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Tax Reductions for the Rich?

I don't think it should be EXACTLY like we tax wages. We need to incentivize capital investments to keep the means of production (thereby salaries and wages) expanding and viable. But favorable treatment should be limited to the small business side of things, not to the multi-billion dollar hedge fund industry.
We already do it to an extent with the graduated rates and the distinction between long- and short-term investments. But the graduated rates are based on income tax bracket, and not investment level. Maybe we should have two separate progressive structures that don't depend on each other. So, for example, your first X dollars of wages are at a lower rate independent of your investments, but your first Y dollars of investments are also at a lower rate independent of your wages. Then we can raise the rates on the upper levels of investment without punishing middle and upper-middle class producers who are also saving for retirement by putting money in the market.
 
I think you're hitting on the biggest problem here. Not so much the numbers, but the perspective. We consider a bigger increase in GDP to be better than a smaller increase, but we really shouldn't actually be making that judgment without looking at who exactly is getting the benefits of that increase. If Microsoft increases its production by $10 billion, that increases the size of our economy, but it doesn't actually do much for the welfare of the nation as a whole if $9.9 billion goes directly into Bill Gates' checking account.

What do you think the bank does the bank does with the $9.9 billion in Gates checking account?

Depending on the reserve requirements at the time, the $9.9 billion can be multiplied several times with loans and deposits. That will increase the size of the economy.
 
What do you think the bank does the bank does with the $9.9 billion in Gates checking account?

Depending on the reserve requirements at the time, the $9.9 billion can be multiplied several times with loans and deposits. That will increase the size of the economy.
The bank does far less with it much slower than paycheck-to-paycheck workers would do with it if they got a little extra every other Friday.
 
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Wow! Nice cherry picking to find something to criticize POTUS. LOL. Did you read the rest of the article? It I is nothing but great economic news. It is interesting that 65% say that the tax cuts had no impact on hiring yet virtually all are experience increasing profits and sales and need to hire people. Also, 68% said that tariffs are not affecting their plans.

Hmm, the bill passed well into fourth quarter 2017. First quarter 2018 showed a 2.3% growth. Is 2.3% growth expected to explain all these great things you say are happening? If so, how much credit did you give Obama for his quarters over 2.3%?
 
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Apple will be hiring 20,000 people in the US in addition to the 84,000 employed in the US. In addition they will be contributing $345 billion to the US economy over the next 5yrs.

https://www.inc.com/business-inside...ng-back-245-billion-pay-38-billion-taxes.html

Apple will hire 20,000 people over the next five years. Does this mean without the tax plan Apple would have hired zero people over the next five years? How do we know how many of those 20,000 were expected to be hired before the tax plan?
 
Hmm, the bill passed well into fourth quarter 2017. First quarter 2018 showed a 2.3% growth. Is 2.3% growth expected to explain all these great things you say are happening? If so, how much credit did you give Obama for his quarters over 2.3%?

I have no problem at all giving Obama credit for economic growth. My point was that the article quoted was full of very good economic outlook and the one item in the survey that could be found to fuel the hate of some people on this board was the one quoted.
 
Apple will hire 20,000 people over the next five years. Does this mean without the tax plan Apple would have hired zero people over the next five years? How do we know how many of those 20,000 were expected to be hired before the tax plan?

If you read the article you will see how Apple is responding to pressure from the administration. The repatriation of foreign cash is good for Americans even f some of it is used to buy back stock.
 
If you read the article you will see how Apple is responding to pressure from the administration. The repatriation of foreign cash is good for Americans even f some of it is used to buy back stock.
I don't have issues with repatriation. For a long time when we had discussions here most of us felt lowering the corporate rate was good. Of course closing loopholes was supposed to be part of that (see GE's past abilities to have big profits and pay 0 federal tax). To my knowledge, those loopholes were not closed as part of the deal. So Apple gets a big increase, and GE probably will still pay no tax. The offshore trick was only part of the dodge, you can see other dodges here. One, a corporation is allowed to sell stock to its management at a reduced price, and take that as a loss against their taxes. Hmmm. And of course we hand out tax breaks for important things, like building a NASCAR track.

We could have passed a bill eliminating things like above and lowered the rate to 21% and I would have been all for it. But we lowered the rate, let people build NASCAR tracks on the federal dime, and then lowered the rates for the wealthiest Americans. The ones who get to buy the stock at the aforementioned lower rate.
 
I don't have issues with repatriation. For a long time when we had discussions here most of us felt lowering the corporate rate was good. Of course closing loopholes was supposed to be part of that (see GE's past abilities to have big profits and pay 0 federal tax). To my knowledge, those loopholes were not closed as part of the deal. So Apple gets a big increase, and GE probably will still pay no tax. The offshore trick was only part of the dodge, you can see other dodges here. One, a corporation is allowed to sell stock to its management at a reduced price, and take that as a loss against their taxes. Hmmm. And of course we hand out tax breaks for important things, like building a NASCAR track.

