2026 Mid-Term Elections

[Derec]

I don’t regard paying one’s fair share in taxes as punitive.

Again, that wholly depends on your definition of "fair share".
And I also think that it is unproductive to focus solely on the relative handful of billionaires to the exclusion of other rich.

I believe taxing in order to raise re ensue and to encourage what is good for society and discouraging what is bad for society is proper.

Developing successful companies is not something we should be discouraging.

We give tax breaks to people raising children in order to encourage people to have children.

Some of that is justified, but currently there are too many and too generous tax breaks. The primary responsibility for raising children should be on the parents, not the taxpayers. The benefits should also not rise linearly with number of children but rather taper off. Because I do not think we should encourage and subsidize people having huge families either.

We assess penalties for corporations which pollute, form monopolies, engage in unfair labor practices and a host of other measures to discourage such behavior and to disincentivize behavior that we find harmful.

True. But that is based on specific harmful behaviors.

We have demonstrated over and over again that we are not willing to treat wealth y individuals the same way we treat poor individuals. If we were to treat the merely wealthy and the poor equally, that would be a big step forwards our ideal of justice for all. It would be another large step forward if we quit treating the uber wealthy as an especially privileged class who are exempt from taxes, laws, rules and regulations that the rest of us are subject to.

Why do you think "uber wealthy" are "exempt from taxes, laws, rules and regulations"? That claim is especially baffling for taxes when they pay a lot in taxes already.

 

[thebeave]

Musk obtained sweetheart non-competitive contracts —paid for by you and me—for his various satellites and launches, most of which have failed.

You are conflating at least three different things. There are a number of test flights that failed, but you don't have contracts with customers for those. Paid SpaceX launches (for both private and government clients like NASA) have been very successful, and relatively affordable.

Indeed. Per the SpaceX Wikipedia page.

As of May 21, 2026, the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have been launched 652 times, resulting in 649 full mission successes, one partial success, and one in-flight failure. In addition, a Falcon 9 experienced a pre-flight failure before a static fire test in 2016.

 

[Toni]

There is nothing confiscatory about paying one’s fair share.

Depends on how you define "fair share".
Do you really think "taxing [billionaires] down to size" that would result in "eliminating" them is "fair share"?

I am a firm believer in properly compensating employees and vendors. Bezos does neither. Instead he creates predatory conditions under which vendors have little choice but to agree to his terms.

They have a lot of market power, yes. Does not mean that it is not a winning scenario for vendors to have access to a sale portal with such market power.

We do absolutely subsidize Bezos’ employees if they are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and healthcare Abd housing and transportation without taxpayer funded subsidies. Same thing only much worse with Walmart.

If they did not have a job at all, they'd cost the government even more. Amazon has a lot of employees, and only some of them are the low-end warehouse employees. And I have shown that even those get paid $18-20 per hour in MCOL city like Atlanta. Of course it is impossible for any company to guarantee pay, especially for their low end employees, that completely eliminates the possibility of them being eligible for government services. That's because eligibility for these programs rises with household size. A family of five is eligible for SNAP up to ~48k. Does that mean that every job should pay at least that much? And what about family of 6? 7?

Musk obtained sweetheart non-competitive contracts —paid for by you and me—for his various satellites and launches, most of which have failed.

You are conflating at least three different things. There are a number of test flights that failed, but you don't have contracts with customers for those. Paid SpaceX launches (for both private and government clients like NASA) have been very successful, and relatively affordable.

Somehow,none carrying any ‘important’ people.

What is that supposed to mean? Afaik there have not been any deaths on SpaceX flights, important or not. And last year SpaceX managed to rescue astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore when Boeing, the original contractor, could not.
There is nothing wrong with providing services to the government and getting paid for it.

The amount of energy and resources expended to satisfy the vanity of a few celebrities could have better been spent on basic necessities for mere mortals.

Now you have shifted to space tourism. That's more Blue Origin than SpaceX. In any case, they pay their own money for a suborbital experience. A lot of people pay a lot of money for expensive vacations. Why do some people hate it when it involves spaceflight? Did you also hate Dennis Tito when he paid $20M to Russians for a week in space in 2001?

If Amazon and Walmart did not drive other businesses out of business then there would be other jobs available. I get it: you live in a major metropolitan area and I don't know that you ever travel outside of that area to more rural areas or small towns. I've lived in major metropolitan areas before and now I live in a more rural setting (small town/city) and the effects are dramatically noticeable where I live. Dramatically. Businesses I relied on for quality products no longer exit because of predatory practices by these mega retailers. The jobs provided by Walmart, for instance, do not support a single adult, much less a family even if both parents are working. Walmart doesn't do 'full time' employment except for a few people. Everyone else is relegated to part time hours and expected to be available whenever they are wanted. No health care, no living wage. We are subsidizing such employers by providing assistance that their underpaid employees require

Now, if we had universal health care, that would be less of an issue but it still would be an issue as far as providing a wage that allows workers to pay rent and buy groceries and afford transportation.

