The Next President is...

[Lord Ratner]

@nsplayer I'm against cutting taxes until we clean up spending. I'm also against raising them. But they do need to be standardized and lowered soon after getting debt levels down. 

 

We need a constitutional amendment that absolutely nothing can be funded for longer than ten years, and all funding must be a specific dollar amount. No future adjustments for inflation, no COLA, no fixed percentages, no per capita budget, nothing. Every single program and expense gets a fixed dollar amount in the budget, and can't exceed 10 years of funding. Right now it takes an act of God to get a program defunded. It should take an act of God to get the program funded. Yes this includes SSI and Medicare/Medicaid.

 

You will always have rot and bloat and ancient politicians rape the future to fund their bullshit, but it should be just as easy for the next generation of politicians to turn off the spigot.

 

 

Edited February 17 by Lord Ratner

[Guest nsplayr]

1 hour ago, Lord Ratner said:

@nsplayer I'm against cutting taxes until we clean up spending. I'm also against raising them. But they do need to be standardized and lowered soon after getting debt levels down.

At least that's an honest position! The current GOP plan looks nothing like that unfortunately...perhaps you didn't vote for them. I'm pretty confident you didn't vote Dem.

break break

Apparently Elon, wants an 8% cut at DoD, while the House GOP are looking for an almost 12% boost. Unclear what Trump's position is, per usual. Probably depends on the last person who talks to him before he fires up his phone for some "executive time" tweeting.

Good luck reconciling that discord with full GOP control of the government and a 3-seat House majority! Soon to be 2, when Stefanik is confirmed for the UN & resigns from the House, maybe they'll continue to string her along for another month plus just to have her vote available.

Elon's proposal would cut almost the entire USMC and Space Force...there may be efficiencies to be found, but not that many! IMHO the 12% boost is more in line with what is being asked of DoD - I think we need more end strength as well as many more weapons, prioritizing volume of specific capabilities over a couple additional of the biggest-ticket items. There's a quality to quantity and we don't currently have it.

I could be convicted of a smaller increase, but I don't see how we stay flat, let alone cut 8% without basically forfeiting upcoming conflicts in advance. Russia is not cutting defense budgets. China is not cutting defense budgets. Hell, Europe is not even cutting defense budgets!

Trifecta shutdown on March 14th here we come...

Edited February 17 by nsplayr

[Smokin]

4 minutes ago, Banzai said:

Something about ask not what your country can do for you…

It seems like many here love the benefits of living in a superpower (cheap prices, lots of earning potential) but can’t seem to grasp that hard and soft power - as well as the maintenance of society - have real costs. Also ironic you talk about roads - how would you propose those be funded if the government doesn’t deserve anything?

You find it ironic I talked about roads in a post highlighting problems with our government spending?  I find it extremely ironic that you referenced the 'ask not what your country can do for you' quote when talking about the budget when the majority of the federal government budget is purely wealth redistribution under various names.  That is 100% people asking what their country can do for them and many of them do virtually nothing for their country in return.

I gave the best 20+ years of my life defending this country; I've asked and answered what I can do for my country.  I'm not asking anything of my country now other than to stop taking my money and giving it to people that haven't done a thing to deserve it.  As @blueingreen said, I'd gladly forfeit everything I've contributed to social security in order to kill all wealth redistribution plans.

I'm just fine paying taxes for things like roads, national defense, etc.  I fully grasp that those have real costs that I've paid for, both in taxes and service.  But the majority of our budget is not roads and such.  And the enormous bureaucracy gobbles up significant portions of the very small portions of our budget that are allocated for what the federal government actually should be doing.  If our government doesn't start focusing on what it should be doing and cutting out the rest of the BS, we're going to be in a world of hurt.

[ViperMan]

57 minutes ago, Smokin said:

You find it ironic I talked about roads in a post highlighting problems with our government spending?  I find it extremely ironic that you referenced the 'ask not what your country can do for you' quote when talking about the budget when the majority of the federal government budget is purely wealth redistribution under various names.  That is 100% people asking what their country can do for them and many of them do virtually nothing for their country in return.

