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Comment by radley | Hacker News Reader

It's not really targeted at tech, insomuch as at Democrats.

Everyone assumed it was a traditional accounting hack. But given the timing and the reinitialization, it's clearly political, not economic.

The code is a strategic time-bomb designed to cause a high-profile economic downturn during a presidential election cycle, specifically when the following president is a Democrat and Republicans have a house majority.

It was used to harm Biden's economy, and it will happen again in 2030 if the next president is a Democrat. While deferred, it will be spun as a major Trump "economic achievement" for the midterms, because companies will be able to afford to hire again.

The tech industry is merely high-profile fodder for extreme politics. It really is that petty.

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The Democrats had control of the presidency and the house in 2022 when this provision first went into effect but had 2 fewer senators (1 fewer if you count the tie-breaking VP). Why didn't they try to change it? Is there some reason a change in the tax code like this can't be modified or repealed once its in place?

They tried. They had Senate spoilers.

As a progressive, it seems like the Democrats always have Senate spoilers...

Providing spoilers was the explicitly designed purpose of the US Senate. It's not a one-sided problem - Senate spoilers are also why the Affordable Care Act didn't get repealed in 2017.

Explicitly?

US Senator was an office initially designed to be selected by state legislatures rather than by direct popular election like the representatives. To a populist or a party boss, that might count as a spoiler to the will of the people or to the will of those in DC, or to both. But I may misinterpret GP's point.

I assume the person you're replying to is talking about the Filibuster and supermajority requirements not the direct election history. The filibuster is a senate rule not a constitutional design, so it wasn't part of the "design". Maybe they're both different ways of adding veto points to the same effect, but I think spoilers as "explicit design" is probably not how I'd describe it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_State...

Not parent but the founders were like folks writing smart contract code, thinking about various exploits and vulnerabilities (that might reduce the wealth of their class) so many of the seemingly dysfunctional elements of the system turn out to be designed deliberately to be dysfunctional. Feature not bug.

They were not thinking about various exploits and vulnerabilities but rather making whatever compromises were necessary in order to form the union. It was negotiation, not planning.

A compromise can also be a feature to resolve a bug, from the point of view of the one demanding it.

> As a progressive, it seems like the Democrats always have Senate spoilers...

With Republicans usually being dominant in a number of states, if Democrats have a Senate majority, it is usually both narrow and dependent on a very small number of Democratic and/or Dem-leading moderate independent Senators from Republican-majority states who vote with the party on leadership, but are soft (or firmly opposed to the progressive preference) on a number of issues important to progressives.

If the US were approximately an equal democracy, this might be less of an issue.

Hell, just first past the post would eviscerate the current parties.

Argh. Too late to edit. Something else outside first past the post* like ranked choice voting.

Which is why they’ll never vote for it. Such changes are remarkable rare. :(

> If the US were approximately an equal democracy, this might be less of an issue

Equal to what?

Equal in voting rights. Gerrymandering has been perfected by Republicans. Through that they manage to dilute votes of the opposition. Other measures discourage voters likely to vote against them, like people who cannot easily take time off to vote in person or who have changed their name. Blocking rank choice and maintaining first past the post also disenfranchise third parties, and reinforces the power of incumbents.

Trump himself admitted it's better for Republicans when fewer people vote.

?? Both sides happily gerrymander. It’s been around since 1812 and both sides are equally guilty at this point.

I didn't say democrats were innocent. I said Republicans perfected the (ab)use of districting.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-...

Governors are elected by popular vote.

> Equal in voting rights. Gerrymandering has been perfected by Republicans. Through that they manage to dilute votes of the opposition.

This thread is talking about the Senate. The senate isn't gerrymandered. Both senators are state-wide races.

If you want to view it that way, you can view the senate as "pre-gerrymandered". But the last time that was an option was in 1959, and both of those are just "the entire area the US owned, but wasn't a state yet. To get senate gerrymandering, you have to go back to 1912 and the admission of New Mexico/Arizona.

