A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Read my post, idiot. I didn't argue that.
Fucking moron.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Despite the wealth tax being the shiny object for those wanting to tax the rich, why should Dems put all their chips on a tax that could easily fall short of hyped expectations?
Economic Analysis: Risking the Wrath of 900 Billionaires
www.taxnotes.com/featured-analysis/economic-analysis-risking-wrath-900
-billionaires/2019/10/18/2b1m3
You can safely ignore the possibility of a U.S. wealth tax. But you should not ignore the political and economic developments that are putting it in the news.
About the impossibility of a wealth tax: First, as is common knowledge, there may be at least even odds of Democrats winning the White House and keeping the House, but their taking the Senate is a long shot. And even in the unlikely event of a Democratic hat trick, the Dems would have to use the budget reconciliation process or invoke the nuclear option (repealing the Senate rule requiring 60 votes to proceed) to enact any tax increase over Republican objections. Those are some high hurdles. (Perhaps the Democrats’ chances improve in 2022, but we’ll wait on that.)
Second, and more fundamentally, despite the wealth tax being the shiny object for those wanting to tax the rich, why should Dems put all their chips on a tax that could easily fall short of hyped expectations? Reforms of existing taxes can achieve similar objectives. On the estate tax: Raise the rates, get rid of the valuation allowance for family limited partnerships, and adopt a half-dozen other estate tax reforms drafted at Treasury during the Obama administration. On the income tax: Raise the capital gains and dividend tax rates, raise the regular income tax rates at the top end, and — to effectively tax the superrich — tax capital gains on an accrual basis or repeal the step-up in basis at death. Lawmakers have a record of starting with a bold, complicated reform like a wealth tax and settling for something less grandiose. For example, in 1993 what started as a Btu tax ended up as a simple hike in the gas tax. What started in 2004 as an intricate corporate integration plan ended up as just a cut in the dividend and capital gains rate.
Part 1: A Provocative Book
Now let’s move on to why the current conversation about a wealth tax is prevalent, even if it has about as much chance as Tulsi Gabbard becoming president.
More at www.taxnotes.com/featured-analysis/economic-analysis-risking-wrath-900
-billionaires/2019/10/18/2b1m3
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
First, as is common knowledge, there may be at least even odds of Democrats winning the White House and keeping the House, but their taking the Senate is a long shot.
Common knowledge, huh?
I guess Moody's didn't get the memo.
https://www.moodysanalytics.com/-/media/article/2019/president-electio
n-model.pdf
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:To quote Moody: "The model did not account for the individual attributes of the candidates other than whether they belonged to the incumbent political party. In other words, it assumed Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were generic candidates, which they were not. In 2020, President Trump will be as much the nongeneric candidate as he was in 2016, and Democrats may also nominate a candidate who is a break from past party nominees".
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
First, as is common knowledge, there may be at least even odds of Democrats winning the White House and keeping the House, but their taking the Senate is a long shot.
Common knowledge, huh?
I guess Moody's didn't get the memo.
https://www.moodysanalytics.com/-/media/article/2019/president-electio
n-model.pdf
Do Right, Be Right. :)
If Mike Pence and Joe Biden were running for President, rather than Trump and Who-knows-who-the-Democrat, then the Moody model assumption of generic candidates is true. Otherwise, the Moody model does not work. Just flip a coin to see who wins. That would be about as scientific. There may be at least even odds of Democrats winning the White House.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America.
The boomers, according to Bruce Gibney, have committed “generational plunder,” pillaging the nation’s economy, repeatedly cutting their own taxes, financing two wars with deficits, ignoring climate change.
Sean Illing: Who are the baby boomers?
Bruce Gibney: The baby boomers are conventionally defined as people born between 1946 and 1964. But I focus on the 1946-1958 boomers because their experiences are pretty homogeneous: They were raised after the war and so have no real experience of trauma or the Great Depression or even any deprivation at all. More importantly, they never experienced the social solidarity that unfolded during war time and that helped produce the New Deal.
But it’s really the white middle-class boomers who exemplify all the awful characteristics and behaviors that have defined this generation. They became a majority of the electorate in the early ’80s, and they fully consolidated their power in Washington by January 1995. And they’ve basically been in charge ever since.
Sean Illing: So how have they broken the country?
