Draining The Swamp

POSTED BY: SHINYGOODGUY
UPDATED: Friday, June 13, 2025 02:56
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SIGNYM

Friday, October 27, 2017 12:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I'll hit you with one more for the day: Trump made a big show of saving jobs at Carrier in Indiana. He hasn't done that again. There are thousands of factories he could show up at to save jobs from being exported. But he hasn't done it because that's work, the work is not fun for Trump, and he never meant what he said about saving factory jobs in the first place. It was all about creating a show for Trump's amusement. Trump didn't do another Carrier because V.P. Pence, ex-governor of Indiana, did all the real work for Trump. Since Pence didn't have a second Indiana factory ready to save, Trump never saved another.

I was under the impression that factory jobs was an important part of Trump's appeal to Signym.

Nope! I wrote an extremely long post about why Trump would NOT be able to revive the economy, and I'll recap it for you here: In order to revive the economy, Trump would not only have to slap import duties on the specific sector(s) that he's aiming at- say, steel, chip fab, heavy-duty electrical grid components, autos, and cloth and clothing - he would have to somehow DIRECT INVESTMENT into those areas. Because, IMHO, "the market" doesn't respond in a timely manner; there's a huge lag between price rise and capital investment. So he would need to have a national bank to provide the appropriate loans to the right companies, for example. But NO political party would allow that, would they? Both Dems and Repubs are committed to "privatization", even when it doesn't work well (like in the health care sector).

There were three things I was hoping Trump would accomplish, because I believe they're extremely important and rbecause they're in any President's purview of foreign policy:

1) Kill TPP and TTIP. DONE. Those would have given up our sovereignty to trade tribunals. Also, it would be nice to extricate ourselves from NAFTA, CAFTA, and other "free trade" agreements.

2) Reverse illegal immigration. IN PROCESS.

3) End our endless wars. FAILURE.

I never thought that he would equalize wealth, revive manufacturing, revive our healthcare system, repair our infrastructure, or do all of those other domestic-agenda things that are beyond his capacity as President. Domestic affairs are Congress' purview.

I would have hoped that with this blatant attack on Trump, with the press blowing a blizzard of lies and the Dems putting up yet-another-fake-enemy (Russia!!!) and more identity politics for you to get tweaked about, you would have seen the seamy underbelly of your sainted Dems and the so-called "free" (bought-and-paid-for) press and hopefully would have learned to look at politics with a more critical eye. Instead, you got completely taken in by the shit show, and you haven't gained any insight at all.

EDITED TO ADD:

SECOND, I don't think you understand how important killing the TPP and TTIP was. There were clauses in both agreements that allowed industries to sue governments for interference in their ability to obtain normal and customary profits. The decisions would be made, not in some state or federal court, but in an secret trade tribunal, made up of trade lawyers who would be deciding solely on the basis of whether or not the agreement was upheld or not.

What does this mean?

Let's say that California adopts a law which requires petroleum products sold in the state not require more than a certain amount of carbon to extract and process. So, for example, petroleum products sourced from Canadian tar sands ... which require a prodigious amount of water and energy to extract and crack ... would not be able to be sold in CA. According to these trade agreements, a Canadian tar sands company would be able to sue to state of CA for interfering in its ability to obtain normal and customary profits. The dispute would be decided in a trade tribunal - probably in Singapore - and since the laws of CA aren't respect

SECOND

Friday, October 27, 2017 4:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

How would you plan to raise taxes on the most wealthy 1% anyhow?
Are you a proponent of Consumption Tax?

Pick a tax. Any tax. Whatever tax you pick to target the 1 percenters' wealth, the wealthy will be enraged and energized to oppose. They will spread propaganda and outright falsehoods (backup by fake scholarly research) convincing the other 99%. That is why these things are the way they are, because the majority (but nowhere near all) of people in the lower 99% are gullible. The only thing the 99% know for sure is they want to pay less and the 1% can use that against the 99%. Works nearly every single time the 1% apply that plan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States

Why You Shouldn't Count On Trump's Promised $4,000 'Raise' From GOP Tax Plan
www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559634802/why-you-shouldnt-count-on-the-promise
d-4-000-raise-from-gop-tax-plan

SIGNYM

Friday, October 27, 2017 5:01 PM

Quote:
Pick a ~~tax~~ war/ enemy/ victim subgroup/ regulation/ economic sector. Any ~~tax~~ war/ enemy/ victim subgroup/ regulation/ economic sector. Whatever ~~tax~~ war/ enemy/ victim subgroup/ regulation/ economic sector you pick to target the 1 percenters' wealth, the wealthy will be enraged and energized to oppose. They will spread propaganda and outright falsehoods (backup by fake scholarly research) convincing the other 99%. That is why these things are the way they are, because the majority (but nowhere near all) of people in the lower 99% are gullible.

Wow, SECOND, you complain that OTHER people are gullible???

