The General US Politics Thread

If only it was just real estate and publicly traded stocks.

Net worth encompasses everything.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2019 at 11:36:23 PM

Yeah but well... they don't have to go call in a specialist to tell the value of the stocks, unlike the real estates.

And like I just said, the stock and the real estate are a couple of the easier bits to value.

Another thing to consider is that the IRS, aware that Estate Taxes are complicated messes, allows for extensions on filing it (up to ten years).

That obviously wouldn't be possible for a wealth tax that has to be done every year.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2019 at 11:42:21 PM

Even with the hourly fluctuating stock market? Huh. Who'd have thunk.

Have you, perhaps, given one iota of thought to the fact that the reason why filing an estate tax return is such an arduous process is that most people don't keep a running valuation of their assets and debts and therefore when they die all of that needs to be done at that moment and that if they did keep track of that on a yearly basis it would be a fuckton less hassle to do?

Valuing stuff like that is still insanely complicated even if you're up to date on your financials, like a lot of the super rich are (being greedy bastards they tend to be very aware of their money).

Doing a careful valuation of one's assets is always going to be a time-consuming and difficult task, especially if you're trying to avoid being charged with tax fraud.

Also, could you tone it down on the insulting language? What's with that "iota of thought" bit? I've so far managed to refrain from insulting the intelligence of other posters here.

I'm trying to avoid making this into an ugly argument.

If one wants to tax the rich more, Ocasio-Cortez's 70% tax is the more practical option. It's certainly less of a potential administrative and legal quagmire. And this isn't a personal bias on my part, given that I'm not really a fan of Ocasio-Cortez either.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2019 at 11:58:54 PM

As I understand it, it's less about something so nebulous as 'taxing the rich more' and more about combating wealth inequality by disincentivizing the hoarding of assets.

Edited by Robrecht on Apr 25th 2019 at 6:02:35 PM

In practice, that's what it is though: getting rich people to pay more taxes.

And that's not a bad thing.

If I were coming up with a tax plan, I'd at least make one that wouldn't require me to somehow overcome another potential obstacle in the Supreme Court in addition to Congress. Especially not this Supreme Court.

Edited by M84 on Apr 26th 2019 at 12:10:50 AM

Double post for a topic shift:

538 also did a bit on Sanders' polling a few days ago.

Bernie Sanders Can Win, But He Isn’t Polling Like A Favorite

They concluded that he can still win, but the polls and history are not in his favor. To them, his odds of winning are very...mediocre.

Also, here's the most recent endorsement list: The 2020 Endorsement Primary

Biden of course surged ahead. However, he has fewer endorsements from actual DNC members than Bernie Sanders does. Sanders still has the most at 5.

Edited by M84 on Apr 26th 2019 at 1:35:30 AM

Ohai, Feinstein. Everyone's entitled to endorse whoever they want, but I can't help but wonder how Harris feels about her fellow California senator endorsing Biden over her.

Edited by Parable on Apr 25th 2019 at 10:50:20 AM

Probably not too shocked, all things considered. Biden's worked with the Democratic Party for a while while Harris only became a Senator a couple years ago.

One gets the impression that Harris and Feinstein despite being Senators for the same state haven't actually spent too much time working together or anything. I bet they haven't even eaten lunch together very often.

Together they kind of embody the weird mishmash of liberal and conservative values that make up California despite it being a Blue state.

Edit:

Since Andrew Yang was brought up in this thread, here's another bit from earlier this month about why he thinks the USA needs UBI.

Basically, he thinks having UBI will, among other things, help raise American life expectancy. As a reminder, things in the USA have been so fucked over the last several years that the USA's life expectancy has actually fallen for the first time in a century. The last time it dropped like this was when there was a major flu pandemic.

The three main causes for this btw are rising suicide rates, drug overdoses, and chronic liver disease.

Yeah, that's right. So many people in the USA are killing themselves that it's actually lowering the life expectancy of our nation as a whole.

Edited by M84 on Apr 27th 2019 at 3:10:53 AM

Considering politics and world events in the last 3 years, its no surprise suicide rates are rising.

Edited by CookingCat on Apr 26th 2019 at 1:01:24 AM

A good chunk of the suicides are happening among middle-aged white people in rural areas.

