Well... it's Trump... again. #47, here we go.

[bilby]

My only comment to is that you actually do lose productivity when you tax people more.

You might. But whether you do depends on how you spend, and on what. It thrns out that even "helicopter money" can be a good thing, in an economy that has suffered government underspending for years.

At this point, it would be hard to find any precedented way for the government to spend money that didn't lead to a net increase in productivity (even after accounting for the small drop in productivity due to increased taxes).

Progressive taxation flattens the curve, giving your society more investors, at the cost of making the biggest investors invest a little less. This is a good thing, for the same reasons that having a parliament is better than having a king, and that having a democracy is better than having an oligarchy, which is itself better than having an autocracy.

In matters of pure opinion - such as where to invest money at a national level - the broader the swathe of citizens who have a say, the better.

 

[bilby]

if our deficit can not be brought under control.

It never could. Not in just 4 years. You should have seen that.
Rump will say anything, with complete disregard for what the truth is.
He doesn't know or care what he is saying.
The Big Brother Bill doesn't even try to ballence the budget. It is not a start either, to fulfilling that promise.

Throughout history there have only been 3 ways that governments have ultimately dealt with excessive debt and these are ALL civilization killers. To wit:

1) Inflation
2) Confiscate wealth Taxation
3) Renounce the debt

...

By the way, I fixed the loaded words.

Wealth confiscation isn't taxation; Taxation is taken from income or expenditure, not from wealth.

If I have a million dollars under my matress, you can come and take it (confiscation), but you can't get to it by taxation unless I spend it and you levy sales tax on the purchase; Or I invest it, and you levy income tax on the profits.

Note that in the latter case, you still don't get any of my million (my wealth); Just a portion of the amount by which it grows. And as long as that portion is less than 100% (after adjusting for inflation), I am always better off investing it than I would be keeping it under my matress.

The falsehood that taxation is synonymous with wealth confiscation is right-wing propaganda. They are two very different things.

 

[bilby]

tech billionares who wish the US dissolved

Do any such people actually exist?

Can you quote any billionare Amarican who has expressed the wish for the US to be dissolved?

This sounds like a bit of unexamined propaganda to me, but if it's real, I would be very interested to know who these billionaires are, and why they imagine that dissolving the US would benefit them.

I could perhaps see a benefit to billionaires who live elsewhere. Mad Vlad from Moscow would probably benefit, and is probably a billionaire (his crazy venture in Ukraine has not been funded from his own pockets, we can be sure).

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Swammerdami]

It is interesting that RVonse turned to this racist right-wing Trumplicker to finally learn that Trump was increasing the deficit rather than decreasing it. I wonder how RVonse connected to this oaf in the first place. @RVonse -- finding the occasional MAGAt who finally suspects that Trump hasn't a clue is NOT the efficient way to educate yourself. But help us out: Are you a Hanson subscriber? If not, what does your blindered news bubble look like to bring you such rubbish?

I listened to Rachel Maddow in good faith when you provided it for me. And you would do well to listen to other opinions rather than censor their opinions.

I'm sorry I was pressed for time when I responded to this. Let me offer a fuller review.

The YouTube RVonse links to is mainly a screed against government debt -- which Hanson for some reason calls "debt-debt-debt." His main point is that debt-debt-debt is bad-bad-bad. This is the same point RVonse makes repeatedly and with which I've not disagreed. Hanson and RVonse both seem to credit Newt Gingrich with the Deficit Reduction Act of 1993 even though Gingrich gleefully denounced it on TV. Was it from Hanson that you got this opinion, RVonse?

We've explained over and over to RVonse that it is the Reublicans who insist on INCREASING debt and of course Trump is accelerating this Starve the Beast approach. There are some here who advocate some for of MMT and regard the debt as unimportant; but surely RVonse has grasped by now that I, Swammerdami, am NOT in that camp.

A similarity between Maddow and Hanson is that they each insist on saying everything twice; but at least Maddow speaks quickly and packs a lot of info into her screeds. If Hanson ever says anything novel or interesting, please summarize it for us, RVonse. I confess I didn't finish what appeared to be a boring, useless and ill-informed opinion.

