Off Topic · OT: The American middle class just got their goose cooked (page 8)

Gudris wrote:This is nothing new, in history almost all revolutions was exactly because of this, richest get richer until they reach critical point and get beheaded

And then couple of millions pure people were raped and killed, millions of middle class robed and countries set back or fall apart.
Was it worth a couple of heads?

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

I like this graph better because it takes in outside factors and does it as a percentage of a corporations income.

I don't like the ones you cited because they constantly reference the AFL-CIO/the EPI and they dont factor in benefits like healthcare or free child daycare services that have become a lot more popular(my friend who works at Google has free childcare and lunch to keep the employees productive(I lowkey envy him) nevertheless such forms of benefits weren't the norm back then) nor do they take into performance-based payments like bonuses that also come into play. And don't even get me started on how EPI measures inflation.

When purely looking at pay, of course, one can easily assume that corporations have been dicking down its workers. However, that isn't the case.

Yes that is very much the case. "Employee compensation" sound nice but when the C-suites make 90% of that number it don't mean Jack shit. Look at "real" meaning inflation adjusted median wedge in the country and compare that corporate profits. Here ill fukking do it for you. Wages include bonuses and base salary.

Erm no? Labor compensation is a much more accurate measurement my guy.

How is it more acurate? The numbers in his graph shows total payroll of companies. That include the top level that make more than 40-50% of the compensation sometimes as high add 80% for smaller companies. How does that show that companies are investing in wage growth for rank and file employees? It just shows CEO pay had kept up with profit levels.

Median wage in three other hand shows what the average American makes and us the only true indication of how bad the wage growth had been frozen. Looking at total payroll is a fallacy, because when the outliers account for 60% of the volume the data is worthless.

Yeah but you can't discount the non wage benefits that the employees get which have clearly been on the rise since the 70s. You can't make an honest assesement without using the compensation that employees get.

I have been in the workforce for over 20 years and I get zero non wage benefits. Just because Google does the right thing doesn't mean everybody else is doing it. Complete BS

And I am not discounting anything. We were discussing how corporations have intentionally suppressed wage growth and diverted capital investment to short term shareholder appeasement. You are trying your best to change the subject by talking about this other stuff. Ain't gonna work. kid.

1) do you work for a corporation
2) my story just like yours is purely anedoctal. Also we are comparing data since the 60s so being in the workforce for 20 years as vague as that is doesn't help your point.
3) you can't compare corporate profits to wages of workers. Because while workers are based in the US corporations have expanded overseas allowing them to reap profits there. And yes I made the same mistake with my graph but it nonetheless doesn't harm my overall point. And don't give me that this is only us taxable income because that isn't specified By the St. Louis fed

Now we have cone to the core part of the argument.
Companies use workforces outside the US, because they are cheaper. Nothing in any data you have provided out anyone else, had rigged that behaviour to the US corporate tax rate, which is the premise we are arguing about. I called bullshot on it, hasn't changed.

lets say I have $100 and I keep $90 abroad and leave $10 here. The tax rate is 35% so I pay 35% on that 10 bucks so I have $6.50. In total I now have 96.5 dollars. If I put all my money in US I would have 65 dollars?

You see how what you are saying is skewing evidence?

No I don't, because NO ONE in the US pays anything at the tax rate.
And what evidence did you provide of countries with lower tax rates having benefited from wage growth where the tax rate and not cost of labor was the deciding factor in investment fee cushions made by corporations.

Dude you arnt getting it. Corporations arnt paying it at that rate because they are keeping their profits offshore

No dude you are not getting it they are not paying at the tax rate even for the money they keep in the US. Have you heard of deductions?? Tax credits??? Special exemptions? Tax havens?

There is not one iota of evidence at all that the tax rate has modified ANY behavior. All you have is conjecture and your right wing talking points. And some anecdotal bullshit.

This all evil greedy corporations must be nationalized and run by liberal professors...
This will start the Golden age in America!!!

How about returning to a FAIR and BALANCED Economic situation like we had before they tilted everything in favor of Big Corps and the Rich??? You know the GREAT version of this country everyone keeps hearing about.

Make America great again?
You Cannot Step Into the Same River Twice...
The world is changes every moment and there is no way back.
The stability of US society is rock-solid and based on common sense of people who have something to lose, people with generation wealth.
They will fight for it to death against any destructive change. So I do not worry.

For all the confusing psycho-babble you post one thing is clear. You are just a greedy person and all you care about is making more money and you don't care at what cost to others. You never have.

If you had found yourself as a member of the exploiting class of the inherently corrupt Russian system, you would be defending what you label as socialism and attacking capitalism. You have zero ideology and zero conscience. While you profess empathy in every post your willingness to defend your wealth at the expense of others clearly shows a mindboggling lack thereof.

My wealth is not on material side so there is no need to protect it.
It cannot be taken away that's why I am content.
The real wealth is spirituality, knowledge, and happiness.
Everyone can have it if he drops hate and fear.
I came to US with no money 20 years back and earn by hard work just enough to leave normal civilized life and do not need more.
The life is short. Our body will be reduced to ashes in no time. So why one will need more money.
You came to this world with close fists and will leave it empty hanged.

So what does this mean? F U to those who are struggling to get by due to the GREED of a powerful few?

Javascript is not enabled or there was problem with the URL: https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/938428232755318784

Click here to view the Tweet

No, it means that if someone is struggling to get by and other 10 are not there are reasons for this.
And this reasons are complex and not just an existence of powerful few.
If we instead of trying to identify and resolve the issues which set people back, while just concentrate on pure hate, the people in need will never get any help.
Greed is universal issue for all people not just powerful. And the only way to reduce greed is turn it into generosity.
Be it moral incentives or laws that make generosity profitable does not matter.

All this you wrote is fine in THEORY but the United States actually had a GREATER BALANCE of wealth which it could’ve IMPROVED on and included more of its citizens but GREEDY MF’ers got together and came up with ways of reversing the Economic balance so that MOST of the money was sucked up by a few.

This country has been an experiment and it was on its way to a more fair and just society but there’s a set of powerful people who actively work against the best interests of the country. That’s why our Infrastructure and Education is crumbling. These BASTARDS have sucked the life blood out of this country and act more like parasites than citizens.

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

I like this graph better because it takes in outside factors and does it as a percentage of a corporations income.

I don't like the ones you cited because they constantly reference the AFL-CIO/the EPI and they dont factor in benefits like healthcare or free child daycare services that have become a lot more popular(my friend who works at Google has free childcare and lunch to keep the employees productive(I lowkey envy him) nevertheless such forms of benefits weren't the norm back then) nor do they take into performance-based payments like bonuses that also come into play. And don't even get me started on how EPI measures inflation.

When purely looking at pay, of course, one can easily assume that corporations have been dicking down its workers. However, that isn't the case.

Yes that is very much the case. "Employee compensation" sound nice but when the C-suites make 90% of that number it don't mean Jack shit. Look at "real" meaning inflation adjusted median wedge in the country and compare that corporate profits. Here ill fukking do it for you. Wages include bonuses and base salary.

Erm no? Labor compensation is a much more accurate measurement my guy.

How is it more acurate? The numbers in his graph shows total payroll of companies. That include the top level that make more than 40-50% of the compensation sometimes as high add 80% for smaller companies. How does that show that companies are investing in wage growth for rank and file employees? It just shows CEO pay had kept up with profit levels.

Median wage in three other hand shows what the average American makes and us the only true indication of how bad the wage growth had been frozen. Looking at total payroll is a fallacy, because when the outliers account for 60% of the volume the data is worthless.

Yeah but you can't discount the non wage benefits that the employees get which have clearly been on the rise since the 70s. You can't make an honest assesement without using the compensation that employees get.

I have been in the workforce for over 20 years and I get zero non wage benefits. Just because Google does the right thing doesn't mean everybody else is doing it. Complete BS

And I am not discounting anything. We were discussing how corporations have intentionally suppressed wage growth and diverted capital investment to short term shareholder appeasement. You are trying your best to change the subject by talking about this other stuff. Ain't gonna work. kid.

1) do you work for a corporation
2) my story just like yours is purely anedoctal. Also we are comparing data since the 60s so being in the workforce for 20 years as vague as that is doesn't help your point.
3) you can't compare corporate profits to wages of workers. Because while workers are based in the US corporations have expanded overseas allowing them to reap profits there. And yes I made the same mistake with my graph but it nonetheless doesn't harm my overall point. And don't give me that this is only us taxable income because that isn't specified By the St. Louis fed

Now we have cone to the core part of the argument.
Companies use workforces outside the US, because they are cheaper. Nothing in any data you have provided out anyone else, had rigged that behaviour to the US corporate tax rate, which is the premise we are arguing about. I called bullshot on it, hasn't changed.

lets say I have $100 and I keep $90 abroad and leave $10 here. The tax rate is 35% so I pay 35% on that 10 bucks so I have $6.50. In total I now have 96.5 dollars. If I put all my money in US I would have 65 dollars?

You see how what you are saying is skewing evidence?

No I don't, because NO ONE in the US pays anything at the tax rate.
And what evidence did you provide of countries with lower tax rates having benefited from wage growth where the tax rate and not cost of labor was the deciding factor in investment fee cushions made by corporations.

Dude you arnt getting it. Corporations arnt paying it at that rate because they are keeping their profits offshore

No dude you are not getting it they are not paying at the tax rate even for the money they keep in the US. Have you heard of deductions?? Tax credits??? Special exemptions? Tax havens?

There is not one iota of evidence at all that the tax rate has modified ANY behavior. All you have is conjecture and your right wing talking points. And some anecdotal bullshit.

This all evil greedy corporations must be nationalized and run by liberal professors...
This will start the Golden age in America!!!

How about returning to a FAIR and BALANCED Economic situation like we had before they tilted everything in favor of Big Corps and the Rich??? You know the GREAT version of this country everyone keeps hearing about.

Make America great again?
You Cannot Step Into the Same River Twice...
The world is changes every moment and there is no way back.
The stability of US society is rock-solid and based on common sense of people who have something to lose, people with generation wealth.
They will fight for it to death against any destructive change. So I do not worry.

For all the confusing psycho-babble you post one thing is clear. You are just a greedy person and all you care about is making more money and you don't care at what cost to others. You never have.

If you had found yourself as a member of the exploiting class of the inherently corrupt Russian system, you would be defending what you label as socialism and attacking capitalism. You have zero ideology and zero conscience. While you profess empathy in every post your willingness to defend your wealth at the expense of others clearly shows a mindboggling lack thereof.

My wealth is not on material side so there is no need to protect it.
It cannot be taken away that's why I am content.
The real wealth is spirituality, knowledge, and happiness.
Everyone can have it if he drops hate and fear.
I came to US with no money 20 years back and earn by hard work just enough to leave normal civilized life and do not need more.
The life is short. Our body will be reduced to ashes in no time. So why one will need more money.
You came to this world with close fists and will leave it empty hanged.

So what does this mean? F U to those who are struggling to get by due to the GREED of a powerful few?

Javascript is not enabled or there was problem with the URL: https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/938428232755318784

Click here to view the Tweet

No, it means that if someone is struggling to get by and other 10 are not there are reasons for this.
And this reasons are complex and not just an existence of powerful few.
If we instead of trying to identify and resolve the issues which set people back, while just concentrate on pure hate, the people in need will never get any help.
Greed is universal issue for all people not just powerful. And the only way to reduce greed is turn it into generosity.
Be it moral incentives or laws that make generosity profitable does not matter.

All this you wrote is fine in THEORY but the United States actually had a GREATER BALANCE of wealth which it could’ve IMPROVED on and included more of its citizens but GREEDY MF’ers got together and came up with ways of reversing the Economic balance so that MOST of the money was sucked up by a few.

This country has been an experiment and it was on its way to a more fair and just society but there’s a set of powerful people who actively work against the best interests of the country. That’s why our Infrastructure and Education is crumbling. These BASTARDS have sucked the life blood out of this country and act more like parasites than citizens.

Nix I understand the roots of you rage.
But sorry it is not helpful to solve any problems, to help anybody, and not good for your own sake.
The only way we can help people is by serving our own family, own community, the people around us.
And I know you do this a lot. So just enjoy it as this is the most important and enjoyable thing.
Life is not a Comic book. Evil and good is inside every persone.
And creating the imaginary monsters behind complicated machinery of society only helps populist manipulators to pray on innocent people issues.

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

I like this graph better because it takes in outside factors and does it as a percentage of a corporations income.

I don't like the ones you cited because they constantly reference the AFL-CIO/the EPI and they dont factor in benefits like healthcare or free child daycare services that have become a lot more popular(my friend who works at Google has free childcare and lunch to keep the employees productive(I lowkey envy him) nevertheless such forms of benefits weren't the norm back then) nor do they take into performance-based payments like bonuses that also come into play. And don't even get me started on how EPI measures inflation.

When purely looking at pay, of course, one can easily assume that corporations have been dicking down its workers. However, that isn't the case.

Yes that is very much the case. "Employee compensation" sound nice but when the C-suites make 90% of that number it don't mean Jack shit. Look at "real" meaning inflation adjusted median wedge in the country and compare that corporate profits. Here ill fukking do it for you. Wages include bonuses and base salary.

Erm no? Labor compensation is a much more accurate measurement my guy.

How is it more acurate? The numbers in his graph shows total payroll of companies. That include the top level that make more than 40-50% of the compensation sometimes as high add 80% for smaller companies. How does that show that companies are investing in wage growth for rank and file employees? It just shows CEO pay had kept up with profit levels.

Median wage in three other hand shows what the average American makes and us the only true indication of how bad the wage growth had been frozen. Looking at total payroll is a fallacy, because when the outliers account for 60% of the volume the data is worthless.

Yeah but you can't discount the non wage benefits that the employees get which have clearly been on the rise since the 70s. You can't make an honest assesement without using the compensation that employees get.

