Trump Tax Cut Proposal Underway

[Tero]

Time to sell any stocks you own. Stocks will fall to Jan 2017 values if GOP tax bill is not all it promised to be.

[Brian Peacock]

Just read an opinion piece that said the plan will "devastate" New York City. Why, one might ask? Because the new plan eliminates the deduction for local and state taxes. New York City has one of the highest, if not the highest, tax burden in the country. Residents counted on that deduction to reduce their Federal tax, and now they won't be able to do that. Boo de-fucking hoo, that's my take on it, and it couldn't happen to a nicer city.

Then there's the mortgage interest deduction. We've always been able to deduct the interest we pay on our mortgages from our taxable income. Trump wants to cap that at $500,000. So if you've got a $2,000,000 mortgage you can't deduct the interest on it. Boo-de-fucking-hoo yet again.

This would be fucking WONDERFUL for us. Florida has no income tax so that deduction won't hurt us. Plus, our home is worth less than $500,000 (and we don't have a mortgage anyway. I can see my real estate ad now -

Tired of paying through the nose to live in a dangerous, expensive, crowded city? Tired of fucking winter snow, miserable cabbies, and muggers you're not allowed to shoot? Can't deduct that mortgage interest any longer? Come to Sunny Florida! Deduct ALL that interest on your beautiful, $499,999 pool home! Pay NO state tax! Tell winter to fuck right off! And, 'round these here parts you can Stand Your Ground all the fuck over that mugger's criminal ass!

I'm seeing a big "WINNING!" sign in my near future.

Vote laklak, for a brighter tomorrow.

[Tero]

Short term (and long, but they have elections so very aware of their state health) problem will be healthcare. Even Republicans can see this:

Murkowski told Roll Call on Thursday that if lawmakers are going to repeal the individual mandate as part of the tax plan, they "absolutely" must pass separate health legislation aimed at stabilizing health care markets and controlling costs.


"If that tax cut is offset by higher premiums, you haven't delivered [a] benefit," she told the newspaper.

McCain praised the Finance Committee, which approved a draft of the plan last night, for “taking another step forward in providing much-needed tax relief,” while also serving notice that he wants plenty of time to offer amendments when the plan reaches the Senate floor.

Politico

With amendments, this will drag for weeks. They should have stuck to corporate tax cuts only

[Animavore]

[Tyrannical]

I sure hope they eliminate the State and Local tax credit, that's would really stick it to those blue states and cities

[NineBerry]

Removing the mandate from health care means actually destroying it. Without the mandate but still banning health insurances from considering pre-existing conditions, this means people can go without an insurance and then get one once they get a serious condition. There is no way this can work.

[Tero]

Except for the once a year sign up. You cannot sign up in the middle of the year currently unless you lose your full time job. And if your employer offers a plan that is the only one you can take, not a cheaper one.

[NineBerry]

Hey boss, can you please fire me so that I can get health insurance and then hire me again afterwards?

[Tero]

Tax shit thrown around in Senate
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... n-shouting

Between 2015 and 2016, US median household income rose 3.2% from $57,230 to $59,039, according to a new report released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday.

[Animavore]

The Repubs want Kansas for the whole country.

[pErvinalia]

The problem in Kansas was that they didn't cut the taxes of the rich enough!

[Animavore]

How Elites Control the Way You Think About Economics

Since the beginning of our nation, American elites have used their power to justify their disproportionate levels of wealth. Today, those few, those happy few, continue this wicked tradition with disturbing effectiveness. They do so by deploying an assortment of tried-and-true strategies to manipulate public sentiment in order to stay on top of the heap.

These strategies, however, are hardly novel. In fact, the game plan for today’s elite class is largely derivative of tactics used by some gilded individuals and corporate titans right after the New Deal. Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian and author of Invisible Hands: The Businessman’s Crusade Against the New Deal, has spent a lot of time researching just how these economic elites perpetuated self-serving (and arbitrary) economic arrangements.

She told me on our new podcast episode:

Starting in the 1930s and the 1940s, some American business people were highly troubled by the direction the country was taking—the rise of the New Deal, the rise of the labor movement, by what they thought was a widespread acceptance of Keynesian ideas. [They were concerned by] the idea that high wages mattered more than high profits for driving economic growth and development.

To resist the “creeping socialism,” Phillips-Fein revealed how the rich set up think tanks to pump out anti-labor propaganda, sponsored economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek to consort with prominent businessmen, and indoctrinated politicians like Ronald Reagan to roll back economic progress for the many.

These tactics were instrumental in sending the predominant economic narrative back to a “business-friendly” state.

Phillips-Fein’s research on this era of American history is remarkable in that it showcases the wealthy’s blind urge to preserve what is best for them above all else. The irony, of course, is that hoarding wealth and sustaining an economy that only works for a few ultimately ends up hurting the rich in the long run.

As Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist and Civic Skunk Works’ founder, pointed out in the same podcast episode:

Concentrated wealth and power, in every circumstance, corrodes the public good. that hierarchies are necessary and need to exist…[but] massively unequal arrangements are never good. They never work out well… The most inclusive societies are always the most successful.

Yet even in a time when we know that inclusive economies outperform exclusive ones, the rich still insist on keeping America great only for them. In a time of economic plight, they are gorging in front of the hungry.
If you think that image is over the top, how else can you rationalize why and how three men now own as much wealth as the bottom 50% of American society?

When so much money is sucked away from the vast majority, it is inevitable that the social fabric will begin to unravel. The greed of those at the top creates an environment where established interests are raged against and the undernourished and underpaid masses make rash social and political decisions.

Furthermore, an economic system that hoards prosperity fosters hatred for that very system—and that is surely not what the privileged class desires. But that’s what they are getting, because they cannot stop themselves from accumulating more and more wealth.

In his famous book, Capital, Thomas Piketty saw the self-defeating nature of this type of thinking, noting:

The inescapable reality is this: wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence, so that some people imagine that it belongs to surreal or mysterious entities.

In full: https://civicskunk.works/how-elites-con ... 31c339c35b

Note: I'm reading Thomas Piketty's book right now. Well researched, collecting over two centuries of data from a load of countries.

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economi ... t-explains

[Animavore]

“It’s a Ponzi Scheme”: Wall Street Fears Trump’s Deranged Tax Plan Could Kick Off Economic Euthanasia.

It’s a Ponzi scheme,” a Wall Street executive told me, dismissing the idea that a multi-trillion dollar tax cut for multinational corporations would trickle down throughout the economy and also pay for itself. It’s a view that’s widely shared among the bankers, hedge-fund managers, traders, and quants whose job it is to determine, with Vulcan accuracy, how the Republican tax bill that passed the House yesterday will actually affect the markets. It’s also more than a little ironic, given that the plan was spearheaded by two former senior partners of Goldman Sachs turned Trump shills—Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin—a pedigree that has done little to reassure Wall Street veterans who worry that the White House may accidentally nuke the economy in the name of “tax reform.” “Will this be the first tax cut in American history that actually results in a recession?” the executive asked.

It’s a great question. And the House plan provides plenty to be worried about in that regard. Take, for instance, the proposed elimination of the deductibility of state and local taxes. That is obviously a cynical, politically motivated ploy on Donald Trump’s part to penalize voters who didn’t vote for him (for good reason) in high-tax blue states, such as New York and California, and to give a benefit to the red-state voters who did vote for him. (I get it, elections have consequences.) Eliminating the deductibility of state and local taxes is an incredibly divisive plan. “It’s a transfer to red-state wealthy guys,” said the executive, who lives in a blue state.

Worse, he says, it could lead to another housing crisis, just as the last one is (or should be) still fresh in our collective memories. Here’s his thinking (which is hard to refute): Since, generally speaking, one of the largest state taxes is on property—your home—eliminating the federal tax deduction for state property taxes will inevitably cause the cost of homeownership in states with high property taxes to go up. It follows, logically, that if the annual cost of home ownership goes up, then the value of the home—which is for most people their single most-valuable asset—must go down. The National Association of Realtors commissioned a recent study that predicted that the elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes could result in a decrease in home valuations of between 10 percent and 17 percent.

That would wipe out a huge amount of homeowner equity, with the usual expected consequences: the sick feeling that comes from knowing that suddenly you are poorer, which can then lead to lower consumer spending, kicking off a recession. Furthermore, if the value of homes goes down, then whatever equity has been built up in those homes will also go down, and the ability to unlock that equity—through home-equity loans or reverse mortgages—will also decrease. Lower home values could also lead to problems—again—for the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that have guaranteed some home mortgages, which are secured by homes worth materially less. New problems for the G.S.E.s will make it harder for people to get mortgages, leading to a lower level of home ownership than already exists.

In full. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11 ... euthanasia

[Tero]

White House would ditch attack on Obamacare in order to pass tax bill
Budget director says ‘we’re OK’ with dropping provision of Republican tax reform that would also repeal healthcare mandate, if it becomes roadblock

[Seabass]

It's always been obvious that blue states outperform red states on economy and just about every metric that matters. But still, idiots continue to vote Republican. I get why the Jesus freaks do it—the GOP is more or less a fundie Christian cult at this point—but why any non-believer would vote Republican is a mystery to me. There is no rational reason to vote Republican. I guess it really just comes down to the cultural divide.



Another Clinton-Trump divide: High-output America vs low-output America

The Path to Prosperity Is Blue

BLUEXIT
A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR SEPARATING BLUE STATES FROM RED

Blue States Barack Obama Won In 2012 Are More Educated Than Red States