen and political skill. So why pretend Trump was something he clearly was not?

Republicans see themselves as the party of free enterprise, of the private not the public sector.

That might have defined the Republican party of the 70’s and 80’s but most Republicans of today only differ from the stridently anti-white, communist Democrats by a small degree. Republicans have been growing government/refusing to shrink government and spending like drunken sailors since the Dubya administration. A “cut” is now defined as slightly slowing the rate of projected growth. They love to lavish taxpayer money on the military industrial complex and Israel.

Republicans are still allocating vast sums of money for refugee resettlement. Republicans are now the party of less big government and slightly less social engineering.

As Democrats have denounced the tax bill for exploding the debt by $1.5 trillion,

It’s funny how Democrats suddenly become deficit hawks when Republicans control the Congress. They were fine with budget deficits and exploding the national debt by ten trillion during Obongo’s reign of terror.

Reaganomics at work and Trump just stole a page out of Reagans playbook…

Trump’s a money man, he knows how to make money, if he succeeds the American people will follow him anywhere. The Alaska tunnel is exactly the kind of money making mega project that will carry him forward. This nonsense of hating Russia is just a load of crap, Russia is a huge pile of money just waiting to be mined. For God’s sake let’s go and get it, there’s plenty for everybody, no need to fight.

True. He goes so far as to claim that “The U.S. is at full employment, with minority unemployment near record lows. ” Full employment must mean something entirely different to Buchanan than to anyone who actually lives here today.

For a quick preview of what Trump (perhaps) has up his sleeve to save the day see:

https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/the-art-of-the-deal/

Yes, it does appear Trump will sink or swim based upon not just whether the economy responds vigorously, but whether that response drives real noticeable benefits to his base. I’m not sure it will, but time will tell. Is the US in as good a position to respond to lower taxes as it was in Reagan’s time? Will the response drive jobs and increased income to Trump’s base, or will it just be absorbed by the rich and by cheaper immigrants? In any case it’s hostage to global economic trends and events, which are far less under the US’s control than they were in the 1980s.

The largest tax cuts in decades. Elevation of Neil Gorsuch to the Antonin Scalia seat on the Supreme Court. A record number of new U.S. appellate court judges approved by the Senate. The U.S. is out of the Paris climate accord and out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

NAFTA is being renegotiated. Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will be open for drilling.

None of that, important as it is, strikes me as of much real interest to the people who voted Republican in 2016 instead of Democrat because Trump seemed different from the old establishment Republicans they’d come to despise as much as the Democrat establishment.

If the economy turns up and that has good effects for the people in the Trump base (not the old Republican partisans), then he can win. But if there is no improvement in the situation for those men and women, then regardless of how well the “economy” is doing he has created a situation in which he will be destroyed as yet another rich lying Republican who pretended to be different but ended up just giving tax cuts for the rich and doing nothing about any of the other issues – nothing significant on immigration, nothing on anti-white discrimination, nothing to stop stupid wars (likely he’ll have engaged in at least one stupid war against either North Korea or Iran, or some other ME proxy disliked by Israel and/or Saudi Arabia) by 2020, with the usual disastrous costs and consequences), and nothing to help the white working class. They’ll either turn to a Democrat “anti-establishment” candidate or just turn away from voting.

More trillions to the welfare state of billionaires. The taxes they pay don’t begin to pay for their enormous burden on local cops, fire, infrastructure and social benefits we pay out to their imported “talent”. All to protect and swell the oligarch’s trillions. From their offices to their homes, they freeload off the rest of us. It was one thing when they actually employed AMERICANS, ran factories here, earned and kept their money HERE. None of that is happening for 40 years now. And I’m to pretend handing to them a 15% tax break bodes well for society? It bodes well for theirs.

The rest? To hell with you.

The Dems will simply run on the mantra that it is all fake news covering Trump’s many collusions. Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from them. Trump colluded with his fellow oligarchs to rig the tax code and steal the economy from them. Trump colluded with the Israeli jews to help them steal a city they have occupied for decades. Ad nauseum.

Buchanan doesn’t know shit about how to measure the performance of the real economy. He only knows how to parrot talking points on the economy.

