• LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This basically eliminates almost all taxes on the rich, burdens middle and lower class with higher prices, and blows up budget deficit.

    So much for FiScAL ReSPonSibiLiTY

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Yeah, are you being fiscally responsible, chump? How much are you making? Jeff over here needs another yacht!

    • novibe@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      The real rich don’t pay any income tax tho? Not sure what you mean. Sure the high-income developers and engineers and lawyers etc. would become a richer, but they are not the rich, are they? The owners of the businesses they work at are. And they don’t pay income taxes.

  • Zier@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    This freak lost a fucking Casino. The place where people just give you their money. A CASINO!!! He is an idiot and the worst “business man”. Con man looking for a new con.

    • Mikelius@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Not a casino. Multiple ones. Because the dumb fuck decided the best way to run resorts was to have them compete and under cut each other.

        • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Fuckwit is my go to. Or “Too stupid to breathe.” Or bring out some Linus Torvalds, but honestly Trump doesn’t deserve to be graced by that mans insults, as awesome as they are from a “JFC dude, that is going way too far”, except Trump would actually deserve them unlike the poor kernel maintainers.

    • btaf45@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Are you suggesting that Convicted Felon and Sex Offender Treason Trump is not a very stable genius?

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Tarrifs on imports?

    So basically jacking up prices on all the things made overseas that are cheapest to buy in the US. That affects everyone, especially the poorer people that tend to shop places where that cheap imported stuff is sold because it’s a bigger percentage of their income. It’s gonna affect the middle class the most because they’re probably the biggest consumers. The rich DGAF because well, they’re rich.

    Quickest way to put even more people below the poverty line.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      things made overseas that are cheapest to buy in the US

      Things that are made overseas because American business owners outsourced the manufacturing jobs to the countries with the cheapest labour (and also the least worker protections)?

        • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          What? No, this is the same exact discussion… that is literally one of the primary purposes of tariffs: to give an advantage to local producers.

          • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I think you misunderstand, friend. The ship has already sailed overseas and there aren’t enough “local” producers to make up for the rise in costs faced by the people who shop where the cheap imported goods are and the middle class that consumes the most.

            The only advantage is to the government collecting the tariffs on the poor and middle class. Like I said, the rich won’t care.

            • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Yes… that’s literally the point? Tariffs both support existing local producers and are an incentive to move production local.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        It’s becoming a problem for Americans because labor leverage abroad (particularly in China and India) have been improving as labor demand eclipses supply.

        African and Latin American states (particularly Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa) were supposed to be the next places to extract labor, but they keep going Woke, with socialist state governments making demands on exports that Western states don’t want to surrender.

        Imperials are running out of countries to exploit.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          You’re kinda making the imperials sound good there, if every time they move into a country they start running out of poor people a generation later

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      That affects everyone, especially the poorer people

      That’s a consequence of outsourcing as much as anything. Tariffs don’t have to mean making retail goods unaffordable for the bulk of the population. When you have domestic industry with room to grow, insourcing your demand can simply mean building out more capital and consuming more labor at home.

      But insourcing also means boosting wages and incentivizing immigration, things conservatives hate.

      So Trump’s pitch ultimately amounts to giving domestic producers with no intention of boosting production an opportunity to price gouge their clients with the blessing of the state.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Your assumption that things become unaffordable is incorrect, they just cost more.

        Prove that wages get boosted. That flies in the face of corporate methodology to cheapen wages and benefits along with product quality in the service of quarterly reports and profits.

        Price gouging is already happening. It doesn’t require trump’s ok to allow it.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Prove that wages get boosted.

          Wages rise when demand for labor exceeds supply. That’s Econ 101.

          That flies in the face of corporate methodology to cheapen wages and benefits along with product quality in the service of quarterly reports and profits.

          Wages are kept low by artificially stunting labor demand. That happens either by under-investing in new capital or cartelizing the hiring process.

          Price gouging is already happening.

          Gouging involves monopolizing supply of commodities. If we increase the supply of capital and the number of hiring firms, that monopolization becomes more difficult.

          But if we simply freeze out imports with trade laws, the existing firms can monopolize domestic supply more easily.

          • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            While I mostly agree with you, econ101 is a pretty poor argument; early econ courses (like intro to micro and macro) are notoriously not grounded in reality.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              econ101 is a pretty poor argument;

              You can argue about the goals of economic policy, but that’s very different from arguing the effects.

              What is the response to rising labor demand? Do you

              • Independently raise wages to the bid price?

              Or

              • Form a cartel to fix wages below the clearing floor?

              The former is the “natural” response you learn about in 101, assuming a naive approach to the problem. The latter is what you learn works best in 201, when your goal is profit maximization.

          • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            None of your replies have any basis other than broad opinion. It’s devoid of manufacturing ability, profiteering, or the corporate price gouging we already experience.

            You just wave a magic wand and suddenly the US can defray the manufacturing deficit and will suddenly throw money at the workforce. Must be a nice imaginary world you live in.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Rich people have enough money that a small percent in price increase doesn’t affect them the way it affects a “normal” person. If you make millions vs 100k/yr combined income it does that the same.

