It is kinda out there
He doesn't address any of the claims in the article, in fact he ignored the entire premise which made the "poor parents are bad parents" claim extra ridiculous this time around. A fifth of his rant is a copy and pasted definition thats irrelevant as a response. It almost feels like the late night rantings of a drunkard, but his grammar this time around is above average for him.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Do you think breaking the law is a wise decision or a stupid one?
How about smoking?
How about spending money on lottery tickets?
The first part of my post simply addresses the fact that many poor people make very bad choices. If they didn't make those choices they could get out of poverty. So who is to blame for those poor decisions?
I move on to cultural issues (which the article actually agrees with) holding people back. I of course pin it on liberals, perhaps that is your point of contention.
Finally I discuss the importance of people realizing the awesome importance their own decisions have on their life. This seems obvious but liberals consistently and regularly try to argue against it.
So what parts do you find objectionable?
The part where the issues you fixate on are neither important root causes nor major causes for most of the poverty and obstacles to upward social mobility in the US. I hold your analysis in the same low regard that I hold all other fundamentalist religious beliefs.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
You can find lots of people who are well off who waste money on cigarettes, booze, and gambling. Those things are neither necessary or sufficient predictors of poverty. Now, are those great choices in general? I personally don't believe so. I also think that a person can do everything that I believe to be right and still end up in poverty - just as someone can do everything wrong and still be wealthy.
Are there people in a poverty of their own making? Absolutely. Are there people who are successful because of their hard work, dedication, and strength of character. Absolutely. However the reverse is also true.
If you have extra money to spend and you spend them on vices, it isn't dramatically negatively impacting your standard of living. However if you DON'T have extra money to spend...
While people making poor choices can still become wealthy - those who have a habit of doing so likely end up going to prison, drug ODing, having failures in other areas of life (relationships, friendships, health). Being born into money certainly *helps* but I think that cushion is less important than the life lessons you are taught by parents who aren't shitty people.
Everything you just said is refuted by Donald Trump.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...trump-tax-plan
Not that this will persuade the Lewks of the world, but 100% of polled economists said Trump's tax plan would work as advertised.
Hope is the denial of reality
Question A at the end is stupidly phrased:
"Since 1980, whenever substantial growth effects have been required to make a tax reform plan revenue neutral, the actual outcome has invariably been a fall in tax revenue as a share of GDP."
No shit Sherlock of course it has, by design. Both the UK and the USA managed to run budget surpluses in the 1990s with tax rates considerably lower than they were in 1980 and yes tax revenues lower as a share of GDP. But the idea of tax cuts to spur growth as has happened before is not to increase tax revenues as a share of GDP. It is to grow GDP and for tax revenues to increase in real terms even if they are smaller as a share of GDP
If you can't even get that right, doesn't fill me with confidence that this is anything other than trolling.
Um, that's precisely the GOP claim.
Hope is the denial of reality
Did you miss Question B there? No one talks about taxes in terms of GDP. No one even knows what percentage of GDP current taxes make up.
Hope is the denial of reality
Do you expect growth to replace hundreds of billions a year in taxes?
Hope is the denial of reality
Except there's A) literally no evidence for the Laffer curve at current tax levels, and B) you'd need double-digit economic growth to make up for that shortfall. Are you seriously suggesting that's on the cards?
Hope is the denial of reality
A) What evidence do you demand without a crystal ball? As far as corporation tax is concerned there is plenty of evidence that cutting taxes raises revenue which is why nations like the UK and Eire have considerably lower corporation taxes. And why trillions of dollars of cash is being offshored away from America in order to avoid your punitively high corporation tax rates. Between the top 5 tech companies in America alone there is literally about $1.5 trillion of cold hard cash IIRC being held offshore away from the IRS in order to avoid corporation tax. Cut it to 15% with a carrot and stick agreement with those companies and that can be onshored and 15% of $1.5 trillion goes a very long way to cutting your deficit.
B) Double-digit growth sounds incredulous until you think that in the long-term it is <1% growth per annum. Yes I do seriously think that can be on the cards, don't you?
Low taxes and controlled expenditure works, its been demonstrated time and again historically.
Pfft. Effective US corporate income tax rate can hardly be described as being "punitive".
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Effective corporate income tax in the US is not 35%.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
The point being that, cost of tax-dodging notwithstanding, it is the effective corporate income tax that is the most relevant when discussing tax revenue and it should also be the most interesting figure when trying to determine whether or not a tax reform measure will be revenue neutral or even increase revenue due to increased growth. Further, if the effective tax is comparable to other G7 countries then it's absurd to describe the income tax rate itself as being "punitive".
If the effective income tax rate is far lower than the statutory 35% then lowering the statutory income tax rate to the same level as the current effective income tax rate should have negligible impact on growth. Given that there would likely remain a number of loopholes--old ones or new--it should lead to an even lower effective income tax rate. You might assert that this would boost growth enough to offset the loss in revenue but the evidence for that remains equivocal at best.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Wisconsin’s Voter-ID Law Suppressed 200,000 Votes in 2016 (Trump Won by 22,748)
Prior to the 2016 election, Eddie Lee Holloway Jr., a 58-year-old African-American man, moved from Illinois to Wisconsin, which implemented a strict voter-ID law for the first time in 2016. He brought his expired Illinois photo ID, birth certificate, and Social Security card to get a photo ID for voting in Wisconsin, but the DMV in Milwaukee rejected his application because the name on his birth certificate read “Eddie Junior Holloway,” the result of a clerical error when it was issued. Holloway ended up making seven trips to different public agencies in two states and spent over $200 in an attempt to correct his birth certificate, but he was never able to obtain a voter-ID in Wisconsin. Before the election, his lawyer for the ACLU told me he was so disgusted he left Wisconsin for Illinois.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Move along, nothing to see here, rules of the game etc etc.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
A) The burden on proof is on those making a claim. Where's your evidence that the Laffer Curve applies under current conditions?
B) If you cut taxes by a third, and this increases economic growth by 1%, it would take 45 years before the government takes in as much in taxes as it did before; it would take even longer to make up for the 45 years of losses (plus interest). If growth goes up 2% (a claim that has no basis in reality), it would take 23 years. Isn't math fun?
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Hope is the denial of reality
President Trump: Wisconsin voter-id law stopped 200,000 fraudulent voters!
(actually, the analysis OG quoted isn't on a much higher level than the above. Though I'd be willing to be that the real numbers *which we will never know, granted* would still have changed the result there. Not that Wisconsin flipping would have changed the outcome)
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
And Comey is gone.
Hope is the denial of reality