A lot of people just look at that $ 4,000 a month paycheck reduced to $ 2,300 by the numerous deductions and call it all taxes.

The East India Company is a poor example because it was granted its monopoly by the government. To support your claim that companies always end up as monopolies without government regulation preventing them you need a monopoly that arose with no government support whatsoever.

Corporations make money in a free society by creating value

If you believe this after experiencing modern corporate America as practiced, you may be too far gone to save.

Scary to read the comments. I suspect part of the reason we are in decline is people have little understanding of capitalism so they are misunderstanding some of our problems.

Corporations to not exist to provide jobs. No one wants a job. If you want a job, go volunteer at Goodwill, they have work for you to do, directions to follow, schedules for you to abide by. What you want is a money, and corporations exist to make money.

Corporations make money in a free society by creating value – they consume some value, like employee’s labor, raw materials, machines, office space, etc. Then they sell the goods that they have created. A balance sheet accounts for all the value used up by the corporation and all the value people voluntarily gave it for the goods it produced. Hopefully the later number is larger than the former. That profit is value created by the enterprise.

Spare me the bank that made bad loans bailed out by Uncle Sam, that is not an example of capitalism in any way; that is simply political pull. Don’t cough up the defense contractor, they are paid by government that gets its funds through threat of guns and jail time, and currency debasement.

Most people cannot create much value. Most people rent their muscles and limited intelligence to someone else who can create value. Most people need a job to make a living. But corporations do not exist to provide jobs. That’s the role of a corporation in the USSR or Argentina and it is value destruction instead of value creation.

Well said, Sir!!

(I already used my “Agree” button.)

It also helps the economy by lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, reducing taxes on small businesses.

i think this is the only time I’ve ever disagreed with RP.

I disagree because anything that helps corporations does not, in the net, help the economy. Notice that I said, “net.”

The reason is that corporations, as we’re talking about them here, are abominations both in theory and in practice.

They are abominations because they socialize risk while privatizing profits. They increase moral hazard by dint of the fact that they relieve the profiteers from personal responsibility and anything that reduces personal responsibility is flat out wrong.

They are also abominations because they tend towards monopolies and monopolies tend to undermine freedom.

They are abominations because they are government protected and pampered entities, Government grants them special privileges and favors and that’s antithetical to liberty.

They are abominations because, due to their unfair advantages, they put people out of work by destroying jobs of some and destroying others’ ability to earn a living without holding a job.

They are abominations because they invariably use their ill gained profits to undermine moral government and further tilt the tables in their favor.

Please note that this is only a partial list of corporate abominations.

As a way of illustrating one of my points, below is what Herbert Spencer had to say about one of the mothers of all corporations, and he points out that despite all their advantages they still tend toward bankruptcy. Please not that they not only tend toward fiscal bankruptcy but moral bankruptcy as well.

What an astounding illustration of the defeat of dishonesty by the eternal laws of things we have in the history of the East India Company! Selfish, unscrupulous, worldly-wise in policy, and with unlimited force to back it, this oligarchy, year by year, perseveringly carried out its schemes of aggrandisement. It subjugated province upon province; it laid one prince after another under tribute; it made exorbitant demands upon adjacent rulers, and construed refusal into a pretext for aggression; it became sole proprietor of the land, claiming nearly one-half the produce as rent; and it entirely monopolized commerce: thus uniting in itself the character of conqueror, ruler, landowner, and merchant. With all these resources, what could it be but prosperous? From the spoils of victorious war, the rent of millions of acres, the tribute of dependent monarchs, the profits of an exclusive trade, what untold wealth must have poured in upon it! what revenues! what a bursting exchequer! Alas! the Company is some 50,000,000l. in debt.⚓✪

Protected trades, too, have afforded many proofs of the impolicy of injustice.

Herbert Spencer, Social Statics [1851]
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/spencer-social-statics-1851?q=east+india#Spencer_0331_162

The single barometer for how tax cuts are functioning is the stock market. The market is going higher because of the anticipatory effects of Trump’s tax cut proposals.

The stock market apparently does not rate the likelihood of World War III over the Koreas very highly, but if Trump’s tax cut proposals are good for the S&P 500, they are unlikely to be of much benefit to working people.

