Read whole transcript, where is smoking gun?

Everyone except a few screwed in high taxed democrat states got a tax cut.

 

Vote Democrat and you won't need money anymore, everything will be free. People who pay the most taxes always get the bigger cut.

 

Your point is what? We know 85% of the tax cuts went to people making $400,000 per year. That's the main problem with the cuts.

 

You mean they pay more in taxes so got more back as a percentage. I know that envy is a deadly sin.

 

I mean people making more than $400,000 shouldn't have had a rate cut. The middle class is dying in this country.

 

Hell that is middle class these days. Tax cuts are not intended to make rich people rich, they already are. Tax cuts are intended to get more money circulating, stimulate the economy in other words. Who has the money to do that? Rich people.

 

IRONY ALERT!

 

You're not addressing the issue.

We're losing the middle class in this country. They depend on selling their labor in what is now a world labor market while at the same time jobs are being automated out of existence.



The increase in GDP is not being split between workers and owners. Among many possible ways of helping the middle class is levying of progressive taxes. People making $400,000 per year shouldn't get a rate cut.

Only because bought pols give it to them.

 

The middle class has been tanking through two Democrat Presidents and one Republican. You can thank the open trade policies that destroyed the American clothing industry, the steel, automobile and electronic tech like Texas Instruments. Trump puts on tariffs and he becomes the villain? You want your middle class back then strangle the dirt cheap imports and buy American as it comes back on line. A tax cut is a tax cut and those that pay the most get the bigger proportional cut. I got a tax cut, tiny but it was mine.

 

Tariffs aren't progressive. Neither would be bringing back industries that moved overseas. It hurts those that can afford it the least. Do I care if I have to pay $100 for sneakers instead of $60? Well, yes, but I can certainly afford it. Similarly, paying $35 for a t-shirt instead of $20 sucks, but I can afford it. A family of four living on $40k - $50k would certainly feel that kind of increase in the cost of goods though. Also, do you think that bringing manufacturing that's been lost overseas back to the United States is really going to bring back the middle class? Many of those jobs can be done by robots cheaper than by American labor.

People need to accept the fact that repetitive type manufacturing jobs are gone, and they're not coming back. They need to accept the same in the coal industry. The world isn't the same as it was 50 years ago.

 

Hahaha...Republicans denying that they had anything to do with "free trade" policies. That's good. They'll be throwing away their ideas on "balanced budgets" next.

 

No, I don't deny it but you ignore the 8 years of Democrat Presidents and some periods of control of Congress that did nothing to change the evil policies of the GOP. There ain't no difference when it comes to the new world order. Trump is an anomaly, actually tries to slow the slide if not reverse it and he gets crucified. The GOP status quo will turn on him so fast it might break their neck if Dems actually impeach him.
When you start looking at both sides for a replacement bear in mind that he didn't just beat Hillary, he beat ALL of them and both political machines and that happened because America is tired of the groups in power and the direction they have taken us. People didn't vote for Trump because they loved him, they voted for him because we can still remember what we were and should still be and recognize how we came to what we are today.

 

I don't disagree with most of that. The Republican Party should have - IMO - cleaned house long, long ago. It became too late, and they settled for a candidate no one expected to win and was basically a big government, large deficits, urban Democrat...or to borrow a phrase "a donkey of a different color." My "theory" is that big money anti-Establishment right-wing donors saw an opportunity to seize control of the Party from the Bush establishment people who had traditionally controlled the Party and maintained their commitment to traditional Republican principles. When Bush III came into the primary campaigns both late and dispirited, it was still an establishment threat to the plans of Priebus, Ryan, and Walker. To counter Bush, Priebus threw open the nomination to all comers...and that's when Trump moved in. Th Republican Party is now gone. And, the Democratic Party may have a similar future, unless they understand the genuine movement for substantial change.

 

Tax cuts for rich people are intended to make rich people richer, not rich. As you said, they're already rich.

Tax cuts stimulate the economy to the extent cut recipients spend the extra money on goods or services produced here.