Gerrymandering can affect voter sentiment and trigger polling location changes during redistricting, both of which can affect voter turnout[1][2][3] (though the research doesn't seem conclusive on the effect).

And thinking about it more, though I haven't seen if there are studies on it: there are probably manpower/fundraising effects from gerrymandering.

If you're able to protect your political power in one area that probably better enables you to amass resources to use in the area you can't gerrymander.

But all that said, both parties practice gerrymandering and I don't think there's strong evidence of a significant advantage over a major party from current gerrymandering at the national level.

[1] https://da.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/da/kernel/90008864/90008864.pdf

[2] https://electionlab.mit.edu/articles/gerrymandering-turnout-...

[3] https://stateline.org/2022/05/20/check-your-polling-place-re...

> On a percentage basis, over three times as many districts were competitive in states where independent commissions drew maps as in states where Republicans drew maps.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-...

That’s just confusing cause and effect. If your seats are safe, you have no reason to agree to forming an independent commission. The same is true in both heavily blue and heavily red states. Are districts more competitive in states where Democrats draw maps? I don’t think so.

This totally ignores values and motivations, and I would argue that only one group in your comment values winning at any cost.

I don’t even know which group you mean, but “my group has good values and motivations, but the enemy group just values winning at any cost” is exactly what a total partisan who values winning at any cost would say.

The evidence is that independent commissions drawing maps makes for more competitive districts. Which party is most opposed to such commissions? Which party is gleefully dismantling all accountability and oversight positions and departments? Which party is openly inviting corruption and pardoning those they should be prosecuting?

I wonder why one party would be seeking to change a civil service that’s 90% staffed by members of the other party? I guess “democracy” means Democrats running the country no matter who wins the election, right?

Democracy means "one person, one vote".

We all know which party is fighting tooth and nail against that on practically every issue that affects it.

Are most members of the civil service Democrats? This is the first I've heard of this.

OP asserts this unsource. While it does seem to tilt towards Democrats since it is ethics and mission oriented and typically requires a degree, 90/10 sounds wild in my experience.

My prior is based on experience. Most of the civilian govies are centrist, "I just want to grill" types.

That makes sense to me. This is why I suspected that attempting to claim the election was stolen would be a losing proposition; I was sadly surprised to the contrary.

Elections are run by Republicans as well as Democrats. In fact several of the key locations that Trump claimed were stealing the election from him were basically locations where the Republican party had a lock on the administration of the election. As I remind people often, when they talk about someone stealing the election, that's not a hypothetical "someone," that's Betty three houses down that has the nice flower garden and organizes the bake sale at church every month.

First, your stats are wild. Please provide and unbiased citation.

Second, your solution was in place in the 1800s and was referred to as the spoils system. It led to bad outcomes and was rightfully abandoned. Your beef is with the fact that educated people tend to choose policies that you don't like (assuming your 90/10 split, which is still wild). You/the GOP have three options. First is to recognize that the policies pursued do not attract people which education (which I consider a red flag). Second is to re-adopt the spoils system despite it being illegal, and frankly just sort of dumb since when the other side is in power you suffee, but at least then you never need to think deeply about making policy for the whole country instead of a subset of supporters. Third, you/the GOP self-own via tearing up all the intellectual capital and international good will built up over the decades without a replacement, massively reducing American influence on the world in all dimensions.

> If you want to view it that way, you can view the senate as "pre-gerrymandered".

That is quite explicitly the history of the US Senate (and House), FWIW.

The Connecticut Compromise was reached to give low-populations states outsized legislative power in the senate. This is the main reason the senate exists.

Building on that, the 3/5th compromise was reached as part of this to give slave states outsized legislative power in the house.

The state of Maine used to be part of Massachusetts, but it was later set up as an independent state in order to increase the number of anti-slavery states in the senate (the Missouri compromise).