I gave the best 20+ years of my life defending this country; I've asked and answered what I can do for my country.  I'm not asking anything of my country now other than to stop taking my money and giving it to people that haven't done a thing to deserve it.  As @blueingreen said, I'd gladly forfeit everything I've contributed to social security in order to kill all wealth redistribution plans.

I'm just fine paying taxes for things like roads, national defense, etc.  I fully grasp that those have real costs that I've paid for, both in taxes and service.  But the majority of our budget is not roads and such.  And the enormous bureaucracy gobbles up significant portions of the very small portions of our budget that are allocated for what the federal government actually should be doing.  If our government doesn't start focusing on what it should be doing and cutting out the rest of the BS, we're going to be in a world of hurt.

[blueingreen]

41 minutes ago, Banzai said:

Something about ask not what your country can do for you…

It seems like many here love the benefits of living in a superpower (cheap prices, lots of earning potential) but can’t seem to grasp that hard and soft power - as well as the maintenance of society - have real costs. Also ironic you talk about roads - how would you propose those be funded if the government doesn’t deserve anything?

This argument doesn't even make sense in 2025 when you consider the many ways in which our standard of living has declined while our tax burdens have increased. And don't give me some bullshit about cheap toys like consumer electronics and the like. I want affordable homes, reliable cars, and cheap energy, not a $100 LCD monitor or a $15 polyester sweater made in Bangladesh.

What's the point of my taxes going up, of seeing the numbers on the GDP chart go up every year, if I can't even do something as simple as ordering a beautiful and affordable kit home from the Sears catalog anymore? This house would cost $45,000 today after adjusting for inflation. According to your logic, life in 2025 should be better than it was in 1995, 1985, or 1955 because we pay more taxes, but a man in 1940 could live better than me...

The whole point of "hard power" and "soft power" is to enable us to live in peace and prosperity, either through the carrot or the stick. But instead of building onwards and upwards from the success of our predecessors, we chose to coast on their legacy. Now I have to regularly worry about something as ridiculous as being accosted by a drugged out schizophrenic when taking public transportation in most major cities, which would have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for my grandfather. It's just death by a thousand little cuts with this kind of stuff, and it fatigues the collective consciousness of our society... and empties our wallets...

We need to seriously rethink our approach to these things. Higher taxation is not the answer. We need less spending, but it's almost impossible to achieve because people can't fathom the thought of losing enormous cash cows like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. "I paid into it, other people should too!!"

And while we're figuring out this domestic spending crisis, we certainly shouldn't be spending any money on condoms for Gaza, transsexual theater troupes, DEI bullshit, and countless other misallocations of taxpayer money.

[Boomer6]

[O Face]

12 hours ago, Smokin said:

You find it ironic I talked about roads in a post highlighting problems with our government spending?  I find it extremely ironic that you referenced the 'ask not what your country can do for you' quote when talking about the budget when the majority of the federal government budget is purely wealth redistribution under various names.  That is 100% people asking what their country can do for them and many of them do virtually nothing for their country in return.

I gave the best 20+ years of my life defending this country; I've asked and answered what I can do for my country.  I'm not asking anything of my country now other than to stop taking my money and giving it to people that haven't done a thing to deserve it.  As @blueingreen said, I'd gladly forfeit everything I've contributed to social security in order to kill all wealth redistribution plans.

I'm just fine paying taxes for things like roads, national defense, etc.  I fully grasp that those have real costs that I've paid for, both in taxes and service.  But the majority of our budget is not roads and such.  And the enormous bureaucracy gobbles up significant portions of the very small portions of our budget that are allocated for what the federal government actually should be doing.  If our government doesn't start focusing on what it should be doing and cutting out the rest of the BS, we're going to be in a world of hurt.

Don’t try to get up Banzai

[Guest nsplayr]

12 hours ago, Smokin said:

...when the majority of the federal government budget is purely wealth redistribution under various names.  That is 100% people asking what their country can do for them and many of them do virtually nothing for their country in return.

...I'd gladly forfeit everything I've contributed to social security in order to kill all wealth redistribution plans.

But the majority of our budget is not roads and such.