Poor people are more likely to spend a tax cut than rich people.

 

Then people need to stop talking about the middle class when what has been lost is the upper income level working class jobs. We have 40% of our population requiring government assistance in one form or another and flipping burgers isn't going to replace assembling watches at Texas Instruments or sowing jeans at Levi Straus. We have a large portion of the population in limbo and no answer for it other than go to college. That really isn't a panacea for what ails us.

 

Rich people spend it differently. They are much more likely to add a couple of employees at their business than poor people who are much more likely to buy a bigger TV.

 

A lot of people buying TV's (or whatever) is the basis for a consumer economy.

 

Somebody has to make them, might as well be us.

 

That's true...but it runs against one of the principal reasons for "free trade." The market goes to the country that makes the best product at the lowest price. I don't believe ANY TV's are made in the U.S. today.

 

No, that's how we got to this point. Now if you're a one world order proponent then you have a point but you boost the poor of Asia and cut the legs out from under the poor here at home. Once that population is large enough you sell the "freebies because you deserve it" and we have socialism which grows like cancer.

 

If you abandon "free trade" for a return to trade based on protectionist policies, such as tariffs, then you are returning to Mercantilism. The principles of capitalism and free trade give the greatest market shares to those who produce the best product at the lowest price. What are they teaching you today in Econ 101?

 

You can be a capitalist and not believe you have to cut your own throat in the name of "free trade". Free trade has only meant all our trading partners got a better deal than we did. It sounded highly moral and idealistic when we started this journey but we had a strong working class. Once we got far enough along in our journey we no longer had that strong force. I think it's family first in pretty much all of life. In the '60s RCA was the premiere makers of electronics like TVs and recording devices. They licensed a company in Japan and built the same product cheaper and sold it cheaper. Don't hear much about RCA anymore.

 

Not arguing over the "morality" of free trade, although I should think it's more "moral" than Mercantilism. No...free trade went by global capitalist principles. The American "working class" was sold-out by our own politicians (Democrats and Republicans) and financial institutions, who simply logically followed the rules to achieve global market dominance. Don't think so? Today, GM sells more vehicles in China than in the U.S.

I watched this from "inside corporate America." The change began occurring with the concept of "shareholder value." That took power away from CEOs and made them essentially "prisoners of Wall Street" (some went willingly when tax policy exempted income increases based on stock value and stock bonuses). Wall Street, in turn, was competing globally, particularly as the world recovered from WW II, the rise of global organizations, etc. When Glass-Steagall was repealed it was on the basis of two factors: customer convenience and global competition. At that time no U.S. bank was in the top global ten. As an almost side-show, globalization broke the organized labor movement, in the private sector, which only increased stagflation...low, but steadily rising inflation, without accompanying cost-of-living increases.

 

It's been tanking under four Republican Presidents (Reagan, Bush, Bush Junior, Trump) and two Democrats (Clinton, Obama). Neither party has done much to help workers. See my graph above.

We have full employment. Nearly all workers make more than the state minimum wage.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage-chart.aspx#Table

Do you think we would be better off if we have them stop doing jobs they do now and work making clothes or other manufactured items we can have produced for labor making $1 or $2 per hour?

He has the wrong answer to a complex, serious problem.

This would make us collectively poorer. Is there a better solution? One part of a better answer is countering the rich-get-richer trend through the tax system. There are other things we can do--improve job training, improve public education (vouchers?), and fund basic health care through the income tax by giving people the option to buy private coverage. We should be looking ahead to a time coming soon when most people are no longer required as workers by the economic system.

No, a tax cut is the government resetting tax rates. There's no good reason I can think of to cut rates for incomes above $400,000, except for people who derive most of their income from their employment.

 

You're right. A Census Bureau report on income inequality, published by Bloomberg, concluded U.S. Income Inequality Grew Significantly in 2018, which was the first such study made by the Bureau since the late 2017 Tax cuts. [See "Census Says U.S. Income Inequality Grew 'Significantly' in 2018," by Ben Holland, September 26, 2019, in Bloomberg News].