        It’s not about quality, it’s about what you’re being sold.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          But right now the cheap stuff is made overseas like in Asia. The expanse stuff is built in Europe or the US. Tariffs would likely be harsher on Asia products. So expensive stuff might not get much more expensive at all. The cheap stuff would get much more expensive.

          Meaning there’d be a bigger cost percentage increase for the people who already can’t afford it. A double whammy.

          • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Tariffs would likely be harsher on Asia products. So expensive stuff might not get much more expensive at all. The cheap stuff would get much more expensive.

            Meaning there’d be a bigger cost percentage increase for the people who already can’t afford it. A double whammy.

            That’s pretty much what I said.

  • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Income tax is such a bitch to deal with. I used to support the idea of replacing it with GST/VAT because then I’d not have to deal with it. But then someone pointed out that disproportionately benefits the rich (who mostly just hold wealth rather than spend it) and disadvantages the poor (who cannot avoid paying for things).

    So fuck it. Make it all income tax and get rid of the others! :P

    (In before this is also a bad idea somehow)

    • Kalkaline @leminal.space
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      5 months ago

      It should be a moderately progressive income tax. That is to say the lowest earning bracket should pay nothing as a percentage of their income, the next bracket should pay a little bit, the next bracket a little higher % of their income, all the way up to billionaires who should be taxed out of billionaire status. I can certainly afford to pay a higher % of my income to taxes than someone who isn’t sure where their next meal is coming from, but my bosses and their bosses, and the people who own the building should be paying way more on their income than me. Also we need to get rid of the shenanigans that allows the ultra wealthy to avoid income tax altogether through loans and what not.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        For clarity, say Kalkaline earns 100k a year. Ideally the billionaires would bring home exactly the same on their first 100k as Kalkaline does.

        Marginal tax rate means the higher tax brackets only tax you in the money made above a certain amount. And it’s the same for the next higher up tax bracket, which doesn’t apply to any lower money.

        If you’re not getting welfare, there is no “next tax bracket” that’s going to make you bring home less when earning more. That’s not a thing.

        If you get a bonus, that might be taxed withheld at 50% because payroll is too lazy to figure out your taxes. You get the remainder back when you file your taxes. (Note this may mean you owe $200 at the end of the year instead of owing $1000. That still counts as you “getting” $800.)

        We could put an 80% marginal tax rate on incomes above a billion dollars, and it wouldn’t really touch someone who was only bringing home 1,030 million dollars a year.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          If you get a bonus, that might be taxed withheld at 50% because payroll is too lazy to figure out your taxes. You get the remainder back when you file your taxes. (Note this may mean you owe $200 at the end of the year instead of owing $1000. That still counts as you “getting” $800.)

          One very slight correction in bold.

      • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’d prefer a 70% tax on billionaires, but I’d settle for 50% for anything above 5million. Take Elon for example, the guy makes an estimated $50,000USD per minute. Yes folks, the guy makes more per minute than the average American does in a year.

        prove to me that billionaires should exist. Tax them accordingly.

      • toffi@feddit.de
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        5 months ago

        Progressive tax brackets make things complicated, in myt opinion. I always like the idea of a large tax free bracket and then taxing. 30-40% for the rest. No tax deduction, everybody has to pay up. You could also go for fixed tax brackets like 15%, 25% and 35% and also no tax deductions.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          5 months ago

          The problem is that tax deductions/credits are a useful tool for guiding certain activity. We want people to put up solar panels, so we give a tax credit for that.

          The other argument for a progressive system is using money for necessities instead of luxuries or investment. Your first $40k or $50k or so is spent on the basic cost of living. After that, you’re using increasing amounts for things you don’t strictly need. So you want to tax that first $50k or so very little, perhaps none at all, and then ramp it up on the people who are just spending money on fast cars or dumping it into SPY or whatever.

          There’s a ton of twisty little ways the tax system makes everything fair-ish. Turns out, running a country of 330M people and an annual GDP of $25T is complicated. It’s not always a fair system, but it’s more fair than it looks at first glance.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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      5 months ago

      Taxes usually start out simple, since that appeals to people. Then over time they get more complicated as people discover more and more edge cases to exploit.

      If you make it all income tax, well, what counts as “income”? Elon Musk just got “paid” $46 billion worth of stock in Tesla, for example. But it’s not actually 46 billion dollars. It’s a share in ownership of a company. Those shares can’t actually be sold for 46 billion dollars. Trying to sell them would cause their price to drop. He can’t actually sell them at all right away, for that matter - they’re restricted stock. He has to hold on to them for a while, as incentive to keep doing a good job as CEO.

      So if he keeps doing a good job as CEO and the stock goes up in value by 10 billion dollars, was that rise in value income? What if it goes down by 10 billion instead?

      This stuff is inherently complicated. I’m not sure that any simple tax system is going to work.

      • Dem Bosain@midwest.social
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        5 months ago

        Elon Musk just got “paid” $46 billion worth of stock in Tesla.

        He should have to pay income tax on the value of the stock on the day he “took possession” of it.

