[flagged]
Isn’t the new line that we’ve been at war with Iran for 47 years?
For 47 years.
Imminent.
They've been pushing the national sales tax to replace income tax since the 2000s (and probably longer).
Whether or not these schemes would work is debatable, but to claim that they show an MO of regressive taxes is just false.
You guys are surrounded by other college-educated SWE, you have no idea how bad it is out there.
People without a college degree went Trump 56-43. People with a college degree went for Harris 56-42. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
Finding the data on this would be convenient but its still unclear to me. I'm not a fan of how that article from NU cites its sources loosely, including lazily citing Wikipedia.
Maybe im misunderstanding you but I would think that any level of SWE skill would be a minimum amount of competence such that they wouldn't fall for Trumps tricks? SWE is rearranging bits accordance to logic...so you need to know logic no?
Vibe coding existed long before AI, especially in web/startup/enterprise information systems. You don't need to be a critical thinker to make a successful RoR app.
I guess there is no free lunch, each person who realizes the importance of education has to start taking it seriously right now and spend their lives getting their community to start taking it seriously and maybe hopefully the next generation can emerge much better off. We let this mess fester for decades and now we are paying for it for the rest of our lives because there is no free lunch.
Overcoming 'American Exceptionalism' to adopt a successful model like the Finnish education system would probably require a massive crisis. The current system will just limp along until then.
One made more promises to the poor and working class. It seems baked into your comment that the distribution should be 50-50 which seems crazy. A swing of ~5 points isn't that much.
This math would work on any demographic.
Onshoring manufacturing is something that has to be incentivized and that has positive externalities outside of dollars and cents.
But some tariffs were really dumb, like on bananas. We can't grow bananas here...
Don’t like the cost? It’s a negotiation tactic. Want manufacturing back? That’s what it’s doing actually, it’s definitely a longterm play to bring it back. Worried about the debt? The tariffs are going to be a huge, permanent revenue generator that gets back at countries that “cheated” us. It can't be all these as multiple elements contradict each other.
I’ll take my Fox News slot now please and thank you.
We can’t? Are south Florida, southern California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, are they not “here”? There is literally a banana variety called California Gold.
Trump and his cabinet don't understand this.
That's what the CHIPS act did. Indeed, everyone talking about TSMC, Intel, etc -- that's all because of the CHIPS act.
Toddler tantrum tariffs, which in reality are a vehicle for massive level corruption (see how Vietnam got a "deal" by approving a Trump resort. Or how every business leader is stuck to Trump's anus lest they be targeted by his tyrant tantrums), are not an incentive. It has had the opposite effect, and new builds have basically dried up.
Consumption was likely mildly reduced (and still is with the 15% tax) but now we have more inflation coming our way when those billions start flowing and our debt just keeps going up.
Now if tariffs had only been applied to, I don't know, yachts, private jets…
Working class often live paycheck to paycheck. Unless rich are also living paycheck to paycheck I'm not sure I the two really compare.
That's of course the idea behind a progressive tax: it scales to what an individual "can afford".
The ironic part is not that you were mildly in favor from the left, the ironic part is that they came from the right.
Pre-Trump, the right was very anti-tariff and only a portion of the left was pro tariff, the Bernie Sanders type.
I suppose that sounds pretty good if you're rich.
https://pettersen.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Documen...
Even if there was a US version, you'd still pay more regardless. This goes against one of the main grievances in the 2024 cycle: prices are too high.
Our domestic manufacturing industry is so far gone, it's doubtful whether even skillfully-applied tariffs could encourage any of it to come back on their own. Never mind this clown show, which apparently didn't even do the basic political work to make sure the tariffs would stay in place more than a year, despite having both houses of Congress.
If your argument is that taxation at sale is harder to dogdge than with income, and thus an obviously regressive scheme would still be advantageous for the average American, then I'm not buying it at all.
I see no evidence whatsoever that the wealthy would have any more difficulty in dodging sales tax than income/capital gains taxes.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a more regressive tax scheme. Bill Gates and I consume approximately the same amount of resources. I don’t see why he should have to pay a significantly different rate than I do.
But I don't see the primary justification for taxes as "keeping consumption in check" (whatever that would mean for you): In my view, we pay taxes to keep our society functional.
Progressive taxation is required to prevent escalating wealth inequality (and I'd argue that US administrations have done a really poor here over the last decades).
Regressive taxes ruin society by nurturing pseudo-parasitic rent-seekers controlling most of the wealth (=> exaggerated for clarity), and the situation is already bad enough without allowing those to basically skip taxes.
I don’t think that wealth inequality is a problem, and therefore don’t agree that taxation should be used to address it.
What is the purpose of taxation then, in your view?
> I don’t think that wealth inequality is a problem
I have a very hard time understanding this perspective.
Wealth can already buy (directly or indirectly) all forms of property, political power and even legal outcomes. I see no real way to remedy any of that, so it seems clear to me that (wealth) inequality must be somewhat kept in check to prevent our society from degenerating into some form of neo-feudalism.
What is your view on that? Do you want a society more strongly stratified by wealth? (why?)
Would you want to provide less equal opportunity in life for Americans is general, or would that be an undesirable side-effect?
Sorry for asking apparently loaded questions-- I'm genuinely trying to understand your viewpoint, and attacking the points that seem most critical from my view.
Both wealthy Americans and the middle class consume approximately the same government resources, and it’s not fair that the upper class should have to shoulder the majority of the tax burden.
> What is the purpose of taxation then, in your view?
To fund the government.
> Wealth can already buy (directly or indirectly) all forms of property, political power and even legal outcomes.
I don’t agree with this claim. Bloomberg outspent his opponents to an absurd degree, which resulted in him losing by an embarrassing amount.
> Would you want to provide less equal opportunity in life for Americans is general, or would that be an undesirable side-effect?
I don’t agree that wealth inequality results in less opportunity for anyone.
I don't know what the definition of "upper class" is to you, but from my view anyone that earns most of his income not by working himself but by others working for him in some form (capital gains, rent, employees, ...) draws wayyyyy outsized use from the state compared to an average citizen. Not only does the state provide enforcement, but also infrastructure, education for workers, a framework to solve disputes, ...
So those people should also pay morefor that privilege. Note especially how companies taking over the roles of a state is not really a thing anymore (company towns, providing education, solving disputes, internal paramilitary, etc): Everyone realizes they are getting a brilliant deal, and no one actually wants to take over those functions (despite lots of people whining about government inefficiency all day long).
All this is much more valueable and useful the bigger your whole money making enterprise is, obviously.
> I don’t agree with this claim. Bloomberg outspent his opponents to an absurd degree, which resulted in him losing by an embarrassing amount.
What is your claim? Media/campaign spending most obviously has a large effect on voting outcomes, because otherwise people wouldn't spend billions on it.
I'm not saying that by spending money you can literally win every election ever, my point is just that sufficient media spending alters voting outcomes most drastically. You don't even need to play the political circus yourself to get access (just consider Musk spending a good chunk and basically getting the DOGE thingy in return).
> I don’t agree that wealth inequality results in less opportunity for anyone.
In a very obvious way, wealth already buys you time, the most valuable opportunity cost for anyone-- time that an average person would need to spend breadwinning for themselves/family.
Education, business contacts, employees and machinery of all kinds are up for sale as well.
If wealth is stratified, the number and kinds of opportunities available to people will necessarily become much more different as well.