And the suicide rate is only really rising in the USA. It seems to have actually dipped in other countries.

Nobody's really sure why this is happening, just that it's happening.

Edited by M84 on Apr 26th 2019 at 4:08:30 PM

I get the point about Warren’s tax plan, but the fact that it doesn’t fit with her wonkness is why I think she’s not gonna stick with it.

It’s simple and popular, for a campaign point that’s perfect, I like AOC’s tax idea better, but it’s significantly less popular.

Warren seems to be getting the public onboard with raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy, she can change the exact details of how to tax them at a later date, but the work of building public support for such taxation has to be done now and needs a simple idea for it to work.

Warren can win campaigning on a wealth tax and implement a top 70% income tax rate and 90% of voters wouldn’t know the difference between the two.

See, that's the sort of "strategy" I hate. It's cynical populist bullshit if that's what she's actually doing.

Most likely for roughly the same reasons why dying in pregnancy rates in the US are rising while they are falling in all other developed countries, why Americans are liable to die earlier, why there is a huge drug crisis aso. A combination of people being "left behind" and not being able to seek out care, either because they can't afford it or because they have been convinced that they shouldn't need it. Also, lack of gun control. It is just so much easier to kill yourself with a gun, plus, if you have one in reach, you might be more likely to do down that route.

That's the rub. There's a lot of potential factors contributing to the rising suicide rate in the USA.

X3 It’s not ideal but we need to sell the public on taxing the wealthy, and so far the evidence indicates that the public is to stupid to understand anything more complicated than a wealth tax (like AOC’s tax plan).

I’ll take a winning candidate who tactically lied about how she will tax the rich over one who won’t tax the rich or one who will loose.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 26th 2019 at 8:26:07 AM

I'm just wondering how — if this is what she's doing — this would be much different from Buttigieg eschewing actual plans over "values". In this case, Warrens value would be "make rich people pay more taxes".

Edited by M84 on Apr 26th 2019 at 4:29:25 PM

The difference is scale, there’s being practical about the exact form a policy idea takes (Warren) and there’s being practical ones entire policy platform (mayor Pete).

I’m not exactly sure where the line of acceptableness is, but I’d say it’s somewhere between the two.

Sometimes we have to be a bit popularist, we’re trying to win a popularity contest after all.

I do think the standards are higher when one deliberately styles oneself as the candidate with clear plans and policies.

TBF though, I don't think she's actually doing this. I actually think she's sincere about the wealth tax, but is underestimating the challenges it faces in legality and execution. I suspect she will eventually adopt the 70% tax thing if she actually becomes POTUS once she realizes just how difficult it will actually be to implement a wealth tax in the USA.

Edited by M84 on Apr 26th 2019 at 4:39:35 PM

See I’m the opposite, because Warren’s history of doing good well written policy makes me give her the benefit of the doubt when her policy is popularist bullshit.

I trust that Warren doesn’t buy her own crap, can’t say the same for mayor Pete.

I also think a salient point to keep in mind is that Warren is not actually seriously proposing a wealth tax as her primary policy at this point.

What she's been doing so far is use it as a hypothetical that serves as an illustration of the extent of inequality in wealth distribution in the US.

In the sense that at this point she's simply been pointing out how many programmes could be funded if there were a wealth tax on personal wealth over 50 million as low as 2%, without actually saying 'So I'm totally going to do that.'

That's kind of a specific way to do that, especially considering she's already gone to economists to help do the math. Which is probably where she got that $2.75 trillion over ten years figure.

What, is she eventually going to say "LOL I wasn't serious about the wealth tax thing."

Anyway, it seems like she has put in just enough effort and thought into this (but arguably not enough) that it's actually a serious proposal. Or at least it looks like one.

Granted, it being not serious at all would explain why it has such a stupid name. "Ultra-Millionaire Tax", really?

I'm now imagining millionaires and billionaires being able to transform into Ultra Heroes.

Edited by M84 on Apr 26th 2019 at 7:39:02 PM

I mean, millionaire tax would sound like she’s coming after the local dentist. Ultra-millionaire accurately suggests the super wealthy.