Try reading this article by the well known leftist magazine, Forbes:

How Government Aid Focuses On The Wealthy First, The Poor Last

People ignore many of the quiet ways the well-to-do get a helping hand.

www.forbes.com

 

[Elixir]

We do absolutely subsidize Bezos’ employees if they are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and healthcare Abd housing and transportation without taxpayer funded subsidies. Same thing only much worse with Walmart.

I don’t know what goes on in WM distribution centers. Or even most stores. But I know some employees of our local WM “super center” and they live quite well, have profit sharing and stock options.
… OTOH I have never met an Amazon warehouse worker who wasn’t miserable.

Of course WM DID drive away some local businesses, and put a number out of business. But much as I miss some of them, it was inevitable. The change didn’t cause downtown to become boarded up, it just changed the assortment of downtown businesses to be more boutique clothing, tourist traps and specialty shops, and less appliances, groceries and commodity items.

 

[Bomb#20]

Musk obtained sweetheart non-competitive contracts —paid for by you and me—for his various satellites and launches ...

They weren't non-competitive. America came within an inch of not having SpaceX at all. Back when this all started, NASA asked for bids to develop a private launch service for it, looked at the bids, and was on the verge of awarding an exclusive sweetheart contract to Boeing, when some NASA old-timer went to bat for letting one of the other companies stay in the pipeline so there'd be a back-up plan in case Boeing fell on its face. Boeing fell on its face.

 

[Elixir]

NASA asked for bids to develop a private launch service for it, looked at the bids, and was on the verge of awarding an exclusive sweetheart contract to Boeing, when some NASA old-timer went to bat for letting one of the other companies stay in the pipeline so there'd be a back-up plan in case Boeing fell on its face. Boeing fell on its face.

That’s how I remember I going down too.
A cryin’ shame, but I believe it was a good faith effort by the government to get the private sector involved in space exploration. Instead of a “private sector” they got one insanely greedy megalomaniacal South African racist.

 

[ZiprHead]

That's not an argument; that's proof by blatant assertion. The second sentence, "It is the total consumption and saving opportunity gained within a specified timeframe, and serves as the foundation for measuring economic growth, assigning tax burdens, and evaluating wealth.", was asserted without argument or evidence. Why would anyone believe such brain-damaged idiocy? If that definition were correct, then if you have a rare tissue type and consequently some oligarch in a country where it's legal offers you a million dollars for your kidney, it would mean you have a million dollars of income even if you don't sell it to him and that million dollars serves as the foundation for assigning your tax burden. That is evidently not what anyone actually means by "income".

Word definitions are itty-bitty scientific theories. But people persist in pulling them out of their asses and believing them without subjecting them to the most elementary tests.

The definition came from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. I'll take their "brain damaged idiocy" over some stranger on the internet with absolutely no proof of actual training in the subject.

 

[ZiprHead]

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?

In case you haven't noticed, there's a helluva lot of Americans that are hurting. Many just one car repair from being homeless. While at the same time the right wants to take away programs that help the average person to finance huge tax cuts for the wealthy and big corp.

What's your point? Are you trying to prove you aren't shilling for Bolsheviks? I was being sarcastic. Derec wasn't shilling for the massively wealthy either.

Sorry. I prefer to deal with people who recognize reality. You apparently seem to think the economic reality in the USA is just fine and not skewed towards the extremely wealthy. Goodbye.

 

[ZiprHead]

We do absolutely subsidize Bezos’ employees if they are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and healthcare Abd housing and transportation without taxpayer funded subsidies. Same thing only much worse with Walmart.

I don’t know what goes on in WM distribution centers. Or even most stores. But I know some employees of our local WM “super center” and they live quite well, have profit sharing and stock options.
… OTOH I have never met an Amazon warehouse worker who wasn’t miserable.

Of course WM DID drive away some local businesses, and put a number out of business. But much as I miss some of them, it was inevitable. The change didn’t cause downtown to become boarded up, it just changed the assortment of downtown businesses to be more boutique clothing, tourist traps and specialty shops, and less appliances, groceries and commodity items.

Yes, Walmart's pay and working conditions have improved quite well. Too bad they had to be shamed and threatened with labor unionization to achieve it.

 

[Toni]

We do absolutely subsidize Bezos’ employees if they are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and healthcare Abd housing and transportation without taxpayer funded subsidies. Same thing only much worse with Walmart.

I don’t know what goes on in WM distribution centers. Or even most stores. But I know some employees of our local WM “super center” and they live quite well, have profit sharing and stock options.
… OTOH I have never met an Amazon warehouse worker who wasn’t miserable.

