Economy Trump tax cuts 6 months later: it was exactly what critics projected - everyone but the rich suffers

[Crystaline Entity]

Who's suffering? You suffering? How so?

 

[SBJJ]

Has the WR really gotten to a point where it’s cool to use a small town rag opinion piece as a source? And act like the thread title is fact?

So could a WR poster use a hack opinion piece to start threads for any sort of thread headline? Seems wacky

Shit thread. Should be dumped

 

[My Spot]

Sounds like poor person problems.

 

[regmma123]

The mastermind of Trump University definitely has the working mans best interest in mind *derp*

 

[sickc0d3r]

I notice that the people that "liked" your post are big government statists. I wonder if they would ever agree in any way with say, Milton Friedman?

Do you believe in free market economics like Friedman did?

Friedman supported and I think actually proposed the idea of negative income tax.

 

[MicroBrew]

Reread what I said. I choose my words very carefully.

The individual is the source of all wealth.

The government is nothing more than an entity comprised of individuals.

The government does not exist independent or superior to the individuals that comprise it, in the same way that the the human body doesn't exist independent or superior to the cells that comprise it.

Once wealth is discovered, the expansion of that wealth can, and often has been a collaborative effort among many. But the individual human intelligence is the only source of all wealth.

The way you frame the argument, is designed to make you right no matter what. It is loaded phrasing on your part. Ofcourse gov. is made up of individuals but these individuals don't act as individuals, and they don't act for personal financial gain , like you the farmer or small business owner does.

 

[oleDirtyBast4rd]

A just government ensures that its subjects have a decent opportunity to flourish. Progressive taxation is the taxation system most conducive to that.

Is the answer to my question yes? If it's no, then why not?

 

[BangersAndSmash]

Has the WR really gotten to a point where it’s cool to use a small town rag opinion piece as a source? And act like the thread title is fact?

So could a WR poster use a hack opinion piece to start threads for any sort of thread headline? Seems wacky

Shit thread. Should be dumped

There's at least three sources there.

www.delewareonline.com - the newspaper you're talking about

www.americansfortaxfairness.org - a political organization dedicated to making the tax code more fair

And most importantly: the CBO. The congressional budget office. The official non-partisan budget calculating office that works for congress.

Here's an example of the CBO quoted saying the same thing:

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/382319-gop-tax-law-will-add-19-trillion-to-debt-cbo

There are plenty more sources quoting the CBO as saying the same thing, so it's safe to assume that the CBO really did revise their estimates to the neighborhood of 1.9t.

Funny thing to mention facts, because economists have been and will continue to be pretty unanimous on the negative impact of these tax cuts, and yet people still acting like those aren't facts but just biased opinions.

From January 2018:
https://itep.org/moodys-and-conserv...ump-corporate-tax-cut-is-not-helping-workers/

November 2017:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/22/16691016/economists-gop-tax-plan-igm-poll

 

[HomerThompson]

Has the WR really gotten to a point where it’s cool to use a small town rag opinion piece as a source? And act like the thread title is fact?

So could a WR poster use a hack opinion piece to start threads for any sort of thread headline? Seems wacky

Shit thread. Should be dumped

 

[Islam Imamate]

Sorry. The existence of cultish followers of the guy is something I kind of recently discovered (Farmer and Greoric here in the WR, but I guess it's a bigger thing around the Internet). It's kind of fascinating, and I think they're not supposed to mention it (I recall when Greoric bizarrely claimed not to know who he was and kept pretending to think he was a woman as a way to get fake credibility to that denial). But I tend to be late on that kind of thing.

He's been around for a bit. He used to use his libertarian philosophy as a cover to eventually convince his audience to cut themselves off completely from their family of origin(called deFOOing) because Molyneux thinks that the vast majority of parents on earth are bad people and need to be cut off by their children. Honestly in a way I sort of see his point, if you take the libertarian obsessive concern with coercive measures to the extreme you'd come to hate parenting since its more or less an inherently hierarchical relationship.

Of course, most of are sane and can come to terms with the hierarchy of parent over child but Molyneux can't, so much so he convinced his wife to cut off her family of origin. There's a clip of the two of them reading this heartfelt letter by her parents begging to be able to see her again and they just laugh at it. But whenever her parents send money they have no qualms in accepting it. Now he's trying to ride the wave of the alt-right and has happily abandoned his libertarian principles in favor of jingoist talking points.

 

[Jack V Savage]

He's been around for a bit. He used to use his libertarian philosophy as a cover to eventually convince his audience to cut themselves off completely from their family of origin(called deFOOing) because Molyneux thinks that the vast majority of parents on earth are bad people and need to be cut off by their children. Honestly in a way I sort of see his point, if you take the libertarian obsessive concern with coercive measures to the extreme you'd come to hate parenting since its more or less an inherently hierarchical relationship.