        In 3 years, he says something on Twitter to pump the stock, and dumps a lot of it. He should have to pay tax (capital gains?) on the additional value of the stock that he sells.

        If the value goes down and he sells it, it’s a deduction.

      • d00phy@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I don’t know if this isn’t already a thing, but if he uses that stock as collateral to overpay for another social media company, or some other stupid flex, he should be taxed on that valuation with no deductions whatsoever.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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          5 months ago

          And as I suspected would be the case, some other folks have responded to my comment with a bunch of additional “simple” suggestions for what to do in this case. Which have hidden exceptions of their own, which will have unexpected impacts and loopholes, which will then elicit further “simple” suggestions for how to fix them, and before you know it we’ve got a complex tax code again.

          There’s an old quote of unclear providence that I think applies here, “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      No that’s about right. The big problem we have right now is we’ve lost the ability to effectively tax people who don’t live on an “income”. So we need a second system for people who are insanely wealthy.

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Be mad that income tax is unnecessarily difficult to deal with. As has been pointed out by others online a lot recently, the US makes personal income taxes hard, where other countries you can fill it out in minutes if you have no deductions, and less than an hour if you do (and have kept good records).

      No one likes paying taxes (usually) but since the process is so painless I don’t hear people complaining about income tax that much (outside of the right-wing media in my country, Australia)

  • Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    Jesus Christ, we learned that fixing the economy via tariffs was bad in 1930. Like holy shit, tariffs are nearly universally agree by every field of economics to be shitty for citizens, businesses, and then the country. It makes no one inside want to buy anything but the simple basics, even with the basics now costing much much more.

    I am not a “free trade” person, but this is not how you “Make America Great Again”. Even Ronald Reagan and Dubya didn’t do tariffs as a replacement for other things.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Yes, but Trump has a “relationship with MIT” and a “very good brain” so what would those economists know?

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Do you know the real reason why he said he had a relationship with MIT? Because his uncle, John Trump, was a professor there.

          I have a cousin who was prominent physicist at a prestigious university. Meanwhile, I dropped out of college. I wouldn’t even dream of suggesting I had any sort of understanding of physics because of my cousin. In fact, he has something named after him and he once tried to explain it to me and I couldn’t understand what the hell he was talking about.

  • ZetaLightning94@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    So become 100% dependent on foreign trade… thats a stupid thing to do when conflict is potentially right around the corner

    • Bahalex@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      No, poor people already pay for the rich. The rich can afford an accountant to find as many loopholes and deductions as possible. The really rich don’t have an “income” and live of capital gains which is already under taxed.

      This is just a hope people remember the “no income tax” part and forget about the “raise import tariffs” part when they’re at the ballot.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Makes sense that profits went up, since this graph is not inflation adjusted

      • 3volver@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That’s probably why he won’t win again. It would be amazing to have a convicted felon as president, he’d go from being a distraction to being the thing that causes serious unrest.

          • 3volver@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Okay so I’ll say he will win in 2024 so then I’ll be wrong as well. It would be crazy if he won as a convicted felon, after being impeached twice, after losing in 2020 by a landslide.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              He did not lose in 2020 by a landslide. That’s just not true.

              Biden won the election with 306 electoral votes and 51.3% of the national popular vote, compared to Trump’s 232 electoral votes and 46.9% of the popular vote.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_elections

              So suggesting he has no chance of winning when he came that close four years ago and he’s likely not lost a huge number of fans is a little premature.

              • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Numbers are even worse when you consider swing states. AZ, GA, and PA swung Biden’s away by a net 40,000 votes. Razor thin margins, for any Dem candidate.

                People fixate on the popular vote, but California going Blue by an extra million votes doesn’t change anything

                • btaf45@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Convicted Felon and Sex Offender Treason Trump did however lose the popular vote in a landslide and the electoral vote in a landslide.

            • RunningInRVA@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I agree with the Squid. We should all be worried. He came ridiculously close last time. Remember the electoral college is not helping. It was basically thousands of votes in 2020 that saved us.

            • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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              5 months ago

              Trump is currently favored in polls and in betting markets. Few people care about the convictions. People who would vote for him definitely don’t care about impeachments. The far-right has a very effective and expansive propaganda machine (old media, alternative media, and social media) that can counter any negative (“fake”) news. Biden is a very weak candidate because of his physical and mental health, and the Democrats are ineffective at “controlling the narrative” compared to the Republicans. I think it’ll probably be a close election, and if I was forced to bet, I’d bet on Trump winning.

          • 3volver@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Yea, amazing wasn’t the right word choice. Probably should have used “absurd”, “ridiculous” or “bizarre” instead.

            • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Amazing - causing great surprise or wonder; astonishing

              Nah you were all good imo lmao people just attribute amazing to positivity

  • CodeInvasion@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Someone did the math and realized we would need a 130% tariff on all goods to replace current income tax revenue.

    People’s number one concern is inflation. If that tariff is created we will see 100% inflation over night!

    • btaf45@lemmy.world
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      Someone did the math and realized we would need a 130% tariff on all goods to replace current income tax revenue.

      And probably didn’t take into account that actually the tariff would need to be even higher since imports would drop drastically from the current amount.