I have been in the workforce for over 20 years and I get zero non wage benefits. Just because Google does the right thing doesn't mean everybody else is doing it. Complete BS

And I am not discounting anything. We were discussing how corporations have intentionally suppressed wage growth and diverted capital investment to short term shareholder appeasement. You are trying your best to change the subject by talking about this other stuff. Ain't gonna work. kid.

1) do you work for a corporation
2) my story just like yours is purely anedoctal. Also we are comparing data since the 60s so being in the workforce for 20 years as vague as that is doesn't help your point.
3) you can't compare corporate profits to wages of workers. Because while workers are based in the US corporations have expanded overseas allowing them to reap profits there. And yes I made the same mistake with my graph but it nonetheless doesn't harm my overall point. And don't give me that this is only us taxable income because that isn't specified By the St. Louis fed

Now we have cone to the core part of the argument.
Companies use workforces outside the US, because they are cheaper. Nothing in any data you have provided out anyone else, had rigged that behaviour to the US corporate tax rate, which is the premise we are arguing about. I called bullshot on it, hasn't changed.

lets say I have $100 and I keep $90 abroad and leave $10 here. The tax rate is 35% so I pay 35% on that 10 bucks so I have $6.50. In total I now have 96.5 dollars. If I put all my money in US I would have 65 dollars?

You see how what you are saying is skewing evidence?

No I don't, because NO ONE in the US pays anything at the tax rate.
And what evidence did you provide of countries with lower tax rates having benefited from wage growth where the tax rate and not cost of labor was the deciding factor in investment fee cushions made by corporations.

Dude you arnt getting it. Corporations arnt paying it at that rate because they are keeping their profits offshore

No dude you are not getting it they are not paying at the tax rate even for the money they keep in the US. Have you heard of deductions?? Tax credits??? Special exemptions? Tax havens?

There is not one iota of evidence at all that the tax rate has modified ANY behavior. All you have is conjecture and your right wing talking points. And some anecdotal bullshit.

This all evil greedy corporations must be nationalized and run by liberal professors...
This will start the Golden age in America!!!

How about returning to a FAIR and BALANCED Economic situation like we had before they tilted everything in favor of Big Corps and the Rich??? You know the GREAT version of this country everyone keeps hearing about.

Make America great again?
You Cannot Step Into the Same River Twice...
The world is changes every moment and there is no way back.
The stability of US society is rock-solid and based on common sense of people who have something to lose, people with generation wealth.
They will fight for it to death against any destructive change. So I do not worry.

For all the confusing psycho-babble you post one thing is clear. You are just a greedy person and all you care about is making more money and you don't care at what cost to others. You never have.

If you had found yourself as a member of the exploiting class of the inherently corrupt Russian system, you would be defending what you label as socialism and attacking capitalism. You have zero ideology and zero conscience. While you profess empathy in every post your willingness to defend your wealth at the expense of others clearly shows a mindboggling lack thereof.

My wealth is not on material side so there is no need to protect it.
It cannot be taken away that's why I am content.
The real wealth is spirituality, knowledge, and happiness.
Everyone can have it if he drops hate and fear.
I came to US with no money 20 years back and earn by hard work just enough to leave normal civilized life and do not need more.
The life is short. Our body will be reduced to ashes in no time. So why one will need more money.
You came to this world with close fists and will leave it empty hanged.

So what does this mean? F U to those who are struggling to get by due to the GREED of a powerful few?

Javascript is not enabled or there was problem with the URL: https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/938428232755318784

Click here to view the Tweet

No, it means that if someone is struggling to get by and other 10 are not there are reasons for this.
And this reasons are complex and not just an existence of powerful few.
If we instead of trying to identify and resolve the issues which set people back, while just concentrate on pure hate, the people in need will never get any help.
Greed is universal issue for all people not just powerful. And the only way to reduce greed is turn it into generosity.
Be it moral incentives or laws that make generosity profitable does not matter.

All this you wrote is fine in THEORY but the United States actually had a GREATER BALANCE of wealth which it could’ve IMPROVED on and included more of its citizens but GREEDY MF’ers got together and came up with ways of reversing the Economic balance so that MOST of the money was sucked up by a few.

This country has been an experiment and it was on its way to a more fair and just society but there’s a set of powerful people who actively work against the best interests of the country. That’s why our Infrastructure and Education is crumbling. These BASTARDS have sucked the life blood out of this country and act more like parasites than citizens.

Nix I understand the roots of you rage.
But sorry it is not helpful to solve any problems, to help anybody, and not good for your own sake.
The only way we can help people is by serving our own family, own community, the people around us.
And I know you do this a lot. So just enjoy it as this is the most important and enjoyable thing.
Life is not a Comic book. Evil and good is inside every persone.
And creating the imaginary monsters behind complicated machinery of society only helps populist manipulators to pray on innocent people issues.

I actually have MUCH more faith in this country and it’s people than you do. I believe THE AMERICAN PEOPLE can change things for the better. We’ve done it before and can do it again.

Some of us can see EXACTLY who is responsible for wrecking things in this country and we have to overcome these people and the voters they keep FOOLING into giving them power to destroy the good things this country is capable of.

These powerful people want us to give up and check out. To just accept things the way they are. I can’t do that. Not after all my ancestors had to endure and fight to achieve for the last 260 years my family has been here. Many of them buried in unmarked graves. Why should we simply accept this BS and let them get away with this THEFT???

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

I like this graph better because it takes in outside factors and does it as a percentage of a corporations income.

I don't like the ones you cited because they constantly reference the AFL-CIO/the EPI and they dont factor in benefits like healthcare or free child daycare services that have become a lot more popular(my friend who works at Google has free childcare and lunch to keep the employees productive(I lowkey envy him) nevertheless such forms of benefits weren't the norm back then) nor do they take into performance-based payments like bonuses that also come into play. And don't even get me started on how EPI measures inflation.

When purely looking at pay, of course, one can easily assume that corporations have been dicking down its workers. However, that isn't the case.

Yes that is very much the case. "Employee compensation" sound nice but when the C-suites make 90% of that number it don't mean Jack shit. Look at "real" meaning inflation adjusted median wedge in the country and compare that corporate profits. Here ill fukking do it for you. Wages include bonuses and base salary.

Erm no? Labor compensation is a much more accurate measurement my guy.

How is it more acurate? The numbers in his graph shows total payroll of companies. That include the top level that make more than 40-50% of the compensation sometimes as high add 80% for smaller companies. How does that show that companies are investing in wage growth for rank and file employees? It just shows CEO pay had kept up with profit levels.

Median wage in three other hand shows what the average American makes and us the only true indication of how bad the wage growth had been frozen. Looking at total payroll is a fallacy, because when the outliers account for 60% of the volume the data is worthless.

Yeah but you can't discount the non wage benefits that the employees get which have clearly been on the rise since the 70s. You can't make an honest assesement without using the compensation that employees get.

I have been in the workforce for over 20 years and I get zero non wage benefits. Just because Google does the right thing doesn't mean everybody else is doing it. Complete BS

And I am not discounting anything. We were discussing how corporations have intentionally suppressed wage growth and diverted capital investment to short term shareholder appeasement. You are trying your best to change the subject by talking about this other stuff. Ain't gonna work. kid.

1) do you work for a corporation
2) my story just like yours is purely anedoctal. Also we are comparing data since the 60s so being in the workforce for 20 years as vague as that is doesn't help your point.
3) you can't compare corporate profits to wages of workers. Because while workers are based in the US corporations have expanded overseas allowing them to reap profits there. And yes I made the same mistake with my graph but it nonetheless doesn't harm my overall point. And don't give me that this is only us taxable income because that isn't specified By the St. Louis fed

Now we have cone to the core part of the argument.
Companies use workforces outside the US, because they are cheaper. Nothing in any data you have provided out anyone else, had rigged that behaviour to the US corporate tax rate, which is the premise we are arguing about. I called bullshot on it, hasn't changed.

lets say I have $100 and I keep $90 abroad and leave $10 here. The tax rate is 35% so I pay 35% on that 10 bucks so I have $6.50. In total I now have 96.5 dollars. If I put all my money in US I would have 65 dollars?

You see how what you are saying is skewing evidence?

No I don't, because NO ONE in the US pays anything at the tax rate.
And what evidence did you provide of countries with lower tax rates having benefited from wage growth where the tax rate and not cost of labor was the deciding factor in investment fee cushions made by corporations.

Dude you arnt getting it. Corporations arnt paying it at that rate because they are keeping their profits offshore

No dude you are not getting it they are not paying at the tax rate even for the money they keep in the US. Have you heard of deductions?? Tax credits??? Special exemptions? Tax havens?

There is not one iota of evidence at all that the tax rate has modified ANY behavior. All you have is conjecture and your right wing talking points. And some anecdotal bullshit.

This all evil greedy corporations must be nationalized and run by liberal professors...
This will start the Golden age in America!!!

How about returning to a FAIR and BALANCED Economic situation like we had before they tilted everything in favor of Big Corps and the Rich??? You know the GREAT version of this country everyone keeps hearing about.

Make America great again?
You Cannot Step Into the Same River Twice...
The world is changes every moment and there is no way back.
The stability of US society is rock-solid and based on common sense of people who have something to lose, people with generation wealth.
They will fight for it to death against any destructive change. So I do not worry.

For all the confusing psycho-babble you post one thing is clear. You are just a greedy person and all you care about is making more money and you don't care at what cost to others. You never have.

If you had found yourself as a member of the exploiting class of the inherently corrupt Russian system, you would be defending what you label as socialism and attacking capitalism. You have zero ideology and zero conscience. While you profess empathy in every post your willingness to defend your wealth at the expense of others clearly shows a mindboggling lack thereof.

My wealth is not on material side so there is no need to protect it.
It cannot be taken away that's why I am content.
The real wealth is spirituality, knowledge, and happiness.
Everyone can have it if he drops hate and fear.
I came to US with no money 20 years back and earn by hard work just enough to leave normal civilized life and do not need more.
The life is short. Our body will be reduced to ashes in no time. So why one will need more money.
You came to this world with close fists and will leave it empty hanged.

So what does this mean? F U to those who are struggling to get by due to the GREED of a powerful few?

Javascript is not enabled or there was problem with the URL: https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/938428232755318784

Click here to view the Tweet

No, it means that if someone is struggling to get by and other 10 are not there are reasons for this.
And this reasons are complex and not just an existence of powerful few.
If we instead of trying to identify and resolve the issues which set people back, while just concentrate on pure hate, the people in need will never get any help.
Greed is universal issue for all people not just powerful. And the only way to reduce greed is turn it into generosity.
Be it moral incentives or laws that make generosity profitable does not matter.

All this you wrote is fine in THEORY but the United States actually had a GREATER BALANCE of wealth which it could’ve IMPROVED on and included more of its citizens but GREEDY MF’ers got together and came up with ways of reversing the Economic balance so that MOST of the money was sucked up by a few.

This country has been an experiment and it was on its way to a more fair and just society but there’s a set of powerful people who actively work against the best interests of the country. That’s why our Infrastructure and Education is crumbling. These BASTARDS have sucked the life blood out of this country and act more like parasites than citizens.

Nix I understand the roots of you rage.
But sorry it is not helpful to solve any problems, to help anybody, and not good for your own sake.
The only way we can help people is by serving our own family, own community, the people around us.
And I know you do this a lot. So just enjoy it as this is the most important and enjoyable thing.
Life is not a Comic book. Evil and good is inside every persone.
And creating the imaginary monsters behind complicated machinery of society only helps populist manipulators to pray on innocent people issues.

I actually have MUCH more faith in this country and it’s people than you do. I believe THE AMERICAN PEOPLE can change things for the better. We’ve done it before and can do it again.

Some of us can see EXACTLY who is responsible for wrecking things in this country and we have to overcome these people and the voters they keep FOOLING into giving them power to destroy the good things this country is capable of.

These powerful people want us to give up and check out. To just accept things the way they are. I can’t do that. Not after all my ancestors had to endure and fight to achieve for the last 260 years my family has been here. Many of them buried in unmarked graves. Why should we simply accept this BS and let them get away with this THEFT???

Faith is important. I also believe that this country will overcome the issues which slowing us down.
That's why I an here and I like what I see. Much better that anywhere I lived or traveled.

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

I like this graph better because it takes in outside factors and does it as a percentage of a corporations income.

I don't like the ones you cited because they constantly reference the AFL-CIO/the EPI and they dont factor in benefits like healthcare or free child daycare services that have become a lot more popular(my friend who works at Google has free childcare and lunch to keep the employees productive(I lowkey envy him) nevertheless such forms of benefits weren't the norm back then) nor do they take into performance-based payments like bonuses that also come into play. And don't even get me started on how EPI measures inflation.

When purely looking at pay, of course, one can easily assume that corporations have been dicking down its workers. However, that isn't the case.

Yes that is very much the case. "Employee compensation" sound nice but when the C-suites make 90% of that number it don't mean Jack shit. Look at "real" meaning inflation adjusted median wedge in the country and compare that corporate profits. Here ill fukking do it for you. Wages include bonuses and base salary.

Erm no? Labor compensation is a much more accurate measurement my guy.

How is it more acurate? The numbers in his graph shows total payroll of companies. That include the top level that make more than 40-50% of the compensation sometimes as high add 80% for smaller companies. How does that show that companies are investing in wage growth for rank and file employees? It just shows CEO pay had kept up with profit levels.

Median wage in three other hand shows what the average American makes and us the only true indication of how bad the wage growth had been frozen. Looking at total payroll is a fallacy, because when the outliers account for 60% of the volume the data is worthless.

Yeah but you can't discount the non wage benefits that the employees get which have clearly been on the rise since the 70s. You can't make an honest assesement without using the compensation that employees get.