We are still waiting for the cheaper health insurance with lower deductibles and cheaper drugs with everybody covered beautifully. That is what Trump ran on. Perhaps the new tax plan could make all health care premiums and payments for deductibles and for drugs eligible for individual taxpayer tax deductions even if taxpayers are taking the standard deduction. With a bit of luck this would abolish the need for health care insurance altogether and a free market could operate in which patients would negotiate whatever prices they wished to pay for services. Medical practices and labs and hospitals could then sell annual subscriptions to patients and cut out the middle man altogether.

After having read your comment, E.O.M., I can’t imagine what the particular views are of Dr. Paul’s that you don’t share. You covered a lot of what he stands for.

I am just curious and not trying to be argumentative.

I think we’re close to being in agreement, but lot of the free market wants investment money. How will you start a new restaurant, as a newbie say, who doesn’t already have money in hand, without a loan? I’ve got nothing against a free market in money too. That means interest rates left the hell alone (KILL THE FED) to rise or fall to the market rate, meaning what rate is a good “price” to pay for getting money ahead in time.

You need capitalists. You just can’t have capitalists that are in cahoots with big government and big banks to screw over the little guys and little enterprises. That only can happen when the government is fairly large. Our country did not always have this monstrous Feral beast over us.

Thanks for the reply.

The economy is blowing tops because the Federal Reserve is messing with interest rates. It cause the economy to blow in 2007 and, when the Fed corrected, the market managed to recovery…but not before millions of people were hurt by Fed stupidity.

Mundell intended that the Euro operate as a standard unit of account and wanted it to facilitate trade throughout the continent. The fact that the Euros mismanage the currency is not his fault.

Keynes is hardly fact-driven. He even lacked any commentary on the roaring 20’s of the United States, the perfect example of how well supply-side economics worked in producing that boom.

You don’t need a gold exchange. In fact, you don’t need to hold any gold on hand at all to run a gold standard. In the case of the US, you want tax cuts to grow the US economy to a massive clip without expanding the money supply. This will increase the value of the dollar while reducing the dollar value of gold. When gold falls to $1,000 an ounce, the President would then announce a gold standard fixed at that price. The Federal Reserve then engages its open-market bond-buying/selling activities to hold the dollar’s value to this gold price.

A thousand bucks is a good price because it represents the long run 30 year moving average of gold.

This is a far superior system to what is done now…where the Fed announces increases or decreases in the Federal Funds Rate willy-nate and blowing up economies in the process.

The single barometer for how tax cuts are functioning is the stock market. The market is going higher because of the anticipatory effects of Trump’s tax cut proposals.

Then why was it going up for Obama. Anything any economist says is total BS. The market is going up because there is no place else for money to go. Now how do you prove which is correct? You can’t.

Do you regard the creation of the Euro as being something anyone should be admired for? I recall that the former head of the Australian Treasury wrote a trenchant criticism at the time of its creation of the folly of the Euŕo’s creation without budgetary union, so its problems were forseeable and forseen.

Do you not distinguish between to so called Keynesians (incuding Richard Nixon: “we are all Keynesians now”) and the great and worldly wise fact driven genius John Maynard Keynes? He would have been horrified (though not altogether surprised) by the 60s and 70s politicians who produced stagflation and borrowed to send tbemselves back into office.

His eloquence in the 30s slowly made the obvious clear to policy makers, namely that if there is a lack of confidence to spend and invest and great unemployment of people and plant politicians had better find ways of restoring the general confidence to spend by arranging for investment and other spending to occur. His 1930s prescriptions were not prescriptions for the 60s (financing another war with debt without pain for the citizen-consumer) and 70s.

I have known many gold bugs, mostly dead or dormant today. Can you see any way in which any kind of gold standard could be restored now? What kind? It is clear that the original guarantee (always dependent on the faith that the banks could actually cope with a “run” in the banks) that one could swap one’s bank issued for gold at a long term legally set price is anachronitic and that some kind of gold exchange side would have to be (re)constructed. What kind?

