Isn’t this the same group that shut down the government over even thinking about raising the debt limit?
Term limits for all.
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… as long as we remain honest, decent, caring, law-abiding citizens, we never will be.
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I refuse to give Chuck Grassley any money!
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Abolish the loopholes for the Inheritor class. The problem usually isn’t in the rates, but the exemptions.
People trying to pass on the family home or farm get reamed, but people like Robert Mercer have corporate merger sex with his daughters and will pass on billions untouched.
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In the US, they don’t; at least not by the federal estate tax. Again, five millions is a lot of money.
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Arguably, these tax breaks would serve working class women then, wouldn’t they? 
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… but I thought that’s who trickle-down economics worked.
Was I wrong?!
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And this close to Xmas too. You don’t go full Scrooge this close to Xmas. That’s just bad form. Repubs are slipping into parody despite themselves.
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Somebody, spit on this guys steak.
Thank you, I mulled for a while how to say this but couldn’t come up with a phrasing worth posting.
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It’s amusing to think that part of his hatred of the poor having any kind of leisure comes from an older tradition of Protestantism’s opposition to leisure. Savings is fine but one doesn’t just eat, sleep, and work. But the most interesting part of that interview is the fact Grassley thinks any spending isn’t an investment in itself. When anyone buys a movie ticket or a smartphone that money is invested by the businesses who take it. The fact he thinks this is a sin or a miscalculation shows he hasn’t a clue when it comes to macro-economics. Thrift only works if there’s enough wealth that can circulate to offset it in the present and the future. If no such offset exists then you get deflation. This isn’t debated save for some fringe kooks in the Austrian School (even Hayek admitted spending was the consequence of all investments).
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Yeah, within our current system it’s an axiom that the amount spent and the amount produced are the same. I don’t understand how someone can buy so deeply into economic models to think that a tax cut can pay for itself while at the same time not understanding the most basic principle of how economics is supposed to work in a capitalist system. Consumption is good, and it doesn’t matter if it’s booze or movies or the services of women running small businesses.
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The Inheritor class always has loopholes to slide the wealth on to the next generation. They don’t just buy lawyers and tax experts, they buy laws. Hidden offshore money, corporatizing family wealth, etc. When a Dupont or a Seagram dies, it barely nicks the family foundation portfolio.
In Canada, the Liberal government made big noises about closing loopholes and taxing the rich, but what they did was crack down on the games that a well-off dentist or chiropractor would do, like having their wife on the company payroll. Nothing about the real rich putting a useless nephew on the family foundation board of directors, with as fat a salary as they want. They’re bypassing the rich and going after the upper middle class.
Five million sounds like a lot, but consider areas with inflated real estate markets. Everyone in Toronto who owns the smallest of homes is at least a paper millionaire. They can’t actually have that money unless they want to be homeless, spend it on rent, or colonize some place far away with lower property values.
So long as the utlra rich have their loopholes, taking everything at $5 million creates a barrier from anyone else joining their club, and will increasingly loot the middle class as high inflation* and paper value shove them into that limit.
- anyone who thinks that we don’t currently have high inflation doesn’t buy the groceries.
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Unless they are gay, maybe?
Consumption is not necessarily good in itself, I think. Sure, the economy needs some of it, but investment is also necessary. You can buy fuel to heat your house (pure consumption) or you can buy insulation and will buy less fuel the next years (investment, and reduction of consumption). Obviously “buying insulation” is also a form of consumption, and some industry needs to manufacture rockwool, for example. But it is also an investment in future savings.
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people buying goods are actually better investors, they don’t demamd dividends, or a buyback. They just get the booze they paid for and the company actually gets to KEEP the money. once again Republocans go to bat for the lender/rentiers at the expense of buyers and renters. I bet next they’ll find a way to go after kickstarters because they have the gall not to extract wealth from their investments.
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But the small investors rarely get them, anyway… and the rich get to drink the booze by themselves. 
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Consumption isn’t a pure good and everyone knows it. But if you are measuring the welfare of the economy by GDP growth, then you are going to measure consumption as a pure good. The kind of economic theory that the republicans are relying on to say their tax cuts are a good idea tells us that people spending money is a good thing, so complaining about people spending money shows this is about class warfare rather than about economics.
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