>If the US were approximately an equal democracy, this might be less of an issue.

How? Evenly divided voters and representatives are the issue. Each side can barely afford to lose 10% or so during votes

No, the reason the "there is always an in-party Senate spoiler" effect (when they have a Senate majority) seems to be more true of Democrats is because it is more true of Democrats, and the reason is that when the two parties in rough balance by popular support (or even rough balance in Presidential electoral prospects, which has the same directional bias as the Senate but of lesser magnitude), the Republican Party has a systematic edge in dominance of states, which translates into a systematic advantage in the Senate, which means that when the Democrats have a Senate majority, it tends to have a decisive segment in red-state Democratic Senators who are unreliable on key priorities.

The issue being discussed in the Senate is not a symmetric issue resulting from near balance in support between the parties.

It’s also because republicans politically punish dissent, while it is more tolerated in the Democratic Party. The consequences of “disloyalty” are higher in the Republican Party.

This might change. After party leadership got 20% of democratic senators to vote for trump’s procedural blank check, the party’s approval rating dropped to 27%.

If it doesn’t change, I suspect the party will split.

I wonder which is better, the totalitarian left, or the totalitarian right?

Since technology has empowered centralized power while providing the tools easily repurposed to poison democracy, I suspect that democracy as we understand it will fail to compete with data driven central planning.

So maybe the question we should be asking is what flavor of total surveillance and centralized control do we want to live under?

But this is the type of thing that progressives would like support (tax big corporate America).

This tax is far more consequential for small companies than for large ones. It probably actually benefits larger companies because it hobbles competition.

No, this is a misunderstanding of the kind of taxation policy progressives tend to favor. Taxation on profit for businesses should be high, and taxation on upper tiers of individual income should be high, but taxation on funds businesses use to reinvest should be exempted or deductable. Basically the taxation we had in place after WW2 and on, with a steep corporate tax rate and more or less a maximum income for individuals. The R&D exemption removed in the 2017 bill, and discussed in the article, is key to that, because it encourages corporations to reinvest their income in building new products and paying workers rather than taking it directly as profit-- after all, at least they could reap the rewards (in growth and revenue) of the R&D later, instead of just giving the money to the government as taxes.

I don’t think most progressives think about it in that detail. Raise taxes on the rich tech companies that are gentrifying san francisco.

I‘m not American but the above description of a tax policy is what I hear a lot from progressives in media.

At first glance I support ... "social and economic equality" and "reforms to improve human conditions, combat corruption, and reduce inequality". Am I progressive?

If you ask me "should corporations pay more taxes?" I will say, yes. Famously so does Warren Buffet, is he also a progressive?

If you ask me, "hey should we gut tax incentives for R&D spending in the USA?" I will say, uhhh no? probably a bad choice?

Recently the progressives have latched on to culture war agendas against the wealthy, educated, white, male, straight and/or over the age of 35 crowd.

In other words, they have a popular agenda, but are political morons that are going to eventually wonder why they can’t break out of solidly blue districts.

https://runforsomething.net/run/candidate-support-system/

I think that is a misrepresentation of the fundamental progressive position, which is to make progress but never at the cost of the marginalized. Because we historically make most progress at the cost of the marginalized it can feel limiting or even discriminatory when we make sure they don’t beat the brunt of continued progress.

There is nothing against the group you mention except that it might be the group that most fights against progress toward equality.

> I think that is a misrepresentation of the fundamental progressive position, which is to make progress but never at the cost of the marginalized.

That just means that the marginalized become an anchor preventing progress. We can’t have nice things until we solve the problems of the bottom quantile—which we never will.

If progressives had been in charge, America and everything it created wouldn’t exist. They never would have allowed us to displace the Indian tribes so the land could be put to better use.

What do you think is the best way to turn tables around and ensure that the marginalized are a net positive for progress? Perhaps we should reintroduce slavery? Or do you think that turning them into food or fertilizer would have more net benefit?