You do realise I assume that gold notoriously fails the tests of the definition of money as a measure and as a store of value? Given the wild swings in the $US price since the early 1970s what price would you be happy to have your savings valued at?

Pure capitalism ownership does not work – pure government ownership does not work – we need a system where private consumers and employees end up as the major owners of production.

Now that’s one of the most confused single sentences I’ve read on economics since I stopped reading stuff written by people in the Feral Gov’t,

I was not clear – I believe in free market enterprise – enterprises produce goods and services – capitalists produce money for an elite that get richer and richer – taking ever bigger slices of the economic pie.

One does good for humanity – the other NOTHING.

We want enterprise to be owned by local folks not some greedy bastards in Wall Street.

Think Peace — Art

While the “chained’ inflation rate is bogus, the rate based on the CPI itself is already bogus according to most measures. Last year I received an additional single dollar per month on my social security check based on this “unchained” measure of the cost of living. According to the more accurate shadowstats, using the statistical basis the government used prior to 1990, inflation has been several per cent higher each year and, therefore, in real terms, the economy has been contracting almost every year in the 21st century. Soviet style statistics are used to mask the bankruptcy of the US economy. While I do not share many of Mr. Paul’s views, I consider him a hero based on his sound foreign policy views and commend his obvious good sense in much of what he puts out there. I also agree with him in practice re the US government, since it is so corrupt, dangerous and hostile to the public welfare it purportedly is there to defend that it does not deserve any resources whatever.

I really don’t see how this is a critique.

Galbraith was a major Keynesian…and Keynesianism is essentially fraud. All demand-side theories, be they monetarism or fiscalism, do not work. Remember the stagflation of the 1970’s? That was not supposed to happen, yet it did. The monetarists got us off the gold standard which destroyed the value of money and the Keynsians crippled the economy with demand-side theories designed to destroy the relationship between creditor and debtor.

Keep something else in mind. The real brain behind Arthur Laffer is Robert Mundell. He is actually the true master of supply-side economics. He was Laffer’s teacher and a Nobel-prize winner in economics. Mundell was also the father of the Euro and the author of the JFK tax cuts.

He is also China’s Chief Economic adviser.

They built an entire university around him.

Actually Dr. Paul,

Incarcerating our “war of aggression” elites, for lying us into war, and seizing all their assets to pay down the heinous debt their lies created… is the absolute BEST way to return a modicum of solvency to our national balance sheet . It would also go a long way to restore our reputation as a law abiding nation,both at home and abroad.

Defrauding us into spending trillions upon trillions of our taxpayer dollars to murder millions of people who never attacked us and never intended to…is an abomination to moral decency and a supreme international crime.

Allowing our “elites” who are guilty of this crime, to walk free, only condones more criminal behavior and more pilfering of our collective wealth.

They lied us into war….let THEM pay the bill that is due….the WHOLE way.

Completing this task of accountability is certainly the highest priority among every American I have ever spoken to…..

Ten thousand times more important than …….”tax reform”.

.

Well, we can hope, Dr. Paul. That costs nothing.

As a representative member of the middle class, i have yet to experience a “middle class tax relief” plan that actually provided any tax relief. It has only ever resulted in an increase in the taxes paid. I expect this “tax relief plan” to be no different.

… other than our current monetary system is inadequate.

You inadvertently got one thing right, there, Art. Yes, the monetary system, fiat money backed by nothing, with a trillion or so created by the FED each year, is inadequate (to say the least). What you seem to be arguing about it the economic system, freedom vs State Control.

Pure capitalism ownership does not work – pure government ownership does not work – we need a system where private consumers and employees end up as the major owners of production.

Now that’s one of the most confused single sentences I’ve read on economics since I stopped reading stuff written by people in the Feral Gov’t, I mean … of course.

Wait, now pure Capitalism, not seen in a century or so, first of all, worked pretty damn well (but, we – the US – had REAL money, meaning gold and silver, not bullshit scraps of green paper). Private consumers have no reason to end up as owners of any damn thing if all they do is consume. As far as employees, they can own the production when they buy the assets that produce. That means they are now the owners, so you might not call them employees anymore.

