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2026 Mid-Term Elections

They see themselves as morally superior
In the sense you apparently intend, I am utterly a-moral, not a subscriber to moral, an utter non morality person. Funny that you would project that.
I try to selfishly attune my own behavior to what my own experience will make me happier and more at peace over the long term. Whether I am more successful or less successful at that than someone else is useless trivia.
But thanks for the revelatory tidbit, Derec.
😁
 
The true tax inequality is dividends have both the income tax and the inflation tax, they are thus treated much worse than either wages or capital gains.
Dividendn payouts tend to increase over time, which negates the "inflation tax".
 
She disagrees. I'm hung up on it because it seems painfully obvious to me that people trying for taxation levels sufficient to eliminate billionaires aren't doing it for the sake of extra tax revenue -- a guy who gets to a billion half way through the year and is prohibited from making any more is going to go on vacation rather than agree to work for nothing, so actual tax receipts will go down when the tax rate is hiked up that much. So they're motivated by a wish to hurt their outgroup, not by a wish to accomplish anything positive for anyone. I don't think pure harm is an appropriate goal for government policy.
Tax rates are and should continue to be progressive. Someone who has an income of $1B would still have an income of $90M if they paid 91% income tax without loopholes.

I have zero respect for anyone who cannot manage to get by on that.
Fred Phelps had zero respect for anyone who cannot manage to get by without gay sex. To ban people from doing stuff we should need a better reason than that they can get by without it.

...
THAT undermines our democracy and what is turning our country into a kleptocracy.
In a democracy when the people want a government service they're supposed to vote to tax themselves to pay for it. What's turning our country into a kleptocracy is our culture of getting services by voting to tax someone else to pay for it.
 
You received an increase in value.
Did you 'recieve' the car as an investment, for it's resale value? Most folk get cars to drive em till they wear-out, you expect them to devalue. Should you get a tax return for it's wear n tear.
Every car has 'value' in it's usefulness. It has monatery value only if sold. Till then any increase in value is just a pipe dream. Just someone's opinion, not an increase in actual money.
Most people do not buy Aston Martins in order to drive them until they wear out. I suspect that most people who buy Aston Martins purchase them assuming their value will hold, long term or perhaps increase.

Now, if you are talking about your average SUV or sedan pick up, you’d likely be correct. People drive them until they feel it is no longer worthwhile to keep them going. That’s what we do in our family.
 
She disagrees. I'm hung up on it because it seems painfully obvious to me that people trying for taxation levels sufficient to eliminate billionaires aren't doing it for the sake of extra tax revenue -- a guy who gets to a billion half way through the year and is prohibited from making any more is going to go on vacation rather than agree to work for nothing, so actual tax receipts will go down when the tax rate is hiked up that much. So they're motivated by a wish to hurt their outgroup, not by a wish to accomplish anything positive for anyone. I don't think pure harm is an appropriate goal for government policy.
Tax rates are and should continue to be progressive. Someone who has an income of $1B would still have an income of $90M if they paid 91% income tax without loopholes.

I have zero respect for anyone who cannot manage to get by on that.
Fred Phelps had zero respect for anyone who cannot manage to get by without gay sex. To ban people from doing stuff we should need a better reason than that they can get by without it.

...
THAT undermines our democracy and what is turning our country into a kleptocracy.
In a democracy when the people want a government service they're supposed to vote to tax themselves to pay for it. What's turning our country into a kleptocracy is our culture of getting services by voting to tax someone else to pay for it.
I was pretty clear about my reasons for believing we need to take the wealthy especially the uber wealthy more. The other reason is the implicit fact that the very wealthy benefit more from the infrastructure that everyone’s tax dollars pay for. They get a greater benefit so they should pony up to remake t that greater benefit.

In a democracy, we are all supposed to have equal say in who elected officials are and our elected officials are supposed to work for the good of all people, not merely the ones who donate the most to their campaigns or find other ways to enrich lawmakers.
 
I think people like you, Toni and Zipr subscribe to the AOC mantra that it is better to be "morally right" than "factually correct". They see themselves as morally superior by advocating these harebrained taxation schemes, and some even want to "eliminate billionaires" by "taxing them down to size". But they do not care so much about the actual facts or likely consequences of what they are advocating.
Thomas Sowell called it "Self-congratulation as social policy".
 
