Democrats 2020

[fromderinside]

...
I agree with Angelo that most people do vote on economic issues. ... The people in the middle aren't going to elect a person promising to force people to sell 50% of their assets to pay a tax because this would drop the value of their 401k overnight.

How would that happen?

Warren and Bernie want to dramatically increase the taxes on wealth. Bernie wants to tax wealth at 50%. I guess that means tax at 50% of it's value. Well, market value is a value at a specific time. Secondly, value does not equal cash. The only way to get cash out of stocks is to sell it. Guess what happens when Bezos sells 50% of his Amazon stock? The stock will fall like a rock. Most retirement portfolios rely on stocks. Dramatically increasing wealth taxes will wipe out many people's retirement.

Obviously you don't understand how tax rates are managed. A wealth rate of 50% is actually a tax on gain. So if one has net worth above a certain amount all gains would be levied on anything above that amount over what one has before the taxation begins. Since the stock is already owned all we're talking about is dividends and growth stock value. Likely if one is using money to build new wealth that which he invests won't be taxed. Only the returns on those investments will be taxed.

Not painful at all.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Looks like we may need a stent

View attachment 24233

Wow. Simultaneously the best and the worst campaign device ever. One would have to go back to Tippecanoe and Tyler Too to match it.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/wh...nt-be-the-dnc-nominee-theyve-moved-on-report/

...
Advisors to President Donald Trump have concluded that former Vice President Joe Biden will not be the 2020 presidential nominee of the Democratic National Committee, a Politico White House correspondent reported Friday.
Anita Kumar was interviewed by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews about the latest in the impeachment scandal over the solicitation of opposition research against Biden’s family.

“When you talk to people close to the president, the one thing they have in common right now that they’re saying over and over again is that whatever has happened this last two weeks has pushed Joe Biden out, that he’s not going to be the nominee,” Kumar reported.
“They feel very strongly or positively it’s not going to be Joe Biden. They’ve already moved on,” she said. “They think it’s going to be Elizabeth Warren.”
...

So either they feel they have damaged Biden enough he is out with their smear job on Biden, or they are trying to cut the whole mess loose and hope everybody will forget about it and move on to the latest outrage. Of course, if successful, they get Warren.

 

[TV and credit cards]

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/wh...nt-be-the-dnc-nominee-theyve-moved-on-report/

...
Advisors to President Donald Trump have concluded that former Vice President Joe Biden will not be the 2020 presidential nominee of the Democratic National Committee, a Politico White House correspondent reported Friday.
Anita Kumar was interviewed by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews about the latest in the impeachment scandal over the solicitation of opposition research against Biden’s family.

“When you talk to people close to the president, the one thing they have in common right now that they’re saying over and over again is that whatever has happened this last two weeks has pushed Joe Biden out, that he’s not going to be the nominee,” Kumar reported.
“They feel very strongly or positively it’s not going to be Joe Biden. They’ve already moved on,” she said. “They think it’s going to be Elizabeth Warren.”
...

So either they feel they have damaged Biden enough he is out with their smear job on Biden, or they are trying to cut the whole mess loose and hope everybody will forget about it and move on to the latest outrage. Of course, if successful, they get Warren.

So, high crimes and misdemeanors for nothing.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

So Warren is now the front runner.

For a long time it was Biden, with Sanders throttling Warren's attempts to overtake him. But first Biden had that aneurysm. That didn't stop him, but then Sanders had a heart attack. Don't try to soften it, it was a heart attack. That is going to knock Sanders out, which will have two effects. First, he is no longer throttling Warren. Second, attention to health issues is going to increase on the front runners, which will only hurt Biden.

Now it is even more important that Gabbard not be allowed anywhere near Warren, because that could throw the field into complete disarray.

Failing a miracle, your front runner is now going to be Warren. I guess that means a second term for Trump.

 

[Politesse]

So Warren is now the front runner.