I have been in the workforce for over 20 years and I get zero non wage benefits. Just because Google does the right thing doesn't mean everybody else is doing it. Complete BS

And I am not discounting anything. We were discussing how corporations have intentionally suppressed wage growth and diverted capital investment to short term shareholder appeasement. You are trying your best to change the subject by talking about this other stuff. Ain't gonna work. kid.

1) do you work for a corporation
2) my story just like yours is purely anedoctal. Also we are comparing data since the 60s so being in the workforce for 20 years as vague as that is doesn't help your point.
3) you can't compare corporate profits to wages of workers. Because while workers are based in the US corporations have expanded overseas allowing them to reap profits there. And yes I made the same mistake with my graph but it nonetheless doesn't harm my overall point. And don't give me that this is only us taxable income because that isn't specified By the St. Louis fed

Now we have cone to the core part of the argument.
Companies use workforces outside the US, because they are cheaper. Nothing in any data you have provided out anyone else, had rigged that behaviour to the US corporate tax rate, which is the premise we are arguing about. I called bullshot on it, hasn't changed.

lets say I have $100 and I keep $90 abroad and leave $10 here. The tax rate is 35% so I pay 35% on that 10 bucks so I have $6.50. In total I now have 96.5 dollars. If I put all my money in US I would have 65 dollars?

You see how what you are saying is skewing evidence?

No I don't, because NO ONE in the US pays anything at the tax rate.
And what evidence did you provide of countries with lower tax rates having benefited from wage growth where the tax rate and not cost of labor was the deciding factor in investment fee cushions made by corporations.

Dude you arnt getting it. Corporations arnt paying it at that rate because they are keeping their profits offshore

No dude you are not getting it they are not paying at the tax rate even for the money they keep in the US. Have you heard of deductions?? Tax credits??? Special exemptions? Tax havens?

There is not one iota of evidence at all that the tax rate has modified ANY behavior. All you have is conjecture and your right wing talking points. And some anecdotal bullshit.

This all evil greedy corporations must be nationalized and run by liberal professors...
This will start the Golden age in America!!!

How about returning to a FAIR and BALANCED Economic situation like we had before they tilted everything in favor of Big Corps and the Rich??? You know the GREAT version of this country everyone keeps hearing about.

Make America great again?
You Cannot Step Into the Same River Twice...
The world is changes every moment and there is no way back.
The stability of US society is rock-solid and based on common sense of people who have something to lose, people with generation wealth.
They will fight for it to death against any destructive change. So I do not worry.

For all the confusing psycho-babble you post one thing is clear. You are just a greedy person and all you care about is making more money and you don't care at what cost to others. You never have.

If you had found yourself as a member of the exploiting class of the inherently corrupt Russian system, you would be defending what you label as socialism and attacking capitalism. You have zero ideology and zero conscience. While you profess empathy in every post your willingness to defend your wealth at the expense of others clearly shows a mindboggling lack thereof.

My wealth is not on material side so there is no need to protect it.
It cannot be taken away that's why I am content.
The real wealth is spirituality, knowledge, and happiness.
Everyone can have it if he drops hate and fear.
I came to US with no money 20 years back and earn by hard work just enough to leave normal civilized life and do not need more.
The life is short. Our body will be reduced to ashes in no time. So why one will need more money.
You came to this world with close fists and will leave it empty hanged.

So what does this mean? F U to those who are struggling to get by due to the GREED of a powerful few?

Javascript is not enabled or there was problem with the URL: https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/938428232755318784

Click here to view the Tweet

No, it means that if someone is struggling to get by and other 10 are not there are reasons for this.
And this reasons are complex and not just an existence of powerful few.
If we instead of trying to identify and resolve the issues which set people back, while just concentrate on pure hate, the people in need will never get any help.
Greed is universal issue for all people not just powerful. And the only way to reduce greed is turn it into generosity.
Be it moral incentives or laws that make generosity profitable does not matter.

All this you wrote is fine in THEORY but the United States actually had a GREATER BALANCE of wealth which it could’ve IMPROVED on and included more of its citizens but GREEDY MF’ers got together and came up with ways of reversing the Economic balance so that MOST of the money was sucked up by a few.

This country has been an experiment and it was on its way to a more fair and just society but there’s a set of powerful people who actively work against the best interests of the country. That’s why our Infrastructure and Education is crumbling. These BASTARDS have sucked the life blood out of this country and act more like parasites than citizens.

Citizen's United - symbol of the greed and corruption...NOTHING to do with freedom.

Moonangie wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

TPercy wrote:

I like this graph better because it takes in outside factors and does it as a percentage of a corporations income.

I don't like the ones you cited because they constantly reference the AFL-CIO/the EPI and they dont factor in benefits like healthcare or free child daycare services that have become a lot more popular(my friend who works at Google has free childcare and lunch to keep the employees productive(I lowkey envy him) nevertheless such forms of benefits weren't the norm back then) nor do they take into performance-based payments like bonuses that also come into play. And don't even get me started on how EPI measures inflation.

When purely looking at pay, of course, one can easily assume that corporations have been dicking down its workers. However, that isn't the case.

Yes that is very much the case. "Employee compensation" sound nice but when the C-suites make 90% of that number it don't mean Jack shit. Look at "real" meaning inflation adjusted median wedge in the country and compare that corporate profits. Here ill fukking do it for you. Wages include bonuses and base salary.

Erm no? Labor compensation is a much more accurate measurement my guy.

How is it more acurate? The numbers in his graph shows total payroll of companies. That include the top level that make more than 40-50% of the compensation sometimes as high add 80% for smaller companies. How does that show that companies are investing in wage growth for rank and file employees? It just shows CEO pay had kept up with profit levels.

Median wage in three other hand shows what the average American makes and us the only true indication of how bad the wage growth had been frozen. Looking at total payroll is a fallacy, because when the outliers account for 60% of the volume the data is worthless.

Yeah but you can't discount the non wage benefits that the employees get which have clearly been on the rise since the 70s. You can't make an honest assesement without using the compensation that employees get.

I have been in the workforce for over 20 years and I get zero non wage benefits. Just because Google does the right thing doesn't mean everybody else is doing it. Complete BS

And I am not discounting anything. We were discussing how corporations have intentionally suppressed wage growth and diverted capital investment to short term shareholder appeasement. You are trying your best to change the subject by talking about this other stuff. Ain't gonna work. kid.

1) do you work for a corporation
2) my story just like yours is purely anedoctal. Also we are comparing data since the 60s so being in the workforce for 20 years as vague as that is doesn't help your point.
3) you can't compare corporate profits to wages of workers. Because while workers are based in the US corporations have expanded overseas allowing them to reap profits there. And yes I made the same mistake with my graph but it nonetheless doesn't harm my overall point. And don't give me that this is only us taxable income because that isn't specified By the St. Louis fed

Now we have cone to the core part of the argument.
Companies use workforces outside the US, because they are cheaper. Nothing in any data you have provided out anyone else, had rigged that behaviour to the US corporate tax rate, which is the premise we are arguing about. I called bullshot on it, hasn't changed.

lets say I have $100 and I keep $90 abroad and leave $10 here. The tax rate is 35% so I pay 35% on that 10 bucks so I have $6.50. In total I now have 96.5 dollars. If I put all my money in US I would have 65 dollars?

You see how what you are saying is skewing evidence?

No I don't, because NO ONE in the US pays anything at the tax rate.
And what evidence did you provide of countries with lower tax rates having benefited from wage growth where the tax rate and not cost of labor was the deciding factor in investment fee cushions made by corporations.

Dude you arnt getting it. Corporations arnt paying it at that rate because they are keeping their profits offshore

No dude you are not getting it they are not paying at the tax rate even for the money they keep in the US. Have you heard of deductions?? Tax credits??? Special exemptions? Tax havens?

There is not one iota of evidence at all that the tax rate has modified ANY behavior. All you have is conjecture and your right wing talking points. And some anecdotal bullshit.

This all evil greedy corporations must be nationalized and run by liberal professors...
This will start the Golden age in America!!!

How about returning to a FAIR and BALANCED Economic situation like we had before they tilted everything in favor of Big Corps and the Rich??? You know the GREAT version of this country everyone keeps hearing about.

Make America great again?
You Cannot Step Into the Same River Twice...
The world is changes every moment and there is no way back.
The stability of US society is rock-solid and based on common sense of people who have something to lose, people with generation wealth.
They will fight for it to death against any destructive change. So I do not worry.

For all the confusing psycho-babble you post one thing is clear. You are just a greedy person and all you care about is making more money and you don't care at what cost to others. You never have.

If you had found yourself as a member of the exploiting class of the inherently corrupt Russian system, you would be defending what you label as socialism and attacking capitalism. You have zero ideology and zero conscience. While you profess empathy in every post your willingness to defend your wealth at the expense of others clearly shows a mindboggling lack thereof.

My wealth is not on material side so there is no need to protect it.
It cannot be taken away that's why I am content.
The real wealth is spirituality, knowledge, and happiness.
Everyone can have it if he drops hate and fear.
I came to US with no money 20 years back and earn by hard work just enough to leave normal civilized life and do not need more.
The life is short. Our body will be reduced to ashes in no time. So why one will need more money.
You came to this world with close fists and will leave it empty hanged.

So what does this mean? F U to those who are struggling to get by due to the GREED of a powerful few?

Javascript is not enabled or there was problem with the URL: https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/938428232755318784

Click here to view the Tweet

No, it means that if someone is struggling to get by and other 10 are not there are reasons for this.
And this reasons are complex and not just an existence of powerful few.
If we instead of trying to identify and resolve the issues which set people back, while just concentrate on pure hate, the people in need will never get any help.
Greed is universal issue for all people not just powerful. And the only way to reduce greed is turn it into generosity.
Be it moral incentives or laws that make generosity profitable does not matter.

All this you wrote is fine in THEORY but the United States actually had a GREATER BALANCE of wealth which it could’ve IMPROVED on and included more of its citizens but GREEDY MF’ers got together and came up with ways of reversing the Economic balance so that MOST of the money was sucked up by a few.

This country has been an experiment and it was on its way to a more fair and just society but there’s a set of powerful people who actively work against the best interests of the country. That’s why our Infrastructure and Education is crumbling. These BASTARDS have sucked the life blood out of this country and act more like parasites than citizens.

Citizen's United - symbol of the greed and corruption...NOTHING to do with freedom.

Freddom is realized necessity

This is what the Republicans are really up to

By Neal Gabler

It isn’t easy watching the country you love fall down a black hole from which it is not likely to emerge, but that is precisely what happened this past week with the Senate passage of the so-called “tax reform” bill. Bernie Sanders spoke for many when he said it will “go down in history as one of the worst, most unfair pieces of legislation ever passed.”

To which I’d add, not only the worst legislation, but also the most radically transformative passed in our lifetimes. The bill seems to have something to hurt every American, except for the wealthy. It raises taxes on most middle-income wage earners over the long haul, eliminates the individual mandate for health care (which will send insurance premiums soaring) and allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House version removes deductions for large health care expenses and compels graduate students to pay taxes on tuition waivers, though the Senate version retains both. Speaking of the health care provisions alone, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicted millions would die.

But to be perfectly honest, bad as they are — and they are very bad — these aren’t likely to be the worst problems with this patchwork legislation. Though it was seemingly thrown together at the last minute, with senators scribbling changes in the margins even as it was being debated on the floor, and though it was concocted solely to give the Republicans and their monster-in-chief a legislative victory — any legislative victory — it would be misguided to think that there isn’t some grand scheme behind it.

In fact, for all the haphazardness, the tax reform measures passed by the House and Senate, which must be reconciled in conference before final passage, achieve a deliberate and much-cherished GOP goal that supersedes short-term victory. Republicans have long dreamed of destroying the social safety net once and for all. This is the bill that finally threatens to accomplish their plan.

The New Deal, which created that safety net, arose in the Great Depression precisely because the free markets that Republicans insist to this day are the answer to every problem failed Americans miserably. Government was needed to bail them out then and to protect them in the future.

New Dealism was a set of programs — Social Security, public works, fair labor laws, conservation and dozens more — but it was also an attitude about government and the role it could and should play, from actively helping citizens in distress to equalizing an unfair tax structure.

The proof of its success is that Republicans didn’t dare revoke it when they came back to power. Frankly, they couldn’t, because New Dealism was too popular for them to do so. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t even reduce the highest marginal tax rate of the 1950s, which sat at 91 percent. And believe it or not, no one outside of right-wing extremists called him a socialist.

Still, there were elements of the Republican Party that chafed over New Dealism and never gave up hope of rescinding it and returning America to its primordial state — when the wealthy controlled everything and ordinary people were left to fend for themselves. The Republicans, a coalition of big business, farmers and small-town Rotarians, hadn’t been the party of the people for a long time.

The GOP’s two deepest strains may have been personal responsibility and Social Darwinism, and neither was especially hospitable to government intervention of any sort. In combination, these beliefs challenged the very foundations of New Dealism, assuming not that government was a collective instrument to help Americans when they needed it, but that government assistance subverted self-sufficiency and undermined the natural order of things: the poor were poor and the rich were rich because they deserved it.

This was by no means the entirety of the Republican Party. Though it is impossible to imagine right now, there was a progressive wing of the party with stalwarts like Robert La Follette, George Norris and William Borah. And there were moderates who, while favoring Wall Street, didn’t abhor all government involvement in the economy.

With this concession, New Dealism not only endured the griping against it, but, during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, grew — with Medicare and Medicaid signal achievements. By necessity, even Richard Nixon was a sort of New Dealer, introducing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That’s the way it was throughout the postwar period — until Ronald Reagan.

Of the many ways Reagan changed American politics, among the most important was taking the extreme right-wing factions of conservatism who had been knocking at the party’s door and letting them in. This was a sneaky trick and a cataclysmic one that eventually would lead to Donald Trump.