Well, that's a position you can take I guess, it's just not a popular one at all.

You're right that a majority of our budget is not roads. An exact majority, 50% of our budget, is social security, medicare and national defense, just those three things. Those are the big levers to pull. You're not gaining much at all by firing all the probationary employees at the Park Service or cancelling a program to provide condoms to Mozambique or whatever. Those are grains of sand on the beach. Sure "eVeRy DoLlAr CoUnTs" but some smart tweaks to the big things are 1,000x more powerful than absolutely slashing the small stuff, so we should focus on the stuff that matters.

• Social security is extremely broadly popular, and a majority of all Americans think we spend too little rather than too much. Approx 80%+ approval.
• Medicare is extremely broadly popular. Approx 80%+ approval.
• National defense is extremely broadly popular and also one of the things that's pretty inarguably required by the Constitution, even amongst conservatives who think the federal government does too much. We're also all very familiar with what this type of spending entails & the benefits it provides.

So, yes, you can be an extreme libertarian miser and say "cut the guvment to the bone!" and live your life that way. But don't pretend that point of view is popular, it's very much not.

I for one want to live in a country that is the world's preeminent superpower both militarily and economically - there's a cost to that and we pay that for national defense. I want to live in a country that secures a dignified degree of income security and medical care for the elderly because having destitute and sick/dying older folks on every corner is not what successful countries do.

If only there were a document that stated that the founding purpose of the United States was to do these things. Something something, IDK, spitballing here..."...insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." Damn that would be sweet.

Obv you can play around at the margins and adjust all spending categories to ensure fiscal stability, and I support some measures to do that, but the overall intent of a civilized nation is to make life better for its citizens, and the framers of the Constitution that we all swore to defend agree. If you want to be in your own self-sufficient bubble unburdened by having to care about other people, you can take a boat to Antactartica or a rocket to the Moon, setup camp, and best of luck to ya!

[HeloDude]

12 minutes ago, Banzai said:

How is giving more money to the owning class and taking away resources from the working class going to get us back to the affordability you claim existed in the 1940s?

Reducing taxes on people who make more money is not “giving” them anything…it was their money to begin with.  And “taking away” from the poor is not taking anything from them as was never their resources to begin with.

[HeloDude]

1 minute ago, Banzai said:

Then do you think we as citizens of the USA don’t have a duty to the debt we have accumulated? Who does?

You didn’t say anything abut debt, you originally were taking a hit giving/taking from people based on their income/wealth.

As for the debt, yep, I’m all for reducing it as much as possible by reducing spending.  We have a spending problem, not a tax problem.

[Guest nsplayr]

12 hours ago, blueingreen said:

I want affordable homes, reliable cars, and cheap energy.

Then we need to build many, many more homes (YIMBY), built and import more cars, and build many, many more utility-scale renewable energy facilities since those are the cheapest form of new energy production.

12 hours ago, blueingreen said:

This house would cost $45,000 today after adjusting for inflation.

I got $64K from 1914 dollars to 2025. Also doesn't include the land, actually building the house, windows, doors, etc. Also no central HVAC, it's less than 1,400 sq/ft, etc. Do you want electricity? That's not likely included, ~10% of homes had electricity in 1914.

Should we build lots more "starter homes" that are < 1,500 sq/ft and don't cost an arm and a leg...yes! Would love to discuss what policy changes are needed to make this happen. Liberal states have failed on this utterly and some more conservative areas of the country have done better.

I agree that part of "The American Dream" includes buying and owning a home, I would love to discuss how we can make that dream a more achievable on a median income, that should be the goal.

12 hours ago, blueingreen said:

The whole point of "hard power" and "soft power" is to enable us to live in peace and prosperity, either through the carrot or the stick. But instead of building onwards and upwards from the success of our predecessors, we chose to coast on their legacy. Now I have to regularly worry about something as ridiculous as being accosted by a drugged out schizophrenic when taking public transportation in most major cities, which would have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for my grandfather. It's just death by a thousand little cuts with this kind of stuff, and it fatigues the collective consciousness of our society... and empties our wallets...

Agreed on this. We need to actually invest in human and physical capital and better ensure public safety in public places.