Bruce Gibney: Well, the damage done to the social fabric is pretty self-evident. Just look around and notice what’s been done. On the economic front, the damage is equally obvious, and it trickles down to all sorts of other social phenomena. I don’t want to get bogged down in an ocean of numbers and data here (that’s in the book), but think of it this way: I’m 41, and when I was born, the gross debt-to-GDP ratio was about 35 percent. It’s roughly 103 percent now — and it keeps rising. This year the debt will increase by 4.6% www.crfb.org/blogs/debt-could-reach-record-levels-2030
The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it. They habitually cut their own taxes and borrow money without any concern for future burdens. They’ve spent virtually all our money and assets on themselves and in the process have left a financial disaster for their children.
We used to have the finest infrastructure in the world. The American Society of Civil Engineers thinks there’s something like a $4 trillion deficit in infrastructure in deferred maintenance. It’s crumbling, and the boomers have allowed it to crumble. Our public education system has steadily degraded as well, forcing middle-class students to bury themselves in debt in order to get a college education.
Then of course there’s the issue of climate change, which they’ve done almost nothing to solve. But even if we want to be market-oriented about this, we can think of the climate as an asset, which has degraded over time thanks to the inaction and cowardice of the boomer generation. Now they didn’t start burning fossil fuels, but by the 1990s the science was undeniable. And what did they do? Nothing.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=oJ3Q
Sean Illing: Why hasn’t this recklessness been checked by the political system? Is it as simple as the boomers took over and used power to enrich themselves without enough resistance from younger voters?
Bruce Gibney: Well, most of our problems have not been addressed because that would require higher taxes and therefore a sense of social obligation to our fellow citizens. But again, the boomers seem to have no appreciation for social solidarity.
But to answer your question more directly, the problem is that dealing with these problems has simply been irrelevant to the largest political class in the country — the boomers. There’s nothing conspiratorial about that. Politicians respond to the most important part of the electorate, and that’s been the boomers for decades. And it just so happens that the boomers are not socially inclined and have a ton of maladaptive personality characteristics.
Sean Illing: It’s interesting that Ronald Reagan is elected right around the time that boomers become a majority of the electorate. Reagan himself wasn’t a boomer, but it was boomers who put him into office. And this is when w
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39% of Americans take mixed ideological positions. Peek beneath the surface of that number, and you find that many of these 39% are not ideologically moderate; they are ideologically mixed up. In many cases, they hold an eclectic assortment of extreme positions.
Something analogous is also true of the two political parties. Assuredly, Democrats and Republicans are much more purely left-wing and right-wing, respectively, than they were 50 years ago. Certainly, Republicans are more hostile to government than are Democrats. Ideologically, the parties stand on opposite shores. But they still are far from internally coherent in any philosophical sense. Democrats are divided between market-oriented technocrats and self-declared democratic socialists. Republicans are in the grip of a populist takeover that defies the relatively libertarian, internationalist orthodoxy of their heretofore dominant Reaganite wing. Are the Democrats center-left or socialist? Both. Are the Republicans populist or libertarian? Again, both. We are not seeing a hardening of coherent ideological difference. We are seeing a hardening of incoherent ideological difference.
And that is really the essence of what feels like a growing division in our country.
More at "Rethinking Polarization"
www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/rethinking-polarization
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:To quote Moody: "The model did not account for the individual attributes of the candidates other than whether they belonged to the incumbent political party. In other words, it assumed Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were generic candidates, which they were not. In 2020, President Trump will be as much the nongeneric candidate as he was in 2016, and Democrats may also nominate a candidate who is a break from past party nominees".
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
First, as is common knowledge, there may be at least even odds of Democrats winning the White House and keeping the House, but their taking the Senate is a long shot.
Common knowledge, huh?
I guess Moody's didn't get the memo.
https://www.moodysanalytics.com/-/media/article/2019/president-electio
n-model.pdf
Do Right, Be Right. :)
If Mike Pence and Joe Biden were running for President, rather than Trump and Who-knows-who-the-Democrat, then the Moody model assumption of generic candidates is true. Otherwise, the Moody model does not work. Just flip a coin to see who wins. That would be about as scientific. There may be at least even odds of Democrats winning the White House.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Justify your wishful thinking however you want. But a few things first before you lie to yourself too much.