What’s not working right now is crony capitalism, gov’t / big business collaboration against small business, the self-employed, and anyone else who likes to work in economic freedom. It’s pretty close to fascism, minus Nazi or Mussolini posters.

If you are this confused about the terminology, Art, how can you even know if you are a Communist or not?

Thanks. I aim to read and digest better when I have time but your opening pars prompted two recollections. 1. A recent visit by Laffer to a local think tank where I thought he came over as a fairground salesman. This impression was not dispelled by his video of a jolly lunch he had with Rumsfeld and Cheney…. 2. J.K.Galbraith. Though I am no fan I Googled “Galbraith on Laffer” and I commend that as a good starting point against over simplification.

The key point to keep in mind is that there are two tax rates where the government gets zero revenue: a tax rate of 0% and a tax rate of 100%.

0% is obvious. At 100%, people choose leisure, work sloppily and move their economic activities underground. The government is effectively starved of tax revenue.

Moving from the points of 0 and 100, you soon discover that there are always two tax rates that yield the same revenue. A tax rate of, say, 90% may yield the same revenue as 10%…but the 10% tax is presiding over a much larger economy.

The whole point is to move along the Laffer curve to an optimum point, once you realize that a 10% tax may be too low or a 90% tax may be too high.

Reducing marginal tax rates from 35% to 25% represents about a 33% increase in profits and income. That is, it is a maximum increase of 33% in profits and income the smaller the economic unit gets. Sure, an entity like Apple may experience a smaller benefit because much of their profits are in untaxable structures. But the smaller the business gets and the lower the worker, the greater the windfall effect is. And even Apple will question the priority of tax avoidance if the lower rates allow it to keep more of its money and use it for other things other than paying lawyers.

The effect is huge for small businesses and workers. Business like these can use their 33% increase in profits to cannibalize the market share of larger rivals. This is why big business hates these tax cuts. They want the tax system in place to keep other firms down, since they already have the legal means to avoid paying these taxes. With supply-side tax cuts, big business advantages are weakened.

In fact, the “revenue-neutral” scam is precisely calibrated so as to negate the beneficial effects of supply-side tax cuts. Big business wants to keep small business down and most republicans are stupid austerity junkies that think government is “too big” or spends “too much” so they fall for this demand-side fiscalist nonsense all of the time.

Proper tax cuts will lead to increases in tax revenue and more investment in America. Why? Because smaller firms can’t go overseas. They will be forced to invest here.

It amazes me that the same middle class that supports the MIIC and their psychotic goal of Absolute Total Dominance and World-wide Hegemony is going to sit on their hinders parts as the Neoconservatives and Globalists band together to keep the masses enslaved. The land of Idiocracy

This is the way it goes in an Oligarchy when a company is a “citizen” who doesn’t pay taxes and who OWNS AND OPERATES the government.

While acknowledging that revenue neutrality would only be an aspiration imperfectly realised I note that, unless the Laffer curve effect delivers big time and immediately there are going to be some years of increasig governent debt as an immediate conseqience. Is that acceptable?

As nominal unemployment in the US is low I wonder why you seem to think that the skills of those who will be drawn back into the workforce by any adfitional corporate investment incentivised by a cut in the corporate tax rate will contribute anything much worthwhile. And what are these investments that corporate America will be making if the nominal rate is say 25 per cent rather than 35 per cent? Does it go beyond deciding to manufacture in America rather than in some other country where the tax rate is already much lower?

Keep in mind that the economy needs faster growth, greater individual productivity and an increased marginal value of working. That’s what tax cuts are for.

Tax cuts always need to be part of any Republican platform.

And, yes, revenue neutrality is stupid.

“Would you care to spell out what Laffer curve effect the cutting of corporation tax will have especially if it is made revenue neutral by increasing indirect taxes.?

The key point to keep in mind is that the changes in the tax rate and the tax code are not revenue neutral within the same corporate entity. It’s not like squeezing the end of a balloon. Furthermore, not all companies or individuals have complex tax returns with massive deductions that remove income from the taxable economy. For most businesses and individuals, they pay substantial taxes across the board. Any relief from that will be welcome.