We could have passed a bill eliminating things like above and lowered the rate to 21% and I would have been all for it. But we lowered the rate, let people build NASCAR tracks on the federal dime, and then lowered the rates for the wealthiest Americans. The ones who get to buy the stock at the aforementioned lower rate.

Agree totally
 
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I don't think it should be EXACTLY like we tax wages. We need to incentivize capital investments to keep the means of production (thereby salaries and wages) expanding and viable. But favorable treatment should be limited to the small business side of things, not to the multi-billion dollar hedge fund industry.

great point. if we tax investment like other income, the investment class will just put their money in their bank's savings account, or under their mattress, where they'll be racking in way more ROI than they would in the market, and be better able to cover that increased tax load.
 
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Apple will hire 20,000 people over the next five years. Does this mean without the tax plan Apple would have hired zero people over the next five years? How do we know how many of those 20,000 were expected to be hired before the tax plan?

and the great thing is, whenever major corps say they plan to hire X more people in the next 5 yrs, that 100% always happens just as they proposed it would.

or not. who knew?
 
great point. if we tax investment like other income, the investment class will just put their money in their bank's savings account, or under their mattress, where they'll be racking in way more ROI than they would in the market, and be better able to cover that increased tax load.

Exactly. If we start taxing investments like everything else, wealthy investors will just stop making money to counteract it.
 
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Did Trump promise tax cuts for large companies or for middle and lower class families?

If you're trying to defend Trump, you need a different set of links that demonstrate how the lower and middle classes got (or will get) tax cuts.
 
Did Trump promise tax cuts for large companies or for middle and lower class families?

If you're trying to defend Trump, you need a different set of links that demonstrate how the lower and middle classes got (or will get) tax cuts.

That has been well documented. Do your own work.
 
That has been well documented. Do your own work.
"Well-documented," you wrote. Except for the part where the 1040 and instructions are not yet available for tax year 2018. Those parts are not well documented. There will be many surprises for average earners next April.

Trump promises income tax cuts for lower and middle class Americans and you guys start bragging about something else entirely, i.e., tax benefits for gigantic companies.
 
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"Well-documented," you wrote. Except for the part where the 1040 and instructions are not yet available for tax year 2018. Those parts are not well documented. There will be many surprises for average earners next April.

Trump promises income tax cuts for lower and middle class Americans and you guys start bragging about something else entirely, i.e., tax benefits for gigantic companies.[/QUOTE

Are you kidding? Trump talked about both!
For the most part he talked about the Corp tax rate being one of the highest in the world with the result that American companies were not competitive because of it? The discussion about individual
Tax rate was detailed significantly when the new withholding tables went into affect.
 
"Well-documented," you wrote. Except for the part where the 1040 and instructions are not yet available for tax year 2018. Those parts are not well documented. There will be many surprises for average earners next April.

Trump promises income tax cuts for lower and middle class Americans and you guys start bragging about something else entirely, i.e., tax benefits for gigantic companies.

My CPA already told me what my approximate taxes will be next year given the same income and deductions. The reduction is low 4 figures. I am not a gigantic company.
 
My CPA already told me what my approximate taxes will be next year given the same income and deductions. The reduction is low 4 figures. I am not a gigantic company.
But since you have a CPA (not a cheapo tax preparer), it also sounds like you are not an average earner, which is what I was talking about. Nice fail at deflection.

Edited/inserted "which is what I was talking about."
 
Hopefully Trump will go after companies raising prices after the mother of all tax breaks. There is no reason that companies shouldn’t be passing at least some of the savings thru to consumers.

Nice deflection. With this type of change in his ratings it will mzke the midterms really interesting.

I have no idea what the future holds for the economy. The tax breaks might get he economy moving beyond Obama's. The tax breaks might contribute to inflation. The tax breaks might send federal borrowing into all-time record highs. I have no clue yet, and I don't think anyone else does. I would just say anyone who says "this is an unqualified success" or "this is an unqualified failure" has no clue what they are talking about.

Personally I subscribe to the idea of cutting spending and raising taxes when the economy is growing. Then doing the opposite when a recession hits. It seems virtually no one else subscribes to that traditional Keynesian idea.
 
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Hopefully Trump will go after companies raising prices after the mother of all tax breaks. There is no reason that companies shouldn’t be passing at least some of the savings thru to consumers.

Nice deflection. With this type of change in his ratings it will mzke the midterms really interesting.

How would you have reacted to Obama "going after companies" and dictating prices? Are you ok admitting that the ends justify the means for you or is there some other difference on why it's ok for Trump to pick winners but not for a different politician you liked less.

This strikes me as some cognitive dissonance about how much you actually believe about capitalism. It's entirely consistent with our economic system for a company to use legislative changes to maximize their own profit, it's interesting that you think the government should get involved and tell them how to distribute that money. If that's the end goal, why use these corporations as the middle man instead of having a sane tax policy that goes directly for the outcome you want?
 
