re: Millionaire releases tax return as illustration

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That’s why there are temporary measures in the bill. I was saying why they chose to make the individual cuts temporary instead of the corporate cuts

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It's more complicated than that. As TiM pointed out corporations need to know the tax cuts are permanent for strategy and planning. But it's hard not to get the feeling this is about satisfying their big donors irregardless of the optics or even the outcome.

This tax plan makes zero sense. The other day I pointed out that the richest People in America are sitting on 100's of billions of dollars that they're not investing in new buisness and not using to raise wages, turns out it's 2.3trillion they're sitting on. I've not seen a single argument that satisfactorily explains how these cuts are going to address income inequality or improve life for the middle class. I've only heard that cutting taxes always helps everyone, well bullshite.

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Yeah, this is the whole fallacy in trickle down. The premise is that those with money will invest in new capital expenditures, businesses, etc and create jobs if you make more capital available to them (for example through tax cuts).

That would be true if they did not have enough to make those capital expenditures and the demand was there for whatever new goods and services would be produced.

However, corporations and the "wealthy" are sitting on record amounts of cash already and looking for investments already. The opportunities aren't there right now and won't be until the demand is there.

If a corp or wealthy person has 100 million dollars in cash or cash equivalents or any other type of highly liquid asset and you make $10 million more available to them through a tax cuts, what happens? They go start a new business, hire more people, etc? shite no. They would have done that with the $100 million already if the opportunity was there. Now they just have $110 million instead of $100 million in their money market account, IRA, or whatever other liquid asset they hold.

That is why this bill is going to produce approximately zero new jobs and zero economic growth.

Not to mention the fact the economy is near full employment as well already.

When opponent characterize this as a give away to corps and the wealthy, that is not entirely accurate, but it can be viewed that way.

When proponents say it will create jobs, economic growth, and "pay for itself", that is bullshite, bullshite and insane bullshite respectively

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It's a real shite show. IMO there is no doubt that there are times when trickle down is the answer, but that time very obviously isn't now.

I'm not even sure what can legally be done to address income inequality. Unions IMO have numerous drawbacks and have failed vast sections of our labor force already.Triggers based on average hourly and non executive income increases to activate the corporate tax reductions would be a start, but I'd bet it isn't legal and implementation would probably be next to impossible if it were.

I suppose there are some theories involving demand side economics but I'm not familiär enough with those to venture an opinion.

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That’s why there are temporary measures in the bill. I was saying why they chose to make the individual cuts temporary instead of the corporate cuts

TnM was trying to claim they did it to screw over the middle class in a few years

Republicans would rather have the whole thing permanent but they can’t

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Yes they can. Republicans can make the whole thing permanent by getting some Dems to vote along with them. But they're not even trying, the same way Dems didn't even try to involve Republicans when they rammed Obamacare through back in 2009.

This is a HUGE mistake by Republicans. It will be their Obamacare.

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One of the things people don't get is that while the Laffer Curve makes sense, if you tax too much you harm the generation of wealth that you can tax, it was also built into the curve that if you tax too little and don't cut spending to offset then you will run up huge debts.

We have a generation, or more, that has grown up thinking that cutting taxes is always a good thing... but does not want to give up the great many things that government does. We want to have our cake and eat it too.

Everyone, it would seem, is fond of cutting government spending... until it gets to the government spending they use. Then they have a problem.

And things get cut, that, in hindsight, should not have been cut. We used to have one of the best mental health systems in the world. Now we release the mentally ill on our streets and are shocked, shocked I say, that bad things happen when we do so. Mostly though, we don't cut.

So we keep writing checks we cannot cash. We are living off our credit cards as a country.

As the Bible said, too whom much is given, much is expected. Bump up the tax rate on the very wealthy. Yes, they pay a lot of what we bring in right now. Well, they can afford it.

Cut spending, which won't be easy, and bump up the tax rate a little and lets start whittling down this debt before it overwhelms us.

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All true. We are just running up the credit card bill and we WILL see DRASTICALLY higher taxes in the near future because of it.

And yeah, people want their cake and to eat it too and gutless politicians can't make the hard choices. The Gang of Six had it right but was ignored.

IMO, if you want to assign blame to the parties for our current fiscal situation and debt, the GOP deserves more blame than the Dems as the Dems are more fiscally conservative by far right now. Neither side is going to cut spending and neither side is a marginally larger spender than the other (Dems increase social safety nets, Repubs increase military spending as a rule of thumb). The Dems at least aren't trying to make things worse by targeting the wealthy for large tax cuts while ignoring spending.

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The wealthy pay the most in taxes (in absolute numbers), but as a percentage of income, they do not. The people who actually pay the most are those with household incomes in the low-mid six figures. How can this possibly be true? 1. The vast majority of people who earn low-mid six figure income are employees, not business owners. 2. While the Social security/Medicare taxes are capped, households that make in the low six figures still pay a significant percentage of their salary. If you make $10 million, you pay the same amount as someone who makes $200k. The guy making $200k pays nearly 7% of his income, while the guy making $10 million pays less than 2.5%. 3. Sales tax accounts for a higher percentage of their income. This is obviously true because someone who earns $10 million doesn't eat 50 times as much as someone who earns $200k. They can't drive 50 cars at once. They don't wear 50 pairs of pants at a time. Millionaires might spend more on those things, but they don't spend anywhere close to 50 times more. My household (~$300k income) pays about 50% of what we earn in taxes, currently. The deductions everyone is so quick to toss aside (SALT, personal exemptions, mortgage interest, property taxes) were the only tools we had to reduce our federal income tax bill. By tossing those deductions aside, Republicans are raising my tax federal tax bill by around $5k per year. Clearly, Republicans believe that paying only 50% of my income in taxes is not enough. We need to approach Sweden levels of taxation. I expected Democrats to be the ones to do that, but I was wrong. It was the Marxist Republican party. Thanks for nothing, Republicans!