Overall, we are taxed at levels above 50% across federal, state and local. Whoever is paying lower rates does so through inefficient tax planning that becomes redundant at lower tax rates.

Lower taxes are the way to go and, according to the Laffer Curve, will have the effect of maximizing tax revenue.

Look at the stock market…which is a barometer of how the overall market is anticipating the cut in taxes. The market is being forced upwards by these expectations in the growth of future revenues. We are also seeing record tax collections.

Even Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer looked favorably on both tax cuts and the Trump’s support for the gold standard.

“Guess what, Comrade Hudson: 50% of workers pay zero federal income tax, but take taxpayers money as if they did.”

Why do Repugs always focus on the federal income tax as if it were the only tax people pay? The income tax is a tax the rich pay because they are rich and can afford it. The poor and middle class DO pay taxes – lots of taxes: FICA taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, payroll roll taxes, property taxes, etc. They don’t pay income tax because that would mean basically everything they earn goes to the government. They are hardly lazy or parasites like trucons like to imply.

The relevant issue isn’t how much the ultra rich pay of a particular tax (the income tax) but how much of their overall income they pay in tax. The poor and middle class may pay up to 50% of their incomes in taxes. A rich guy like Romney? He paid just over 20%. Those poor whittle rich people. Whatever.

Repugs are nothing but low IQ sheep who repeat whatever they hear without any semblance of critical thinking. Yeah, buddy. Go ahead and cut Google, Corporate America, George Soros, Marc Zuckerberg, and Harvey Weinstein’s taxes some more…because those people worked soooo hard for you last election.

However, I do sense the classic communist jealousy & envy from you.

In our modern economy, products go begging to be purchased – we produce more than we can rationally consume – yet many people live a substandard life because of a lack of money. There is NO good reason for this – other than our current monetary system is inadequate.

I am sure you would like to fix this inadequate system – right!

Think Peace — Art

p.s. Pure capitalism ownership does not work – pure government ownership does not work – we need a system where private consumers and employees end up as the major owners of production.

the death tax is just another way to make sure the middle class cannot climb that ladder. another taking away the ladder bullshit by the rich.

I would probably be moving my entire asset out of usa before I die.

Would you care to spell out what Laffer curve effect the cutting of corporation tax will have especially if it is made revenue neutral by increasing indirect taxes.

How are Trump’s policies not a classic application of supply side economics? What matters is that we get tax reductions that pull us down along the Laffer Curve and that the tax cuts increase the marginal utility and marginal value of work.

The single barometer for how tax cuts are functioning is the stock market. The market is going higher because of the anticipatory effects of Trump’s tax cut proposals.

The notion that tax cuts are for the rich is the demand-side nonsense between the monetarists and the fiscalists.

Trump is even a supporter of the gold standard.

All classic Jude Wanniski.

I realise the united states of America is a fairly young country and some Americans think it still to be a frontier country. But, everything has been ‘ discovered’, claimed or belonging to someone or some entity by now. There is no more vacant land to claim. America will, and has evolved into a socialist state where government will gain ground or takes the burden by salami tactics, brute force or simply by scraping up the residu of bankrupt individuals or compagnies. Cleaning up the mess those individuals or compagnies leave behind.

Even if peoples have enough of their kings, and put their heads under the guillotine. The first thing they do thereafter is elect a new leader who Ofcourse also need money to do the things most people are only too glad not to have to do themselves.

The problems with inheritance taxes include

1. The very rich only pay if they are careless or don’t care. By “very rich” I mean those who are rich enough to matter in terms of influence and political clout, not just someone whose home and holiday house are worth $8 million and lives off the income from $25 million of investments. The latter would not avoid inheritance tax ….and…
2. Death can strike capriciously and it is most unlikely that the family of a 45-55 year old worth say $25 million is going to be adequately protected by life assurance (assuming the deceased could get it at all: the worst injustice I know was inflicted on the family of a veteran of WW2 whose war caused disabilities that he bravely worked to overcome prevented him getting life assurance!). And capricious markets can mean that assets are greatly overvalued for inheritance taxes.

3. Who can trust moderately salaried public servants and politicians (with great perks and pensions) to devise the rules and levels of any tax so heavy in its impact as an inheritance tax above about 10 per cent?