Ahem!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

SECOND

Friday, October 27, 2017 5:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

There were three things I was hoping Trump would accomplish, because I believe they're extremely important and rbecause they're in any President's purview of foreign policy:

1) Kill TPP and TTIP. DONE. Those would have given up our sovereignty to trade tribunals. Also, it would be nice to extricate ourselves from NAFTA, CAFTA, and other "free trade" agreements.

"Can everyone stop saying Donald Trump killed off the Trans-Pacific Partnership? He didn’t. It was already dead. Thanks to pressure from ordinary Americans – yes, it really does work – TPP already lay without a pulse on the floor of Congress. There is no need to congratulate Trump’s bigoted regime or pretend he has assembled a cabinet that isn’t teeming with corporate interests."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/24/donald-trump-tpp-trans-p
acific-partnership-president-hillary-clinton

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Friday, October 27, 2017 5:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Pick a ~~tax~~ war/ enemy/ victim subgroup/ regulation/ economic sector. Any ~~tax~~ war/ enemy/ victim subgroup/ regulation/ economic sector. Whatever ~~tax~~ war/ enemy/ victim subgroup/ regulation/ economic sector you pick to target the 1 percenters' wealth, the wealthy will be enraged and energized to oppose. They will spread propaganda and outright falsehoods (backup by fake scholarly research) convincing the other 99%. That is why these things are the way they are, because the majority (but nowhere near all) of people in the lower 99% are gullible.
Wow, SECOND, you complain that OTHER people are gullible???

Ahem!

Do you recall that I have often claimed to be of the 1% ? I continue to make that claim. I was trying to think of way to prove it. Finance Serenity 2? That would be a bad investment based on Serenity's boxoffice, especially if the new movie script follows the comics. Mal stands up against the entire Alliance in the comics. If it wasn't a comic, he'd be dead a dozen times. He's no tactical genius; he's just ridiculously lucky.

Despite voting for Democrats, I will accept my oversized share of Trump's tax cut, if and when it passes. You don't get to be a 1% if you don't take advantage of other people's gullibility. I'm not cheating them, like that old fraudster Trump. They give me their money and they don't sue afterwards, again, completely un-Trump-like.
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/01/donald-trump
-lawsuits-legal-battles/84995854/

SIGNYM

Friday, October 27, 2017 10:52 PM

You being a 1-percenter has nothing to do with being gullible or not. Seriously, I have no idea why you keep bringing it up. You've got your head stuck so far up the DNC's ass, you're looking out of its mouth.

There are two explanations for that:

1) You truly believe in the bleeding-heart liberal-victim-globalist political model, and you believe that the Dems are better than the Repubs. In that case, you're gullible.

2) Or you believe in the liberal-victim-globalist political model, to break everyone up into warring groups so that the elite [i.e you] can take over, in which case the Dems really DO represent your interests, and you just use them for political cover/ virtue signalling. In that case, you're a swamp creature.

So, which is it?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Friday, October 27, 2017 11:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
How would you plan to raise taxes on the most wealthy 1% anyhow?
Are you a proponent of Consumption Tax?
Pick a tax. Any tax. Whatever tax you pick to target the 1 percenters' wealth, the wealthy will be enraged and energized to oppose. They will spread propaganda and outright falsehoods (backup by fake scholarly research) convincing the other 99%. That is why these things are the way they are, because the majority (but nowhere near all) of people in the lower 99% are gullible. The only thing the 99% know for sure is they want to pay less and the 1% can use that against the 99%. Works nearly every single time the 1% apply that plan.

Any tax.
Income Tax. The wealthy 1% have no need to work, or have income. They have enough to live on for years, many more years than the current or next administration will be in office. So no additional Income Tax will be collected from Zero Income. In fact, the existing Revenue from the current amount of taxed Income will evaporate. As Jayne pointed out in Pilot Serenity, a meager percent of something is better than 100% of Nothin. Remember Reaganomics.

Capital Gains Tax. If the wealthy choose to divest of Capital Investments, Zero Capital Gains will result. Again, a higher percentage of Zero is less than a meager percentage of something. Heard of the Great Depression?

Corporate Tax, or Tax on Profit. If their wealth is divested from productive Companies, Zero Profit will result. Again, Zero Tax revenue from Zero Profit.

In each case, increase of Tax RATE results in less Tax REVENUE, and productivity stagnates, and all of the 99%ers lose out on all of the income they could have had from the 1%ers allowing their money to work. Resulting in less Tax REVENUE from the 1%, more unemployment and less Tax REVENUE from the 99%, and more War from despots who sense a weak America. The 1% did not starve during the Great Depression, and their wealth was not at risk of confiscatory Taxes without it being invested.

So far, your Any Tax concept falls flat.
Which Tax were you going to increase to confiscate dollars from the wealthy?

