Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Kaleredar]

In this case, your 100 dollars you earn you pay 0$ in taxes, and gain money through the earned income tax credit. So you'd be earning $100 dollars, and then an extra $10 for how the system rewards the poorest earners.

Then, of course you'd rather be rich than poor. I never implied otherwise. Tax cuts don't change the calculus of trading a high income and high tax rate for a low income and low tax rate. It's still fun to be rich.

It never was "we need incentives to be rich" it is "rich people respond to incentives, too." They don't work as hard for that extra dollar when they keep 50 cents instead of 60 cents, or 40 cents instead of 50 cents.

You think rich people don't re-invest the money they earn to grow it? Wow.

I think the problem here isn't that the rich should pay more, but that the non-rich need to recognize human behavior still applies to the rich, and they don't stuff their money under a mattress when they have more of it. The rich "squirrel away their money" is as much a fallacy as "only the rich have 401k's, only the rich have retirement accounts, only the rich have money to invest and grow." Come on now, this is too full of fallacies to be any more than a statement of your envy.

Wealth inequality is at its highest in recent memory and the rich are paying less than ever.

And yet somehow, despite the rich having so much going for them, that money isn’t “trickling down.” And year after year, the wealthy make more and more money while the middle class shrinks.

Now why is that? If all the rich needed was “incentives” and “more money,” then shouldn’t your grand economic scheme be working out perfectly? It’s the best time to be rich in human history, and yet you’re implying they need… more? For the trickle down to finally start trickling?

And that inequality is not because of “illegal immigrants” and “taxes on the little guy.” The first is a complete red herring and like I said, if taxes on the little guy were a concern then lowering them and raising them on the wealthy to compensate would be the answer. But that’s not the solution that the republicans have ever gone for, is it?


Meanwhile, when the American middle class was robust, education cheap and accessible, housing affordable and social programs solvent and strong, tax rates on the top earners were vastly higher. And yet somehow… businesses found ways to grow and expand and still invest! Fancy, that!

Maybe try the progressive plan which has worked historically, instead of your plan which has never worked and is actively not working as we speak. at what point in your trickle-down economic dream that America has been pursuing in shades for at least the past 50 years do you say ”hmmm maybe this just doesn’t actually work.”

[LeGin v4]

I think the problem here isn't that the rich should pay more, but that the non-rich need to recognize human behavior still applies to the rich, and they don't stuff their money under a mattress when they have more of it.

Excuse me while I just vomit

"stuff their money under a mattress"

What money?

Do you think that "hand to mouth" isn't a thing? Fuck me

"human behavior"

Way'd a go, bud. Some seriously scary assumptions going on there. Human morality according to Tehdang.... fucking scary

[Breccia]

(posts outdated data)

Yeah, I would post ancient data based on projections too, if what I voted for turned out to be a lie, but I didn't want to admit it.





My data's from June 2024. You knew you were lying and voted for the extension, which disproportionately helps the rich, anyhow. Then came here to lie about it.

The law will boost the after-tax incomes of households in the top 1 percent by 2.9 percent in 2025, roughly three times the 0.9 percent gain for households in the bottom 60 percent, TPC estimates

Plus all the details about real estate, heirs, business rates, etc that you chose to leave out because it would ruin your admittedly false narrative.

Also, still haven't touched SS taxes, which are disproportionately paid by the poorer brackets, and a significant source of federal revenue.

Also, still haven't talked about business income rates, and the second you try, I'll just say "Tesla paid nothing in 2024" and instantly win.

You have nothing. You lie, because you have nothing. You didn't even cite your source.

[LeGin v4]

You didn't even cite your source.

Cato Institute, 2021

https://www.cato.org/blog/frequently...-cuts-jobs-act

Right-leaning think tank. Report a) ignores payroll taxes, sales taxes, and state/local taxes, which are regressive and disproportionately affect lower-income households b) absolute dollar savings e.g., 9.3% on fuck all = fuck all, 0.04% on multi millions / billions = considerable

As you say, his argument is purely "how much do people pay" not wealth inequality

---

Sorry, Mayhem already caught

[Kaleredar]

Cato Institute, 2021

https://www.cato.org/blog/frequently...-cuts-jobs-act

Right-leaning think tank. Report a) ignores payroll taxes, sales taxes, and state/local taxes, which are regressive and disproportionately affect lower-income households b) absolute dollar savings e.g., 9.3% on fuck all = fuck all, 0.04% on multi millions / billions = considerable

His argument is purely "how much do people pay" not wealth inequality

I mean… If someone told me “you can make your current salary and be taxed at the rate you’re currently taxed at (~25%), OR you could earn 100 million dollars a year but you’ll have to suffer the indignity of having 95% of that money actually go the government” I’d… you guessed it, take that five million dollars. I’d personally suffer that “egregious insult.”