For a long time it was Biden, with Sanders throttling Warren's attempts to overtake him. But first Biden had that aneurysm. That didn't stop him, but then Sanders had a heart attack. Don't try to soften it, it was a heart attack. That is going to knock Sanders out, which will have two effects. First, he is no longer throttling Warren. Second, attention to health issues is going to increase on the front runners, which will only hurt Biden.

Now it is even more important that Gabbard not be allowed anywhere near Warren, because that could throw the field into complete disarray.

Failing a miracle, your front runner is now going to be Warren. I guess that means a second term for Trump.

All we need now is for Liz Warren to avoid having any palpitations, strokes, or seizures for a few months, and perhaps she'll emerge as president through a clean process of natural selection. (You can't convince me Trump isn't barreling towards some kind of health crisis).

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

With Cheeto's bad diet, obesity and aversion to exercise, there is indeed a good chance of health issues here. If Bernie falls far behind and drops out, I suspect he will ask his followers to not fail to show up at the polls in a fit of disappointment, to oust Trump. To not make the mistake of 2016 that gave us Trump. If Trump's stunts damage Biden's chances, we get Warren. If Biden is out by March 2020, Super Tuesday, you know he will likewise ask his supporters to go with Warren and not fail to go to the polls. To oust Trump. To put Trump out of his misery. After March 3, most of lesser candidates will be out of the running. All will be telling their loyal supporters, go to the polls. Get Trump out. It looks like the Greens and Libertarians won't be much of a factor this election cycle.

 

[Rhea]

So, high crimes and misdemeanors for nothing.

...Chicks for free

 

[fromderinside]

Corrupt leaders is going to be a huuuuge issue. Good thing the demos are tucking an impeachment inquiry into their holster. Top campaign Slogan "Make America Fair Again"

 

[Toni]

Silly, the wealth tax isn't about raising money.

Sure, some idiots thing the wealthy sit around on large piles of cash, but most people realize the wealthy are asset rich.

Those who realize that the wealthy are asset rich and STILL want a net worth or wealth tax want to destroy the wealth. It isn't about jealousy or greed, it is about envy.

I don’t envy Bezos or Buffett or Gates or for that matter, Winfrey.

I look at my kids and the amount of money that they can earn with college and/or professional degrees and I look at the cost of housing, rental and purchase price. One has student debt from law school and the others have no student debt. Two always have two jobs. Home ownership is mostly out of their reach-one is buying a very inexpensive home. They are unlikely to have children because of money. Nobody takes wild or expensive vacations. Only one has purchased a (used) vehicle in the last 5 years; everyone else is driving older vehicles, with one resorting to taking my old car which had nearly 300K miles on the odometer. We all live in the relatively inexpensive Midwest.

At the age of the youngest, we were married and had all of our children and had just purchased (along with the bank) our second house in the new state we had moved to for work.

US productivity is at a record high, surpassing years of increased worker productivity. Wages are stagnant. Student debt and housing prices are crippling. Health insurance and health care costs are far too high and far far too much of the cost associated with health care are not doctors’ salaries or nurses’ or lab techs’ wages but in the bloated bureaucracy necessary for even small town practices, and of course, ensuring that insurance company executives earn millions of dollars in salaries plus multimillion dollar annual bonuses.

This is an imbalance that is toppling our nation.

 

[Derec]

Obviously you don't understand how tax rates are managed. A wealth rate of 50% is actually a tax on gain.

Wrong. That would be a capital gains tax. A wealth tax such as is proposed by Warren et al would be assessed on total wealth.

 

[Derec]

Of course, if successful, they get Warren.

Which is what they have wanted since the beginning.

 

[Derec]

justice for blacks and indians,

Reparations are not "justice". Giving one ethnic group veto power over all energy projects is not "justice". Both are idiocy.

limiting destruction of water tables

Everybody is for clean water. But outright banning a technology that allowed US to be less reliant on energy imports is not a sensible policy and will harm US economy if implemented.

and sensible gun constraints.