1. EVERYBODY said that Trump was going to lose and lose big last time. Only two polls ever showed that wasn't the case, and they were largely ignored.
2. Trump was running against a well known Clinton. She's a piece of shit, but (at least back then) everybody still loved Billy.
3. The only people that Trump have pissed off are the people who are still screwed in the head that he won in the first place after being lied to for a year.
4. Trump already has several keys to the white house, as well as the incumbent advantage. There are also easily as many hard core Trump fans out there are people who hate the guy.
5. The loud minority on the Left has become insane and completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Just ask Bill Maher about his frustrations that Democrats on the debate stage keep pandering only to people that were already never going to vote Trump, as well as people who can't even legally vote (felons, illegal aliens, etc.) Outside of socialists, and the rich white woke crowd, their messages don't resonate at all with the people who are going to vote.
The Democrat candidates are so bad this time that they're a plus in Trump's favor. Their lack of any legitimate platform for the people are Trump's biggest ally.
The only coin flip here is how many people are going to vote, and how many are going to stay on the couch. Which is exactly what Moody's says. Only in the extreme case of record voter turnout do Democrats have a chance at eeking out a victory. Trump wins in all other scenarios, and if voters are demoralized and stay home, he could get 380 electoral votes this time.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:In 2016, 538 predicted Trump had a 50% chance of winning. It fluctuated, but Trump's chances were always better than the chance that an oil well would be a gusher. Gushers are what keeps Texas #1! We don't get depressed by chances less than 50%. We keep drilling. Trump kept drilling. Trump hit a gusher. He could do it again in 2020. Or, just maybe, it will be a Democrat who hits the gusher. There can only be one gusher at a time. No sharing. Never two.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Justify your wishful thinking however you want. But a few things first before you lie to yourself too much.
1. EVERYBODY said that Trump was going to lose and lose big last time. Only two polls ever showed that wasn't the case, and they were largely ignored.
2. Trump was running against a well known Clinton. She's a piece of shit, but (at least back then) everybody still loved Billy.
3. The only people that Trump have pissed off are the people who are still screwed in the head that he won in the first place after being lied to for a year.
4. Trump already has several keys to the white house, as well as the incumbent advantage. There are also easily as many hard core Trump fans out there are people who hate the guy.
5. The loud minority on the Left has become insane and completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Just ask Bill Maher about his frustrations that Democrats on the debate stage keep pandering only to people that were already never going to vote Trump, as well as people who can't even legally vote (felons, illegal aliens, etc.) Outside of socialists, and the rich white woke crowd, their messages don't resonate at all with the people who are going to vote.
The Democrat candidates are so bad this time that they're a plus in Trump's favor. Their lack of any legitimate platform for the people are Trump's biggest ally.
The only coin flip here is how many people are going to vote, and how many are going to stay on the couch. Which is exactly what Moody's says. Only in the extreme case of record voter turnout do Democrats have a chance at eeking out a victory. Trump wins in all other scenarios, and if voters are demoralized and stay home, he could get 380 electoral votes this time.
Look at the data: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
6ixStringJack is economically anxious. How does anxiety affect voters?
Quote:https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-saying-trumps-win-had-nothin
Trump, as FiveThirtyEight contributor Jed Kolko noted immediately after the election, won most counties — and improved on Romney’s performance — where a large share of jobs are vulnerable to outsourcing or automation. And while there is no standard measure of economic anxiety, a wide range of other plausible proxies shows the same pattern. According to my own analysis of voting data, for example, the slower a county’s job growth has been since 2007, the more it shifted toward Trump.1 (The same is true looking back to 2000.) And of course Trump performed especially strongly among voters without a college degree — an important indicator of social status but also of economic prospects, given the shrinking share of jobs (and especially well-paying jobs) available to workers without a bachelor’s degree.
g-to-do-with-economics/
Vote your fears and anxieties, 6ixStringJack!
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Have you got a minute? MASH-UP: Trump’s al-Baghdadi Speech & Obama’s Bin Laden Speech
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Who says I'm economically anxious?
When I do work again, it's going to be another near minimum wage part time job, just like the last one I worked. Those are easy to find no matter who is president. ;)
In the mean time, have you gleaned any expressed concern I have about not currently working?
I'll answer that for you.
No. No you haven't.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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