I write as one who’s family suffered near total wipeout of an honest businessman’s estate by a conjunction of high death duty rates, their non adjustment for inflation, and a temporary spike in the market for shares in companies which he could not ethically sell at the time – before a precipitate crash before a grant of probate could be obtained.

I now live and propose to die in a country without inheritance taxes or the need to try and avoid them.

it isn’t low tax, it is no tax. when you die, you will pay 50%. when the walton died, he paid zero. I am 100% sure when his wife and kids die in the future they will also pay zero tax.

This by a very experienced newspaper editor snd business commentator may be of interest

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/alan-kohler/donald-trumps-tax-plan-is-doomed-from-the-start/news-story/d3dedaaff81dcbad4759bb4c494d271e

Don’t associate with them if you don’t like them, simple.

I don’t.

It has nothing to do with envy but a lot to do with disgust. I already said the parents are fine folk, but the kids…they’re another story. See comments #18 and 24. They have a clue as to what I’m referring to.

Please keep commenting. Your personal attacks are a good source of laughs just like Humpty Trump and the rest of the hyenas in DC.

. . . or, the shrinks get paid handsomely to put up with it.

They do get paid well. Believe it or not, there have been three of them in my family, and I wouldn’t have their occupations for anything.

They are all well moneyed, fine folk, but their kids are messes. Totally screwed up with their entitlement mentalities. Excellent genetic potential gone utterly to waste.

After that ALL should go to the State.

Yes, because they always use it so well. Always for the public benefit ya know. (Sarcasm intended.)

On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be so sarcastic since the big bucks were probably obtained with the aid of government in the first place, so maybe it should be returned to the government. However, there’s a problem with that and it goes like this: At a minimum, taxes are theft. They can also be correctly viewed as fines imposed on productive folks

The funds, therefore, do not belong to the government, but to the productive people they were stolen from. How about returning the ill gotten gains to the people and then abolish taxes, corporations and government altogether?

Indeed, Hendrick would rather the government get peoples money because government spends it so wisely and does such wonderful things with it.

Communism, the most failed system ever devised.

Insanity:
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

My, my, ‘red’ envy.

So what? Don’t associate with them if you don’t like them, simple.

You have no right to tell someone what they can or cannot do with their money.

However, I do sense the classic communist jealousy & envy from you.

Embarrassing strawmen & stunning ignorance.

I said federal income taxes.

I said nothing about state & local taxes.

What health insurance are you talking about? I doubt you even know.
Those that federal taxpayers pay for?

There’s a very, very “good chance” that you don’t know what you’re pretending to talk about.

I suspect you’re probably one of the unproductive takers.

Hold your camels, Achmed.

Not to worry – they are bedded down for the night (in the tent with crazy Uncle Mo). OK, where were we:

I am not denying I may be a communist.

From what you wrote earlier, you sure can’t. I am no Senator Joe McCarthy, as much as we need him now, so not to worry about that either. I am glad you are honest about it.

But all tax is a reset between those who run too far ahead of the crowd and those who lag too much.

That may be the Communist idea of taxes, but the libertarian idea of taxes are collections of money taken for a set of things that only governments can do a good job at. It turns out, that’s a miniscule set.

And yes, it will not work when earth is divided into separate states.

OK, yeah they’ve tried it enough. I wouldn’t want to see the earth NOT divided into separate states, unless we have easy access to, and a way to live, on some other planets – first so I’d be able to get the hell out before the rush, and secondly so there’d be some competition between Communism and freedom. Monopolies never work out very well.

Cheerio to you, too, Mr. Hendrix.

50% of workers pay zero federal income tax, but take taxpayers money as if they did.

Classic false assertion by yet another “Let ’em eat cake” Social Darwinist. Low wage workers pay the 7.5% payroll taxes. And if they are self-employed and/or 1099, they pay the full 15%. To say nothing of the state and local taxes they have to pay.

Moreover, there is a good chance that they get crap benefits if they get any at all so are stuck paying for nearly worthless health care insurance with huge deductibles.