Progressives have been in charge, over and over again. You're discounting America starting from what is, by modern standards, a very regressive position.

Was the end of slavery a progressive or regressive move?

“That just means that the marginalized become an anchor preventing progress.”

And that’s the difference. Progressives view it as important that we progress all groups and that challenge is fundamental to society, whereas you view them as an anchor.

But this doesn't raise taxes on rich tech companies, it effectively does the opposite - the tax burden is proportionally lower the larger/more successful the tech company is.

Therefore, even by your own admission, this isn't progressive policy.

What makes you think this?

This time bomb was created because the bill slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Maintaining the status quo would mean taxing big corporate America more than this bill does.

But it isn't tax big corporate America. Did you read the article?

It's a 10% tax cut for big corporate America, with some economic poison for blue states in the future.

And get blamed for it. If every single Republican and two Democrats vote against something guess who people blame?

Both parties tend to when there is a narrow majority, e.g. McCain thumbs downing at the repeal of the ACA.

Why should they? Why did we allow a president to put in tax raise for the future. Replicants were playing politics from the start. Pass a bad bill, and then hope to get about it when the bad parts kick in when the other side woo be in power

Politics are complicated.

Generally, in tax bills they try to keep them "neutral" where any tax cuts or tax breaks are coupled with tax increases elsewhere BUT they tend to report the 10-year affect for whatever reason. This bill provided a ~30% cut in corporate tax on profits, with a delayed increase in tax cost on Software R&D pushed to the next term.

If the next party wants to reverse it, they'd have to find the money with an increase in tax - directly undoing it would be a ~50% increase in corporate tax rate, which (I guess?) would be a tough sell politically. Meanwhile, the tax code on software engineering sounds too niche to expend political capital on.

Either way, its another example of how corporate America is trading long-term growth (R&D, product development) for short term gain (lower taxes today).

If this was passed in 2017 to go into effect during the next presidential term, wouldn't that only work as a time bomb for Biden's presidency if Trump didn't expect to win a second consecutive term?

Given the history of prior presidents winning 2 consecutive terms, it seems like Trump could have reasonably expected a 2022/2023 tax change to be his problem.

No. It’s after re-election. Bad news late in your second term isn’t that big of a deal, unless you care about legacy.

Most presidents care about legacy, at least to me it seems like trump holds that as a higher priority than most.

Trump seems to care what people think today, every day. He doesn't seem like someone who puts a lot of thought into the future.

You know, I wonder if that's a sad but valuable trait for a politician.

Public opinion can change daily, and external events can appear with no warning. These things can make a prior path of action vanish, or even make it madness to pursue.

If you try to plan everything long term, I bet you hit a lot of disappoint as a politician. If you only see today, then you're not fighting for things that are now not possible.

I imagine one would be far less stressed as a result. And maybe more popular than otherwise.

Some problems require years or even decades to address. Consider how quickly a COVID vaccine was developed, yet it depended upon many years of quietly studying SARS and R&D around MRNA. Or consider trying to address developing or maintaining infrastructure.

A chaotic politican whose mind is changed by the last person they spoke with won't do well facing serious long term problems.

It gets worse if the only things they consistently stand for is their own power, personal wealth, their sycophants, and their grade-school-level (mis)understanding of complex matters.

>me it seems like trump holds that as a higher priority than most

Why?

He seems to care immensely about being viewed as the "winner" and the "best" at everything.

I also have to assume that anyone interested in slapping their name in big gold letters on as many buildings as possible is interested in the perception of legacy.

I misinterpreted your original comment. I thought you meant he would act as the ideal benevolent leader to obtain this perception

Hah, oh yeah I could see reading it that way being very confusing! Trump and benevolent don't belong in the same dictionary.

if you retain power, you can fix it. the US government currently has the significant problem that one party campaigns on the government being dysfunctional, so they do their best to make it so.