Of course, most of are sane and can come to terms with the hierarchy of parent over child but Molyneux can't, so much so he convinced his wife to cut off her family of origin. There's a clip of the two of them reading this heartfelt letter by her parents begging to be able to see her again and they just laugh at it. But whenever her parents send money they have no qualms in accepting it. Now he's trying to ride the wave of the alt-right and has happily abandoned his libertarian principles in favor of jingoist talking points.

Rup was talking about that deFOOing before. Creepy as shit. And weird that he'd be so against some kinds of hierarchical relationships but not against wage labor.

 

[Deleted member 159002]

Is the answer to my question yes? If it's no, then why not?

The government should levy whatever taxes are needed to ensure that each of its subjects has a good chance at having a decent quality of life. If a tax were to seriously compromise certain or all subjects' good chance at a decent quality of life, it would be unjust.

 

[MiniCraque]

This is a weird classification. I'm certainly not a big gov't statist, and I'd bet that I agree with Friedman on more than you do.

Friedman supported and I think actually proposed the idea of negative income tax.

Friedman is quite possibly the most misquoted economist in all of history (only because Marx wasn't an economist in the traditional sense though, otherwise he'd win by a landslide). Philosophical ramblings aside, he was closer to Keynes than he was to the Mises crowd. I've seen these attempts at bringing him closer to those kooks and they're just absurd. "Muh free markets" isn't really a denominator for economists because all of them fundamentally believe in it.

 

[Black Helicopters]

Besides putting us into debt because Republicans believe in spending more with less funds, what is the evidence that the tax cuts has hurt the average or even poor person?

 

[Farmer Br0wn]

The way you frame the argument, is designed to make you right no matter what. It is loaded phrasing on your part. Ofcourse gov. is made up of individuals but these individuals don't act as individuals, and they don't act for personal financial gain , like you the farmer or small business owner does.

The reason you're having such a hard time finding a counter to this notion, is because it's simply the truth.

Individual human intelligence is the source of all wealth.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Besides putting us into debt because Republicans believe in spending more with less funds, what is the evidence that the tax cuts has hurt the average or even poor person?

Yeah, that's pretty much it. We're borrowing a truckload to give money to rich people, essentially. That was supposed to be offset with higher wages or something (and stronger overall growth was supposed to offset the revenue loss). So far, real wages are actually *down* (not just slowed growth) and revenue loss looks actually bigger than anticipated with no growth effect. It's too early to say definitively based on the returns, but given that the returns are lined up with reasonable expectations going in, I don't think it's too early to say it's looking pretty bad, and that people who were making claims about the positive impact that would follow should be preparing their concession speeches (or, more realistically, their excuses).

 

[IReallyDoTrainUFC]

The way you frame the argument, is designed to make you right no matter what. It is loaded phrasing on your part. Ofcourse gov. is made up of individuals but these individuals don't act as individuals, and they don't act for personal financial gain , like you the farmer or small business owner does.

Government officials don't act for their own financial gain? Or make rules that keep their positions of power? Huh? What world do you live in?

 

[IReallyDoTrainUFC]

I think it's a meaningless statement, actually. Not something one agrees with or disagrees with. Those are complementary values.

If you read through Friedman's writings, you'll see that he was a lot more conventional than I think people like you (who know him mostly as a caricature or through his role as a propagandist) realize. Very much not an Austrian quack, though he was wrong about a few important things.

OK. Friedman rejected basic government standards for safety requirements on motor vehicles in favor of free consumer choice. There is a famous video of a young Michael Moore debating Friedman about this.

Do you agree with Friedman that the government shouldn't be involved in enforcing safety standards for motor vehicles?

 

[panamaican]

You're assuming he needs the same amount of road to make that money.

His product could have doubled in value and he would be using the same amount of road. You would be, in effect penalizing him for no justifiable reason.

No, I make no such assumption. I said that I made up the numbers. And it's an example.

On the larger scale, he doesn't just use the same amount of road. He uses more of the total infrastructure, some of it direct, some of it indirect because of the effect on others within the economic chain. In reality, we can't break it down to units of road or units of electricity but we can generally break down that it takes more inputs to increase outputs. And those who are using a greater percentage of the inputs, in aggregate, are expected to pay a tax that reflects that.

 

[IReallyDoTrainUFC]

Friedman supported and I think actually proposed the idea of negative income tax.

Friedman had a bunch of whacky ideas for taxation, as did most of the Chicago school economists. I'm not defending any of those ideas, I believe all taxation is theft and it is fundamentally evil.