Trump is indeed an idiot and a sell-out, but it’s the repulsiveness of the “I got mine.” crowd that got him elected.

I thought it was 50 percent of the total population that doesn’t pay income taxes?? Maybe i’m wrong.

Hold your camels, Achmed.

I am not denying I may be a communist.

And yes, it will not work when earth is devided into separate states. Precisely because the reasons you gave. But all tax is a reset between those who run too far ahead of the crowd and those who lag too much. It is a matter of time preference.
Cheers!

That’s how the alcohol manufacturers and drug. Producers get rich! The brats spent their inheritance wealth this way and die early

Let’s see how much cognitive dissonance we will get to see from commentators.

I agree with you, Restless-90210 on your views on inheritance. Also, you are right about copyright and patent law. The patent law should include a loss of rights if the invention, process, whatever is not made/implemented within a 10 year time frame. Big companies buy up patents and apply for patents just to keep competitors from creating something. If they sit on ’em, that should be the end of the patent.

Now, respectfully on the rest of your comment, I admire your optimism. However, this one statement, “There will be Hell to pay. Hell. To. Pay.” is wrong in my opinion. Look, I agree with you that Trump did intend to help actual Americans. I don’t think he can do it, and I think he’s not nearly as wise as people made him out to be. He may be street smart and business smart, but he doesn’t know any history or anything about the people he is up against. He’d be much better off to start urging the public to come to Washington, FS to help out (yes, I mean rallies, visits by masses of people to congressional/senatorial offices, and more (all on the up-and-up, for sure …))

Here’s my disagreement finally with your “Hell to Pay” statement, excuse me, HELL! TO! PAY! I don’t think President Trump wanted to be president for the money or fame. I don’t think he’s particularly power-hungry either, so the threat of no support for him in 2020 is an idle threat. He doesn’t care, and I can’t blame him.

Man, I like this comment a lot, especially your last paragraph. I was going to ask you how you expect this (honest and hardworking men getting rewarded) to happen, so I’m glad you didn’t have your own special tax plan ideas.

Look it’s simple, all the moral hazards, with the guys that just get in good deals with the US government (most legally) that are unproductive gravy trains – pretty much your 3 paragraphs starting in “-“, happen because the US Feral gov’t has been allowed to grow large. It’s completely off the reservation as far as the US Constitution goes. Your 3 examples, TB, and thousands of more bad “moral hazard” induced scams are happening because the US gov’t is INVOLVED in stuff it should not be.

The real solution lies in cutting this Feral Beast in Washington, FS, down by 95%.That’s the only thing that will fix the problems you wrote about TG. This new tax plan, and this other one, and another guy’s great plan will all be loopholed out of, and there are millions of people on the gov’t gravy trains that won’t let it be allowed to see the light of day to begin with.

So why should corporations pay taxes when that money could be invested in the corporation to provide more employment, and then the employees pay income taxes.

Could be but won’t be, that is the issue. In the 80s we had the PC and semiconductors to generate a wave of new jobs. What exactly are all the corporations going to make that that they aren’t already doing. No, whey will use the money for accusations, which actually result in less jobs.

Kudos to M. Hudson, well said.

Reply to Don Bacon: I agree that we should focus on jobs, but I think there really is a class war, and our class is losing.

“Promote the success of people who do things and make things…” um. Does this include:

– A rich banker that drives their company into the ground, and gets bailed out at taxpayer expense?

– A politically connected defense contractor that gets to charge $500/gallon of gasoline shipped to Afghanistan so we can continue to wage endless pointless winless wars in places that are of zero strategic interest the the United States?

– A wealthy investor that gets almost zero-interest money from the US government, loans it to a student to pay grossly overpriced tuition at a third-rate institution, and then when the student goes bankrupt, the government pays them out like a guaranteed 6% profit? Why do we even need these investors anyhow? They are using our money, not theirs, and they are not evaluating risk which is of course one of the real cores of a market-based economy.

You get the idea. I like people who do useful things and make useful things. I like people who take real risks, trying to steer resources away from unproductive uses and into productive ones. But that’s not what we have here. Our current ‘job creators’ are nothing of the sort, they are parasites, pure and simple.