Once upon a time, these folks were widely dismissed as kooks and pushed to the margins. Now they were at the heart of the party. All you need to know is that Reagan got his political start delivering speeches about “the ant heap of totalitarianism” and reviling Medicare as inevitably leading to a socialist dictatorship. (We’re still waiting.)

Reagan and his right-wing friends shared one great ambition: to destroy New Dealism. Part of this was to further enrich their rich benefactors and disempower the poor under that old guise of free markets and Social Darwinism. But there’s another possible reason, more psychological than ideological: You hurt people because it makes you feel more powerful and because you think they have it coming. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) admitted as much the other day when he said, in defense of the estate tax repeal, that if you give ordinary Americans tax breaks, they will just waste their money on “booze, women and movies.”

Inevitably, New Dealism and Republicanism cannot coexist, because New Dealism is about helping people and Republicanism is about insisting that people can only help themselves. There is not a shred of empathy in the latter.

And therein lies the real driving force and the grand strategy behind this so-called tax reform. The House and Senate bills will both increase the deficit — the deficit about which Republicans have caterwauled for 50 years — by more than one trillion dollars! But rather than admit such rank hypocrisy, they deny that a trillion dollars will actually be added to be the deficit. The biggest dissemblers say that the resulting economic growth from tax cuts will take care of it, which is utter nonsense. The less egregious liars say that they will raise taxes if the deficit balloons, which is also nonsense. But — and here is the fine print — they say that if necessary they will cut government programs to keep the deficit under control.

That is the basic point. The object of tax reform is to create a gigantic deficit to justify ending the New Deal.

The time will come, and it is not far off, when every New Deal and Great Society program will be on the chopping block. And when they are, Republicans will start their deficit hawk mating call again. And because the deficit will have swelled so much, programs will be slashed. They won’t just nibble away at the edges. They will try to kill the whole thing.

Democrats will protest. They may even be in power. But if they are, they will be handed an untenable situation, having to choose between deficits and programs. In effect, Democrats are being set up. You can already hear Republicans saying we can’t afford Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps or even Social Security. It is government as cruelty.

In the past, when it came to New Dealism, Republicans always had to hide their true intentions because when they dared reveal them, as George W. Bush did when he sought to privatize Social Security, the hue and cry was deafening. In fact, a few weeks ago I wrote about how Americans were wising up, and it’s true that the more they learn about this “tax reform,” the more opposed they are. Right now, the opposition is overwhelming.

But with Donald Trump in charge, Republicans feel no need to conceal. They have been emboldened, I think, to show their true selves because they feel Trump has their back with his supporters — and as long as they have that army behind them, they are willing to take the risk of promoting a “reform” nearly everyone else hates. Those aggrieved white men who form the bulk of rank-and-file Republicanism don’t care if they have to pay more taxes. They don’t care if their health insurance premiums soar. They don’t care if their children can’t afford to go to college. Surveys show that they are more devoted to Trump than to their own welfare, and they will follow Trump wherever he leads, even if he leads them to financial disaster. He voices their hatreds, and hatred trumps policy. Such is modern Republicanism.

In a way, you can’t blame Republican office holders for being fired up. They have the New Deal in their sights, and they are eager to pull the trigger. Yet this country already has suffered grievously from Republicanism and Trumpism. It has lost its moral compass, and is about to put an alleged child molester in the Senate. America is going to suffer a great deal more once the deficit reckoning comes and the great unraveling begins. When the social safety net is gone, what happens to those who fall — which in truth, could be every single one of us?

This article was originally published at BillMoyers.com

GustavBahler wrote:

This is what the Republicans are really up to

By Neal Gabler

It isn’t easy watching the country you love fall down a black hole from which it is not likely to emerge, but that is precisely what happened this past week with the Senate passage of the so-called “tax reform” bill. Bernie Sanders spoke for many when he said it will “go down in history as one of the worst, most unfair pieces of legislation ever passed.”

To which I’d add, not only the worst legislation, but also the most radically transformative passed in our lifetimes. The bill seems to have something to hurt every American, except for the wealthy. It raises taxes on most middle-income wage earners over the long haul, eliminates the individual mandate for health care (which will send insurance premiums soaring) and allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House version removes deductions for large health care expenses and compels graduate students to pay taxes on tuition waivers, though the Senate version retains both. Speaking of the health care provisions alone, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicted millions would die.

But to be perfectly honest, bad as they are — and they are very bad — these aren’t likely to be the worst problems with this patchwork legislation. Though it was seemingly thrown together at the last minute, with senators scribbling changes in the margins even as it was being debated on the floor, and though it was concocted solely to give the Republicans and their monster-in-chief a legislative victory — any legislative victory — it would be misguided to think that there isn’t some grand scheme behind it.

In fact, for all the haphazardness, the tax reform measures passed by the House and Senate, which must be reconciled in conference before final passage, achieve a deliberate and much-cherished GOP goal that supersedes short-term victory. Republicans have long dreamed of destroying the social safety net once and for all. This is the bill that finally threatens to accomplish their plan.

The New Deal, which created that safety net, arose in the Great Depression precisely because the free markets that Republicans insist to this day are the answer to every problem failed Americans miserably. Government was needed to bail them out then and to protect them in the future.

New Dealism was a set of programs — Social Security, public works, fair labor laws, conservation and dozens more — but it was also an attitude about government and the role it could and should play, from actively helping citizens in distress to equalizing an unfair tax structure.

The proof of its success is that Republicans didn’t dare revoke it when they came back to power. Frankly, they couldn’t, because New Dealism was too popular for them to do so. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t even reduce the highest marginal tax rate of the 1950s, which sat at 91 percent. And believe it or not, no one outside of right-wing extremists called him a socialist.

Still, there were elements of the Republican Party that chafed over New Dealism and never gave up hope of rescinding it and returning America to its primordial state — when the wealthy controlled everything and ordinary people were left to fend for themselves. The Republicans, a coalition of big business, farmers and small-town Rotarians, hadn’t been the party of the people for a long time.

The GOP’s two deepest strains may have been personal responsibility and Social Darwinism, and neither was especially hospitable to government intervention of any sort. In combination, these beliefs challenged the very foundations of New Dealism, assuming not that government was a collective instrument to help Americans when they needed it, but that government assistance subverted self-sufficiency and undermined the natural order of things: the poor were poor and the rich were rich because they deserved it.

This was by no means the entirety of the Republican Party. Though it is impossible to imagine right now, there was a progressive wing of the party with stalwarts like Robert La Follette, George Norris and William Borah. And there were moderates who, while favoring Wall Street, didn’t abhor all government involvement in the economy.

With this concession, New Dealism not only endured the griping against it, but, during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, grew — with Medicare and Medicaid signal achievements. By necessity, even Richard Nixon was a sort of New Dealer, introducing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That’s the way it was throughout the postwar period — until Ronald Reagan.

Of the many ways Reagan changed American politics, among the most important was taking the extreme right-wing factions of conservatism who had been knocking at the party’s door and letting them in. This was a sneaky trick and a cataclysmic one that eventually would lead to Donald Trump.

Once upon a time, these folks were widely dismissed as kooks and pushed to the margins. Now they were at the heart of the party. All you need to know is that Reagan got his political start delivering speeches about “the ant heap of totalitarianism” and reviling Medicare as inevitably leading to a socialist dictatorship. (We’re still waiting.)

Reagan and his right-wing friends shared one great ambition: to destroy New Dealism. Part of this was to further enrich their rich benefactors and disempower the poor under that old guise of free markets and Social Darwinism. But there’s another possible reason, more psychological than ideological: You hurt people because it makes you feel more powerful and because you think they have it coming. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) admitted as much the other day when he said, in defense of the estate tax repeal, that if you give ordinary Americans tax breaks, they will just waste their money on “booze, women and movies.”

Inevitably, New Dealism and Republicanism cannot coexist, because New Dealism is about helping people and Republicanism is about insisting that people can only help themselves. There is not a shred of empathy in the latter.

And therein lies the real driving force and the grand strategy behind this so-called tax reform. The House and Senate bills will both increase the deficit — the deficit about which Republicans have caterwauled for 50 years — by more than one trillion dollars! But rather than admit such rank hypocrisy, they deny that a trillion dollars will actually be added to be the deficit. The biggest dissemblers say that the resulting economic growth from tax cuts will take care of it, which is utter nonsense. The less egregious liars say that they will raise taxes if the deficit balloons, which is also nonsense. But — and here is the fine print — they say that if necessary they will cut government programs to keep the deficit under control.

That is the basic point. The object of tax reform is to create a gigantic deficit to justify ending the New Deal.

The time will come, and it is not far off, when every New Deal and Great Society program will be on the chopping block. And when they are, Republicans will start their deficit hawk mating call again. And because the deficit will have swelled so much, programs will be slashed. They won’t just nibble away at the edges. They will try to kill the whole thing.

Democrats will protest. They may even be in power. But if they are, they will be handed an untenable situation, having to choose between deficits and programs. In effect, Democrats are being set up. You can already hear Republicans saying we can’t afford Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps or even Social Security. It is government as cruelty.

In the past, when it came to New Dealism, Republicans always had to hide their true intentions because when they dared reveal them, as George W. Bush did when he sought to privatize Social Security, the hue and cry was deafening. In fact, a few weeks ago I wrote about how Americans were wising up, and it’s true that the more they learn about this “tax reform,” the more opposed they are. Right now, the opposition is overwhelming.

But with Donald Trump in charge, Republicans feel no need to conceal. They have been emboldened, I think, to show their true selves because they feel Trump has their back with his supporters — and as long as they have that army behind them, they are willing to take the risk of promoting a “reform” nearly everyone else hates. Those aggrieved white men who form the bulk of rank-and-file Republicanism don’t care if they have to pay more taxes. They don’t care if their health insurance premiums soar. They don’t care if their children can’t afford to go to college. Surveys show that they are more devoted to Trump than to their own welfare, and they will follow Trump wherever he leads, even if he leads them to financial disaster. He voices their hatreds, and hatred trumps policy. Such is modern Republicanism.

In a way, you can’t blame Republican office holders for being fired up. They have the New Deal in their sights, and they are eager to pull the trigger. Yet this country already has suffered grievously from Republicanism and Trumpism. It has lost its moral compass, and is about to put an alleged child molester in the Senate. America is going to suffer a great deal more once the deficit reckoning comes and the great unraveling begins. When the social safety net is gone, what happens to those who fall — which in truth, could be every single one of us?

This article was originally published at BillMoyers.com

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

This is what the Republicans are really up to

By Neal Gabler

It isn’t easy watching the country you love fall down a black hole from which it is not likely to emerge, but that is precisely what happened this past week with the Senate passage of the so-called “tax reform” bill. Bernie Sanders spoke for many when he said it will “go down in history as one of the worst, most unfair pieces of legislation ever passed.”

To which I’d add, not only the worst legislation, but also the most radically transformative passed in our lifetimes. The bill seems to have something to hurt every American, except for the wealthy. It raises taxes on most middle-income wage earners over the long haul, eliminates the individual mandate for health care (which will send insurance premiums soaring) and allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House version removes deductions for large health care expenses and compels graduate students to pay taxes on tuition waivers, though the Senate version retains both. Speaking of the health care provisions alone, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicted millions would die.

But to be perfectly honest, bad as they are — and they are very bad — these aren’t likely to be the worst problems with this patchwork legislation. Though it was seemingly thrown together at the last minute, with senators scribbling changes in the margins even as it was being debated on the floor, and though it was concocted solely to give the Republicans and their monster-in-chief a legislative victory — any legislative victory — it would be misguided to think that there isn’t some grand scheme behind it.

In fact, for all the haphazardness, the tax reform measures passed by the House and Senate, which must be reconciled in conference before final passage, achieve a deliberate and much-cherished GOP goal that supersedes short-term victory. Republicans have long dreamed of destroying the social safety net once and for all. This is the bill that finally threatens to accomplish their plan.

The New Deal, which created that safety net, arose in the Great Depression precisely because the free markets that Republicans insist to this day are the answer to every problem failed Americans miserably. Government was needed to bail them out then and to protect them in the future.

New Dealism was a set of programs — Social Security, public works, fair labor laws, conservation and dozens more — but it was also an attitude about government and the role it could and should play, from actively helping citizens in distress to equalizing an unfair tax structure.

The proof of its success is that Republicans didn’t dare revoke it when they came back to power. Frankly, they couldn’t, because New Dealism was too popular for them to do so. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t even reduce the highest marginal tax rate of the 1950s, which sat at 91 percent. And believe it or not, no one outside of right-wing extremists called him a socialist.

Still, there were elements of the Republican Party that chafed over New Dealism and never gave up hope of rescinding it and returning America to its primordial state — when the wealthy controlled everything and ordinary people were left to fend for themselves. The Republicans, a coalition of big business, farmers and small-town Rotarians, hadn’t been the party of the people for a long time.

The GOP’s two deepest strains may have been personal responsibility and Social Darwinism, and neither was especially hospitable to government intervention of any sort. In combination, these beliefs challenged the very foundations of New Dealism, assuming not that government was a collective instrument to help Americans when they needed it, but that government assistance subverted self-sufficiency and undermined the natural order of things: the poor were poor and the rich were rich because they deserved it.

This was by no means the entirety of the Republican Party. Though it is impossible to imagine right now, there was a progressive wing of the party with stalwarts like Robert La Follette, George Norris and William Borah. And there were moderates who, while favoring Wall Street, didn’t abhor all government involvement in the economy.

With this concession, New Dealism not only endured the griping against it, but, during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, grew — with Medicare and Medicaid signal achievements. By necessity, even Richard Nixon was a sort of New Dealer, introducing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That’s the way it was throughout the postwar period — until Ronald Reagan.

Of the many ways Reagan changed American politics, among the most important was taking the extreme right-wing factions of conservatism who had been knocking at the party’s door and letting them in. This was a sneaky trick and a cataclysmic one that eventually would lead to Donald Trump.

