Trump made history: introducing tax cuts made him LESS popular

[hecep]

okey-doke.

[anon81034786]

@Papasan

We’ve traveled to every country on that list, except Norway. The trip to Finland was a real eye opener, the country side is beyond my meager narration abilities, a post card photo everywhere you turned.

I am extremely partial to Switzerland myself and would seriously consider an ex-pat relocation there if the salary was right. The only drawback is the very high cost of living there. A result, I’m sure, of it’s popularity.

[anon81034786]

@Ericb

My taxes definitely went down, but I also got a smaller refund. My employer changed the withholdings based on my W4. I made no changes to it. So I got about a $75 increase on my paycheck every two weeks. My total tax was about $1500 less for 2018. I suspect, and it’s been reported, that this happened for a lot of people, and they were not happy because they depend on that refund and had no idea the withholdings were changed in their paychecks. I had no idea until I did my taxes. I’m not saying taxes went down for everyone but this was a very common situation for a lot of folks who mistakenly think they went up.

I deliberately increased my withholding an extra $50 per paycheck last January to adjust for the tax changes since I wasn’t sure what the impacts were going to be. My overall taxes did go down a modest amount so I ended up getting a pretty large refund.

That refund is currently helping me to weather the unexpected sacking I just got 2 weeks ago.

(Where’s all the ‘Thanks Trump’ memes??)

[jandrese]

We tried to itemize, but hit the cap before we even got to charitable contributions. Dependants and a mortgage capped it out immediately.

[anon41977465]

Anyone who starts a sentence “Given what Trump knows” doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

[werdnagreb]

I would not call Canada’s economic structure “socialistic”. Yes, it’s more socialistic than the US, but only barely.

[jrkrideau]

Note the backpacks and the shoes on the main characters.

We have three young guys, fairly well dressed, decent haircuts, people in the background look fairly well dressed and going about their business.

No mob of people dumpster diving and what looks like a lot of food being thrown out.

No way that this could be FAKED /s

[L0ki]

I think he might also have had to sign something.

[nungesser]

The funny thing is, this should have been grade-school simple for someone as grade-school dumb as Trump.

Farmers and blue-collar workers voted for him because of his image as ultra-rich and a brilliant businessman. What could be more on-brand for Trump than to literally send people big fat checks signed TRUMP? Getting free money from the rich president is exactly what people hoped for.

Instead, he messed with the withholding and it makes it look like he’s a skinflint, giving them less money than Obama did.

[anon50609448]

@Ericb

I’m not saying taxes went down for everyone but this was a very common situation for a lot of folks who mistakenly think they went up.

Which furthers the author’s point about this being a devastating political error. If there are a large number of people out there who ended up with more money because of the change but feel like they ended up with less, something went very wrong with communications. (Not that communications about taxes are easy - it’s hard to do effective communications about things that very few people understand)

[Snork]

This “what if” assumes that Drumpf has at least some tiny measure of competence. He makes his “policy” decisions by listening to the people pushing ideas on him and agreeing with the one who kisses his ass the best.

[hecep]

@werdnagreb

I would not call Canada’s economic structure “socialistic”. Yes, it’s more socialistic than the US, but only barely.

Whatever it’s called… it seems to be working.

[Edgar_Carpenter]

George W Bush’s first big tax cut was not popular, either. Tax cuts are not as automatically popular as the GOP (and too many spineless Democrats) claim.