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Comment by victoro | Hacker News Reader

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 Is there some reason a change in the tax code like this can't be modified or repealed once its in place?

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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).

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 It's not a one-sided problem - Senate spoilers are also why the Affordable Care Act didn't get repealed in 2017.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

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