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Ain't all of that the truth. I'm in the same boat, and see the same thing. And I also know when this shite bill blows the deficit right back up, the assholes will come looking to me as a high wage earner to pay for it in a couple of years as usual.

By the way, I just checked the poliboard. It is interesting to compare this thread with some actual quality discussion to the shite flinging monkeys over there and their drive by monosyllabic one sentence responses with little to no substance.

Quite a contrast between the two threads discussing the same subject.

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Yeah, I personally think income inequality is the single biggest problem we are facing as a society.

It is not because I am particularly compassionate either. The extended unemployment benefits during the recession bothered me, I believe the disability system is being abused, I do not believe in able bodied people getting government benefits who are not working (take away the benefits and they work or starve as long as they are able bodied).

However, that is not what income inequality is really about. It is the working middle class who puts in 40 or more hours a week and has no leverage to ever get a raise that does much more than keep up with inflation. There just is not that much opportunity for advancement for the vast majority of Americans. Studies bear that out that class mobility in the U.S. is mostly a myth since the 1970s. 95% of the wealth being concentrated with a very small number of people is simply not a healthy society.

Unions did give members some leverage concerning wages and wage stagnation really set in when unions died, but unions had problems as you mentioned.

Anyway, I don't have an answer, I'm just logical enough to realize this tax bill is pretty much targeted and tailored specifically to the wealthy and increasing income inequality substantially. It is just stupid and illogical in every way, but people elected these jack-offs and it is what it is.

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There are a bunch of reasons why class mobility is becoming more difficult. I could write a long essay on the subject, but I won't here. Instead I'll just mention a few points.

1. We should pay the same amount of tax, regardless of how we earn our money, but the tax code favors investment over labor, bigly.

2. Corporations are taxed on net income (profit), while individuals are taxed on gross income (equivalent of revenue). The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are legally people, so why aren't they taxed like people?

3. Unprofitable corporations pay no income tax. They are protected by the US military and take advantage of all the government services that profitable corporations do, but only profitable corporations pay for those services through taxes. In other words, the federal government subsidizes mediocrity and failure.

4. "Limited liability" is the biggest market distorting government policy in modern economic history. It's a concept that is directly opposed to "personal responsibility" and "accountability". Privatize profits, socialize losses. Government should end this market distorting practice, which would allow for a free market solution...insurance.

5. In the past, the economy changed on the timescale of centuries. Today, the economy changes on the timescale of decades. People who can't adapt (which is most people) get left behind. When automated vehicles eliminate millions of jobs in the transportation sector in the near future, those displaced employees aren't all gonna go to college to become engineers. If that was something they were capable of, they'd probably already be a engineers. Some may find a place maintaining those vehicles, but most are going to be filling out applications at WalMart. This is especially rough when it happens to people in their 50s or later. The cost of job training/education is more difficult to justify when you're <20 years from retirement than when you're >40 years from retirement. The payoff just isn't there, not to mention the greater family obligations most people in their 50s tend to have.

By the way, something else that annoys me right now. Trump just ran his mouth blaming previous administrations for a long overdue infrastructure bill that is badly needed and he promised about 10 months ago was imminent.

This tax plan is so stupid. We need the infrastructure bill desperately so let's bigly reduce revenues so we can't pay for it. All so the wealthy and corps get money.

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1. We should pay the same amount of tax, regardless of how we earn our money, but the tax code favors investment over labor, bigly.

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It favors long term investment, not something you want to change lightly. Think about it: how well-off are laborers going to be in retirement if you tax their long term savings at the same rates as labor? Hint: not very good.

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Corporations are taxed on net income (profit), while individuals are taxed on gross income (equivalent of revenue). The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are legally people, so why aren't they taxed like people?

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Because people don't operate at 3-5% profit margins?

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Unprofitable corporations pay no income tax. They are protected by the US military and take advantage of all the government services that profitable corporations do, but only profitable corporations pay for those services through taxes. In other words, the federal government subsidizes mediocrity and failure.

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And literally everything you just said applies to the lower 47% of the workforce.

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In the past, the economy changed on the timescale of centuries. Today, the economy changes on the timescale of decades

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LOL, what? This country's economy is only a couple of centuries old, and I doubt at any point in its history did it evolve at a timescale of 100 years.

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Irrelevant to the discussion. If this bill cut everyone's taxes by x percent, ok. But this bill is specifically targeted and tailored to the benefit the wealthy VERY disproportionately.

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Most people have a 401k with stock market investments. Dramatically reducing tax rates on corporations helps everyone who invests in publicly traded companies.

All the naysayers are leaving that part out.

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It favors long term investment, not something you want to change lightly. Think about it: how well-off are laborers going to be in retirement if you tax their long term savings at the same rates as labor? Hint: not very good.

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They would be better off because we would be able to lower individual income tax rates.

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Because people don't operate at 3-5% profit margins?

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Nonsense

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And literally everything you just said applies to the lower 47% of the workforce.

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In other words, you agree with me that our government subsidizes mediocrity and failure, and that we should stop this practice immediately. Going forward, everyone should pay taxes on gross revenue/income, not profit/disposable income.

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LOL, what? This country's economy is only a couple of centuries old, and I doubt at any point in its history did it evolve at a timescale of 100 years.

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Fun fact: Human history didn't begin in 1776.