Senate passes their Tax bill

In part, I think this is the intended result of the tax bill. To put this into context, think about the fact that many millions of people are private contractors who effectively compete with big businesses for the same work. Making you bear more burden means two things: the market clears of competitors and those businesses get a cheaper labor pool. It’s a big win for big business who will get the two fold result of lower taxes and slav-err-cheap-err-more labor. :smiling_imp:

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*urge to reference David Ricardo intensifies*

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Yes, I’m sure that’s what they imagine is the case, but it isn’t.

Shifting the tax burden to the poor, the lower-class, the working class, the self-employed, and independent contractors might kill off the riffraff. But small startups like the types they say the tax bill will support can’t afford to have full-time staff for every random need. They can’t have a full-time designer to occasionally make their business cards, a full-time accountant for their taxes, and a full-time caterer for when they need lunch. By making small businesses pay more taxes, they’re killing the entire support system for large businesses.

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At this point, I’m dismal on the chances of a full-on nuclear war with North Korea waking these fucksticks up.

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Nah, they’re 100% good with that and cheering for it actively.

What’ll be interesting is whether the reality that their Medicare/Medicaid is essentially going away, their retirement age is changing, their health insurance is fucked, and their insurance deductions are going away will make anyone realize that Trump Hates Them. It surely should – I mean, it’s one thing for those darn Koreans to get blowed up, but for their own money to go up in flames is usually what wakes people up.

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One of the changes to the tax code is that state taxes will no longer be deductible on your federal income tax (or in the house version the SALT deduction is severely capped but not completely eliminated). This doesn’t entirely negate your point, but it makes increasing state level income tax more painful (and so less politically palatable) than it would have been prior to the current set of federal tax changes

The thing is the startup capitalists aren’t the ones who won the election, though. That prize goes to the Wall Street backers in Trump’s camp. In the end, they’ll get a very good Christmas while the rest of the economy burns down (they still make money even when the rest of us aren’t). So in a way, you could say it’s payback since many of the startups entrepreneurs who backed Clinton and the DNC.

Also as for the small businesses, Wall Street doesn’t give a hoot about them either. If anything, many of these old money types would love to replicate feudalism down to the clothing prohibitions and tying the peasants to vocations. They’re off in their own world which ultimately is some creepy power fantasy.

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Yes, I’ve been made quite aware of that as my money, my vocation, my healthcare, and my rights as a person get systematically destroyed over the past year. The world will be better off when these people are dead, but I’m not sure I’ll be around to see it.

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They’re just going to pass it on to their children, as Trump’s dad did.
As for me, I am trying to think of the world as my home, not so much the U.S., and probably would return only to fight in the next civil war/revolution.

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As the Yiddish saying goes, and if my grandmother had balls she’d be my grandfather.

Can’t prove a hypothetical. Way too much water under the bridge by now.

I happen to agree that Sanders would’ve had a better shot than Clinton ultimately did – no “but her emails” nonsense, which I honestly expected would not dominate her coverage the way that it did. But it’s more what my gut says, it’s not something provable.

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And people continuing to make up fake numbers is helpful to nobody.

Her emails. Sanders. The DNC. None of it matters at all.

By refusing to move on and deal with what’s going on right now, the Bernie-shoulda-won whiners are exactly the same as the Republicans who keep trying to prosecute Hillary.

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Agreed it’s impossible to know. Had he won the nomination the GOP would have surely invented some other scandal to scream about for six months. We simply don’t know how he would have weathered the general campaign.

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Yep, exactly. I say all this, btw, as someone who voted Clinton in the primary.

In 2020? I’m actually considering switching my registration to Republican – early enough for applicable deadlines – so as to vote against Trump (or Pence, as the case may be at that juncture) as many friggin’ times as possible.

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I agree. I feel the same way about the “more Dems should have voted” whiners.

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…it has caused an election in a very, very Red State to be very close, something that hasn’t happened in a long time.

This gives me hope. Even if Moore wins, it gives me hope for the 2018 elections.

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ricardio-intellectual-equals

I used to have an image of David Ricardio with Ricardio from Adventure time on his head… sadly, I don’t know where it is… I’ll have to remake it at some point.

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Oh man, this would be funny and karmatic if the outcome wasn’t so disastrous.

I mean, c’mon – is anybody the slightest bit shocked that Congress is already talking about reneging on the (unwritten) promises made to Flake and Collins to get their 0 hour votes? I’m sure not. I pretty much knew this was going to happen.

Lawmakers made it clear that they felt no reason to support the proposed deals, and blamed Senate leaders for trying to wheel and deal their way to a successful result on reforming the tax code and slashing rates, an issue they believe all Republicans should have been united around from the start.

Shame on all these fuckers.

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Not in my neighborhood. Our civil defense has started up the air raid siren testing again.

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So how soon do we just admit we live in the insane asylum already?

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