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Where are the tax cuts?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Ubiquitin, Feb 8, 2017.

  1. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    I'd be surprised if this doesn't get 51 votes.
     
  2. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    Yeah, percentage wise, it seems to hurt the most for middle class or upper-middle class people living in expensive cities who pay a lot of local taxes. But if you're in an expensive city and in the upper 1% or so, happy happy days for you.

    This tax proposal would (will?) hurt me and Mrs. B-Bob, a lot. It would be nice to just once vote in the interest of my pocket book, and it looks like that'll be the case in 2018. My wallet, my conscience, my stance on using objective truth, my stance on foreign policy -- it's all going to point directly against one party, stem to stern.
     
  3. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Contributing Member

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    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/18/chipotle-downgraded-employee-pay.html

    Let this be a lesson for those that say if the Trump admin is able to cut corporate taxes, that if you think that money will go back into higher wages, you are dead wrong.

    With corporations, they don't view labor as an investment. Its a fixed cost and part of a formula to help maximize profit going to the SHAREHOLDERS.
     
  4. SamFisher

    SamFisher Contributing Member

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    It is kind of amazing how many people - mostly those who are hiring for low wage jobs - seem to think we are living in a perpetual state of 2009, where unemployment is 13% and we are in a severe depression. Labor is a market. Laborers - even low wage ones - can set their own price.

    THe minimum wage is too low to live on. That's what happens when you don't adjust it for inflation for decades. If you offer low wages for what is shitty work with few benefits in a tight labor market - you will have difficulty hiring workers.

    Solutions to this: Offer better work, more benefits, higher pay. It's that simple

    It's kind of funny, minimum wage is so low and out of whack with the actual cost of living now it has the opposite effect of what its intent was. Instead of raising the floor for what worker's would receive otherwise, it instead creates a misconception among employers as to what the cost of labor is.

    It is not $7.25 an hour anymore, to use that as your baseline in most places is going to severely limit your ability to hire. If you had a budget to buy a house of $500,000 but most houses in the city you want to live in cost $1,000,000 - you should either increase your budget, or look somewhere else.
     
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  5. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Contributing Member

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    Great points and you got me thinking about how it’s amazing to me how counterintuitive two particular poltical agenda points are to each other on this issue within the Republican Party and their voters.

    If you hear most people from the right use racial innuendo it’s usually when they start talking about so-called “Government Handouts”. They talk about the times they see someone (hints that they are black or Mexican of course) buying lobster tails with food stamps at the grocery story and they go on a rant about “my hard working taxes paying for your lobster yada yada.. etc”. As we are all from the south here in Tx (expect for Russian Legend up there in Siberia) I assume we have all heard that a lot unless you don’t know white conservatives for some reason.

    That’s one conservative poltical talking point.

    Then there is the minimum wage talking points ... which for conservatives I can never get my head around. Why are they so against raising it?... well... probably because they don’t understand how it intertwines with the first point. Law makers on the right are adamant about corporate profits so much that they allow these large companies to keep wages low and subsidize the low income workers through welfare, etc. because they know our minimum wage is well below living standards and if they can either raise the wages, use subsidies so corporation can keep their profits, or watch half the country slip into bankruptcy and poverty.

    The problem isn’t hand outs. The problem is insistence on gifting maximum profits to companies like Walmart at the expense of the tax payers which subsidize Wal Mart’s work force while the share holders make billions with low cost of workers and an unregulated enviroment that pretty allows for monopolization if you’re big enough to put the leverage on the people you do business with. And Wal Mart isn’t alone. I got my start in corporate America working for one of the globes worst monopoly offenders that the US allows to get away with pretty much anything and pay their employees garbage.

    It’s an economic system that takes the worst parts of socialism, and the worst parts of an oligarchy and try’s to pass it off at capitalism. And Republican voters should be smarter than that and the both sides should wake up and see past the stupid partisanship of the minimum wage talking points. Even the racist red neck hates the low minimum wage, he’s just too stupid to know it yet.
     
    #145 dobro1229, Oct 19, 2017
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2017
    B-Bob, Phillyrocket and SamFisher like this.
  6. sugrlndkid

    sugrlndkid Member

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  7. dmoneybangbang

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    And there's a reason why the GOP dubbed it Obamacare..... ACA was much more well received by conservatives.

    It's a trust issue, they trust that Bernie won't sell them out to the rich like Trump would.
     
  8. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    Wow, so are you saying that in a nation of 300 million, you can find a few uninformed or not-quick-witted people of any particular persuasion and make a 3-minute video of them saying basically anything conceivable? Amazeballs.

    Unfortunately, it's not very convincing to anyone but your closest circle of those who carry the fetid GOP water you want to force-feed to the rest of us. Again, I'm paying attention, and under the current proposal, my family's taxes go up, a lot, under the current proposal. Would that be to support Americans less fortunate than my family? Actually no. It would go to enriching people like Two Scoops and his rich cabinet. Color me still uninterested in that proposal.
     
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  9. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    Force-feeding of tax increase (for many of us) one step closer, all to further enrich the wealthiest Americans.

