We’re boned:
Looks like I picked the wrong profession. This bill will eventually gut public higher education, and the humanities will be the first to go, as they’re considered “luxuries” by the GOP establishment. I suppose it was nice while it lasted. But at least the took out the provision that shielded Betsy DeVos’ Alma Mater from the tax on private college endowments. I suspect that there will be far fewer working class people able to get a higher education degree now. But hey, who needs an educated work force right? Who needs history, art, and literature and people to help us understand those things? I mean, we’re all a bunch of marxist, partisan hacks, right?
The whole thing seems like a shitshow…
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Damn them! Damn them all! They can have my Library of Congress when they pry it from cold, dead hands.
…
Sorry. Sorry that everyone has to suffer because some goddamn selfish pricks decided to screw everyone over. It is my sincere hope that the Republican base die soon: old, destitute, and miserable. It is not right that we suffer for their greed.
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I’m an independent contractor who owns his own business.
Under the new tax rules, none of my business expenses are deductible. I can no longer deduct the rent I pay on office space, the cost of business equipment, or the cost of travel to my clients’ offices when needed. My tax burden after this year will increase by many thousands of dollars, which means that my 12-year-long career as a freelance designer won’t be able to continue.
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You and me both. I spend tens of thousands a year on travel, accommodations, IT equipment, etc. I’m getting fucked by this. Which is exactly what they want.
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But this tax bill is supposed to help small businesses! /s
That totally sucks. I’m sorry. The reality of this bill seems to be punishing anyone who makes less than a million a year.
I suppose we’ll see what the reconcilation bill looks like, but this is a really horrible bill all around. The people who actually do important things in the economy are going to get the biggest burden here.
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It is all for the best, so big corporations can have a cheaper, more abundant pool of unemployed peons to choose from. Low unemployment is bad for bosses.
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This is what gets me, becuause I keep hearng the GOP line about ‘job creators’ and oh hey these small contractor type businesses are job creators. They give people something to start as. But no it seems their definition of ‘job creator’ is ‘big enough to walk in with briefcases full of money and not bat an eye at the expense involved.’
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Here are some of the specifics on the impact of higher education:
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Un-ironically, this is exactly the case. The GOP concept of ‘job creator’ is along the entrepeneur/Trump model: someone who can found a large business with massive industry growth potential and can employ many hundreds of people; the new tax bill is hugely skewed to benefit big business by taking benefits away from the self-employed or independent contractors. The hope would be to boost raw employment numbers rather than support ‘vendors’ like myself. It didn’t work for Reagan and it won’t work now.
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And since I haven’t had a good “fuck John McCain” moment in a few weeks, here we go.
Fuck that guy.
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This might not be as terrible as it seems. Oh, the provisos are… insane. But! They are so gratuitously horrible that this may be the final snap-awake moment that America so desperately needs. This actually makes me optimistic, for the first time in ages. I was afraid of the death of a thousand cuts, all of which are infected.
This… this could change things.
It is going to get worse before it gets better, however.
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Forgive my skepticism, but I’ll believe that when I see it. We all thought his election, the Russia investigation, nazis in our streets actually killing people, a clearly incompetent and dangerous foreign policy, installing a bunch of kleptocrats to gut our government, etc, would finally wake up the latent socialist in people. So far, nothing. This is just getting further and further normalized.
If and when people wake up, it won’t matter, because it will be signed into law and having a measurable effects on our economy and on people’s lives.
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More link dumps about this fuckery.
https://www.axios.com/the-odd-amendments-included-in-the-gop-tax-plan-2514179293.html
With bonus “let’s shit on Native Americans some more while we’re at it” regulations:
Treat Indian tribal governments as State governments for specific Federal tax purposes, and others
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Oh, skepticism is absolutely called for. I’m not saying I am certain. But the difference is that you could ignore the Nazis. You totally could, if you wanted to. It’s just something on the News and, anyway, it’s all fake, probably.
But there’s precious few Americans that this… thing won’t wallop upside the head. And soon, too! It’s not like starving places out of infrastructure which kills them twenty years down the road. The effects are going to happen now.
That just might be what it takes.
Might being the crucial word.
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Alabama is on the verge of putting a child molester in the Senate and most Republicans are cool with it because it will further the agenda of the outright fascist President that 40% of Americans still support.
I guess in an abstract way I know things can’t keep getting worse forever, but how many more “maybe this will be the wake up call America needs!” moments do we have to endure?
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Not to mention people being perfectly cool with light treason from those in charge.
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You’ve every right and every reason to feel like that. And you may well be right, as grim as that’d be. But I think that this is the case where the ill-consequences and the ill-thought-out action follow one another directly enough that it becomes hard to ignore. I mean, you can tell yourself that it’s all lies about Moore, you can say to yourself that, evidence to the contrary, Trump will be draining that swamp any day now, but if your business folds because the GOP tax plan hates you, well, who are you going to blame? You can’t pretend it is a good thing, and you can’t pretend it is someone else’s fault. Hence the hope.
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