Trump’s most lasting legacy will be the national debt

Tax the rich.

The answer's so simple, and we still won't do it.

lizmonster said:

Tax the rich. The answer's so simple, and we still won't do it.

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It didn't work too well in France. Just sayin'.

https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/france-s-wealth-tax-should-be-a-warning-for-warren-and-sanders

-cb

So that Simpsons episode back in 2000 really was prophetic, eh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXcYMvzZ7jk

I think there are ways to change the tax code in a way that at least reduces the income disparity we've been seeing in the past couple of decades. There have been periods of economic growth and low unemployment where taxes were higher for rich people than they are now. We can return to that without "soaking" the rich in the way some countries did.

Soak 'em. They won't even feel it.

If you don't want to soak them, at least moisten them a little. Like the spray off one of their yachts.

I looked at what the Iraq war cost—it was several trillion.

Reagan made everyone feel wealthy with tax cuts, the deficit spiraled up.

GW Bush pushed and got a tax cut before 911. The war, like Reaganomics, did not trigger any GOP majority reversal of those tax cuts.

Trump pushed tax cuts, the GOP legislators were all to happy to have a POTUS rubber stamp their tax cuts.

Now we have an incredibly expensive pandemic, going on a year now. Until it's under control, the economy cannot get back up and running.

Yet mention raising taxes and the usual framing immediately surfaces—it won't work for ... reasons.

So what if the rich fled France when a wealth tax was implemented. We aren't France and a wealth tax is not the only way to tax the rich. Did rich people flood back into the US with the latest round of tax cuts?

Bottom line, either we stop worrying about the deficit (the general we), or we raise revenue on people who can afford it. We are going to need a couple trillion more to deal with the pandemic. We don't need McConnell and his ilk whining about the spending unless they are willing to give that tax cut back. Just like the Iraq war (unnecessary, but that's another debate for another day), you can't not pay for it.

People need income replaced. They need rent and mortgage relief. You can't put a halt to evictions unless you help the landlords who cannot absorb the loss. Sections of the economy are going to need rebuilding or revising in some cases. There will be some shifts like people working from home may keep working from home. That's not a bad thing. Think of the decrease in traffic and pressure on property values in dense urban areas.

It will cost money until the country and the world resets. Deficits don't matter at the moment. But if we decide they do, tax the rich.

lizmonster said:

Tax the rich.

The answer's so simple, and we still won't do it.

Click to expand...

This whole fascism business is a direct result of the fact that the rich really don't like to pay taxes. They have their flying monkeys in politics and the media to make sure try to keep it from happening, and to keep people fighting against their own interests. We will be told by no end of "experts" that taxes will cause the rich to leave, to invest less, to close stores, lay people off, all the worst things you can possible imagine.

cbenoi1 said:

It didn't work too well in France. Just sayin'.

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France has the least economic inequality in the G7 nations. The US has the highest.

In other words, taxing the wealthy wasn't that big a deal to France; Wikipedia says it earned them revenues equivalent to about 0.22% of their GDP. Revenues from a US wealth tax are estimated at 1-1.4% of our GDP, or about $200 billion a year. That would, for reference, pay for Medicare and have enough left over to also fund the federal Education and Environmental programs. (Or pay the yearly interest on the debt we've incurred since Reagan introduced "trickle-down economics"....)

And speaking of debt: the French national debt is about 40K Euro per capita. The US debt is about 66K Euro per capita. In a list of the 186 countries this particular site tracks from least to most debt per capita, the US ranked 184th.

I also had a big belly laugh at the suggestion towards the end of the article that rich Americans might flee to Canada. What the authors, who may have a wee slant here, are failing to mention is that Belgium also has a wealth tax, albeit a lower one than France. And Canada already has a wealth tax too, as well as numerous other taxes Americans aren't used to paying. In fact, this article suggests there are only three countries -- Chile, Ireland, and Mexico -- where the wealthy could move and pay less taxes. And yet the article does not suggest the rich might flee to Mexico. Hmm.

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TL;DR: we are not France. We have massive inequality they don't, a mind-bogglingly huge national deficit that they don't, and the wealthy in France already paid a much higher tax (before the wealth tax) than their compatriots in the US, who have a very, very short list of places they can move with a better tax rate than the US. Look at countries where wealthy white people will not be completely culturally displaced and that list shrinks to one.

Tax the rich.

FFS, just look north of the border. I'm paying a top marginal rate of just over 50%, and there's still no way I'd move to the states. This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. You don't have to tax the rich at 99% to make the system work. If you started taxing millionaires and billionaires at a 50% (or something similar) top marginal rate, you'd still bring in massively more $.

'Rich people might flee to Canada'.
Really? Why would we take them? We have rich people of our own, it's not like there's a spoiled-brat shortage. Canada takes in refugees and immigrants from war-torn or desperate places.
"Waa! We don't want to pay taxes!" is not 'persecution'.

What do we need foreign rich people for, if not to milk them like cash-cows?

The GOP speaks of balanced budgets and fiscal prudence, but when push comes to shove, they have a worse record on this than the Democrats.

I agree taxes need to be increased on the rich, especially billionaires. The super rich have raked in huge profits during the pandemic, while ordinary people have suffered. With the Democrats' bare margin in the Senate, I don't see any major changes in tax policy coming soon though.

And, sadly, Trump's most lasting legacy will be his cult of deranged reality denying followers poisoning the body politic for as many decades as climate change give the USA. The debt won't come close to causing the harm the radicalized MAGA cultists will.

Deficit spending freaks people out more than it should, imo.

https://www.reuters.com/article/sponsored/is-a-debt-doomsday-near

People always make the analogy of sticking with a household budget and responsibly saving for a rainy day, but even households routinely go into debt for major purchases, like homes and cars, not to mention unexpected emergencies.

Problems arise when one lacks the means to pay down the debt, either because their income decreases unexpectedly or because the debt was too great to begin with. However, countries have flexibility households do not, as they do have the means to increase their revenue, or to increase the amount of revenue going to pay down the debt, at a future date. And unlike many households nowadays, countries' revenue will increase when the economy recovers. This is always assuming it will, of course. The most concerning issue about our current budgetary situation is that the deficit is a higher percentage of the GDP than usual. This is due both to Trump's economic policies (tax cuts for the wealthy) and because of the unexpected costs associated with the pandemic, which will likely be greater even than they would have been, thanks to his administration's short-sighted and ham-handed approach to it.

Hopefully, the damage Trump has done to the economy won't cause it to languish throughout the Biden Presidency, because people tend to blame and credit incumbents for the sins or virtues of their predecessors. There is definitely a pattern of GOP POTUSes screwing the economy, Democrats gradually fixing it, then people get tired of a slow, steady recovery and elect a Republican again, who gets credit for the economic recoveries that hit their full stride during their term. Then the Republican screws things up, and a Democrat gets elected again, rinse, repeat.

I think the cultural issues are going to plague us for a long time, though. Trump didn't create the angry, grievance-ridden right, but he certainly poured a lot of gasoline on that fire and reinforced their belief that they are the most normal and "true" Americans who have been abandoned by everyone else, even the mainstream GOP. These issues are not completely independent of the economy either. The Right is always angry these days, even when they are doing okay economically and getting what they want politically. But when economic uncertainty is added to the mix they get even more volatile and inclined to lash out at people they see as "unfair" competition.