12 hours ago, blueingreen said:

Higher taxation is not the answer. We need less spending...

Disagree on this. You are going to have an impossibly hard time achieving the above goals without more and better spending. The "ideal life" most folks here probably envision was in the 1950s, right? Single working father buying a home and a car and providing for his family while his wife would SAHM with 2.5 kids and white picket fence right? I'm not saying that's the only good life, but it is a good one and one I personally live pretty much!

You know what we did to achieve that? Spend a FUCK TON of money investing in human and physical capital + war production & victory under FDR. All the New Deal spending and policy changes plus eventually winning WWII launched us from depression-era second-rate power to global superpower & most prosperous nation on earth.

Going from the great depression of the 30s to the Leave It To Beaver American Dream of the 1950s did not happen by accident and it definitely didn't happen by lowering taxes and spending. You cannot austerity yourself to greater prosperity.

Edited February 17 by nsplayr

[HeloDude]

14 minutes ago, Banzai said:

When it comes to funding society, everything is about giving/taking from people based on their income/wealth. You just believe it should be done differently (in a way that I would argue would have negative second and third order effects).

For example, if we went to a tariff based tax system, the poor would have to pay significantly more of a percentage of their net worth or income to taxes than the rich. 

Again, we have too much welfare and federal spending as it is…and the poorest don’t pay federal income taxes, and if they work, they actually get paid by the IRS, so don’t give me the “poor pay too much in federal income taxes” BS.  Compare apples to apples and tell me what percentage of revenue received from federal income taxes are paid by the top 20% of earners vs the bottom half of earners.  You’re just for more social programs, paid by higher earners, and I am for less.  

[HeloDude]

2 minutes ago, Banzai said:

I am for high earners paying a proportionally higher amount of their income or net worth in taxes, yes. It’s called progressive taxation, and it is highly popular. And I’m bothered that rich people and corporations don’t pay enough in taxes, just like 60-80% of Americans:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/07/top-tax-frustrations-for-americans-the-feeling-that-some-corporations-wealthy-people-dont-pay-fair-share/

This forum will be biased, but it is not reflective of broader American views.

I think we’re at a stopping point here. I acknowledge your views. But I think they are over simplistic and I disagree with them.

The problem with socialism is the eventually you run out do other people’s money.  We already have a very progressive tax system and yet we’re extremely in debt…but sure, let’s just do more of it.  And have you seen the average American today?—yeah, not what I would call a model example of thriving society.

[HeloDude]

12 minutes ago, Banzai said:

Your assertions about how relatively progressive our tax system is is not backed up by the data.

https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality-before-and-after-taxes

 

You lost me at “income inequality”…it’s called life, and some people are just better at it than others.  Sorry, but if you’re a progressive who believe in more social programs than less, then you’re right, we’re definitely not going to agree on much.  

[brabus]

19 minutes ago, Banzai said:

I am for high earners paying a proportionally higher amount of their income or net worth in taxes, yes. It’s called progressive taxation, and it is highly popular. And I’m bothered that rich people and corporations don’t pay enough in taxes

The top 1% pay nearly 50% of federal taxes, top 10% pay over 75%, and the bottom 50% (I say again, HALF of tax payers) pay less than 3% of total federal taxes. The top 50% pay over 97% of the taxes.  It is pure insanity and completely illogical to argue “the rich don’t pay their fare share.” But it’s a nice progressive talking point to be absorbed and repeated by ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and/or unintelligent people.

Other related points…

- We need to rein in spending on a historic scale. Should Medicare/SS be shuttered? Well I do believe we need a social safety net (we agree on that), but these are horribly ran programs, and as of now all of my SS witholdings across adult life are literal theft because the program will be completely insolvent and defunct by the time I’m of age…unless they fix it. We need a new system along with a SS sunset

- I’m OK with taxes staying flat for a short time while we solve spending problems and reduce the deficit. But reality is we the people are currently being taxed 100s of billions that are paying for utter bullshit. Thats 100s of billions that need to be back in taxpayer pockets via cuts as soon as feasible. We can’t right the wrong of the past (because we need to reduce deficit), but we should at least start righting it ASAP (e.g. start with a clean slate)

- General point: conservatives aren’t anti-tax, but we are anti-tax to fund bullshit the federal gov has no business funding, let alone managing/controlling. For example, Dept of Ed had a $238B budget in 2024…that dept shouldn’t exist at all and $238B is either not required by the gov (and therefore tax reduced) or I could see still collecting it to pay down deficit (again, for a short timeframe, not forever). That’s one example from a large sea of examples. 