Maybe I’m just selfless like that.

[Breccia]

Cato Institute, 2021

I saw the source was caught, thanks everyone. But the issue was, @tehdang did not cite it. What does it say, when you quote a source and you refuse to cite it yourself? Because I think it says "I know my source cannot withstand scrutiny".

[Dontrike]

Any tax cuts, even the abstract case of an across the board 2% tax cut for everyone, will be "tax cuts for everybody" and also "the vast majority only apply to those making over 700k yearly.

Then you look at the income brackets, changes in tax credits, changes in the standard deduction, and the picture shifts. Take income percentiles before and after the tax cuts, for the amount of taxes people actually pay, and how that changed. I'll pick Cato, though others do it:
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/ggWlAGQ.png[/IG]
You see the bottom 50th and bottom 75th of tax filers eating up so much relative change in their taxes paid? Yup. The "vast majority" benefitted. The poorest saw an even greater benefit relative to their tax burden.

This "the rich pay more than you" is true, but your kind is always wrong. Of course they pay more, they have more money, but the percentage of what they pay is incredibly small when compared to your average American. When someone making $100M pays less of a percentage than someone making $70k then that's a problem. When the richest man pays nearly zero and when corporations get money back for no reason then it's a problem.

For how much your orange rapist wants to "take us back to the good days" why isn't the rich paying 80% like they used to?

[Kaleredar]

This "the rich pay more than you" is true, but your kind is always wrong. Of course they pay more, they have more money, but the percentage of what they pay is incredibly small when compared to your average American. When someone making $100M pays less of a percentage than someone making $70k then that's a problem. When the richest man pays nearly zero and when corporations get money back for no reason then it's a problem.

For how much your orange rapist wants to "take us back to the good days" why isn't the rich paying 80% like they used to?

And I say… fuck whether “the rich pay more/pay a higher percent” totally. I legitimately do not care if they’re “unfairly targeted” or “end up paying more than others.”

What matters is that we have a system that works and does the most good for the most people. Not that we hold on to some “equal parity in taxation and burden of payment” if all that actually does is create a broken system for the vast majority of people. Because The statement “taxes are technically fair on paper” is meaningless. It alone helps no one… Other than the already rich, of course. “We followed this imagined sense of morality and failed, oh well!” is utter inanity.

And this isn’t some communist “take away all possessions and force everyone to be equal” schtick either. As we’ve established, precipitously raising taxation on the uber wealthy still leaves them wealthy. The rich people would still have vastly more money and be afforded vastly more comforts and opportunities than normal people… but under a system of taxation that gives the most possible people a standard for living deserved by all human beings, especially in a “first world” country.

[Breccia]

Judge orders Tufts student detained by ICE to be released on bail

Oh, yeah, she was being held without bail.

"What crime was she convicted of?"

None.

"What crime was she accused of?"

None.

Hey, remember when people like @tehdang and Trump said "You Democrats are trying to protect MS-13 members!" I can't help but notice they're silent about this. This is why it's important to remember what they're not saying: if the rights aren't being protected, the innocent are also at risk. That's why we're defending the rights, so that just saying "this person is a criminal because we said so" doesn't remove them.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions, who is presiding over the case, said at the conclusion of Friday's bail hearing that Ozturk raised "very substantial" and "very significant" claims that her First Amendment and due process rights were violated when she was taken into custody following the revocation of her student visa in March.

"Her continued detention cannot stand," he said.

Ozturk is currently being held at an immigration facility in Basile, Louisiana, where she was transferred after she was detained in Massachusetts. But the court said she can now return to her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, with no travel restrictions. The bail hearing in her challenge to her confinement came after a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration had until May 14 to comply with a district court's order to transfer Ozturk to immigration custody in Vermont.

"Why did they move her all the way across the country?"

Very likely, to throw her in a prison with all the other brown people. Or, to keep her from her family, school, and lawyers.

"You don't know that."

I know the official reason give, "we didn't have any space in local jails", is also the subject of a judge's reversal. Meaning, the federal government has no meaningful official reason, and that means I win by default.