Perhaps RVonse understands DOGE cost-cutting better than Hanson. Hanson had only praise for Elon Musk and the teeny-boppers who laid off thousands of workers at random. RVonse OTOH has remained silent after I asked him whether laying off IRS auditors was a good way to save money.

I do remain curious how RVonse stumbles on such useless videos and why he places so much faith in them. YouTube also puts me into a bubble: I keep clicking on Stephen Colbert and I am presented with more and more Colbert. Their algorithms then supply me with links to Jimmy Kimmel et al despite my not clicking there.

 

[crazyfingers]

A bill to amend the constitution. Really... Is he that stupid or does he probably rightly believe that Fox viewers are that stupid.

 

[ImGod]

I'm not a pie in the sky type that the current Dems have a solution. We should have at least 4 parties that make groups work together. The Dems sold unions down the river and sit behind tech billionares who wish the US dissolved so they could take over, the Rs wouldn't know a balanced budget if it slapped their ass in a sex dungon.

We are currently in a Hobson's Choice. It is the Democrats or the party that has allowed RFK Jr to cancel working on a vaccine against bird flu because it was being developed using mRNA... and his keystone MAHA report, referred to studies that never existed.

Am I happy with the Dems? No. It ain't perfect, it ain't good... it is the only feasible option. The current party in power is exported people without Due Process to a prison in El Salvador. <--- that shit should be hyperbole! The Democrats won't usher in utopia. They can't solve all the problems. But they can be trusted not to sell out American interests for a jumbo jet!

RFK Jr was a dem until 2023 and an independent since. He's nuts, but not Republican. More granola hippy liberal California anti-vax movement. He just hitched his crazy train to whoever gave him power.

Like Musk. He'd have supported Biden if Biden hadn't locked Tesla out of the government EV conversation and threatend his SpaceX launches with regulations.

Musk might be having buyers remorse. Or his autism has him bored and chasing a new shiney somewhere.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Musk might be having buyers remorse. Or his autism has him bored and chasing a new shiney somewhere.

Trump played him. He got the nerdy kid to clean and organize. Musk couldn't help himself.

Musk should have focused on cleaning up government websites and introducing efficient processes and software. Employee headcount could be managed by identifying unneeded positions and letting attrition (which is still going on to this day) do the rest.
The guy can't seem to understand, he does his brand no favor with such a public spectacle of firing people. Firing people simply because they were in their probationary period was particularly cruel and could be a major financial hit for those who relocated on their own dime.
Time will tell if Musk learned his lesson. We'll see how quiet he is going forward.

 

[scombrid]

I'm not a pie in the sky type that the current Dems have a solution. We should have at least 4 parties that make groups work together. The Dems sold unions down the river and sit behind tech billionares who wish the US dissolved so they could take over, the Rs wouldn't know a balanced budget if it slapped their ass in a sex dungon.

We are currently in a Hobson's Choice. It is the Democrats or the party that has allowed RFK Jr to cancel working on a vaccine against bird flu because it was being developed using mRNA... and his keystone MAHA report, referred to studies that never existed.

Am I happy with the Dems? No. It ain't perfect, it ain't good... it is the only feasible option. The current party in power is exported people without Due Process to a prison in El Salvador. <--- that shit should be hyperbole! The Democrats won't usher in utopia. They can't solve all the problems. But they can be trusted not to sell out American interests for a jumbo jet!

RFK Jr was a dem until 2023 and an independent since. He's nuts, but not Republican. More granola hippy liberal California anti-vax movement. He just hitched his crazy train to whoever gave him power.

Like Musk. He'd have supported Biden if Biden hadn't locked Tesla out of the government EV conversation and threatend his SpaceX launches with regulations.

Musk might be having buyers remorse. Or his autism has him bored and chasing a new shiney somewhere.

