Grindy, I'm done. Thanks for the time out. Just kind of a passionate topic based on what's been going down the past few years.

Well, I said everything I wanted to say about the subject. Thanks for playing. ;)

He's a great performance artist. In the meantime, you guys will just have to find someone else to teach you reading comprehension. I've tried a few times now and it just seems to fall on deaf ears/eyes/whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Post a link from a site with progress in the title.

Care to be more specific? I love people like you. :D

Simpler times

^^^^^ Brilliant.

Jefferey Lord, one of the biggest Trump, and GOP policy appologists on the planet, (dude can't make a point without mentioning Reagan) just said the most repugnent thing on TV I've heard in eons.

To paraphrase: "It's imperative that tax breaks benefit the rich instead of the poor. Poor people don't hire poor people. Rich people hire poor people."

Time out.

5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

I'm wiping my bloody forehead after slamming my skull against a wall a few times.

Linda lost her awesome job 2 years ago. Although having an absolutely stellar resume, all she's found at the age of 56, is part time, at minimum wage, with ZERO benefits. (vacation, sick time, or health care)

Rich people have decided not to hire a few people full time, and instead hire a lot of people part time to save a bunch of money. Ya, let's give them more tax breaks.

I'm losing my ****ing mind here.

ANT defends Jeffery Lord and trickle down economics in 3... 2... 1....

Don't bring Lorde into this.

Still waiting on you guys (Chula and Elephant) to provide something resembling a legitimate, coherent counterargument to ANY of the points I've made earlier today. 3...2....1...

Oh right, you'd rather whine and make up political positions I supposedly have on numerous issues. Muh badddd. :)

Quoting myself to keep the post out front. I'm so my ****ing sick of people who back this attitude. More than 75% of them who voted for Trump are getting ****ed in the ass by his cabinet and policies. And they are too dumb to realize it.

"MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

You still got the bumper sticker on your car?

It's a ****ing wonder why my brain keeps shutting down lately.

Be careful guys, your elbows are gonna go out of you keep jacking yourselves off like this.

Ant, your points are so cliche. No need trying to debate them. Keep walking your gilded cage path. Glad it makes you feel comfy.

You're smart. The rest of of us are dumb.

We can't read or comprehend your ideology.

Good for you.

Good night.

Furiouser is out of my league at this point.

Meh. People who are wealthy at the level you are talking about have their pick of lucrative real estate development opportunities all over the planet. They might buy a property here, but they'll set up their estate elsewhere if it saves them millions to do so. And that's the truth: if you don't see that then then you might want to go actually spend some time studying what the uber-wealthy actually do. Trust me, the U.S. isn't do or die for any of them.

See, I'm all for taxing the living bejesus out of the rich and out of their corporations, but the estate tax isn't the way to go about it because it's basically just a cheap windfall that the uber-rich already work to evade when it could be replaced with something that brings in more revenue (like I suggested earlier). You need a tax code that encourages real accountability for both the government (as in, what the taxed money is actually used for instead of **** all hearsay) and also for the numerous brackets we currently have that already make things more complicated than they really should be. Get rid of the loopholes and create more specific criteria that keeps the wealthy from taking evasive action. It can be done. :)

Reminds me of a conversation I had won a dudebro in college. Verbatim

Broseph: If you lower taxes on the rich, they'll pay more taxes than they do now because they wouldn't try to get out of paying their taxes.
Me: who told you that, a rich guy?
Broseph: how'd you know?

I'd be fine with them moving, more room for me. Do we need to build a wall to keep the wealthy in?

I'm sure the U.S. government would love to do that if they could wrap their heads around a better means. :laughing:

For instance, you can give up your citizenship for just a few thousand dollars. However, there are supposedly large numbers of wealthy expats who give up their citizenship in the U.S. every year in order to start businesses oveseas. Why not replace the estate tax with something that targets those people instead as they "leave", AKA a better exit tax than what we have now? That would bring in way more revenue on an annual basis and it is nearly impossible to dodge.

5,411 people gave up US citizenship in 2016. An all time record number.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertw.../#8000937503d6

The US population as of 2015 was calculated as 321.4 million. You want me to do the math for you? Raising the exit tax on 5,000 people isn't going to do squat for the economy. By comparison, raising the estate tax would affect millions of people.

PS: 5,411 represents 0.0017% of the population. Swing and a miss buddy.

*affect

This place....... :D

Norway's neoliberal government removed the inheritance tax a while ago as well, along with a bunch of other tax cuts for the wealthy, including a cut to the tax on fortune. The argument goes that inheritors have an innate right to their families' wealth (because **** kids who are born into poorer families) and that tax cuts for the wealthy increase investments among entrepreneurs. The government acually hired a commission to research the economic benefits of the tax cuts, and they found that they had very little effect on investements, and that most of the money just went into the personal paychecks of business managers and owners. Then the neoliberals proceeded to keep slashing the taxes.