In a democracy when the people want a government service they're supposed to vote to tax themselves to pay for it.
Nonsense. If they could pay for it themselves, they wouldn't need the government to provide the service at all; They could just pay a non-government provider to supply the service.

The point and benefit of government is redistribution of wealth, in the form of (broad) infrastructure and mandatory insurances; That is, the provision of services to those who need them, paid for by those who can afford to pay for them.

To some extent, these turn out to be the same people, but later in life, because governments run deficits. But ultimately the people who are fortunate are forced to give a leg up to those who are not, and if and when that makes todays unfortunates ae to become tomorrows taxpayers, so much the better.
 
What's turning our country into a kleptocracy is our culture of getting services by voting to tax someone else to pay for it.
Nonsense. What's turning your country into a kleptocracy is your habit of electing conmen and thieves to office, and then refusing to do anything to remove them, on the spurious basis that the other guy would be just as bad*, and at least the incumbent has experience of how to run a government.





* And there is only one other guy; It's a two party system. Go ahead, waste your vote...
 
I was pretty clear about my reasons for believing we need to take the wealthy especially the uber wealthy more.
Yes -- you appear to perceive them as your enemy so you'd like the government to treat them as its enemy.

The other reason is the implicit fact that the very wealthy benefit more from the infrastructure that everyone’s tax dollars pay for. They get a greater benefit so they should pony up to remake t that greater benefit.
As noted upthread, the average one-percenter is paying his fair share and twenty-nine other people's fair share too. When you say they benefit more so they should pay more, you are perpetrating a rhetorical bait-and-switch. "Benefit more and pay more" is equally compatible with benefit three times as much and pay twice as much, benefit three times as much and pay three times as much, and benefit three times as much and pay four times as much. You appear to be encouraging readers to feel "benefit three times as much and pay four times as much" is less than their fair share by fudging which of those scenarios you're talking about. You have at no point supplied any evidence that the infrastructure that everyone’s tax dollars pay for is used by the wealthy in a proportion greater than the proportion they pay for it.

In a democracy, we are all supposed to have equal say in who elected officials are
Where did you get that idea? It's ridiculous. We're all supposed to have an equal say in who wins the election. Not the same thing at all. Whoever gets to decide whose names are on the ballot evidently has enormously more say in who elected officials are than the rest of us who just get a multiple choice test. That's how democracies are designed to work.

and our elected officials are supposed to work for the good of all people, not merely the ones who donate the most to their campaigns or find other ways to enrich lawmakers.
Quite so. That's why governments should not treat some of us as the enemy. Hurting a minority group for the sake of hurting them is not a proper use of government power.
 
I was pretty clear about my reasons for believing we need to take the wealthy especially the uber wealthy more.
Yes -- you appear to perceive them as your enemy so you'd like the government to treat them as its enemy.

The other reason is the implicit fact that the very wealthy benefit more from the infrastructure that everyone’s tax dollars pay for. They get a greater benefit so they should pony up to remake t that greater benefit.
As noted upthread, the average one-percenter is paying his fair share and twenty-nine other people's fair share too. When you say they benefit more so they should pay more, you are perpetrating a rhetorical bait-and-switch. "Benefit more and pay more" is equally compatible with benefit three times as much and pay twice as much, benefit three times as much and pay three times as much, and benefit three times as much and pay four times as much. You appear to be encouraging readers to feel "benefit three times as much and pay four times as much" is less than their fair share by fudging which of those scenarios you're talking about. You have at no point supplied any evidence that the infrastructure that everyone’s tax dollars pay for is used by the wealthy in a proportion greater than the proportion they pay for it.

In a democracy, we are all supposed to have equal say in who elected officials are
Where did you get that idea? It's ridiculous. We're all supposed to have an equal say in who wins the election. Not the same thing at all. Whoever gets to decide whose names are on the ballot evidently has enormously more say in who elected officials are than the rest of us who just get a multiple choice test. That's how democracies are designed to work.

and our elected officials are supposed to work for the good of all people, not merely the ones who donate the most to their campaigns or find other ways to enrich lawmakers.
Quite so. That's why governments should not treat some of us as the enemy. Hurting a minority group for the sake of hurting them is not a proper use of government power.
No, I see the fact that we have so structured our laws governing corporations and taxes in such a way as to allow some small number of people to accumulate billions of dollars as antithetical to the existence of democracy.