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/26/politics/house-budget-vote-tax-reform/index.html

    Only 20 brave House Republicans stood against this massive increase in the deficit and supporting the current plan to end SALT, a major deduction used by 1/3 of all tax filers.

    Can't believe people will stand for this, but I guess they will, as long as Fox News tells them it's a "cut".
     
    FranchiseBlade likes this.
  10. FranchiseBlade

    FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
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    Thanks for pointing this out. I wasn't actually aware of this. It is so ludicrous. I think Fox news is part of it, but it goes into the old labels for each party. Republicans are the party of cutting taxes and Democrats are the party of raising taxes. Those labels are attached whether or not they are actually accurate. With that and some media outlets pumping out the party line, folks will believe whatever they are told to believe.
     
  11. hooroo

    hooroo Member

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    lol, corporations see shareholders as annoyances. the money goes to to the top of the food chain, ie ceo.
     
  12. Commodore

    Commodore Contributing Member

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    The state and local tax deduction creates a nasty incentive for states to raise taxes, because other states' citizens foot the bill via the deduction (i.e I don't mind my state raising taxes cause I'll just write it off and the feds will pay for it).

    Citizens of low tax states transferring wealth to citizens of high tax states.

    Deductions in general are bad, as they are a way to distort markets and control people's behavior.

    Just keep rates very low so the amount owed is effectively the same, no matter how you live your life, or what state you live in.
     
  13. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    I think it's dishonest to even suggest that every dollar taxed from a person locally or by state is exactly $1 that they then receive in federal tax relief. You are correct that the SALT rule (obviously) keeps money away from the (evil, right?) federal government, but it's at the benefit of highly taxed citizens. The dishonest part is that, NO, we highly-taxed folks don't say "oh, sure, raise my local taxes b/c I will get dollar for dollar relief on fed taxes." That's not how it works.

    If a person in a blue state pays a $20,000 tax bill, they do not pay $20,000 less to the feds. They deduct the $20k and save on the order of $6k on federal taxes. So when a state or county raises our taxes $2k, we don't shrug. We say "holy ****. The $600 relief on federal taxes does not pay for this extra $2k I'm going to owe now. Crap."

    Basically, you want to penalize people for living in states with high taxes: pay our $20,000 to our local government and then pay an extra $6,000 in federal tax on money we never saw in the first place due to our local taxes.

    I mean: I'm happy this won't affect you. But the system has deep roots and people have planned their lives based on the rules. To change the rules this drastically is, in my biased view, a little cruel. If it affected you drastically, I'm sure you would agree. If blue staters were writing this to hurt red staters, you'd have a different take.

    I'm especially pissed because I'm not benefitting people less fortunate than me. I will be paying more to benefit ****ing Warren Buffet and our fearless imbecile in chief. That's the obvious, data-backed bottom line, and I think it's stupid. Wealth imbalance is a problem, not a deity.

    EDIT: Also, @Commodore , your analysis of robbing from the federal government to benefit local government overlooks a key stat: blue states give more than they get from the federal government. The actual data shows that, on average, red states are benefitting federally from the great productivity of blue states. (And that's fine, by itself, but it adds an interesting context to the idea of highly-taxed citizens in a place like California needing to pay even more to the feds.)
     
    #153 B-Bob, Oct 26, 2017
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2017
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  14. calurker

    calurker Contributing Member

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    Such as?
     
  15. Cohete Rojo

    Cohete Rojo Contributing Member

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    Individuals should not be able to skirt national tax payments via deducations of state and local taxes. We here in Texas have no recourse (no say) in how California or New York legislates, and so therefore is very unfair to allow individuals from such states to not pay their fair share.

    Cuomo and Brown need to shut up.
     
  16. Air Langhi

    Air Langhi Contributing Member

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    Texas has high property taxes especially if you own a decent house which you won't be able to deduct anymore. So this plan will screw us too.
     
  17. Ubiquitin

    Ubiquitin Contributing Member
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    It also nonsense. California and New York pay more than they take out and even with state deductions pay similar per capita as Texas.
     
  18. Ubiquitin

    Ubiquitin Contributing Member
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    Whoever is putting out these talking points for the GOP tax plan are just lying at this point. Corporations will pay as little as the market allows for their workers. Only shareholders will see any tangible benefit of corporations having a lower tax burden. And the GOP wants to push out the middle class worker from the market by nerfing the 401k.

    Or this idea that states and cities with income taxes are somehow cheating the system because those taxes paid are deducted from the taxable income.

    The GOP is going to be for a rude awakening when they lose the 2018 election because the wealthy who funded all these GOP candidates campaigns are going realize their big investment was a bust. This tax reform is another **** burger from a group of lawmakers with no morals.
     
  19. Cohete Rojo

    Cohete Rojo Contributing Member

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    Good. It is about time this kind of nonsense ends.
     
  20. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    So that the additional tax pays for a fraction of the massive tax cut for the very top. The rest would need to be loans from China and elsewhere. Very good. #maga
     

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