Sure. But banning a style of rifle because they look "scary" is not a sensible policy, especially since rifles of all types, whether they look like assault rifles or not, are responsible for more than an order of magnitude fewer homicides than handguns.

more inclusive and less tribal.

Funny you would say it given how Warren (and other Dems) want to give Indian tribes more power than they already have.

Look at the business news. We're going into a Trump Tariff caused recession.

This will benefit Dems. But they have always been good at snatching defeat out of jaws of victory. And look at the last two Democratic presidents, the only two Democratic presidents in 40 years. Clinton ran as a "third way" moderate and Obama was about "no blue states and red states, only United States" and an "all of the above" approach to energy (which he abandoned toward the end of his tenure to his shame). I don't think Dems will win if they become all about reparations, de-facto open borders, veto power for Indians over energy projects, opposing telescopes, grabbing certain guns based on how they look, calling justified police shootings "murder" etc.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Gallup Poll
2019 September 16-30

Trump approval rating
Republican - 87%
Independent - 36%
Democratic - 5%

Democrats outnumber Republicans by a bit but Independents outnumber either Democrats of Republicans.
Independents have been splitting pretty equally in early election cycles. Not this one it seems.

Pew Research tells us Independents give Trump a 34% approval rating, quite in line with Gallup. I small a big defeat coming in 2020.

 

[angelo]

It will still be a It's the economy stupid kind of election. If the unemployment and growth figures all hold up, the Trumpet will be a shoe in. There's no such thing as a Trump caused recession.........yet! For the first time in decades, I'm buying manufactured goods like alkaline batteries for example made in the USA instead of China.

If it were just about the economy, Trump’s polling wouldn’t have sat stagnant at about 40% his entire time in office.
It’s not just about the economy. Some people are looking not only at their wallets but at the world they want their children to grow up in.

Trump is most odious.

A boderless, politically correct militarily disarmed sharia ruled world? May not our future generations curse modern freedom loving and democratic world for letting that happen?

 

[angelo]

It will be. The problem is, back then the "stupid" being referred to was Bush. Today the "stupid" are the Trump supporters. So, for example:



They already don't "hold up": US has half a million fewer jobs than believed after big government revision and The Dow Is Down Again Because Economic Growth Is Still a Worry are just two examples.

There's no such thing as a Trump caused recession.........yet!

Nonsense. Recessions don't "start" on a dime. They are the ripple effects of actions already taken, such as Trump's disastrous trade policies and the Republicans raping the tax code.

For the first time in decades, I'm buying manufactured goods like alkaline batteries for example made in the USA instead of China.

You have always had the option of buying alkaline batteries made in the USA. The Duracells made in China are counterfeits, so if you've been buying them all this time, well....see my first observation.

Who said anything about brands! But for your information, the batteries I have in front of me are from German owned company Varta who also produce my hearing aid lithium batteries.

 

[angelo]

Gallup Poll
2019 September 16-30

Trump approval rating
Republican - 87%
Independent - 36%
Democratic - 5%

Democrats outnumber Republicans by a bit but Independents outnumber either Democrats of Republicans.
Independents have been splitting pretty equally in early election cycles. Not this one it seems.

Pew Research tells us Independents give Trump a 34% approval rating, quite in line with Gallup. I small a big defeat coming in 2020.

For the umpteenth time, all polls predicted Killery would win in a canter back in 2016!

 

[Elixir]

Gallup Poll
2019 September 16-30

Trump approval rating
Republican - 87%
Independent - 36%
Democratic - 5%

Democrats outnumber Republicans by a bit but Independents outnumber either Democrats of Republicans.
Independents have been splitting pretty equally in early election cycles. Not this one it seems.

Pew Research tells us Independents give Trump a 34% approval rating, quite in line with Gallup. I small a big defeat coming in 2020.

For the umpteenth time, all polls predicted Killery would win in a canter back in 2016!