Some/many perhaps most billionaires absolutely behave in ways that demonstrate that they do not believe in democracy but hold themselves above the law.

We are all supposed to have a say in whose names appear on ballots. Generals ther are rules governing what, if any criteria any would be elected official must meet to be eligible to stand for election.
 
As noted upthread, the average one-percenter is paying his fair share and twenty-nine other people's fair share too.
While it is a fact that it was noted upthread, what was noted upthread is not a fact but an opinion. You have yet to establish why your opinion as to what constitutes a “a fair share” prevails over Toni’s opinion or anyone else’s opinion. Hence you are modelling your quote from Thomas Sowell.
 
What's turning our country into a kleptocracy is our culture of getting services by voting to tax someone else to pay for it.
Nonsense. What's turning your country into a kleptocracy is your habit of electing conmen and thieves to office, and then refusing to do anything to remove them, on the spurious basis that the other guy would be just as bad*, and at least the incumbent has experience of how to run a government.

* And there is only one other guy; It's a two party system. Go ahead, waste your vote...

Heh.

 
unethically irresponsible inference procedure
No, I think it's pretty solid, honestly.

If <chain of false premises and invalid inferences snipped>
People like Jarhyn are really bad at modeling other people's minds. They know this about themselves; yet they go right on trumping up baseless accusations about other people's thought processes with reckless disregard for the truth, trusting in their incompetently constructed models.
 
<perfectly legitimate argument snipped>
Question: Why are you schilling yourself for the massively wealthy? Do you think you will be one of them someday?
Question: Why are you shilling for the Bolsheviks? Do you think they will include you in the Politburo someday?

Question 2: Do leftists have any arguments that are not, ultimately, ad hominem?
Yep. That’s the thing. If we’re going to go after a guy hard because he has more than me; how do I know that I’m not next?
 
We’re all subsidizing Bezos, if you want something to complain about.
Are we? Because buying from a company is not the same as subsidizing the part-owner. You are not subsidizing Piggly Wiggly (or whatever the grocery store you guys have in your neck of the woods - rural areas around here often have Piggly Wiggly) either when you shop there.
And Musk who seems bent on producing as many children he doesn’t raise ( in his case that’s a good thing).
Presumably he does pay a lot of child support for them though. The taxpayer is not subsidizing his kids. Unlike some guy who has 14 kids as well but all his baby mamas are on SNAP and Medicaid.
Well, actually we are subsidizing Musk. SpaceX lives on government contracts, and Tesla would have had a tough time finding a place in the market without electric car and Powerwall subsidies.
 
We’re all subsidizing Bezos, if you want something to complain about.
Are we? Because buying from a company is not the same as subsidizing the part-owner. You are not subsidizing Piggly Wiggly (or whatever the grocery store you guys have in your neck of the woods - rural areas around here often have Piggly Wiggly) either when you shop there.
...
Of course we are. We are subsidizing any employer who pays employees so poorly that they must supplement their income by food stamps, Medicaid, and other poverty relief measures. We are subsidizing them by increased number of children who need to go to subsidized daycares, Head Start programs, be in Medicaid, or free lunch programs, etc.
That's religious catechism, not economic reasoning. If a guy does not have the skill set to increase any employer's revenue enough to cover the cost of supporting himself and his family, he has a problem. When an employer buys the guy's labor at fair market value, she's solving part of his problem for him. If you solve part of somebody's problem, that does not magically make his whole problem your problem. You might as well claim his food stamps are a subsidy to his grocer because the grocer doesn't sell him $500 worth of food for the $200 he can earn himself.

We also are subsidizing all corporations by building infrastructure: roads, water and sewer, utilities, etc.
Corporations pay corporate income taxes that help finance that infrastructure. You haven't shown the tax revenue is less than the cost of providing the service.

We are especially subsidizing corporations every single time they are given tax breaks when they decide to build another store or warehouse in any community.
Corporations, like most other economic actors, shed positive externalities that they don't get paid for into their economic ecosystems by the boatload. The reason local governments offer tax breaks is because they want those externalities. That's only a subsidy if the externalities are insufficient to make up for the lost tax revenue, i.e., if the local government officials made a bad deal. Local officials are sometimes stupid or corrupt, sure, but often they offer tax breaks because it's a good deal for their community.