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 28, 2017 12:35 AM

You'd have to revamp the tax structure because it's far too easy for corporations and transnational elites to declare their profits in tax havens, or hide their wealth in "instant" subsidiaries and foundations (with fake histories and pro-forma boards) such as provided by banks like Mossack Fonseca. (I'm always referencing M-F NOT because it's unusual, simply because it had a large amount of internal documents leaked, which demonstrated its internal workings and how it provided these services.)

To make clear how this works, let's say you have a petroleum extraction company in the USA, and you want to avoid paying USA taxes. So what you do is sell your oil to an oil tanker subsidiary which flies the Panamanian flag, but you sell it for a really cheap price. So your USA taxes are low because the sale price is low. Your shipping company transports the oil to Japan, and sells it for a high price. It makes beaucoups bucks in profit, but because the subsidiary which made the profit is registered in Panama ... and there are no corporate taxes in Panama ... you get to keep nearly all of the profit that you made.

So there would have to be some definitional changes in where and how sales are made to avoid these various tax avoidance schemes.

If it were me, I'd simply drop the tax rate but also eliminate specialized deductions, exemptions, expenses, depreciations, subsidies, etc. which have been crafted to benefit big business, because the way it is right now only small and medium-sized business get nailed.

OH BTW- JSF- that concept that lower rates increase tax revenues has been disproved over and over and over again. That is a misapplication of a concept called the aptly-named "Laffer Curve". Every tax-cutting Republican President - including Reagan- sang that song, and every one of them was proved wrong, as demonstrated by the history of actual government revenues versus tax rates.

Before you forward an idea like this, it would be useful to look up actual numbers to see if it's been validated by reality.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

SECOND

Saturday, October 28, 2017 1:25 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

Capital Gains Tax. If the wealthy choose to digest of Capital Investments, Zero Capital Gains will result. Again, a higher percentage of Zero is less than a meager percentage of something. Heard of the Great Depression?

Corporate Tax, or Tax on Profit. If their wealth is divested from productive Companies, Zero Profit will result. Again, Zero Tax revenue from Zero Profit.

. . . So far, your Any Tax concept falls flat.
Which Tax were you going to increase to confiscate dollars from the wealthy?

Your thinking is too much all or nothing. You can slowdown the 3 million American 1 percenters from tax-cheating and jerking America around in random directions by purchasing shares in their companies. Norway’s $1 Trillion sovereign wealth fund owns more than 1 percent of global stocks. If the USA had a sovereign wealth fund, the US government would have a great deal of say over how badly the 1 percenters run America and how much they can cheat on their taxes and how crappy they treat employees.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-27/norway-1-trillion-wealth-fu
nd-gains-3-2-as-stocks-soar-higher

Then the problem moves to who controls America’s sovereign fund. Trump’s philanthropy shows how untrustworthy he is with amounts under $6 million. It would be better to leave control in the hands of 3 million greedy, irrational American 1 percenters than transfer it to him, the greediest 1 percenter there is.
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/washington-posts-david-fahrenth
old-wins-pulitzer-prize-for-dogged-reporting-of-trumps-philanthropy/2017/04/10/dd535d2e-1dfb-11e7-be2a-3a1fb24d4671_story.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 28, 2017 4:42 AM

Quote:
Your thinking is too much all or nothing. You can slowdown the 3 million American 1 percenters from tax-cheating and jerking America around in random directions by purchasing shares in their companies. Norway’s $1 Trillion sovereign wealth fund owns more than 1 percent of global stocks.SECOND

It just goes to show that being rich and being smart aren't related. More about that in a bit ...

Quote:
If the USA had a sovereign wealth fund, the US government would have a great deal of say over how badly the 1 percenters run America and how much they can cheat on their taxes and how crappy they treat employees.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-27/norway-1-trillion-wealth-fu
nd-gains-3-2-as-stocks-soar-higher

Do you have any idea where Norway's sovereign wealth fund money came FROM? It came from Norway's nationalized oil industry.

Say, SECOND, how would you like your gas wells nationalized? If not that, which industry or industries do YOU suggest that the United States government nationalize, in order to get non-tax revenues for this sovereign wealth fund that you recommend?

Quote:
THE NORWAY MODEL
NORWAY IS THE odd man out in the Nordics. While its neighbours are flirting with free markets, Norway is embracing state capitalism. Its national oil champion, Statoil, is the largest company in the region. The Norwegian state owns large stakes in Telenor, the country’s biggest telephone operator, Norsk Hydro, its biggest aluminium producer, Yara, its biggest fertiliser- maker, and DnBNor, its biggest bank. It holds 37% of the Oslo stockmarket, but it also controls some non-listed giants such as Statkraft, a power-generator, which if listed would be the third-biggest company on the stockmarket.

Hubby and I both think that the government SHOULD nationalize some industries: oil and gas, electricity, and banking, to start with. That way, it could earn profits directly and not have to worry about winkling it out of the pockets of the greedy elite.

But I'm sure you would never agree to that, and neither would the Dems.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

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