Hopefully Trump will go after companies raising prices after the mother of all tax breaks. There is no reason that companies shouldn’t be passing at least some of the savings thru to consumers.
It is hard to know where to begin.
1. The shareholders of these companies want to maximize profits not pass savings along to consumers or employees. The neither have nor feel they have some obligation to do what you suggest.
2. Management wants to maximize their salaries not pass savings along to shareholders, consumers or employees. Legally they are obligated to shareholders but as a practical matter they care about their own pay.
3. Trump doesn't care about shareholders, consumers, employees or management...he only wants to maximize his own haul while staying out of jail.

You imagine Trump as if he were some kind of beneficent dictator. There are no such things. But Trump is bringing us ever closer to the other kind of dictatorship.
 
I think it isn't Trump who's doing that. It's his supporters and enablers who are doing that. You can see them doing it right here.
Dictatorship is Trump's agenda...their agenda is supporting Trump. In an important sense I don't think they have agency.
 
I think it isn't Trump who's doing that. It's his supporters and enablers who are doing that. You can see them doing it right here.
Did you ever hear of the book "They Thought They Were Free" Here is an excerpt
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’"

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?​
 
It is hard to know where to begin.
1. The shareholders of these companies want to maximize profits not pass savings along to consumers or employees. The neither have nor feel they have some obligation to do what you suggest.
2. Management wants to maximize their salaries not pass savings along to shareholders, consumers or employees. Legally they are obligated to shareholders but as a practical matter they care about their own pay.
3. Trump doesn't care about shareholders, consumers, employees or management...he only wants to maximize his own haul while staying out of jail.

You imagine Trump as if he were some kind of beneficent dictator. There are no such things. But Trump is bringing us ever closer to the other kind of dictatorship.

The POTUS should use the bully pulpit to put a spotlight on companies failure to consider their customers, the American people.
 
The POTUS should use the bully pulpit to put a spotlight on companies failure to consider their customers, the American people.

Shame on you for preaching government interference and meddling. Talk about inefficient and unfair processes and practices...

Without customers, Companies have no business. They are obviously attune to their needs and issues. The only exceptions are monopolistic utilities.
 
Shame on you for preaching government interference and meddling. Talk about inefficient and unfair processes and practices...

Without customers, Companies have no business. They are obviously attune to their needs and issues. The only exceptions are monopolistic utilities.

Uh, it’s the government’s job to represent the people. There are a lot more monopolies than utilities. Try Amazon for example.
 
Please show us where Amazon holds a monopoly
https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...exactly-does-amazon-become-a-monopoly/530616/

On Friday morning, Amazon announced it was buying Whole Foods Market for more than $13 billion. About an hour later, Amazon’s stock had risen by about 3 percent, adding $14 billion to its value.

Amazon basically bought the country’s sixth-largest grocery store for free.

As the financial reporter Ben Walsh pointed out on Twitter, this is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen—normally, the acquiring company’s share price falls after a major purchase—and it suggests that investors now believe something odd is going on with Amazon. What could it be?

From a straightforward standpoint, the Whole Foods acquisition means that Amazon will now participate in the $700 billion grocery-store business. Jeff Bezos, the company’s president and CEO, has made grabs at that market for several years—launching Amazon Fresh, a food home-delivery service, and opening several Amazon-branded bodegas in Seattle. Now he owns one of the industry’s best-known brand names.

But Amazon paid a premium to buy Whole Foods, so its new full entry into another industry doesn’t quite explain the rise. Instead, the boost in share price suggests something more ominous: An incredible amount of economic power is now concentrated in Amazon, Inc., and investors now believe it is stifling competition in the retail sector and the broader American economy.​
 
https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...exactly-does-amazon-become-a-monopoly/530616/

On Friday morning, Amazon announced it was buying Whole Foods Market for more than $13 billion. About an hour later, Amazon’s stock had risen by about 3 percent, adding $14 billion to its value.

Amazon basically bought the country’s sixth-largest grocery store for free.

As the financial reporter Ben Walsh pointed out on Twitter, this is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen—normally, the acquiring company’s share price falls after a major purchase—and it suggests that investors now believe something odd is going on with Amazon. What could it be?

From a straightforward standpoint, the Whole Foods acquisition means that Amazon will now participate in the $700 billion grocery-store business. Jeff Bezos, the company’s president and CEO, has made grabs at that market for several years—launching Amazon Fresh, a food home-delivery service, and opening several Amazon-branded bodegas in Seattle. Now he owns one of the industry’s best-known brand names.

But Amazon paid a premium to buy Whole Foods, so its new full entry into another industry doesn’t quite explain the rise. Instead, the boost in share price suggests something more ominous: An incredible amount of economic power is now concentrated in Amazon, Inc., and investors now believe it is stifling competition in the retail sector and the broader American economy.​

Please demonstrate how this violates the prongs of antitrust law
 
I wasn’t arguing amazon probably violated laws I was showing evidence they have monopolist power. Just because something is bad doesn’t make it illegal.

What evidence? That article didn't describe anything monopolistic except the behavior of Amazon's stock
 
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