But what would trump have done if he retained the presidency and lost congress? That's also been pretty common over the last few decades if I'm mistaken, a president with one or both sides of Congress is reelected but Congress flips to the opposition party.

I would suppose that the Democrats would remove the policy regardless of who was in charge.

How?

Vote with Republicans in removing it

But Republicans put it in. The proposed. They were the vast majority of the votes for it. It was signed by Trump. It was their baby.

2020 - Trump goes after tiktok https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-31/trump-to-...

In 2024 two bills (merged later) went through the Republican controlled House with a bipartisan vote (350+ for) [1] then the Democrat controlled Senate [2] with another bipartisan vote (79-18, attached to an Israeli funding bill) basically following whatTrump wanted.

Late 2024 - Trump then offered to save the service when the Public turned against the ban and used it as a campaign item.

2025 - His supporters were all over Tiktok praising him, including the CEO of Tiktok when he put a pause on the required sale. He's also extended the deadline multiple times now.

----------------------------

Republicans might start using this tactic more now that it's been shown to work. It's similar to the "Fuck the next admin" tax bill that he put in his first term.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-house-vote-force-byted... [2] https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-congress-bill-1c48466d...

But they didn’t, so that supposition is bunk

When did they have control of the senate without a BD being the lynchpin?

He would do nothing because his supporters believe misinformation and worship him.

Prices haven't gone down at all nor will bringing manufacturing to the US do this (likely causing them to go up) but his approval rating is 50%

> He would do nothing because his supporters believe misinformation and worship him.

Interesting, that hasn't been my experience.

I live in a very red part of the country and most people I know are Trump supporters, including some family members have been very MAGA since 2016.

I've been hearing more and more complaints over missed promises: no Epstein files, raising budgets, RFK is starting to water down his promises, no end to the Ukraine or Gaza wars, etc.

He missed effectively every promise from 2016. Why did these people vote for him 2 more times, especially after an attempted coup? Maybe these "complaints" are just an attempt to dodge personal responsibility for having supported a catastrophe.

He's removing the illegal immigrants and being very aggressive about it.

Sure you can guess at a person's intentions or reasoning, but my experience here is that there weren't many complaints in the first term for whatever reason and now there are.

I couldn't get inside their head to say why. My read on them is largely that the complaints are legitimate frustrations though. This isn't exactly a part of the country where voters are somewhat evenly split and Trump supports would need to save face or smooth over interpersonal friction by giving a nod to the idea that he may not deliver.

Hey, you knew a guy (Physics BA) who almost aced the LSAT cold. Do you remember what his score was and how old he was when he took it?

I don't remember his score, but he was probably about 22?

> I've been hearing more and more complaints over missed promises: no Epstein files, raising budgets, RFK is starting to water down his promises, no end to the Ukraine or Gaza wars, etc.

I based my argument on the poll averages as shown below, most are high 40s similar to the past few months. I would think if people were upset about missed promises it would be reflected in these. It's been ~5 months.

You might say people are giving him a chance to implement a plan or that some action would take time therefore they are willing to give a thumbs up for now, hence the polls. The reason I discounted this is because I'm not aware of any plan or current actions by Trump that would reduce prices. The trade wars will either increase prices due to tariffs or increase prices if products are made in the US.*1

I believe you but maybe float a question to your neighbors - "If prices don't come down would you vote Democrat in 2027?"

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump...

Political polls are extremely misleading. Ask someone if they still agree with a decision they already made, they will more often than not find a reason to say yes.

> I believe you but maybe float a question to your neighbors - "If prices don't come down would you vote Democrat in 2027?"

The fact that you're assuming people should align with one party or the other is the problem.

Who gives a shit what letter is next to a candidates name? What matters is what the candidate stands for, what matters to them, and whether you believe they'll stuck to their guns when the political machine that is DC fights back.

> But what would trump have done if he retained the presidency and lost congress?