We are subsidizing them by allowing mega corporations such as Amazon and Walmart to underpay their suppliers and by cornering the market after they’ve drive out more local retailers —at which point they are free to charges they want and supply what they choose. When people have few choices about where and what they can buy because other options have been eliminated, we have helped create that situation by subsidizing corporations that do not, in fact, need the subsidies to survive or thrive.

This is off the top of my head.
:consternation2: Overall, Amazon and Walmart have increased people's choices enormously.
 
What's turning our country into a kleptocracy is our culture of getting services by voting to tax someone else to pay for it.
Nonsense. What's turning your country into a kleptocracy is your habit of electing conmen and thieves to office, and then refusing to do anything to remove them, on the spurious basis that the other guy would be just as bad*, and at least the incumbent has experience of how to run a government.

* And there is only one other guy; It's a two party system. Go ahead, waste your vote...

Heh.


IMG_3745.jpeg
 
<perfectly legitimate argument snipped>
Question: Why are you schilling yourself for the massively wealthy? Do you think you will be one of them someday?
Question: Why are you shilling for the Bolsheviks? Do you think they will include you in the Politburo someday?

Question 2: Do leftists have any arguments that are not, ultimately, ad hominem?
You owe him an answer, first.

And holy fuck WOW what loaded questions? They're as loaded as DJT's Depends.

Do you think you will ever be wealthy? That your children, by their own merits and assuming you even have any, will ever be wealthy?

I don't think you will. In fact, I might have over the last month become wealthier than you or any of your descendants will ever become, for all it is a pittance compared to super-wealth we are discussing.

You are shilling for people who think you are worth being thought about not-at-all even as they use your face for stepping stones.

<perfectly legitimate argument snipped>
Question: Why are you schilling yourself for the massively wealthy? Do you think you will be one of them someday?
Question: Why are you shilling for the Bolsheviks? Do you think they will include you in the Politburo someday?

Question 2: Do leftists have any arguments that are not, ultimately, ad hominem?
Yep. That’s the thing. If we’re going to go after a guy hard because he has more than me; how do I know that I’m not next?
Not because he has more than you, but because he did nothing to merit it.

When there's something that could be seen more as a collective birthright of humanity that is hoarded by a few of us, and those few have done nothing nor their ancestors in living memory... Well, that's when I think we can pretty well decide that it's time to allow the merit to accrue to those currently engaged in doing the things that actually build and maintain our world... "shareholding" and "power brokering" is not that.

We can in fact fairly trivially observe that shareholding over others' work is parasitical at best and "power brokering" is so often wantonly destructive so as to be something many of us here surely think should be outright criminal.

People have tolerated billionaires for some time. I do not see us ever failing to tolerate mere "millionaires", but if the day comes, I think it is quite far away indeed. They would come for ME long before they ever come for you.

There has been some discussion on the scale of wealth, and of where someone enters "buy a lawmaker" or even "buy a legislature" territories of disposable wealth, however, and it seems a slippery slope when we have demonstrated that the scale of wealth being criticized here is any wealth that buys such influence.

If you are not buying influence, I doubt you will ever find yourself labeled as "next in line".
 
The people living below the poverty line in point of fact use a great deal of common property
Unevidenced assertion, and unclear at that.
Is “a great deal” more or less than what a billionaire consumes? More or less than the average US citizen?
Pretty vacuous statement in the absence of any facts or figures.
... says the guy who said they're 'hardly using any “common property”'. Pretty vacuous statement in the absence of any facts or figures.

As for how it compares to a billionaire's use, we'd have to take it item by item. They use Medicaid, emergency rooms for non-emergency medical problems, social services, food stamps, EITC, and public parks and sidewalks as homes more than a billionaire would. Medicare, could be the same. Roads, less. Public schools and police protection, that's going to depend on how you measure it and I'd expect estimates to vary wildly. And of course there are plenty of other things impoverished people use less or not at all that I didn't include because it was a list of counterexamples to your claim. But the question in dispute wasn't whether they consume less than a billionaire, but whether the billionaire's use is disproportionately greater compared to the ratio of their tax bills. You've produced no facts to back up your claim about that.
 
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