Of course WM DID drive away some local businesses, and put a number out of business. But much as I miss some of them, it was inevitable. The change didn’t cause downtown to become boarded up, it just changed the assortment of downtown businesses to be more boutique clothing, tourist traps and specialty shops, and less appliances, groceries and commodity items.

Yes, Walmart's pay and working conditions have improved quite well. Too bad they had to be shamed and threatened with labor unionization to achieve it.

They have not improved locally. People who work there struggle to get by, make copious use of the local food banks and other aid and hate their jobs. I did know someone who worked in an Amazon warehouse who thought they were a good employer. Which is more a testament to his prior job's disgusting practices than it is to Amazon's enlightenment.

Any employer who does not want its workforce to unionize would do well to head it off by paying its employees well and by providing an excellent set of comprehensive benefits and good working conditions.

 

[ZiprHead]

We do absolutely subsidize Bezos’ employees if they are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and healthcare Abd housing and transportation without taxpayer funded subsidies. Same thing only much worse with Walmart.

I don’t know what goes on in WM distribution centers. Or even most stores. But I know some employees of our local WM “super center” and they live quite well, have profit sharing and stock options.
… OTOH I have never met an Amazon warehouse worker who wasn’t miserable.

Of course WM DID drive away some local businesses, and put a number out of business. But much as I miss some of them, it was inevitable. The change didn’t cause downtown to become boarded up, it just changed the assortment of downtown businesses to be more boutique clothing, tourist traps and specialty shops, and less appliances, groceries and commodity items.

Yes, Walmart's pay and working conditions have improved quite well. Too bad they had to be shamed and threatened with labor unionization to achieve it.

They have not improved locally. People who work there struggle to get by, make copious use of the local food banks and other aid and hate their jobs. I did know someone who worked in an Amazon warehouse who thought they were a good employer. Which is more a testament to his prior job's disgusting practices than it is to Amazon's enlightenment.

Any employer who does not want its workforce to unionize would do well to head it off by paying its employees well and by providing an excellent set of comprehensive benefits and good working conditions.

Around here WM is advertising that their starting pay is 20 dollars per hour and the workers get health insurance on day one.

 

[Harry Bosch]

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.

Wow! Taxing someone is treating them as an enemy. There's your whole attitude in a nutshell.

And you criticize other for ad homs.

Oh for the love of god! I didn't say taxing someone is treating them as an enemy! I said taxing someone not to raise revenue but in order to hurt them -- to tax them so heavily you kill their incentive to produce more wealth and thereby reduce revenue -- is treating them as an enemy. Sanders-style 100% tax brackets and Toni-style billionaire elimination treat the uber-wealthy as an enemy. This isn't rocket science.

Yea, this is my problem for where this thread has been heading. I’m all for what can we do to help people lift themselves up. I’m all for economic development; helping people; and then paying for it with taxes. I’m all for a progressive tax system. I do well now, after many years of busting my ass. I’m okay with paying more now. But to tax the crap out of a guy because we don’t like him? Or punish him for success? Take his assets away and give to someone else is fair? What liberal value is this?

 

[Bomb#20]

Why are you schilling yourself for the massively wealthy? Do you think you will be one of them someday?

I silently ask that question every time some fool argues against their own interests in defense of the supremacy of wealth over humanity. I think many like Derec get off on imagining that yes, one day they will be rolling in billions and laughing at the doubters.
Meanwhile, the shoe is in the other foot and they are the butt of the joke.

Every time some fool claims another fool is arguing against his own interests, the question I ask is: if people can't be trusted to know what's in their own interests, how can they be trusted to know what's in others' interests?

 

[Elixir]

Every time some fool claims another fool is arguing against his own interests, the question I ask is: if people can't be trusted to know what's in their own interests, how can they be trusted to know what's in others' interests?

Hopefully, they’re not the same people. Not everyone is equally prone to acting against their own interests, or against common interests.
Empathy allows us to ‘feel’ the effects that our pursuit of “our interest” has on others. We should elect people who are capable of empathy.

 

[laughing dog]

If we had taxed the crap out of putative billionaires, Trump wouldn’t be POTUS. Suddenly that idea has an upside.

 

[Bomb#20]

... If the higher the income, the more political power, really were incompatible with a democratic republic, then every single democratic republic that has ever existed was incompatible with a democratic republic.

I apologize, I forgot I was dealing with the terminally pedantic.

The higher the income, the more political power, especially at the billionaire level and above. Which, IMO is incompatible with the principles of a democratic republic.

Ah, so every single democratic republic that has ever existed was incompatible with the principles of a democratic republic. Got it. So why should we think your personal conception of the Platonic Form of the Democratic Republic is a better expert on what the principles of a democratic republic are than actual real-life democratic republics? Opposition parties have always depended for their survival on rich people deploying their wealth as a counterweight to the power of the Leviathan.

