Clashes as yellow vest protests grow in Belgium, Netherlands

The more money you let Americans keep and spend the faster the economy will grow.

Nevertheless, Trump's tax cuts hiked taxes for the rich, and many of them are not happy about it.

"As part of the tax bill passed by the Republican Congress last December, the standard deduction individuals can take when paying their income tax was raised, but deductions for many individual items were removed.

In addition, individuals can no longer deduct more than $10,000 for state and local taxes or declare miscellaneous itemized deductions for work-related expenses and investment fees.

All these changes have hit pro athletes, whose certified public accountants are still toting up the losses, harder than most.

"One of my players makes $2 million a year," Steven Goldstein, a CPA with Grassi and Co. in New York who works with more than a dozen professional athletes and celebrities, told Steven Kutz of MarketWatch, "and it will cost him $80,000 more now because he can't deduct state taxes [over $10,000], agent fees, workout clothes, meals and entertainment, and his cellphone."

Most fans are likely to say, "Cry me a river," and in many cases they'd be justified. While some pro athletes toil in their various sports' minor leagues, where the actual pay can be minimum wage or below, some pro players make 10s of millions of dollars a year in salaries and bonuses, and many more make millions annually.
Cooper: Trump, Democrats, the rich and taxes,By Clint Cooper in Opinion Free Press, December 8th, 2018.
https://www.timesfreepress.com/news...2018/dec/08/trump-dems-rich-and-taxes/484545/

 

I agree with most of your post, but would offer one point for consideration. Trump's tax law won't put that much extra or new money into the hands of middle & lower class Americans, so I don't see it feeding a large consumer demand cycle.

 

I'm sure the people making millions will able to handle such a setback.

 

You know, logically, think about it, who needs whom more, the Steve Jobs' of the world need the poor, or vice versa?​

Ayn Rand: "If concern for human poverty and suffering were one’s primary motive, one would seek to discover their cause. One would not fail to ask: Why did some nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieved material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in subhuman misery? History and, specifically, the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the nineteenth century, would give an immediate answer: capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance—and the key to capitalism is individual freedom."

and

"Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others—misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement—failure is not a mortgage on success—suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence—man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause—life is not one huge hospital."​

aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/poverty.htm

or stated: Simply, your hunger doesn't give you the right to raid my refrigeration; getting the government to do it for you doesn't make it any less immoral.
​

 

We're talking about a 1st world nation... where HALF the country with a job earns 1930 euro or less.
Those people simply can not pay the bills that come in, while top managers make millions.
And when we take that HALF the nation with jobs, and add the people who do not have jobs.
Than we got a majority, in a democratic nation. Things happens at that point.

So you asked me, who needs who more? Seems obvious.
The rich need to have a majority.
They aint much without it.

 

Just read Israel is preparing for their Yellow Vest events.

Oh and Trump can
"told ya so" at Macron et al.

The costs of Climate Change Accords are unfairly placed on the poorer.
It is a regressive situation.
Similar to Grand Plans to reduce traffic by charging fees.
Richer folks lose all those poorer folks cluttering up "their" roads.


Bravo Yellow Vests and Thank YOU.


Moi

​

 

And so your solution is to have the majority vote to make the productive pay for the poor’s inability to earn their own living?

In political science we call that tyranny of the mob at the expense of the rights of the individual.

My solution is to fire the central planners, and embrace capitalism. Then let each individual rise as far as their best will take them.

 

1930 euros is over 6 times what the average Russian earns. All the trolls on this board will tell you the Russians are rolling in money. You don't see them protesting either. Ever wonder why that is?

 

OMG... lol
In political science, we call this democracy when the majority rules.
And when the individual rules at the expense of the majority, than it's tyranny.

 

They don't live in Russia where the cost of living is a lot cheaper.

 

Ah, the one against the many, like in Venezuela, right? BTW: A free man seeks neither to rule or be ruled, he seeks not martyrdom nor sainthood--what he seeks is the right to be left alone to pursue his own happiness.

Ayn Rand: "Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.

An individualist is a man who says: “I will not run anyone’s life—nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone—nor sacrifice anyone to myself.”

Furthermore: "If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it’s done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong)—how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered."

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/democracy.html

Now let me put it simply to the simple: The choice is neither slave or enslavement by the one or the many, but tyranny by the brute and/or the mob, or liberty.

Or as Buddy Holly sang it: "You go your way; I'll go mine."

 

No like in France where they go by Liberte, egalite and fraternite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberté,_égalité,_fraternité
(liberty, unity, equality)

 

Which is why the French Revolution was covered in guillotine blood and headless corpses. Which is why I like, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." You know, Individualism, not mass slaughter that is the currency of collectivism.

As in: No man can call me brother he thinks he has the right to rule my life.

 

Dude. That was to end the tyranny of the royal elite.
You really do not know anything. lol

 

Oh, I bet you loved Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, the power-lusting bloodletting, psychotic murdere--and just possibly the top intellectual leader-- of the French Revolution. Correct me if I'm wrong, didn't he put Thomas Paine in prison?

The difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution is that the French revolutionaries fought for "brotherhood", the Americans fought for liberty, as in:

"My country tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died!
Land of the Pilgrim's pride!
From every mountain side,
Let freedom ring!

 

Doesn't change a thing about their fanatic national culture of liberty, unity, equality is based on ending tyranny. And you thinking the group representing the majority gets their way in a democracy.... are a bunch of tyrants. lol. What a joke.

 

And replaced it with the tyranny of the mob. The result: The French are still jealous of America's success.

 

Ah, democracy, it got Hitler elected.

 

Yeah, I do. Didn't they enact the Jim Crow laws?

 

They are only a few hundred miles from Russia, they should form a caravan and migrate there. By the way, how is Russia so much cheaper? Aren't you the yahoo who says you can buy a penthouse for a few bucks in Europe? Aren't you the same ignorant twit who wrote 40 posts on how cheap the power was in Europe?

 

irrelevant

 

We're talking about France, not about the US apartheid laws.

 

sorry that you hate a democratic majority rule, and favor some kind of North Korean system.

 

Ah, you're the one Tull was speaking of in their song "Thick As Brick". Oh well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach a jackass to think.

 

We're talking about the majority and their right to terrorize a minority.