RealGeek

US Government spending:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Rv5UHrNsvcucvflDwwz_pqEjjH...

> If you really want to go after the wealthy, you need to tax wealth, not ordinary income

Trump has promised several more yuuge tax breaks and loopholes to wealthy:

- Repeal alternative minimum tax

- Repeal estate tax

- Reduce capital gains tax

- Reduce business tax rate to 15% eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax.

A wealthy individual could just make an LLC, and funnel all his money into it and enjoy the 15% tax rate while working folks pay regular income tax of 33%.

Even though Republicans have House and Senate majority, I still don't see any of this getting through. Those politicians won't self-destruct their careers.

How will a wall stop illegal immigration? Couldn't traffickers just use ladders to climb the wall?

> visa holders staying longer than they are allotted is the number 1 source of illegal immigration.

Trump's own wife overstayed and worked illegally on a visitor visa.

> premiums always go up regardless of the law.

My car insurance premium goes up every year, Republicans say it is because of Obamacare.

> And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days? Will he step down? Come up with yet another plan?

He will delete it from his website and claim it never existed.

> Yet somehow they have built up more infrastructure in a year then we did in decades

We spend most on military, social security and medicare. China doesn't.

> but are the proceeds really flowing back to the US?

What do you think they are doing with that money in tax havens? They buy US bonds and invest that money in our markets.

> A middle-class family will get a 35% tax cut.

I did some back-of-the-envelope calculation to figure how our taxes could change for various income levels for married joint filers. This does not factor in any deductions.

Nobody is getting a 35% tax cut. Tax rate for middle-class families will go down by around 1% only, and taxes will go up for low-income families by 2%. Single tax filers will also see an increase in taxes.

The biggest tax cuts will actually go the highest income earners, tax rate will go down by 6.42% for someone who makes $10 million. Maybe that is what Trump calls the middle-class?

Trump's proposed tax brackets vs current brackets

$18,000 Current: $1,800 (10%) Trump: $2,160 (12%) Change: + $360 (2%)

$36,000 Current: $4,472 (12.42%) Trump: $4,320 (12%) Change: - $152 (0.42%)

$75,000 Current: $10,322 (13.76%) Trump: $9,000 (12%) Change: - $1,322 (1.76%)

$120,000 Current: $21,542 (17.95%) Trump: $20,250 (16.87%) Change: - $1,292 (1.08%)

$250,000 Current: $57,913 (23.16%) Trump: $45,750 (18.3%) Change: - $12,163 (4.86%)

$500,000 Current: $143,665 (28.73%) Trump: $11,1750 (22.35%) Change: - $31,915 (6.38%)

$1 million Current: $341,666 (34.16%) Trump: $293,250 (29.32%) Change: - $48,416 (4.84%)

$10 million Current: $3,905,666 (39.05%) Trump: $3,263,250 (32.63%) Change: - $642,416 (6.42%)

Trump is offering slogans, not solutions.

The truth is, factories will come back to America, but jobs won't. Across all industries, labor is being replaced by automation.

In the next 4 to 8 years, self-driving vehicles will kill millions of driving and trucking jobs. Donald has no solution for it.

> It wasn't a race issue, it was an immigration issue since many illegal immigrants have taken American jobs.

How come a con man who employees illegal immigrants at his construction projects and manufactures his own products in China & Bangladesh is the solution for it?

> unfortunately, for the RNC, the evangelical vote is still a significant portion of the population

Trump has exposed that the evangelical voters are hypocrites who don't practice what they preach. Their goal is to impose their religion on us.

They are totally enamored with a candidate who has profited off strip clubs, cheated on his wife, married multiple times, sexual assaulted women and bragged about it, and appeared on the cover of the nation’s pre-eminent porn magazine. But they are offended by Beyonce's songs.

This is an opportunity for GOP to move away from evangelical appeasement, but no... they will double down on it.

Especially in this case, WikiLeaks is a hit man hired by Russia to attack US elections.

A lot of corporations are creating tons of value from PO boxes in Ireland, Zug and other tax havens.

I have tried a bunch of Macbook Air competitors, but none of them have a trackpad as good as MacBook.

They realized that they can only claim the camera fell off so many times.

Asian immigrants are the top earners because they come from the top talent pool in their home countries.

If you are in India or China, you can not just board a plane to US. The best way to immigrate to US is to perform well in STEM education, then go to US for higher studies. Since it is difficult for them to get a US visa, most of the people who are able to go through the whole process are usually the top performers who work very hard.

Not sure if this includes Indian-American statistics, but Indian-Americans are the highest income group in US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

> Build a car with a hyper-focus on reliability and toss a 150,000 mile 10 year comprehensive warranty on it

Which is exactly what Hyundai did. They offer 10 year / 100k miles warranty. Contrary to the perception, their warranty gave me confidence to try it, and I've been happy with it so far.

> you need to bribe everyone to do anything in India?

Not everything, but almost everything that has to do with Government. I had to pay bribe even to get my Passport, driver's license and police clearance certificate.

The problem is not that they aren't paying taxes on their foreign income. They are evading taxes even on the income earned in US.

They setup a subsidiary in a offshore tax heaven, transfer their patents and intellectual property to offshore tax heaven, and then route the profits from US company to their offshore subsidiary with transfer pricing tricks.

Some of these companies claim that their headquarters are in Switzerland, Ireland or Cayman Islands. But in reality they are nothing more than a PO box and bank account.

These FDI restrictions were placed for multi-brand retail stores like Walmart.

I guess Apple stores are considered multi-brand because they sell some products from other brands as well.

These restrictions are only for foreign companies. An Indian company can sell 100% imported products without any restrictions, but they are required to pay import duty.

These tips usually don't help in India. If you look poor and nobody, the police could even beat you up for no reason.

If you look and act rich & influential, then police and Government officials play nice with you.

Apple sales are weak in India because iPhone is overpriced in India, prices of Apple products in India are a lot higher than US. In 2015, over 100 million smartphones were sold in India.

Apple sells iPhone 6s 16 GB for $920 in India[1], while you can buy comparable Android smartphones from manufacturers like Xiaomi and OnePlus for $300 to $400

Sweet-spot price for Indian middle class is $300 to $400 and they typically upgrade in 1 to 2 years.

[1] http://www.apple.com/in/iphone/compare/

I am Indian.

Vendors like Spice and Intex are Indian companies. Companies can sell imported products in India, they just have to pay import duty on it.

India have FDI restrictions in retail sector to prevent big box retailers like Walmart from destroying local retailers.

Most of the popular brands including Apple already sell in India, but they have to partner with a Indian retailer to do so.

My personal car was stopped by octroi officers near a state border in India. They searched my car, and then said that I should have paid octroi tax on the personal computer I was carrying in the car.

I told them that all taxes were paid including VAT and Octroi for the computer when I bought it 5 years ago.

The said it doesn't matter, I must stop at the Octroi office and pay taxes again every time I am crossing a state border for everything I am carrying in my vehicle.

He said my only option is to pay them bribe, or they will impound my vehicle indefinitely.

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A professor doing maths is weird?