Once upon a time, these folks were widely dismissed as kooks and pushed to the margins. Now they were at the heart of the party. All you need to know is that Reagan got his political start delivering speeches about “the ant heap of totalitarianism” and reviling Medicare as inevitably leading to a socialist dictatorship. (We’re still waiting.)

Reagan and his right-wing friends shared one great ambition: to destroy New Dealism. Part of this was to further enrich their rich benefactors and disempower the poor under that old guise of free markets and Social Darwinism. But there’s another possible reason, more psychological than ideological: You hurt people because it makes you feel more powerful and because you think they have it coming. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) admitted as much the other day when he said, in defense of the estate tax repeal, that if you give ordinary Americans tax breaks, they will just waste their money on “booze, women and movies.”

Inevitably, New Dealism and Republicanism cannot coexist, because New Dealism is about helping people and Republicanism is about insisting that people can only help themselves. There is not a shred of empathy in the latter.

And therein lies the real driving force and the grand strategy behind this so-called tax reform. The House and Senate bills will both increase the deficit — the deficit about which Republicans have caterwauled for 50 years — by more than one trillion dollars! But rather than admit such rank hypocrisy, they deny that a trillion dollars will actually be added to be the deficit. The biggest dissemblers say that the resulting economic growth from tax cuts will take care of it, which is utter nonsense. The less egregious liars say that they will raise taxes if the deficit balloons, which is also nonsense. But — and here is the fine print — they say that if necessary they will cut government programs to keep the deficit under control.

That is the basic point. The object of tax reform is to create a gigantic deficit to justify ending the New Deal.

The time will come, and it is not far off, when every New Deal and Great Society program will be on the chopping block. And when they are, Republicans will start their deficit hawk mating call again. And because the deficit will have swelled so much, programs will be slashed. They won’t just nibble away at the edges. They will try to kill the whole thing.

Democrats will protest. They may even be in power. But if they are, they will be handed an untenable situation, having to choose between deficits and programs. In effect, Democrats are being set up. You can already hear Republicans saying we can’t afford Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps or even Social Security. It is government as cruelty.

In the past, when it came to New Dealism, Republicans always had to hide their true intentions because when they dared reveal them, as George W. Bush did when he sought to privatize Social Security, the hue and cry was deafening. In fact, a few weeks ago I wrote about how Americans were wising up, and it’s true that the more they learn about this “tax reform,” the more opposed they are. Right now, the opposition is overwhelming.

But with Donald Trump in charge, Republicans feel no need to conceal. They have been emboldened, I think, to show their true selves because they feel Trump has their back with his supporters — and as long as they have that army behind them, they are willing to take the risk of promoting a “reform” nearly everyone else hates. Those aggrieved white men who form the bulk of rank-and-file Republicanism don’t care if they have to pay more taxes. They don’t care if their health insurance premiums soar. They don’t care if their children can’t afford to go to college. Surveys show that they are more devoted to Trump than to their own welfare, and they will follow Trump wherever he leads, even if he leads them to financial disaster. He voices their hatreds, and hatred trumps policy. Such is modern Republicanism.

In a way, you can’t blame Republican office holders for being fired up. They have the New Deal in their sights, and they are eager to pull the trigger. Yet this country already has suffered grievously from Republicanism and Trumpism. It has lost its moral compass, and is about to put an alleged child molester in the Senate. America is going to suffer a great deal more once the deficit reckoning comes and the great unraveling begins. When the social safety net is gone, what happens to those who fall — which in truth, could be every single one of us?

This article was originally published at BillMoyers.com

These Republicans are some Craven and Sadistic MF'ers. This has been their Wet Dream forever. To be able to finally "Drown The Government In A Bathtub" which has been their stated goal for decades.

Hate blinds people. Haters always are losers and those who breed hate a double losers.
The only thing that can help is love - it does not have political affiliation.

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

This is what the Republicans are really up to

By Neal Gabler

It isn’t easy watching the country you love fall down a black hole from which it is not likely to emerge, but that is precisely what happened this past week with the Senate passage of the so-called “tax reform” bill. Bernie Sanders spoke for many when he said it will “go down in history as one of the worst, most unfair pieces of legislation ever passed.”

To which I’d add, not only the worst legislation, but also the most radically transformative passed in our lifetimes. The bill seems to have something to hurt every American, except for the wealthy. It raises taxes on most middle-income wage earners over the long haul, eliminates the individual mandate for health care (which will send insurance premiums soaring) and allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House version removes deductions for large health care expenses and compels graduate students to pay taxes on tuition waivers, though the Senate version retains both. Speaking of the health care provisions alone, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicted millions would die.

But to be perfectly honest, bad as they are — and they are very bad — these aren’t likely to be the worst problems with this patchwork legislation. Though it was seemingly thrown together at the last minute, with senators scribbling changes in the margins even as it was being debated on the floor, and though it was concocted solely to give the Republicans and their monster-in-chief a legislative victory — any legislative victory — it would be misguided to think that there isn’t some grand scheme behind it.

In fact, for all the haphazardness, the tax reform measures passed by the House and Senate, which must be reconciled in conference before final passage, achieve a deliberate and much-cherished GOP goal that supersedes short-term victory. Republicans have long dreamed of destroying the social safety net once and for all. This is the bill that finally threatens to accomplish their plan.

The New Deal, which created that safety net, arose in the Great Depression precisely because the free markets that Republicans insist to this day are the answer to every problem failed Americans miserably. Government was needed to bail them out then and to protect them in the future.

New Dealism was a set of programs — Social Security, public works, fair labor laws, conservation and dozens more — but it was also an attitude about government and the role it could and should play, from actively helping citizens in distress to equalizing an unfair tax structure.

The proof of its success is that Republicans didn’t dare revoke it when they came back to power. Frankly, they couldn’t, because New Dealism was too popular for them to do so. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t even reduce the highest marginal tax rate of the 1950s, which sat at 91 percent. And believe it or not, no one outside of right-wing extremists called him a socialist.

Still, there were elements of the Republican Party that chafed over New Dealism and never gave up hope of rescinding it and returning America to its primordial state — when the wealthy controlled everything and ordinary people were left to fend for themselves. The Republicans, a coalition of big business, farmers and small-town Rotarians, hadn’t been the party of the people for a long time.

The GOP’s two deepest strains may have been personal responsibility and Social Darwinism, and neither was especially hospitable to government intervention of any sort. In combination, these beliefs challenged the very foundations of New Dealism, assuming not that government was a collective instrument to help Americans when they needed it, but that government assistance subverted self-sufficiency and undermined the natural order of things: the poor were poor and the rich were rich because they deserved it.

This was by no means the entirety of the Republican Party. Though it is impossible to imagine right now, there was a progressive wing of the party with stalwarts like Robert La Follette, George Norris and William Borah. And there were moderates who, while favoring Wall Street, didn’t abhor all government involvement in the economy.

With this concession, New Dealism not only endured the griping against it, but, during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, grew — with Medicare and Medicaid signal achievements. By necessity, even Richard Nixon was a sort of New Dealer, introducing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That’s the way it was throughout the postwar period — until Ronald Reagan.

Of the many ways Reagan changed American politics, among the most important was taking the extreme right-wing factions of conservatism who had been knocking at the party’s door and letting them in. This was a sneaky trick and a cataclysmic one that eventually would lead to Donald Trump.

Once upon a time, these folks were widely dismissed as kooks and pushed to the margins. Now they were at the heart of the party. All you need to know is that Reagan got his political start delivering speeches about “the ant heap of totalitarianism” and reviling Medicare as inevitably leading to a socialist dictatorship. (We’re still waiting.)

Reagan and his right-wing friends shared one great ambition: to destroy New Dealism. Part of this was to further enrich their rich benefactors and disempower the poor under that old guise of free markets and Social Darwinism. But there’s another possible reason, more psychological than ideological: You hurt people because it makes you feel more powerful and because you think they have it coming. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) admitted as much the other day when he said, in defense of the estate tax repeal, that if you give ordinary Americans tax breaks, they will just waste their money on “booze, women and movies.”

Inevitably, New Dealism and Republicanism cannot coexist, because New Dealism is about helping people and Republicanism is about insisting that people can only help themselves. There is not a shred of empathy in the latter.

And therein lies the real driving force and the grand strategy behind this so-called tax reform. The House and Senate bills will both increase the deficit — the deficit about which Republicans have caterwauled for 50 years — by more than one trillion dollars! But rather than admit such rank hypocrisy, they deny that a trillion dollars will actually be added to be the deficit. The biggest dissemblers say that the resulting economic growth from tax cuts will take care of it, which is utter nonsense. The less egregious liars say that they will raise taxes if the deficit balloons, which is also nonsense. But — and here is the fine print — they say that if necessary they will cut government programs to keep the deficit under control.

That is the basic point. The object of tax reform is to create a gigantic deficit to justify ending the New Deal.

The time will come, and it is not far off, when every New Deal and Great Society program will be on the chopping block. And when they are, Republicans will start their deficit hawk mating call again. And because the deficit will have swelled so much, programs will be slashed. They won’t just nibble away at the edges. They will try to kill the whole thing.

Democrats will protest. They may even be in power. But if they are, they will be handed an untenable situation, having to choose between deficits and programs. In effect, Democrats are being set up. You can already hear Republicans saying we can’t afford Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps or even Social Security. It is government as cruelty.

In the past, when it came to New Dealism, Republicans always had to hide their true intentions because when they dared reveal them, as George W. Bush did when he sought to privatize Social Security, the hue and cry was deafening. In fact, a few weeks ago I wrote about how Americans were wising up, and it’s true that the more they learn about this “tax reform,” the more opposed they are. Right now, the opposition is overwhelming.

But with Donald Trump in charge, Republicans feel no need to conceal. They have been emboldened, I think, to show their true selves because they feel Trump has their back with his supporters — and as long as they have that army behind them, they are willing to take the risk of promoting a “reform” nearly everyone else hates. Those aggrieved white men who form the bulk of rank-and-file Republicanism don’t care if they have to pay more taxes. They don’t care if their health insurance premiums soar. They don’t care if their children can’t afford to go to college. Surveys show that they are more devoted to Trump than to their own welfare, and they will follow Trump wherever he leads, even if he leads them to financial disaster. He voices their hatreds, and hatred trumps policy. Such is modern Republicanism.

In a way, you can’t blame Republican office holders for being fired up. They have the New Deal in their sights, and they are eager to pull the trigger. Yet this country already has suffered grievously from Republicanism and Trumpism. It has lost its moral compass, and is about to put an alleged child molester in the Senate. America is going to suffer a great deal more once the deficit reckoning comes and the great unraveling begins. When the social safety net is gone, what happens to those who fall — which in truth, could be every single one of us?

This article was originally published at BillMoyers.com

These Republicans are some Craven and Sadistic MF'ers. This has been their Wet Dream forever. To be able to finally "Drown The Government In A Bathtub" which has been their stated goal for decades.

Hate blinds people. Haters always are losers and those who breed hate a double losers.
The only thing that can help is love - it does not have political affiliation.

What I feel isn't HATE. It's Righteous Indignation!!! I stand up for People and do my best to be a giving citizen of this country. Why should I feel anything less than disgust for those who are the complete opposite and only seek to take and harm others?

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

This is what the Republicans are really up to

By Neal Gabler

It isn’t easy watching the country you love fall down a black hole from which it is not likely to emerge, but that is precisely what happened this past week with the Senate passage of the so-called “tax reform” bill. Bernie Sanders spoke for many when he said it will “go down in history as one of the worst, most unfair pieces of legislation ever passed.”

To which I’d add, not only the worst legislation, but also the most radically transformative passed in our lifetimes. The bill seems to have something to hurt every American, except for the wealthy. It raises taxes on most middle-income wage earners over the long haul, eliminates the individual mandate for health care (which will send insurance premiums soaring) and allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House version removes deductions for large health care expenses and compels graduate students to pay taxes on tuition waivers, though the Senate version retains both. Speaking of the health care provisions alone, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicted millions would die.

But to be perfectly honest, bad as they are — and they are very bad — these aren’t likely to be the worst problems with this patchwork legislation. Though it was seemingly thrown together at the last minute, with senators scribbling changes in the margins even as it was being debated on the floor, and though it was concocted solely to give the Republicans and their monster-in-chief a legislative victory — any legislative victory — it would be misguided to think that there isn’t some grand scheme behind it.

In fact, for all the haphazardness, the tax reform measures passed by the House and Senate, which must be reconciled in conference before final passage, achieve a deliberate and much-cherished GOP goal that supersedes short-term victory. Republicans have long dreamed of destroying the social safety net once and for all. This is the bill that finally threatens to accomplish their plan.

The New Deal, which created that safety net, arose in the Great Depression precisely because the free markets that Republicans insist to this day are the answer to every problem failed Americans miserably. Government was needed to bail them out then and to protect them in the future.

New Dealism was a set of programs — Social Security, public works, fair labor laws, conservation and dozens more — but it was also an attitude about government and the role it could and should play, from actively helping citizens in distress to equalizing an unfair tax structure.

The proof of its success is that Republicans didn’t dare revoke it when they came back to power. Frankly, they couldn’t, because New Dealism was too popular for them to do so. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t even reduce the highest marginal tax rate of the 1950s, which sat at 91 percent. And believe it or not, no one outside of right-wing extremists called him a socialist.

Still, there were elements of the Republican Party that chafed over New Dealism and never gave up hope of rescinding it and returning America to its primordial state — when the wealthy controlled everything and ordinary people were left to fend for themselves. The Republicans, a coalition of big business, farmers and small-town Rotarians, hadn’t been the party of the people for a long time.

The GOP’s two deepest strains may have been personal responsibility and Social Darwinism, and neither was especially hospitable to government intervention of any sort. In combination, these beliefs challenged the very foundations of New Dealism, assuming not that government was a collective instrument to help Americans when they needed it, but that government assistance subverted self-sufficiency and undermined the natural order of things: the poor were poor and the rich were rich because they deserved it.