 

[laughing dog]

... If the higher the income, the more political power, really were incompatible with a democratic republic, then every single democratic republic that has ever existed was incompatible with a democratic republic.

I apologize, I forgot I was dealing with the terminally pedantic.

The higher the income, the more political power, especially at the billionaire level and above. Which, IMO is incompatible with the principles of a democratic republic.

Ah, so every single democratic republic that has ever existed was incompatible with the principles of a democratic republic. Got it. So why should we think your personal conception of the Platonic Form of the Democratic Republic is a better expert on what the principles of a democratic republic are than actual real-life democratic republics? Opposition parties have always depended for their survival on rich people deploying their wealth as a counterweight to the power of the Leviathan.

Instead of you killing brain cells to put words in the mouths of others, why not stop and mull over what others write?

For example, if every single democratic republic that has ever existed was incompatible with the principles of a democratic republic, so what?

 

[WAB]

We do absolutely subsidize Bezos’ employees if they are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and healthcare Abd housing and transportation without taxpayer funded subsidies. Same thing only much worse with Walmart.

I don’t know what goes on in WM distribution centers. Or even most stores. But I know some employees of our local WM “super center” and they live quite well, have profit sharing and stock options.
… OTOH I have never met an Amazon warehouse worker who wasn’t miserable.

Of course WM DID drive away some local businesses, and put a number out of business. But much as I miss some of them, it was inevitable. The change didn’t cause downtown to become boarded up, it just changed the assortment of downtown businesses to be more boutique clothing, tourist traps and specialty shops, and less appliances, groceries and commodity items.

Yes, Walmart's pay and working conditions have improved quite well. Too bad they had to be shamed and threatened with labor unionization to achieve it.

They have not improved locally. People who work there struggle to get by, make copious use of the local food banks and other aid and hate their jobs. I did know someone who worked in an Amazon warehouse who thought they were a good employer. Which is more a testament to his prior job's disgusting practices than it is to Amazon's enlightenment.

Any employer who does not want its workforce to unionize would do well to head it off by paying its employees well and by providing an excellent set of comprehensive benefits and good working conditions.

My 28 yr old son works in an Amazon warehouse just outside Phoenix and loves his job. He makes 23 dollars an hour, has his own apartment, a nice car, and the last time I saw him he was happy as a lark.

With nearly 48k annually, no, he's not rich, he doesn't shit money, but that's plenty of money for himself, to live the way he chooses. I know from what he's said that he resents the idea that he's some kind of dupe who's horribly oppressed but just too stupid to know it.

 

[WAB]

We do absolutely subsidize Bezos’ employees if they are unable to afford basic necessities such as food and healthcare Abd housing and transportation without taxpayer funded subsidies. Same thing only much worse with Walmart.

I don’t know what goes on in WM distribution centers. Or even most stores. But I know some employees of our local WM “super center” and they live quite well, have profit sharing and stock options.
… OTOH I have never met an Amazon warehouse worker who wasn’t miserable.

Well I've only met one, my son, and he's far from miserable. Of course, he lives by himself. Naturally, if he had a wife and kids to support, things would be different. He's happy and very self-sufficient in his present circumstances.

 

[Bomb#20]

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.

How do you figure that? The devil is always in the details. For instance, some services inherently involve coercing locals. If the people want a road from point A to point B they're going to have to eminent-domain the land along the route; a non-government has no power to do that. For another instance, some services have a free-rider problem. If the people want not to be invaded, the army can't only protect people who volunteer to pay soldiers' wages from an invasion. It protects everyone or no one -- it either stops the invaders or doesn't -- so there's nothing to disincentivize a free-rider from declining to pay and getting protected anyway because his neighbors paid, which results in so many people not paying that the army loses the war. It's a prisoners' dilemma situation. The dominant strategy is to defect, but that's worse for everyone than all cooperating, so the rational solution is for the people to vote to be forced to cooperate.

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.

Well, according to Thomas Jefferson the point and benefit of government is to secure certain unalienable Rights such as Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. So what makes your declaration of what government is for any less of an ideological promotional myth than his was?

The actual point of government is to secure powerful people's power and make their enjoyment of it less effort. That's why thugs evolved into bandits and bandits evolved into mafias and mafias evolved into governments. The actual benefit of government is, well, let me put it like this. If you ever found yourself in a country without a government, redistribution of wealth in the form of broad infrastructure and mandatory insurances would be pretty far down on the list of things you'd miss.

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.

Certainly. But that no more depends on the people who force "the fortunate" to give a leg up to the unfortunate picking a minority group to put the burden on and exempting themselves from leg-up-giving duties than it depends on Muslims taxing non-Muslims extra. Most of the people voting to enact discriminatory taxes on others are pretty damn fortunate themselves.