 

 

[blueingreen]

1 hour ago, nsplayr said:

Then we need to build many, many more homes (YIMBY), built and import more cars, and build many, many more utility-scale renewable energy facilities since those are the cheapest form of new energy production.

I'm all for building new housing. I'm also a bit of an architecture nut, so I'd love to see a revival of classical architectural ideals instead of the utilitarian concrete and steel we see nowadays. There are some up and coming studios in places like Charleston, SC that are working wonders. I'd also like to see real estate become less of a speculative asset owned by mega-corps like BlackRock. The incentives are all wrong, people and companies alike shouldn't be holding on to their homes with the expectation that it's going to appreciate in value. Just let a house be a house. When it comes to renewable energy, I'm not willing to entertain any discussion that excludes nuclear. The backbone of renewable power grids in the future is going to have to be nuclear, and people need to get over their unfounded fears about it. The improvements in safety that have been made in the past 5 - 10 years alone are remarkable. We literally have meltdown-proof reactors and reusable nuclear waste.

1 hour ago, nsplayr said:

I got $64K from 1914 dollars to 2025. Also doesn't include the land, actually building the house, windows, doors, etc. Also no central HVAC, it's less than 1,400 sq/ft, etc. Do you want electricity? That's not likely included, ~10% of homes had electricity in 1914.

Apologies, that was my mistake. I thought that image was from the 1940 Sears catalog. It's actually from the 1924 catalog, which means the inflation-adjusted price of that home is... $36K. Even if it was $64K, that's still a fantastic price. As for the price of plumbing, heating, and electricity, take a look at this 1927 Sears Modern Homes catalog (Full Catalog Link)

1 hour ago, nsplayr said:

Should we build lots more "starter homes" that are < 1,500 sq/ft and don't cost an arm and a leg...yes! Would love to discuss what policy changes are needed to make this happen. Liberal states have failed on this utterly and some more conservative areas of the country have done better.

I agree that part of "The American Dream" includes buying and owning a home, I would love to discuss how we can make that dream a more achievable on a median income, that should be the goal.

I don't disagree with anything you say here. People don't need such large houses. I think the appetite for smaller starter homes is there, but nobody builds them and I genuinely don't know why. I'm not a housing policy expert, but it seems like the regulations on housing have ballooned since the days of the Roebuck homes. I live in a kit home in the Northeast that was built in 1963 and it's largely unchanged / unrenovated since then. I have no complaints about heating, electricity, etc., but these kinds of homes are no longer built today for some reason.

1 hour ago, nsplayr said:

Going from the great depression of the 30s to the Leave It To Beaver American Dream of the 1950s did not happen by accident and it definitely didn't happen by lowering taxes and spending. You cannot austerity yourself to greater prosperity.

During the New Deal era, our country had a larger share of people who were economically productive. It was all hands on deck. Today we have people committing PPP loan fraud, starting companies called "Free Money Inc." and "Hellcat LLC". I know that's just one small example, but it's indicative of a completely different mindset. There is so much fraud and waste that has accompanied the general decline in our morals and standards.

Spending is only complex in the sense that there are a near-infinite number of ways to allocate resources, which can cause a headache. In another sense, it's dead simple: There are givers and takers. Working people who pay more taxes than they take out in benefits are givers. Children, the elderly, and the poor are usually takers. Does that mean we should exile all children, elderly people, and poor people to the Mojave Desert or something? No. But we need strike a balance between respecting the contributions of the productive class and helping the needy. As the ratio of givers to takers approaches 1:1, or even less, we become increasingly screwed. Our current demographic trends are moving us closer to that 1:1 ratio.