This was by no means the entirety of the Republican Party. Though it is impossible to imagine right now, there was a progressive wing of the party with stalwarts like Robert La Follette, George Norris and William Borah. And there were moderates who, while favoring Wall Street, didn’t abhor all government involvement in the economy.

With this concession, New Dealism not only endured the griping against it, but, during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, grew — with Medicare and Medicaid signal achievements. By necessity, even Richard Nixon was a sort of New Dealer, introducing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That’s the way it was throughout the postwar period — until Ronald Reagan.

Of the many ways Reagan changed American politics, among the most important was taking the extreme right-wing factions of conservatism who had been knocking at the party’s door and letting them in. This was a sneaky trick and a cataclysmic one that eventually would lead to Donald Trump.

Once upon a time, these folks were widely dismissed as kooks and pushed to the margins. Now they were at the heart of the party. All you need to know is that Reagan got his political start delivering speeches about “the ant heap of totalitarianism” and reviling Medicare as inevitably leading to a socialist dictatorship. (We’re still waiting.)

Reagan and his right-wing friends shared one great ambition: to destroy New Dealism. Part of this was to further enrich their rich benefactors and disempower the poor under that old guise of free markets and Social Darwinism. But there’s another possible reason, more psychological than ideological: You hurt people because it makes you feel more powerful and because you think they have it coming. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) admitted as much the other day when he said, in defense of the estate tax repeal, that if you give ordinary Americans tax breaks, they will just waste their money on “booze, women and movies.”

Inevitably, New Dealism and Republicanism cannot coexist, because New Dealism is about helping people and Republicanism is about insisting that people can only help themselves. There is not a shred of empathy in the latter.

And therein lies the real driving force and the grand strategy behind this so-called tax reform. The House and Senate bills will both increase the deficit — the deficit about which Republicans have caterwauled for 50 years — by more than one trillion dollars! But rather than admit such rank hypocrisy, they deny that a trillion dollars will actually be added to be the deficit. The biggest dissemblers say that the resulting economic growth from tax cuts will take care of it, which is utter nonsense. The less egregious liars say that they will raise taxes if the deficit balloons, which is also nonsense. But — and here is the fine print — they say that if necessary they will cut government programs to keep the deficit under control.

That is the basic point. The object of tax reform is to create a gigantic deficit to justify ending the New Deal.

The time will come, and it is not far off, when every New Deal and Great Society program will be on the chopping block. And when they are, Republicans will start their deficit hawk mating call again. And because the deficit will have swelled so much, programs will be slashed. They won’t just nibble away at the edges. They will try to kill the whole thing.

Democrats will protest. They may even be in power. But if they are, they will be handed an untenable situation, having to choose between deficits and programs. In effect, Democrats are being set up. You can already hear Republicans saying we can’t afford Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps or even Social Security. It is government as cruelty.

In the past, when it came to New Dealism, Republicans always had to hide their true intentions because when they dared reveal them, as George W. Bush did when he sought to privatize Social Security, the hue and cry was deafening. In fact, a few weeks ago I wrote about how Americans were wising up, and it’s true that the more they learn about this “tax reform,” the more opposed they are. Right now, the opposition is overwhelming.

But with Donald Trump in charge, Republicans feel no need to conceal. They have been emboldened, I think, to show their true selves because they feel Trump has their back with his supporters — and as long as they have that army behind them, they are willing to take the risk of promoting a “reform” nearly everyone else hates. Those aggrieved white men who form the bulk of rank-and-file Republicanism don’t care if they have to pay more taxes. They don’t care if their health insurance premiums soar. They don’t care if their children can’t afford to go to college. Surveys show that they are more devoted to Trump than to their own welfare, and they will follow Trump wherever he leads, even if he leads them to financial disaster. He voices their hatreds, and hatred trumps policy. Such is modern Republicanism.

In a way, you can’t blame Republican office holders for being fired up. They have the New Deal in their sights, and they are eager to pull the trigger. Yet this country already has suffered grievously from Republicanism and Trumpism. It has lost its moral compass, and is about to put an alleged child molester in the Senate. America is going to suffer a great deal more once the deficit reckoning comes and the great unraveling begins. When the social safety net is gone, what happens to those who fall — which in truth, could be every single one of us?

This article was originally published at BillMoyers.com

These Republicans are some Craven and Sadistic MF'ers. This has been their Wet Dream forever. To be able to finally "Drown The Government In A Bathtub" which has been their stated goal for decades.

Hate blinds people. Haters always are losers and those who breed hate a double losers.
The only thing that can help is love - it does not have political affiliation.

What I feel isn't HATE. It's Righteous Indignation!!! I stand up for People and do my best to be a giving citizen of this country. Why should I feel anything less than disgust for those who are the complete opposite and only seek to take and harm others?

Because by hating people you bring all the misery on yourself and they are totally untouched.
Especially when you generalizing the huge group of population by political affiliation.
It is no different from racism, nationalism, or sexism.

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

This is what the Republicans are really up to

By Neal Gabler

It isn’t easy watching the country you love fall down a black hole from which it is not likely to emerge, but that is precisely what happened this past week with the Senate passage of the so-called “tax reform” bill. Bernie Sanders spoke for many when he said it will “go down in history as one of the worst, most unfair pieces of legislation ever passed.”

To which I’d add, not only the worst legislation, but also the most radically transformative passed in our lifetimes. The bill seems to have something to hurt every American, except for the wealthy. It raises taxes on most middle-income wage earners over the long haul, eliminates the individual mandate for health care (which will send insurance premiums soaring) and allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House version removes deductions for large health care expenses and compels graduate students to pay taxes on tuition waivers, though the Senate version retains both. Speaking of the health care provisions alone, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicted millions would die.

But to be perfectly honest, bad as they are — and they are very bad — these aren’t likely to be the worst problems with this patchwork legislation. Though it was seemingly thrown together at the last minute, with senators scribbling changes in the margins even as it was being debated on the floor, and though it was concocted solely to give the Republicans and their monster-in-chief a legislative victory — any legislative victory — it would be misguided to think that there isn’t some grand scheme behind it.

In fact, for all the haphazardness, the tax reform measures passed by the House and Senate, which must be reconciled in conference before final passage, achieve a deliberate and much-cherished GOP goal that supersedes short-term victory. Republicans have long dreamed of destroying the social safety net once and for all. This is the bill that finally threatens to accomplish their plan.

The New Deal, which created that safety net, arose in the Great Depression precisely because the free markets that Republicans insist to this day are the answer to every problem failed Americans miserably. Government was needed to bail them out then and to protect them in the future.

New Dealism was a set of programs — Social Security, public works, fair labor laws, conservation and dozens more — but it was also an attitude about government and the role it could and should play, from actively helping citizens in distress to equalizing an unfair tax structure.

The proof of its success is that Republicans didn’t dare revoke it when they came back to power. Frankly, they couldn’t, because New Dealism was too popular for them to do so. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t even reduce the highest marginal tax rate of the 1950s, which sat at 91 percent. And believe it or not, no one outside of right-wing extremists called him a socialist.

Still, there were elements of the Republican Party that chafed over New Dealism and never gave up hope of rescinding it and returning America to its primordial state — when the wealthy controlled everything and ordinary people were left to fend for themselves. The Republicans, a coalition of big business, farmers and small-town Rotarians, hadn’t been the party of the people for a long time.

The GOP’s two deepest strains may have been personal responsibility and Social Darwinism, and neither was especially hospitable to government intervention of any sort. In combination, these beliefs challenged the very foundations of New Dealism, assuming not that government was a collective instrument to help Americans when they needed it, but that government assistance subverted self-sufficiency and undermined the natural order of things: the poor were poor and the rich were rich because they deserved it.

This was by no means the entirety of the Republican Party. Though it is impossible to imagine right now, there was a progressive wing of the party with stalwarts like Robert La Follette, George Norris and William Borah. And there were moderates who, while favoring Wall Street, didn’t abhor all government involvement in the economy.

With this concession, New Dealism not only endured the griping against it, but, during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, grew — with Medicare and Medicaid signal achievements. By necessity, even Richard Nixon was a sort of New Dealer, introducing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That’s the way it was throughout the postwar period — until Ronald Reagan.

Of the many ways Reagan changed American politics, among the most important was taking the extreme right-wing factions of conservatism who had been knocking at the party’s door and letting them in. This was a sneaky trick and a cataclysmic one that eventually would lead to Donald Trump.

Once upon a time, these folks were widely dismissed as kooks and pushed to the margins. Now they were at the heart of the party. All you need to know is that Reagan got his political start delivering speeches about “the ant heap of totalitarianism” and reviling Medicare as inevitably leading to a socialist dictatorship. (We’re still waiting.)

Reagan and his right-wing friends shared one great ambition: to destroy New Dealism. Part of this was to further enrich their rich benefactors and disempower the poor under that old guise of free markets and Social Darwinism. But there’s another possible reason, more psychological than ideological: You hurt people because it makes you feel more powerful and because you think they have it coming. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) admitted as much the other day when he said, in defense of the estate tax repeal, that if you give ordinary Americans tax breaks, they will just waste their money on “booze, women and movies.”

Inevitably, New Dealism and Republicanism cannot coexist, because New Dealism is about helping people and Republicanism is about insisting that people can only help themselves. There is not a shred of empathy in the latter.

And therein lies the real driving force and the grand strategy behind this so-called tax reform. The House and Senate bills will both increase the deficit — the deficit about which Republicans have caterwauled for 50 years — by more than one trillion dollars! But rather than admit such rank hypocrisy, they deny that a trillion dollars will actually be added to be the deficit. The biggest dissemblers say that the resulting economic growth from tax cuts will take care of it, which is utter nonsense. The less egregious liars say that they will raise taxes if the deficit balloons, which is also nonsense. But — and here is the fine print — they say that if necessary they will cut government programs to keep the deficit under control.

That is the basic point. The object of tax reform is to create a gigantic deficit to justify ending the New Deal.

The time will come, and it is not far off, when every New Deal and Great Society program will be on the chopping block. And when they are, Republicans will start their deficit hawk mating call again. And because the deficit will have swelled so much, programs will be slashed. They won’t just nibble away at the edges. They will try to kill the whole thing.

Democrats will protest. They may even be in power. But if they are, they will be handed an untenable situation, having to choose between deficits and programs. In effect, Democrats are being set up. You can already hear Republicans saying we can’t afford Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps or even Social Security. It is government as cruelty.

In the past, when it came to New Dealism, Republicans always had to hide their true intentions because when they dared reveal them, as George W. Bush did when he sought to privatize Social Security, the hue and cry was deafening. In fact, a few weeks ago I wrote about how Americans were wising up, and it’s true that the more they learn about this “tax reform,” the more opposed they are. Right now, the opposition is overwhelming.

But with Donald Trump in charge, Republicans feel no need to conceal. They have been emboldened, I think, to show their true selves because they feel Trump has their back with his supporters — and as long as they have that army behind them, they are willing to take the risk of promoting a “reform” nearly everyone else hates. Those aggrieved white men who form the bulk of rank-and-file Republicanism don’t care if they have to pay more taxes. They don’t care if their health insurance premiums soar. They don’t care if their children can’t afford to go to college. Surveys show that they are more devoted to Trump than to their own welfare, and they will follow Trump wherever he leads, even if he leads them to financial disaster. He voices their hatreds, and hatred trumps policy. Such is modern Republicanism.

In a way, you can’t blame Republican office holders for being fired up. They have the New Deal in their sights, and they are eager to pull the trigger. Yet this country already has suffered grievously from Republicanism and Trumpism. It has lost its moral compass, and is about to put an alleged child molester in the Senate. America is going to suffer a great deal more once the deficit reckoning comes and the great unraveling begins. When the social safety net is gone, what happens to those who fall — which in truth, could be every single one of us?

This article was originally published at BillMoyers.com

These Republicans are some Craven and Sadistic MF'ers. This has been their Wet Dream forever. To be able to finally "Drown The Government In A Bathtub" which has been their stated goal for decades.

Hate blinds people. Haters always are losers and those who breed hate a double losers.
The only thing that can help is love - it does not have political affiliation.

What I feel isn't HATE. It's Righteous Indignation!!! I stand up for People and do my best to be a giving citizen of this country. Why should I feel anything less than disgust for those who are the complete opposite and only seek to take and harm others?

Because by hating people you bring all the misery on yourself and they are totally untouched.
Especially when you generalizing the huge group of population by political affiliation.
It is no different from racism, nationalism, or sexism.

I’m not generalizing. I’m stating a point of fact. If there wasn’t any difference in voters views there wouldn’t be such stark partisanship. In any event this is the kind of BS I’m talking about.

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GustavBahler wrote:

This is what the Republicans are really up to

By Neal Gabler

It isn’t easy watching the country you love fall down a black hole from which it is not likely to emerge, but that is precisely what happened this past week with the Senate passage of the so-called “tax reform” bill. Bernie Sanders spoke for many when he said it will “go down in history as one of the worst, most unfair pieces of legislation ever passed.”

To which I’d add, not only the worst legislation, but also the most radically transformative passed in our lifetimes. The bill seems to have something to hurt every American, except for the wealthy. It raises taxes on most middle-income wage earners over the long haul, eliminates the individual mandate for health care (which will send insurance premiums soaring) and allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House version removes deductions for large health care expenses and compels graduate students to pay taxes on tuition waivers, though the Senate version retains both. Speaking of the health care provisions alone, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicted millions would die.

But to be perfectly honest, bad as they are — and they are very bad — these aren’t likely to be the worst problems with this patchwork legislation. Though it was seemingly thrown together at the last minute, with senators scribbling changes in the margins even as it was being debated on the floor, and though it was concocted solely to give the Republicans and their monster-in-chief a legislative victory — any legislative victory — it would be misguided to think that there isn’t some grand scheme behind it.