RFKJr is a Republican now. The GOP has fully embraced all of his dumb shit. Just look at Florida’s latest legislative session complete with a Chemtrail bill. Sure he’d have gone with the Democrats if they’d entertained his “theories”. That was the Republican calculation starting in 2009. They realized they could get the RFK/Alex Jones vote if they worked on making the Democrats to be the “Deep State”. So the conspiracy theories about FEMA Death Camps and such started up right quick after Obama was sworn in.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm not a pie in the sky type that the current Dems have a solution. We should have at least 4 parties that make groups work together. The Dems sold unions down the river and sit behind tech billionares who wish the US dissolved so they could take over, the Rs wouldn't know a balanced budget if it slapped their ass in a sex dungon.

We are currently in a Hobson's Choice. It is the Democrats or the party that has allowed RFK Jr to cancel working on a vaccine against bird flu because it was being developed using mRNA... and his keystone MAHA report, referred to studies that never existed.

Am I happy with the Dems? No. It ain't perfect, it ain't good... it is the only feasible option. The current party in power is exported people without Due Process to a prison in El Salvador. <--- that shit should be hyperbole! The Democrats won't usher in utopia. They can't solve all the problems. But they can be trusted not to sell out American interests for a jumbo jet!

RFK Jr was a dem until 2023 and an independent since. He's nuts, but not Republican.

Indeed and the far-left has some unfortunately wonky people when it comes to health and science. But I said which party put him in the position of HHS? The Democrats would NOT have done that. The GOP didn't stop it. And worst yet, not because they believe a single thing RFK Jr. says, but for their political health relative to a primary from Trump.

Like Musk. He'd have supported Biden if Biden hadn't locked Tesla out of the government EV conversation and threatend his SpaceX launches with regulations.

Musk might be having buyers remorse. Or his autism has him bored and chasing a new shiney somewhere.

Again, the Democrats wouldn't have let Musk run around DC, acquire all of the data, try to fire hundreds of thousands of workers, illegally impound spending.

President Harris wouldn't be dicking around with Habeas Corpus, making friendly chats with Putin, mouthing off to foreign leaders, engaging in tariff wars that are threatening our economy.

A President Harris would have been mostly a status quo sort of thing. Not fixing all of our problems. But not creating a lot of new ones either. It'd be boring as all hell.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Musk should have focused on cleaning up government websites and introducing efficient processes and software. Employee headcount could be managed by identifying unneeded positions and letting attrition (which is still going on to this day) do the rest.

what evidence was there that he would have been capable of that?

The history of his Twitter takeover shows how he thinks something should be reorganized. And that’s what he did with the government.

 

[ZiprHead]

A bill to amend the constitution. Really... Is he that stupid or does he probably rightly believe that Fox viewers are that stupid.

My bets on both.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Andy Ogles is an actual person, not AI? Sounds too much like Barney Google.

 

[jonatha]

clean and organize

I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

If Musk ran SpaceX the way he ran DOGE he'd be cutting out an engine at a time until he got a consistent string of failures...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

A bill to amend the constitution. Really... Is he that stupid or does he probably rightly believe that Fox viewers are that stupid.

My bets on both.

Well, if they have a lot of support in the House, I guess that means they have 2/3+ support in the House... and the Senate? I wouldn't have guessed they'd have 2/3 support in the House with only a 3 seat majority in said House but who am I to question a GOP lawmaker.

Then 3/4 of the states. About 20 states voted for Harris. So, that'll be pretty difficult.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

clean and organize

I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

If Musk ran SpaceX the way he ran DOGE he'd be cutting out an engine at a time until he got a consistent string of failures...

Doesn't he? Tesla and SpaceX hit the marks on their goals. Once they got to his pet projects, things got messy.

 

[Elixir]

Then 3/4 of the states. About 20 states voted for Harris. So, that'll be pretty difficu

Well, those States are all corrupt leftists trying to impose their socialism on the rest of us, so we can change that law or just get rid of it. MAGA.

 

[Swammerdami]

Has anyone posted this image yet? Trump posted it on "Truth" Social. I can't even ...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Weren't the Blue Brothers also on a mission from god?

 

[bilby]

Weren't the Blue Brothers also on a mission from god?

Sure, but they hated Illinois Nazis.