I'm not against all inheritance. But there should definitely be a limit on how much money you can inherit, in order to alleviate some economic inequality. 77 of Norway's 100 richest people inherited their wealth. This means that the usual liberal/right-wing argument about "job creators" or "hard work" or "risk and investments" really don't apply here, since these people have not made any risk, nor made any investments, nor worked hard. A progressive inheritance tax is not a radical suggestion. It makes perfect sense even from a centrist point of view. The only people to whom it makes sense to remove taxes on inheritance are the super wealthy.

How about we all stop voting for politicians that solely represent the bourgeoisie so that we'll no longer have to deal with **** like this?

This is where it gets interesting. Suppose we managed to close all loopholes and then introduce a steeply progressive tax on income, fortune, ownership and inheritance. The wealthy/business-owners would see this as an immense blow to their personal fortunes, and lose a lot of incentive to invest. What's the point of investing if it's not profitable? So they would either:
1. Try to revert these taxes by all means (parliamentary struggle, capital strike, illegal means)
2. Move their enterprises (and fortunes) abroad to somewhere more profitable

This is going to happen as long as the means of production and immense amounts of wealth are in private hands. The only way to deal with this is to take over the privately-owned means of production in the hands of the collective, and then radically distribute society's wealth.

Trump's White House trying to blame Obama for all of Flynn's **** ups.

Jesus Christ. How long will his leaches keep swallowing this ****.

Seriously. Hey, white conservative "Make America Great Again" person: He's ****ing you in the ass just to further his and his family's personal businesses.

China Defends Trademark Grants For Ivanka Trump Products : The Two-Way : NPR

Just how stupid are a large percentage of the voting populace of this ****ing country.

*banging head against wall. again.*

Really does make you wonder what he did in his time with the Obama administration though. Would he make such an overwhelmingly stupid move if he didn't have some kind of precedent of getting away with it? Speculation of course, but Flynn's trustworthiness is not contingent on who his boss is.

Do you know the net worth of all of those people leaving the U.S.? Some of them own businesses worth hundreds of millions. But the estate tax is easy to evade in comparison, and only a small fraction of the wealthy deal with it at all. Hence why I see it as a non-issue.

Elph might be on to something if both could be revamped.

+1

Do you have a list of their net worth? Are you saying all 5,000 of them are multi-millionaires? Again, how much would a higher tax bracket on 0.0017% of the population help the economy, even if they are all mega rich? It's all simple math dude.

Easy to evade = fix the easy evasion.

Wealthy don't deal with it = make it harder to not deal with.

0.0017% of 100 billion dollars is $1,700,000. Doled out to 200 million people it equals less than 1 - 100th of a ****ing penny each.

(I think my calculator just blew up)

If even 100 of those 5,000 were multi-millionaires, it would still be more useful than the estate tax as it currently stands. You should re-read the part of my sentence where I said "some of them own businesses worth hundreds of millions".

But like you said, if it can be "fixed" then there you go. Otherwise might as well not have it at all.

I like to pretend I know what's going on in this thread, but it's just became a duel between Chula, elph, and Ant. It's actually entertaining.

Did you miss the part of my post where I said fix the estate tax rules so the rich can't dodge them and have to pay fair amounts????

Also, I think you missed my edit where I did some math on your behalf.

An economic advisor just said that if Trump's current tax plan was in place back in 2005 (last time Trump disclosed a tax return), Trump would have only paid $7 million on his earnings instead of the $37 million he actually paid.

:beer: awesome tax plan dude (quote from an anonomous mega rich person) :beer:

Why do you complain about things I already acknowledged? See the second paragraph from the post you quoted.

If the estate tax is being abolished (assuming some variation of Trump's plan passes), then there won't be an opportunity to fix the estate tax unless someone brings it back in four years or something. But since he's not abolishing the exit tax, then my suggestions on how it should be amended currently in order to be more effective than it currently is would be a path forward. :)

We'll just have to see how things play out here since it seems to be a work in progress.

Obama fired Flynn.

Once again, Obama fired Flynn.

Again, the money math doesn't amount to anything. Why are you focusing on the exit tax so much? Whether the expats amount to $10 billion or $100 billion, it trickles down to nothing in the big picture of things (see what I did there?).

Not f-cking with the current estate tax and making it fair across the board would be a million more times significant to the populace. But you've already made it perfectly clear that you dig the "rich get richer - F-the poor" mindset.

Do you know why? All I can find when I research it is that it was insubordination, which for all I know could mean that Obama asked Flynn to get him some coffee and Flynn refused.

there's no bigger crime that you can commit

He was fired for speaking out against the official WH viewpoints over and over again. Wild cannon **** that, in the big picture, were not healthy for an administration and it's ability to govern and make policy.

Trump trying to lay the vetting blame on Obama is beyond pathetic.

Don't let a tree get in the way of the forest. Trump's team totally ****ed up with Flynn.





Just heard that 56% of Americans think Russia is an ally.

*my forehead simply can't take anymore abuse*

Thanks, anything about that was buried over the news story we're discussing.

This is incredibly ironic.

I'm curious if Elph and Chula think that people who ruin their lives need to take some responsibility in fixing them or just simply get supported forever because "woe is me".