In fact, for all the haphazardness, the tax reform measures passed by the House and Senate, which must be reconciled in conference before final passage, achieve a deliberate and much-cherished GOP goal that supersedes short-term victory. Republicans have long dreamed of destroying the social safety net once and for all. This is the bill that finally threatens to accomplish their plan.

The New Deal, which created that safety net, arose in the Great Depression precisely because the free markets that Republicans insist to this day are the answer to every problem failed Americans miserably. Government was needed to bail them out then and to protect them in the future.

New Dealism was a set of programs — Social Security, public works, fair labor laws, conservation and dozens more — but it was also an attitude about government and the role it could and should play, from actively helping citizens in distress to equalizing an unfair tax structure.

The proof of its success is that Republicans didn’t dare revoke it when they came back to power. Frankly, they couldn’t, because New Dealism was too popular for them to do so. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t even reduce the highest marginal tax rate of the 1950s, which sat at 91 percent. And believe it or not, no one outside of right-wing extremists called him a socialist.

Still, there were elements of the Republican Party that chafed over New Dealism and never gave up hope of rescinding it and returning America to its primordial state — when the wealthy controlled everything and ordinary people were left to fend for themselves. The Republicans, a coalition of big business, farmers and small-town Rotarians, hadn’t been the party of the people for a long time.

The GOP’s two deepest strains may have been personal responsibility and Social Darwinism, and neither was especially hospitable to government intervention of any sort. In combination, these beliefs challenged the very foundations of New Dealism, assuming not that government was a collective instrument to help Americans when they needed it, but that government assistance subverted self-sufficiency and undermined the natural order of things: the poor were poor and the rich were rich because they deserved it.

This was by no means the entirety of the Republican Party. Though it is impossible to imagine right now, there was a progressive wing of the party with stalwarts like Robert La Follette, George Norris and William Borah. And there were moderates who, while favoring Wall Street, didn’t abhor all government involvement in the economy.

With this concession, New Dealism not only endured the griping against it, but, during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, grew — with Medicare and Medicaid signal achievements. By necessity, even Richard Nixon was a sort of New Dealer, introducing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That’s the way it was throughout the postwar period — until Ronald Reagan.

Of the many ways Reagan changed American politics, among the most important was taking the extreme right-wing factions of conservatism who had been knocking at the party’s door and letting them in. This was a sneaky trick and a cataclysmic one that eventually would lead to Donald Trump.

Once upon a time, these folks were widely dismissed as kooks and pushed to the margins. Now they were at the heart of the party. All you need to know is that Reagan got his political start delivering speeches about “the ant heap of totalitarianism” and reviling Medicare as inevitably leading to a socialist dictatorship. (We’re still waiting.)

Reagan and his right-wing friends shared one great ambition: to destroy New Dealism. Part of this was to further enrich their rich benefactors and disempower the poor under that old guise of free markets and Social Darwinism. But there’s another possible reason, more psychological than ideological: You hurt people because it makes you feel more powerful and because you think they have it coming. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) admitted as much the other day when he said, in defense of the estate tax repeal, that if you give ordinary Americans tax breaks, they will just waste their money on “booze, women and movies.”

Inevitably, New Dealism and Republicanism cannot coexist, because New Dealism is about helping people and Republicanism is about insisting that people can only help themselves. There is not a shred of empathy in the latter.

And therein lies the real driving force and the grand strategy behind this so-called tax reform. The House and Senate bills will both increase the deficit — the deficit about which Republicans have caterwauled for 50 years — by more than one trillion dollars! But rather than admit such rank hypocrisy, they deny that a trillion dollars will actually be added to be the deficit. The biggest dissemblers say that the resulting economic growth from tax cuts will take care of it, which is utter nonsense. The less egregious liars say that they will raise taxes if the deficit balloons, which is also nonsense. But — and here is the fine print — they say that if necessary they will cut government programs to keep the deficit under control.

That is the basic point. The object of tax reform is to create a gigantic deficit to justify ending the New Deal.

The time will come, and it is not far off, when every New Deal and Great Society program will be on the chopping block. And when they are, Republicans will start their deficit hawk mating call again. And because the deficit will have swelled so much, programs will be slashed. They won’t just nibble away at the edges. They will try to kill the whole thing.

Democrats will protest. They may even be in power. But if they are, they will be handed an untenable situation, having to choose between deficits and programs. In effect, Democrats are being set up. You can already hear Republicans saying we can’t afford Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps or even Social Security. It is government as cruelty.

In the past, when it came to New Dealism, Republicans always had to hide their true intentions because when they dared reveal them, as George W. Bush did when he sought to privatize Social Security, the hue and cry was deafening. In fact, a few weeks ago I wrote about how Americans were wising up, and it’s true that the more they learn about this “tax reform,” the more opposed they are. Right now, the opposition is overwhelming.

But with Donald Trump in charge, Republicans feel no need to conceal. They have been emboldened, I think, to show their true selves because they feel Trump has their back with his supporters — and as long as they have that army behind them, they are willing to take the risk of promoting a “reform” nearly everyone else hates. Those aggrieved white men who form the bulk of rank-and-file Republicanism don’t care if they have to pay more taxes. They don’t care if their health insurance premiums soar. They don’t care if their children can’t afford to go to college. Surveys show that they are more devoted to Trump than to their own welfare, and they will follow Trump wherever he leads, even if he leads them to financial disaster. He voices their hatreds, and hatred trumps policy. Such is modern Republicanism.

In a way, you can’t blame Republican office holders for being fired up. They have the New Deal in their sights, and they are eager to pull the trigger. Yet this country already has suffered grievously from Republicanism and Trumpism. It has lost its moral compass, and is about to put an alleged child molester in the Senate. America is going to suffer a great deal more once the deficit reckoning comes and the great unraveling begins. When the social safety net is gone, what happens to those who fall — which in truth, could be every single one of us?

This article was originally published at BillMoyers.com

Good article. I think the last part is important. The country is collectively losing its moral compass. A person who boasts about sexually harassing women has become president. Another person who may have molested children is in the running for a Senate seat. Another with multiple sexual harassment claims against him steadfastly refuses to step down.

The whole laissez-faire based destruction of what used to be a great economy and the neoliberal take over if the mainstream thought process in our corporate culture are how republicans have forced their agenda. Look at my discussion with TPercy - he wants to abolish corporate tax altogether and he claims that will lead to growth. He then says corporations shouldn't care about their stakeholders and should pursue profits at all costs and only care about their shareholders. Now connect the dots.

We abolish corporate tax, and they find other countries still have equivalent talent willing to work at lower wage structures which will allow the corporations to increase their profit margins so they take the money and invest over there. The neoliberal will tell you there's nothing wrong with that. Except the so called growth never happened in the US, and we taxpayers ended up subsidizing the growth somewhere else. Then they'll tell you American workers need to be competitive on wages. Because that's what it says on Finance 101. So now we have subsidized corporations so that they can tell us to take even lower wages and the neoliberals have magically delivered "GROWTH"!!!!

If you point this out they act very confused and ask you why are you complaining about the middle class? They middle class is shrinking because more people are moving up!!

Pathetic peddlers of horseshit.

Home Depot just showed who will gain the most from corporate tax cuts

By David Lynch

With unemployment low and demand for new homes high, a company like Home Depot could be spending most of its surplus billions on raises for workers or the rollout of new stores.

Instead, the world’s largest home improvement chain this week announced that it is using $15 billion to buy back shares of its own stock, a move that will reward shareholders including chief executive Craig Menear and other top executives.

Even as lawmakers on Capitol Hill began hammering out the final version of a tax cut designed to give businesses more money to invest, Home Depot’s statement was a reminder that corporate America may have other plans for that cash.

Economy & Business Alerts
Breaking news about economic and business issues.
Several companies already have indicated that they will use excess funds to pay off debt, increase dividend payments or repurchase their own shares rather than create new jobs or raise wages. On Wall Street, the consensus is that workers will be last in line behind shareholders, creditors and investment bankers when the extra corporate cash is distributed.

“If they’ve got good growth prospects for something, they’re already throwing money at that. I don’t think the world changes because of lower taxes,” said Tim Ghriskey, who manages $1.5 billion in assets as chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management. “There’s clearly going to be a lot of share buybacks.”

Home Depot, which says its plans have nothing to do with the shifting tax landscape, is a special company for the president. The chain’s founder, Bernie Marcus, was among President Trump’s staunchest supporters during the 2016 campaign, once writing that “the fate of this nation” depended upon his election.

Now, the White House website features a Marcus opinion piece praising the tax cut as “the gift that keeps on giving.” As Congress debated the $1.5 trillion Republican tax plan, Home Depot last month issued a statement praising the plan for “improving the competitive position of companies so they can create more jobs.”

White House economists have said that more generous tax rules for corporations will lead to an increase in investment, which will in turn trigger more jobs and higher wages. In an October report, the Council of Economic Advisers bemoaned the “disappointing state of capital accumulation” and said underinvestment by big business explains disappointing wage growth in recent years.

Yet business investment by one measure has risen in four of the past five quarters, which economists say is a reminder that such big-ticket spending decisions often turn on more than the tax rate. Some outside experts also are skeptical that the tax changes will make much difference for companies already enjoying ­near-record corporate profits.

“I don’t anticipate much new investment,” said economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

To be sure, several corporations, including AT&T and CVS Health, have publicly touted plans to funnel tax savings into new spending on equipment or hiring. The telecom giant has vowed to boost its annual investment next year by $1 billion, about a 4 percent increase from last year’s $22 billion total.

Companies choose to buy their own shares, increase the dividend they pay shareholders, or pay off debt when they can’t earn a higher return by using the money some other way. With interest rates so low, letting cash sit idle doesn’t make sense.

“Companies have had so much cash, they could do ‘all of the above.’ They’re likely to continue to do so,” said Edward Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research.

Over the past five years, companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index spent $2.6 trillion acquiring their own shares. Information technology companies such as Google’s parent company Alphabet led the way with big banks such as Wells Fargo and Citigroup close behind. Dozens of companies so far this year, including marquee names such as Apple, JPMorgan Chase and Boeing, have spent big on their own stock.

As the stock market shattered records this year, the number of companies in the S&P 500 that have repurchased shares fell compared with last year.

With the corporate tax cut nearing final approval, Home Depot is far from alone in its buyback plans. Within hours of the retailer’s announcement Wednesday, T-Mobile US disclosed its own $1.5 billion plan to repurchase shares.

Such buybacks often lift stock prices, since they result in the same earnings being divided by a smaller number of shares. In Home Depot’s case, that will be good news for shareholders that include top management, a teachers pension plan and mutual funds run by Capital Group, Vanguard and BlackRock.

Home Depot also is increasing its investment, modernizing the front end of its top 40 stores and introducing more automation to its supply chain. Over the next three years, the company plans to spend $8.2 billion on capital improvements compared with more than $27 billion on share buybacks and dividends.

The retailer’s announcement, which included no major hiring, was just the latest indication that the $1.5 trillion tax cut may not have the intended effect upon corporate investment and the overall economy.

With extra cash freed up by the corporate tax cuts, buybacks could top the record value of $172 billion set in the third quarter of 2007. Around $129 billion was spent in the most recent three months, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

“I definitely think it’s going up,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

In a July survey of 302 companies, 65 percent said they planned to boost dividend payments, and 46 percent forecast share buybacks. A little more than one-third said they would invest the proceeds in new equipment, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

House and Senate conferees are working to reconcile competing tax cut packages in hopes of sending Trump a final bill before Christmas. The measure would cut the corporate income tax to 20 percent from the current 35 percent and allow companies to bring home roughly $2.6 trillion in cash parked overseas at sharply reduced tax rates.

Home Depot had $4.2 billion deposited in foreign accounts as of January, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

A spokesman for Home Depot said the tax legislation was not a consideration in the stock buyback or the unveiling of new financial targets for 2020, including a modest increase in capital spending.

“Tax reform benefit is not factored into any of this,” Stephen Holmes said.

The disappointing prospects for corporate investment echo prior tax-cutting episodes. In 2004, the U.S. granted companies a one-time opportunity to bring money home and pay a 5.25 percent tax rather than the full 35 percent corporate levy. Almost all of the repatriated funds were distributed to shareholders, according to a 2009 study by economists at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois.

“We’ve been down this road before and come up relatively empty-handed,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist for MUFG Union Bank. “You can give these companies more money, but if they don’t have any way to invest the money and get the return they want, they’re going to return the money to shareholders every single time.”

GustavBahler wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...

Home Depot just showed who will gain the most from corporate tax cuts

By David Lynch

With unemployment low and demand for new homes high, a company like Home Depot could be spending most of its surplus billions on raises for workers or the rollout of new stores.

Instead, the world’s largest home improvement chain this week announced that it is using $15 billion to buy back shares of its own stock, a move that will reward shareholders including chief executive Craig Menear and other top executives.

Even as lawmakers on Capitol Hill began hammering out the final version of a tax cut designed to give businesses more money to invest, Home Depot’s statement was a reminder that corporate America may have other plans for that cash.

Economy & Business Alerts
Breaking news about economic and business issues.
Several companies already have indicated that they will use excess funds to pay off debt, increase dividend payments or repurchase their own shares rather than create new jobs or raise wages. On Wall Street, the consensus is that workers will be last in line behind shareholders, creditors and investment bankers when the extra corporate cash is distributed.

“If they’ve got good growth prospects for something, they’re already throwing money at that. I don’t think the world changes because of lower taxes,” said Tim Ghriskey, who manages $1.5 billion in assets as chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management. “There’s clearly going to be a lot of share buybacks.”

Home Depot, which says its plans have nothing to do with the shifting tax landscape, is a special company for the president. The chain’s founder, Bernie Marcus, was among President Trump’s staunchest supporters during the 2016 campaign, once writing that “the fate of this nation” depended upon his election.