For the umpteen hundredth time, you got it wrong again.
Read and learn:

When the final polls came in for the 2016 election, only one of the eleven major national polls that played into RealClearPolitics‘ average gave Trump the advantage: IBD/TIPP showed Trump winning by 2%. While Trump, in fact, lost the popular vote, a Washington Post analysis found IBD to be the second-most accurate of the pollsters in 2016 (McClatchy/Marist got its prediction the closest). IBD/TIPP was also the most accurate in the previous three elections.

 

[TV and credit cards]

It will still be a It's the economy stupid kind of election. If the unemployment and growth figures all hold up, the Trumpet will be a shoe in. There's no such thing as a Trump caused recession.........yet! For the first time in decades, I'm buying manufactured goods like alkaline batteries for example made in the USA instead of China.

If it were just about the economy, Trump’s polling wouldn’t have sat stagnant at about 40% his entire time in office.
It’s not just about the economy. Some people are looking not only at their wallets but at the world they want their children to grow up in.

Trump is most odious.

A boderless, politically correct militarily disarmed sharia ruled world?

No.

May not our future generations curse modern freedom loving and democratic world for letting that happen?

 

[Treedbear]

...
I agree with Angelo that most people do vote on economic issues. ... The people in the middle aren't going to elect a person promising to force people to sell 50% of their assets to pay a tax because this would drop the value of their 401k overnight.

How would that happen?

Warren and Bernie want to dramatically increase the taxes on wealth. Bernie wants to tax wealth at 50%. I guess that means tax at 50% of it's value. Well, market value is a value at a specific time. Secondly, value does not equal cash. The only way to get cash out of stocks is to sell it. Guess what happens when Bezos sells 50% of his Amazon stock? The stock will fall like a rock. Most retirement portfolios rely on stocks. Dramatically increasing wealth taxes will wipe out many people's retirement.

I see what you mean. The wealth tax idea was the main reason I hesitated about Warren. But that was before Bernie's heart attack, and now he's trying to outdo Warren on the wealth tax scheme. It's even a worse idea in light of that point you made. I've always said they should tax the rich more but by simply increasing the marginal tax rates. While taking away some of the reward it doesn't act as a disincentive the way a wealth tax would. Capitalism provides more than enough incentive for the super-wealthy to stay invested. All I want to do is flatten out the distribution curve on economic growth.



Not do some kind of claw-back. As the article that chart came from said:

The idea behind a tax like this is that it would significantly reduce the accumulation of extreme wealth. For one, the tax itself would incentivize wealthy people to, well, be less wealthy in the eyes of the government. As Yglesias explained:

[T]he mere existence of the wealth tax would, on the margin, encourage wealthy individuals to dissipate their fortunes on charitable giving and lavish consumption. If you try to horde wealth the government is going to tax it, so you might as well spend it.

That is both a feature and a bug. But as some experts have pointed out, it might also encourage rich people to hide their wealth. As Saez and Zucman have written in the past, these kinds of tax proposals are “fragile.”

“They can be undermined by tax limits, base erosion, and weak enforcement,” the economists wrote in an early September 2019 paper. That’s why many countries have abandoned them. As Yglesias pointed out, of the 12 OECD-member nations that had wealth taxes in 1990, only four — France, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland — continue to implement them. But Zucman and Saez argue “that tolerating tax competition and tax evasion is a policy choice.”

Sanders does address enforcement in his plan.

He is calling for a “national wealth registry and significant additional third party reporting requirements,” as well as increasing Internal Revenue Service funding to enforce the wealth tax. The plan calls for a mandated IRS audit of 30 percent of wealth tax returns for those in the 1 percent bracket and a 100 percent audit for all the billionaires. It also establishes a 40 percent exit tax on the net value of all assets under $1 billion and 60 percent over $1 billion for anyone that wants to take their wealth to another country.

So it seems to actually penalize any efforts by the super-successful that result in additional profits and encourages them to spend it frivolously. That's plain counter-productive. And the additional audits will increase pressure on politicians to invent ways to hide that wealth. Just keep it simple with higher marginal tax rates is what I say.