Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jeff Buchanan]

Here's a couple of links for your Saturday reading pleasure.

Tax reform has been touted by the Trump administration as putting an average of $4000 back into the pockets of the American middle class and provide trickle down benefits for American workers. There is some truth to that but, on balance, it ain't great for the typical American, Bob.

I thought the Atlantic article linked below does a good job in this balanced analysis - cuts the hype coming from the White House.

The second link from the NYT allows you to see in broad terms what income group you'll fall in for tax purposes and then predicts the tax benefits or costs to you.

Have fun.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/trump-tax-cuts-companies-raises-bonuses/549116/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/upshot/tax-calculator.html

[entropy]

Doesn't matter how nice you are to me, I will NOT show you my Festivus pole.

LMAO!!!! post of the year

[entropy]

I'm not going to suggest Trump's tax plan is the what I'd propose.... however, if you complain that someone paying an extra $12/month for medications under Trump's plan is going to bankrupt people and then turn around and claim an additional $20/week in pay is insignificant.... well, you're playing party politics.

Either both matter or both don't.

All that said, if there has been one positive over the last couple weeks it is watching the rich in NY and California panic. I guess I'm evil like that...

Merry Christmas.

[entropy]

oh.. and the recent speeches by the VP and other cabinet members... where they've openly praised trump or privately went around a table praising him is actually scary. That is something we'd see from NK. Our president shouldn't have people praising him to demonstrate loyalty.

[Kapture1]

[Da Geezer]

I thought the Atlantic article linked below does a good job in this balanced analysis - cuts the hype coming from the White House.

The second link from the NYT allows you to see in broad terms what income group you'll fall in for tax purposes and then predicts the tax benefits or costs to you.

Those articles are just more of the left-wing nonsense that is now being spewed because the Dems/media (really the same party) were unable to stop the tax cuts.

Some fallacies:
- Assuming everything about the corporate tax cut that the left says is true, that only 25% or so will go directly to employees, and the rest going to dividends or buy-backs, those dividends and buy-backs ultimately make all pension and retirement programs more solvent because they drive up the stock price.
- When the top 20% of earners pay 95% of the taxes, and the top 1% pay 57% of taxes, it is pretty hard to design a tax cut that doesn't benefit the people actually paying taxes. Of course, 85% of the Dem base pays no taxes, so it is a bit disingenuous to complain about unfairness in the cuts. The cuts are only "unfair" because the current tax system is so profoundly progressive that any cut would benefit the top 20%.
- We will have a way to check who is telling the truth. Those of you who work, check your paycheck in February. Did you get a tax cut? 80% of Americans will.
- Demedia never considers growth. A growing economy covers a lot of sins, and is the only feasible way to cut into the National Debt other than hyperinflation.
-Demedia is also lying about how this tax cut will raise individual taxes after 9 years. Nothing of the sort will happen, any more than Medicaid will be cut. Tax cuts and entitlement programs are difficult to eliminate.
-Most important, people and corporations get to keep more of their own money and spend it the way they want to spend it. Liberty means something to us liberals.

[Ghengis Jon]

oh.. and the recent speeches by the VP and other cabinet members... where they've openly praised trump or privately went around a table praising him is actually scary. That is something we'd see from NK. Our president shouldn't have people praising him to demonstrate loyalty.

Absolutely right. To insist on such brazen goo goobling indicates a deep seated insecurity and lack of confidence or possibly the onset of meglomania. We have a deeply disturbed individual occupying the Oval Office.

[Kapture1]

its hard to give someone paying 0 in taxes a tax cut

[Kapture1]

[THE_WIZARD_]

its hard to give someone paying 0 in taxes a tax cut

Yet they ARE going to get a cut with the doubling of the child credits...so even though they pay no taxes currently they will get bigger refunds...and STILL the left bitches.

You can't make a whiner happy.

[CGVT]

.

[SeattleLionsFan]

For what it's worth, I have little problem with the tax cuts. I have a big problem with how they are going to pay for them.

My favorite thing is when Trump says how this or that measure is the best in 10 years. Of course it is. Stupid republican fiscal policy destroyed the economy ten years ago. . Merry Christmas!

[THE_WIZARD_]

Stupid republican fiscal policy destroyed the economy ten years ago.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Dr. Strangelove]

Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.

More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained. Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They ?all have AIDS,? he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.

Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never ?go back to their huts? in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.

As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/us/politics/trump-immigration.html

[hack]

To be fair, it was Clinton that really opened things up for Wall Street. Certainly the Bush 43 folks didn't help.