Now, the White House website features a Marcus opinion piece praising the tax cut as “the gift that keeps on giving.” As Congress debated the $1.5 trillion Republican tax plan, Home Depot last month issued a statement praising the plan for “improving the competitive position of companies so they can create more jobs.”

White House economists have said that more generous tax rules for corporations will lead to an increase in investment, which will in turn trigger more jobs and higher wages. In an October report, the Council of Economic Advisers bemoaned the “disappointing state of capital accumulation” and said underinvestment by big business explains disappointing wage growth in recent years.

Yet business investment by one measure has risen in four of the past five quarters, which economists say is a reminder that such big-ticket spending decisions often turn on more than the tax rate. Some outside experts also are skeptical that the tax changes will make much difference for companies already enjoying ­near-record corporate profits.

“I don’t anticipate much new investment,” said economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

To be sure, several corporations, including AT&T and CVS Health, have publicly touted plans to funnel tax savings into new spending on equipment or hiring. The telecom giant has vowed to boost its annual investment next year by $1 billion, about a 4 percent increase from last year’s $22 billion total.

Companies choose to buy their own shares, increase the dividend they pay shareholders, or pay off debt when they can’t earn a higher return by using the money some other way. With interest rates so low, letting cash sit idle doesn’t make sense.

“Companies have had so much cash, they could do ‘all of the above.’ They’re likely to continue to do so,” said Edward Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research.

Over the past five years, companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index spent $2.6 trillion acquiring their own shares. Information technology companies such as Google’s parent company Alphabet led the way with big banks such as Wells Fargo and Citigroup close behind. Dozens of companies so far this year, including marquee names such as Apple, JPMorgan Chase and Boeing, have spent big on their own stock.

As the stock market shattered records this year, the number of companies in the S&P 500 that have repurchased shares fell compared with last year.

With the corporate tax cut nearing final approval, Home Depot is far from alone in its buyback plans. Within hours of the retailer’s announcement Wednesday, T-Mobile US disclosed its own $1.5 billion plan to repurchase shares.

Such buybacks often lift stock prices, since they result in the same earnings being divided by a smaller number of shares. In Home Depot’s case, that will be good news for shareholders that include top management, a teachers pension plan and mutual funds run by Capital Group, Vanguard and BlackRock.

Home Depot also is increasing its investment, modernizing the front end of its top 40 stores and introducing more automation to its supply chain. Over the next three years, the company plans to spend $8.2 billion on capital improvements compared with more than $27 billion on share buybacks and dividends.

The retailer’s announcement, which included no major hiring, was just the latest indication that the $1.5 trillion tax cut may not have the intended effect upon corporate investment and the overall economy.

With extra cash freed up by the corporate tax cuts, buybacks could top the record value of $172 billion set in the third quarter of 2007. Around $129 billion was spent in the most recent three months, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

“I definitely think it’s going up,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

In a July survey of 302 companies, 65 percent said they planned to boost dividend payments, and 46 percent forecast share buybacks. A little more than one-third said they would invest the proceeds in new equipment, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

House and Senate conferees are working to reconcile competing tax cut packages in hopes of sending Trump a final bill before Christmas. The measure would cut the corporate income tax to 20 percent from the current 35 percent and allow companies to bring home roughly $2.6 trillion in cash parked overseas at sharply reduced tax rates.

Home Depot had $4.2 billion deposited in foreign accounts as of January, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

A spokesman for Home Depot said the tax legislation was not a consideration in the stock buyback or the unveiling of new financial targets for 2020, including a modest increase in capital spending.

“Tax reform benefit is not factored into any of this,” Stephen Holmes said.

The disappointing prospects for corporate investment echo prior tax-cutting episodes. In 2004, the U.S. granted companies a one-time opportunity to bring money home and pay a 5.25 percent tax rather than the full 35 percent corporate levy. Almost all of the repatriated funds were distributed to shareholders, according to a 2009 study by economists at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois.

“We’ve been down this road before and come up relatively empty-handed,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist for MUFG Union Bank. “You can give these companies more money, but if they don’t have any way to invest the money and get the return they want, they’re going to return the money to shareholders every single time.”

This article lists out everything I have been saying for ever

Stock buybacks will go up
Wages won't be meaningfully impacted
Companies already have a ton of money available to invest in growth, this won't make a difference
And the supporters of the GOP keep using this as an excuse to further accumulate wealth for themselves

I am in agreement with whoever wrote this

meloshouldgo wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...

Home Depot just showed who will gain the most from corporate tax cuts

By David Lynch

With unemployment low and demand for new homes high, a company like Home Depot could be spending most of its surplus billions on raises for workers or the rollout of new stores.

Instead, the world’s largest home improvement chain this week announced that it is using $15 billion to buy back shares of its own stock, a move that will reward shareholders including chief executive Craig Menear and other top executives.

Even as lawmakers on Capitol Hill began hammering out the final version of a tax cut designed to give businesses more money to invest, Home Depot’s statement was a reminder that corporate America may have other plans for that cash.

Economy & Business Alerts
Breaking news about economic and business issues.
Several companies already have indicated that they will use excess funds to pay off debt, increase dividend payments or repurchase their own shares rather than create new jobs or raise wages. On Wall Street, the consensus is that workers will be last in line behind shareholders, creditors and investment bankers when the extra corporate cash is distributed.

“If they’ve got good growth prospects for something, they’re already throwing money at that. I don’t think the world changes because of lower taxes,” said Tim Ghriskey, who manages $1.5 billion in assets as chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management. “There’s clearly going to be a lot of share buybacks.”

Home Depot, which says its plans have nothing to do with the shifting tax landscape, is a special company for the president. The chain’s founder, Bernie Marcus, was among President Trump’s staunchest supporters during the 2016 campaign, once writing that “the fate of this nation” depended upon his election.

Now, the White House website features a Marcus opinion piece praising the tax cut as “the gift that keeps on giving.” As Congress debated the $1.5 trillion Republican tax plan, Home Depot last month issued a statement praising the plan for “improving the competitive position of companies so they can create more jobs.”

White House economists have said that more generous tax rules for corporations will lead to an increase in investment, which will in turn trigger more jobs and higher wages. In an October report, the Council of Economic Advisers bemoaned the “disappointing state of capital accumulation” and said underinvestment by big business explains disappointing wage growth in recent years.

Yet business investment by one measure has risen in four of the past five quarters, which economists say is a reminder that such big-ticket spending decisions often turn on more than the tax rate. Some outside experts also are skeptical that the tax changes will make much difference for companies already enjoying ­near-record corporate profits.

“I don’t anticipate much new investment,” said economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

To be sure, several corporations, including AT&T and CVS Health, have publicly touted plans to funnel tax savings into new spending on equipment or hiring. The telecom giant has vowed to boost its annual investment next year by $1 billion, about a 4 percent increase from last year’s $22 billion total.

Companies choose to buy their own shares, increase the dividend they pay shareholders, or pay off debt when they can’t earn a higher return by using the money some other way. With interest rates so low, letting cash sit idle doesn’t make sense.

“Companies have had so much cash, they could do ‘all of the above.’ They’re likely to continue to do so,” said Edward Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research.

Over the past five years, companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index spent $2.6 trillion acquiring their own shares. Information technology companies such as Google’s parent company Alphabet led the way with big banks such as Wells Fargo and Citigroup close behind. Dozens of companies so far this year, including marquee names such as Apple, JPMorgan Chase and Boeing, have spent big on their own stock.

As the stock market shattered records this year, the number of companies in the S&P 500 that have repurchased shares fell compared with last year.

With the corporate tax cut nearing final approval, Home Depot is far from alone in its buyback plans. Within hours of the retailer’s announcement Wednesday, T-Mobile US disclosed its own $1.5 billion plan to repurchase shares.

Such buybacks often lift stock prices, since they result in the same earnings being divided by a smaller number of shares. In Home Depot’s case, that will be good news for shareholders that include top management, a teachers pension plan and mutual funds run by Capital Group, Vanguard and BlackRock.

Home Depot also is increasing its investment, modernizing the front end of its top 40 stores and introducing more automation to its supply chain. Over the next three years, the company plans to spend $8.2 billion on capital improvements compared with more than $27 billion on share buybacks and dividends.

The retailer’s announcement, which included no major hiring, was just the latest indication that the $1.5 trillion tax cut may not have the intended effect upon corporate investment and the overall economy.

With extra cash freed up by the corporate tax cuts, buybacks could top the record value of $172 billion set in the third quarter of 2007. Around $129 billion was spent in the most recent three months, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

“I definitely think it’s going up,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

In a July survey of 302 companies, 65 percent said they planned to boost dividend payments, and 46 percent forecast share buybacks. A little more than one-third said they would invest the proceeds in new equipment, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

House and Senate conferees are working to reconcile competing tax cut packages in hopes of sending Trump a final bill before Christmas. The measure would cut the corporate income tax to 20 percent from the current 35 percent and allow companies to bring home roughly $2.6 trillion in cash parked overseas at sharply reduced tax rates.

Home Depot had $4.2 billion deposited in foreign accounts as of January, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

A spokesman for Home Depot said the tax legislation was not a consideration in the stock buyback or the unveiling of new financial targets for 2020, including a modest increase in capital spending.

“Tax reform benefit is not factored into any of this,” Stephen Holmes said.

The disappointing prospects for corporate investment echo prior tax-cutting episodes. In 2004, the U.S. granted companies a one-time opportunity to bring money home and pay a 5.25 percent tax rather than the full 35 percent corporate levy. Almost all of the repatriated funds were distributed to shareholders, according to a 2009 study by economists at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois.

“We’ve been down this road before and come up relatively empty-handed,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist for MUFG Union Bank. “You can give these companies more money, but if they don’t have any way to invest the money and get the return they want, they’re going to return the money to shareholders every single time.”

This article lists out everything I have been saying for ever

Stock buybacks will go up
Wages won't be meaningfully impacted
Companies already have a ton of money available to invest in growth, this won't make a difference
And the supporters of the GOP keep using this as an excuse to further accumulate wealth for themselves

I am in agreement with whoever wrote this

Farther accumulating the wealth is very good.
This is the only way to make good use of it.
And I see it is used efficiently enough to move human civilization forward.
If we have more wealth in disposal of Masks, Jobs, Brins, and other like them, we will be better off.
As Russian poet and bard Visockiy wrote:
"I do not like Coliseums and Circus,
This is were millions are broken by dollar,
And even if we are for great disturbances,
I will never be in love with this"

arkrud wrote:Farther accumulating the wealth is very good.
This is the only way to make good use of it.
And I see it is used efficiently enough to move human civilization forward.
If we have more wealth in disposal of Masks, Jobs, Brins, and other like them, we will be better off.
As Russian poet and bard Visockiy wrote:
"I do not like Coliseums and Circus,
This is were millions are broken by dollar,
And even if we are for great disturbances,
I will never be in love with this"

The answer to this problem was simple but Powerful Wealthy individuals have bought the Government and fixed the rules so that most of the money goes to the top. That's not a good thing. There's no reason why this country hasn't taken on a massive project of rebuilding it's Infrastructure and Education so that the country could be ready for the future. The Rich have been all too happy to allow this country to ROT from the inside out. That is not a good thing.

This is the richest country in the world and yet we have HORRIBLE schools, roads, bridges, airports, rail and ports. WHY???

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:Farther accumulating the wealth is very good.
This is the only way to make good use of it.
And I see it is used efficiently enough to move human civilization forward.
If we have more wealth in disposal of Masks, Jobs, Brins, and other like them, we will be better off.
As Russian poet and bard Visockiy wrote:
"I do not like Coliseums and Circus,
This is were millions are broken by dollar,
And even if we are for great disturbances,
I will never be in love with this"

Here's the thing, Corporations are at the point where they have so much money they don't know what to do with it. They aren't creating more jobs or paying more. The accumulation of more and more wealth isn't a good thing at a certain point.

The answer to this problem was simple but Powerful Wealthy individuals have bought the Government and fixed the rules so that most of the money goes to the top. That's not a good thing. There's no reason why this country hasn't taken on a massive project of rebuilding it's Infrastructure and Education so that the country could be ready for the future. The Rich have been all too happy to allow this country to ROT from the inside out. That is not a good thing.

This is the richest country in the world and yet we have HORRIBLE schools, roads, bridges, airports, rail and ports. WHY???

In the world of Arkrud, there's no need to create jobs, the poor deserve to be poor because they don't work hard and the rich should continue to accumulate wealth because it "moves civilization forward".

meloshouldgo wrote:

nixluva wrote:

arkrud wrote:Farther accumulating the wealth is very good.
This is the only way to make good use of it.
And I see it is used efficiently enough to move human civilization forward.
If we have more wealth in disposal of Masks, Jobs, Brins, and other like them, we will be better off.
As Russian poet and bard Visockiy wrote:
"I do not like Coliseums and Circus,
This is were millions are broken by dollar,
And even if we are for great disturbances,
I will never be in love with this"

Here's the thing, Corporations are at the point where they have so much money they don't know what to do with it. They aren't creating more jobs or paying more. The accumulation of more and more wealth isn't a good thing at a certain point.

The answer to this problem was simple but Powerful Wealthy individuals have bought the Government and fixed the rules so that most of the money goes to the top. That's not a good thing. There's no reason why this country hasn't taken on a massive project of rebuilding it's Infrastructure and Education so that the country could be ready for the future. The Rich have been all too happy to allow this country to ROT from the inside out. That is not a good thing.

This is the richest country in the world and yet we have HORRIBLE schools, roads, bridges, airports, rail and ports. WHY???

In the world of Arkrud, there's no need to create jobs, the poor deserve to be poor because they don't work hard and the rich should continue to accumulate wealth because it "moves civilization forward".

SMDH

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