"But if she's writing such horrible things about the United States, she must be a criminal!"

She isn't.

"There is absolutely no evidence that she has engaged in violence or advocated violence," Sessions said. "She has no criminal record. She has done nothing other than essentially attend her university and expand her contacts within the community in such a supportive way."

Mike Rodman, a spokesperson for Tufts University, said in a statement that the school is "pleased that the court has approved Rumeysa's request to be released on bail, and we look forward to welcoming her back to campus to resume her doctoral studies. As we have noted previously, Rumeysa is a student in good standing, and nothing in her co-authored op-ed of March 26, 2024, in The Tufts Daily student newspaper violated either the university's gatherings, protests, and demonstrations policy or its Declaration on Freedom of Expression. We hope that she is able to rejoin our community as soon as possible."

In addition to hearing testimony from Ozturk, her lawyers also questioned her doctor, her adviser in the doctoral program at Tufts and an official with a Burlington, Vermont, organization that offered pretrial services to Ozturk if she is released.

The government did not put forward any witnesses to provide testimony.

Ozturk's attorneys said that an immigration judge denied bond for the Turkish national during a hearing last month after they asked an immigration judge to release her as her immigration case proceeds. Her lawyers said the Department of Homeland Security presented one document to support their opposition to Ozturk's bond request: a one-paragraph State Department memo revoking her student visa.

The immigration judge, Ozturk's attorneys said, denied bond based on the "untenable conclusion" that she was "both a flight risk and a danger to the community."

As justification for her arrest and detention, the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Ozturk "had been involved in associations that 'may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization,'" according to court filings.

Yep. Trump imprisoned her on the basis of a political opinion, on literally nothing else, offered no witnesses, then tried to hide her in the shuffle. They did so for months and they denied her bail the entire time.

CBS News then continues the article with things we already know, and a "funny" story how she broke down with an asthma attack while her doctor was on the stand testifying that she had asthma.

The First Amendment of the Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now, this is an anonymous forum post, we have a terms of service not a Constitution meant to hold up a country. But imagine, hypothetically, a moderator who could just ban people despite no rules being broken.

"Whoa whoa whoa! You can't talk about that! There are rules!"

Yes, and what I'm saying is something entirely unrelated: banning someone without cause. Totally different topic. I posit that such a mod, looking at a poster who said "Yes, Ozturk should be removed from the United States purely on the basis of their unpopular opinion the people in charge did not care for, but not any rule they may have broken" might have the option of saying "then you don't mind if I ban you because of your unpopular opinion, even though you did not break any rules". Also known as "being Thwarted".

With that aside taken care of, @Flarelaine what is your opinion on the unfolding Ozturk issue?

[LeGin v4]

I mean… If someone told me “you can make your current salary and be taxed at the rate you’re currently taxed at (~25%), OR you could earn 100 million dollars a year but you’ll have to suffer the indignity of having 95% of that money actually go the government” I’d… you guessed it, take that five million dollars. I’d personally suffer that “egregious insult.”

Maybe I’m just selfless like that.

You don't fancy a superyacht?

[Kaleredar]

You don't fancy a superyacht?

I guess I might have to save up my millions for a few years.

[Rasulis]

You don't fancy a superyacht?

I am perfectly happy with the used two-seater kayak that I bought off Marketplace.

[Huehuecoyotl]

I think the problem here isn't that the rich should pay more, but that the non-rich need to recognize human behavior still applies to the rich, and they don't stuff their money under a mattress when they have more of it.

You are quite right. The rich don't stuff their money under a mattress. They use it to buy politicians, to make the environment that they are already richly rewarded by even more favourable. Then they go out and start buying up assets. Then they expect a return on those assets, which sucks even more money out of the economy. Which then needs to look for a place to land to generate a return.

Whatever the exact fucking opposite of a virtuous circle is, that's what you end up with when you don't tax the rich properly. More and more of the wealth of society being sucked upwards. Leaving those at the bottom, and in due course the middle, increasingly struggling to compete in a rigged market. Wondering why you can't afford a house? Or why health bills keep going up? Or vets bills? Or basically any fucking thing that you need to live?

It's because the rich are gathering all that money to themselves, and looking to use it to generate even more. Creating black holes of cash that are sucking money in perpetually.