Trump is blaming Biden for the obvious outcome of Trump's tarrif nonsense. What do you think Trump would have done?

You have to be fair though, politicians always blame someone else and its usually the last person that was in charge.

How often do you hear any one politician claim the glory of a situation that they had nothing to do with? And when was the last time you actually heard a politician own their failing or apologize?

> You have to be fair though, politicians always blame someone else and its usually the last person that was in charge.

I don't think this is a reasonable or informed take. It's quite obvious that the tarrif lunacy is single handedly causing an economic downturn. Trump himself has downplayed the relevance of this downturn with inane comments over how tarrifs would also be painful to the US economy. If you see a politician like Trump claiming both that tarrifs will be painful to the US and that the economic pain caused by Trump's tarrifs is blamed on whoever was there before him, you need to be massively disingenuous or naive to claim that "politicians always blame both sides". There is nothing normal about Trump's actions.

My claim wasn't whether trump is responsible, of course his tariffs are having a very real impact. My point was that one should never expect a politician to admit that, at best they dodge claiming responsibility but more often than not they point at someone else, often the last person in office.

If you'd like to say my claim is uninformed that's fine, but I ask again for examples when a politician directly owned their failure or apologized for it.

> My point was that one should never expect a politician to admit that, (...)

That's the problem with your false dichotomy: Trump already admitted tarrifs create economic problems.

https://fortune.com/2025/02/02/trump-tariffs-americans-some-...

Trump blaming predecessors for the problems created by his tarrifs policy goes way beyond your run-of-the-mill predecessor blaming. Trump is simultaneously warning his tarrifs policy will cause economic damage and that the economic damage created by his policies were caused by someone else.

To be clear, this is the quote that article references.

> “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” Trump said in a social media post. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”

That doesn't read to me as Trump claiming responsibility for any pain that we might see, and it isn't an apology. Even better, he ultimately doubles down on the tariffs and claims the end result will be worth any of the pain that he doesn't directly acknowledge he will have caused.

So.. criminal racketeering?

This is just wrong. It was passed in 2017 (during Trump’s presidency). It was to go into effect in 2020 (a presidential election year during Trump’s presidency). He hoped to be re-elected.

No. It went into effect in 2022 [0], which means the timeline absolutely does track with OP's theory. That gives a hypothetical Trump term 2 a full year to fix it but also imposes enough of a time crunch that they could plan on sabotaging attempts to fix it by another party.

I'm not saying it's the actual story, but the timeline does track.

[0] Page 60, Sec 1306(e) sets the date: https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/hr1/BILLS-115hr1enr.pdf

I don’t think it really changes the narrative. 2020 was also a congressional election year, even had Trump won (as he appeared to want desperately) he could not have been assured of a Republican congress.

My argument is simple: Occam’s Razor

The Republicans in congress put the provision in solely as a gimmick to get past the CBO.

Frankly I don’t think legislators in either party are competent enough to have foreseen the consequences and even if they had been they wouldn’t have put a bomb like this in that would be more likely than not to backfire and affect them.

I just think that too often people interpret incompetence as malice, especially nowadays when things are so polarized that it’s fashionable to hate people who differ with one’s political opinions.

I think you’re wrong that legislators are incompetent. They’re human, and they’ve spent much of their lives learning how to get votes, but they’re not incompetent. A lot of them aren’t malicious, but there seems to be a small group of people outside of the legislative branch who are hell bent on taking control at all costs. And if you want to keep the votes rolling in you have to work with those people or get primaried. The dysfunction follows from fear more than incompetence these days.

I think legislators are skilled politicians and many are lawyers of varying competence. I would not expect them to deeply understand the negative downstream economic consequences of changing an obscure provision of the tax code. Maybe some of them could but would those have even been in the room? I get the impression most legislation is written by staffers (polysci or lawyers) and particularly spending legislation is tightly controlled in committee; only a handful of lawmakers ever saw the actual legislation before it was passed.

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