If I truly felt that giving up 40 - 50% of my income would guarantee fast, widespread, and safe public transit, walkable neighborhoods, beautiful and affordable homes, low crime, high social trust, etc. I would agree with you. I've been to Denmark, I've been to Japan, I've been to places that have these things. But the sense that I get and that many other honest and hard-working Americans get is that we're being shafted, which doesn't encourage me to give more of my money to the government. It's going to take time for the government to regain the trust of the American people.

Edited February 17 by blueingreen
spelling

[busdriver]

22 minutes ago, Banzai said:

Your assertions about how relatively progressive our tax system is is not backed up by the data.

https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality-before-and-after-taxes

 

That data set has nothing to do with how progressive a tax system is.  The countries the left likes all have less progressive tax systems.  Everyone pays a crap load.

[Guest nsplayr]

On 2/15/2025 at 8:30 AM, ClearedHot said:

So you do think we should buy Greenland!

Honestly this is the least dumb random idea Trump has advocated for 😅 We bought Alaska from the Ruskies and that has turned out amazingly well. We shouldn't invade Danish sovereign territory in order to do it, but if they wanna sell it (they don't, but hypothetically), we should buy it.

[17D_guy]

So we all cool with the Democratic Mayor of New York City getting his bribery case dismissed since he jumped on the immigration band wagon?

Then the DOJ getting the resignation of the primary prosecutor, then firing the prosecutors who wouldn't dismiss the case?

Nice Quid pro quo.
 

[Guest nsplayr]

3 minutes ago, 17D_guy said:

So we all cool with the Democratic Mayor of New York City getting his bribery case dismissed since he jumped on the immigration band wagon?

Then the DOJ getting the resignation of the primary prosecutor, then firing the prosecutors who wouldn't dismiss the case?

Nice Quid pro quo.
 

I have been a long-term hater of Eric Adams since I saw him plant drugs in a bookcase in a campaign ad. The fact that he's the Dem mayor of NYC is neither here nor there. He's a corrupt asshole and the charges against him are very sound - he should face trial.

Trump should not pardon or drop cases against corrupt politicians, but we all know why he does.

 

Edited February 17 by nsplayr

[SocialD]

29 minutes ago, nsplayr said:

Should we build lots more "starter homes" that are < 1,500 sq/ft and don't cost an arm and a leg...yes! Would love to discuss what policy changes are needed to make this happen. Liberal states have failed on this utterly and some more conservative areas of the country have done better.

 

I've been pouring over a bunch of zoning information today (horrible reading), you're right, LOTS of work to do on this.  Sadly, it's tough to even find someone willing to build such "small" houses. 

 

29 minutes ago, nsplayr said:

Disagree on this. You are going to have an impossibly hard time achieving the above goals without more and better spending. The "ideal life" most folks here probably envision was in the 1950s, right? Single working father buying a home and a car and providing for his family while his wife would SAHM with 2.5 kids and white picket fence right? I'm not saying that's the only good life, but it is a good one and one I personally live pretty much!

 

The problem with that "ideal life" is that wasn't really all that idealistic as we want to remember.  Or maybe we just come from different classes, but my parents upbringing wasn't exactly "ideal," based on what they were required to do to raise a family on a single income.  

 

break break

 

When you factor everything right down to things like real estate tax, etc...(taxed money on taxed money), we already pay a huge portion of our income to taxes.  After looking at my needs and this years final tax bill, I'm already working less this year lol.  Anyway, I'd entertain backing higher tax rates if I knew it would be spent wisely.  Based on what I've seen after a career in the military, some of the things we fund coming out lately and having a family member heavy into an industry that is heavily subsidized by taxpayer money, I just don't believe that will happen.  On the latter point, I sure wish my family had a few hundred acre of land because govt subsidized cheese is great for many landowners right now...

[blueingreen]

1 hour ago, Banzai said:

How is giving more money to the owning class and taking away resources from the working class going to get us back to the affordability you claim existed in the 1940s?

Firstly, your framing is a little disingenuous. I don't "claim" this kind of affordability existed in the past... it simply did. I provided receipts on housing prices in my previous post which you can peruse at your discretion.