It will only end in one of three ways; we change this as a society and start taxing the fuck out of them, while reversing the environment that lets them get all the money in the first place. Fat chance given that they own every political and financial lever that exists. Or they carry on until society literally collapses, because hundreds of millions of people don't have any money. At all. Or, we have a French style uprising because people have had enough. Heads on spikes, eat the rich. That kind of thing.

If the rich had any sense, they'd be pushing for option one themselves. Because if they don't, they're going to get some combination of 2 and 3. But everything we've seen of the rich, and how they operate, suggests they'd die before they give up a single cent. This carries on, they're going to get their chance to.

[Fugus]

Evidently the new leader of the USPS is a board member of FedEx.

Par the course of putting people there with a vested interest in making sure it fails.

[Xath]

But do you see that the poor benefited in a reduction of their relative tax burden on par and greater than the rich did?

You started off saying "vast majority only apply to those making over 700k yearly." That's saying something concrete about the tax cuts from the perspective of those making less than 700k. How can you say this when the taxes they paid went down by a greater percentage than those making over 700k? Shouldn't you change this to say something like the vast majority applied to all taxpayers across all income brackets? And then you can nitpick on why the pure dollar amounts to higher earners should be considered under special analysis? A more moderate take on impact can be true if you write it well, but your initial post was just plain wrong.

What you aren't factoring in is how much those cuts will cost the poor vs the rich specifically vis Medicare Medicaid and social security not to mention the massive research and clean energy cuts along with cutting staff from essential programs all in pursuit of giving the rich a massive tax cut.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politic...-habeas-corpus


https://apnews.com/article/immigrati...d2f85831cf2194

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2747948.html

Welp we are fucked.

[Rasulis]

High tariffs become ‘real’ with our first $36K bill

We’re no stranger to tariff bills, although they have definitely ramped up over the last two months. However, this is our first ‘big bill’, where a large portion was subjected to a 125%+20%+25% import markup. Unlike other taxes like sales tax where we collect on behalf of the state and then submit it back at the end of the month, or income taxes, where we only pay if we are profitable, tariff taxes are paid before we sell any of the products and are due within a week of receipt which has a big impact on cash flow.

In this particular case, we’re buying from a vendor, not a factory, so we can’t second-source the items (and these particular products we couldn’t manufacture ourselves even if we wanted to, since the vendor has well-deserved IP protections). And the products were booked & manufactured many months ago, before the tariffs were in place. Since they are electronics products/components, there’s a chance we may be able to request reclassification on some items to avoid the 125% ‘reciprocal’ tariff, but there’s no assurance that it will succeed, and even if it does, it is many, many months until we could see a refund.

We’ll have to increase the prices on some of these products, but we’re not sure if people will be willing to pay the higher cost, so we may well be ‘stuck’ with unsellable inventory that we have already paid a large fee on.

[Paranoid Android]

People you are all wrong about Trump. He cares about refugees.

Trump Officials Seek to Bring First White Afrikaners to U.S. as Refugees Next Week

We all read this awhile back that shocking Elmo was pushing this. Hmm, I wonder why? That its the white Afrikaners who are the ones oppressed in a country.

Pure White Supremacy.

[Rasulis]

Cato Institute, 2021

https://www.cato.org/blog/frequently...-cuts-jobs-act

Right-leaning think tank. Report a) ignores payroll taxes, sales taxes, and state/local taxes, which are regressive and disproportionately affect lower-income households b) absolute dollar savings e.g., 9.3% on fuck all = fuck all, 0.04% on multi millions / billions = considerable

As you say, his argument is purely "how much do people pay" not wealth inequality

---

Sorry, Mayhem already caught

The numbers are based on earned income reported to the IRS. People don't become billionaires from earned income. Most billionaires' wealth gains are never taxed. Otherwise, how do you explain Marck Zuckerberg paying $0 in Federal Income Tax in 2018, $68,000 in 2015 and $65,000 in 2017.

How about business tax? Meta paid income taxes of $1.738 billion for the quarter ending March 31, 2025 on a revenue of $42.31B. I would love to pay that kind of tax rate.

[Paranoid Android]

This too.

Stephen Miller says they are “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, which is only allowed when the US has been invaded or during an insurrection, which would not allow people to challenge their incarceration in court if they are arrested and detained.

Vid in Link.

Man this little fascist fuck has openly talked about removing judges, getting rid of the judicial branch. Now Habeas Corpus, the basis of 5th Amendment.

[We are covfefe]

Miller wants to take over trump's position so bad. He might get it, too.