What is the difference between the "owning class" and the "working class?" In my mind the "working class" is a class of people who are certainly not rich but are still net contributors, and are therefore part of the "owning" or "productive" class. If the net economic output of your work is less than zero, how can you even call that "work"?

I'd also refer you to what @brabus mentioned earlier. The top 50% of earners pay over 97% of the taxes. It's absolutely insane that half the country essentially contributes nothing to our finances.

1 hour ago, Banzai said:

Do you see people making $30k a year working a minimum wage job as members of the society you live in? Or are they just sucking up your resources?

My hope is that a person making $30K a year is on the first rung of a long and illustrious career ladder. If that person is incapable of earning more than $30K for their entire life, it is indeed likely that they are a net fiscal burden on our society. I would also wonder if there might be an element of cognitive and/or physical impairment at play. 

[blueingreen]

2 minutes ago, Banzai said:

And if you yearn for the 40s, why would you not support 90% marginal taxes on top earners and less income and wealth disparity? After all, that was when America was great, right?

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/

I'm not some TradCon type looking through rose-tinted glasses who thinks 1940 was the cultural and economic peak of civilization. But yeah, it was great in a lot of ways. Can you provide a rational explanation for why a good house in a safe neighborhood was more affordable in 1927? Genuinely, what am I missing? We've made all this cultural and economic "progress" for what? As I said, I would be happy to pay more taxes if I knew it went to a good cause and I was able to see the return on my investment in the society around me. I just get the sense that the quality of our society has not improved in fundamental ways that should be commensurate with our increased rates of taxation.

Taxing the rich at 90% sounds nice until you actually try implementing it and all the billionaires move to Switzerland or Dubai. Look what happened to Norway after they passed their billionaire tax in 2023. Could the rich give us more of their money? Probably. How far do we go before we risk driving them away, though? It's a legitimate question that deserves an answer. The combined wealth of all US billionaires is only $4.5 trillion, and if we confiscated it all, we could run the government for less than a year. How about the bottom 50% of earners. Could they do more? I think the answer to this question is the hardest. Is ability innate, environmental, or both? Maybe ability or "hard work" doesn't even correspond to outcomes as you suggest. If we assume that our society continues to increasingly rely on tech-savvy people in the age of AI, and we know that cognitive ability is normally distributed, then where does that leave the increasingly large class of people who will simply struggle to survive in the modern economy? What do we do with them? Should we restructure our immigration process to only screen for those on the right tail of the distribution? Lots of questions that we as a country need to answer.

[ClearedHot]

3 hours ago, nsplayr said:

Honestly this is the least dumb random idea Trump has advocated for 😅 We bought Alaska from the Ruskies and that has turned out amazingly well. We shouldn't invade Danish sovereign territory in order to do it, but if they wanna sell it (they don't, but hypothetically), we should buy it.

I agree...at first I thought it was another Crazy Ivan but when you peel the onion back a little bit it makes a lot of sense.  Obviously the strategic location issue but I had no idea about all the rare earth minerals, once that I came to light I was curious why Denmark wasn't harvesting everything on their own, apparently the capital investment is a bit to steep for them.  interestingly the Chinese are aware, they have a heavy presence on the ground right now.  What was truly surprising the extend of the independence movement in Greenland, a majority of the residents have wanted to be independent for some time.  Everyone is throwing shade at Trump for bringing this up but the United States tried to buy Greenland in 1947 for $100 million.  Just like we tried to buy Cuba in 1848 and again in 1854.

[BuddhaSixFour]

This is where the conversation jumps the rails. The “rich” pay their fair share and the tax system is highly progressive through the bottom 99%. Then it falls off a cliff and the “stratospherically wealthy” pay far less. I’m super fortunate to have the first world problem of getting taxed hard. Hell, I vote D 90% of the time so I even fully admit I enable it. What chaps my ass is when people who make less than me say I should pay more while the people above me proportionately pay half as much. Scott Galloway has a great discussion on who the “tax mules” are, and it’s the $500k to $2M on W2 wages crowd. A few years of that and investment income takes over at cap gains rates, plus the shenanigans you can play there.