RubberDuck

Except your argument on small ownership is quick decision making has a counter arguement… shareholders… they appoint a small group for daily operations and decisionmaking. But the real power is with the shareholder meeting and a large group of possibly anonymous owners.

Exclude a mortgage for your primary residence, capped at the median house price or something… And only exclude it IF it is paid back in full over a max period.

This is the case in the Netherlands… paid back in full after max 30 years… No cap in how much. This was because the interest on the mortgage are tax deductible. So some bankers figured… we keep the loan maxed, and put your paybacks in a special fund… and at the end of the 30 years the fund pays back the mortgage. That way we get max interests and you get max tax break. In the end the banks made a lot of public funds private this way.

Assets are taxed all the time (real estate tax, car tax… ). So taxing the value of a share portfolio at the 31st of December each year is perfectly doable. And if it has depreciated since last year, you get a tax deduction… which is capped by the income tax to maximally reach 0… No carrying over till next year… or maybe 1 year… whatever, that’s implementation details.

How much do you tax these assets is the point that needs consideration… it’s not fully income… But a percentage is only fair. And if this means people need to realize gains to pay for it… that’s fine… Why would it not be?

And borrowing against an asset portfolio should mean that it counts as realizing gains of the asset portfolio and the amount is seen as income and thus taxed. (You loan 10 million against your shares, that’s income) And to avoid fallout for the normal people you can build in a threshold and exclusions for example for the first million in your lifetime… or for the mortgage on your primary residence with a cap at the median house price or … something. So for these people borrowing against assets means they can keep the assets… but pay interest on the loan. Alternatively they can actually realize the gains and pay cash.

It’s not hard at all, it’s a matter of political will, and writing proper laws that state your objective and exceptions.

It should be E and the DOJ should have made sure that this was handled in a court of law in the first 100 days. Or maybe even a specialised tribunal for insurrection.

How did they handle the insurrectionists post civil war?

It also helps if you have a very specific and narrow cause … muh guns rights … and anti or pro specific legislation. This creates broad consensus… that follows the NRA draft talking points they usually bring out.

Can’t wait for him to try and bully some of the big suppliers. What … you want how much money for a prototype… That will work wonders for the quality.

Maybe defense corporations will start selling devices with paywalled options or subscription.

Modern day factory workers. It’s bizarre this is not unionized yet.

Half of them right wing bots getting ready to do the same thing again.

Change in this case is not, “were doing everything completely different”, but more of where the focus of the policy is. And the focus on “the economy” does shit for normal people. I’m sure wrecking the economy will hurt them… but the simple fact is biden-harris failed to adress the issues facing a looooooot of americans.

And your chocolate pudding example perfectly aligns with the failure to imprison Trump. The Americans don’t care about ANY of his crimes because the justice system and the president did not Care.

If it was soooooooo important, he would have been thrown in jail, publicly prosecuted and executed for treason… and he was not. Instead everyone danced around it, and SHOWED the American people there are zero consequences while saying “he is so dangerous, he is so bad, he is a criminal”. Well like you say, talk is cheap. Put up or shut up… and the American people said the same. All the anti Trump rhetoric was dismissed because if any of it where true he would have been in jail.

The fact Biden is the most pro worker and pro u ion does not mean shit if the whole world saw you use executive power to publicly stop the strike. The fact that he later in backrooms got them ak OK deal… was done in the limelight… so that’s an own goal. He should have targeted the Corporation at the same time… but he did not.

So I get what you are saying. And I argue, the Dems fucked themselves… a lot… repeatedly…

No, the Democratic party ran a candidate that wanted to keep the status quo in a period the whole country needed change.

And during the last 4 years the sitting president was actually sleepy Joe. He should have arrested trump and his co conspirators and throw away the key after a very public trial.

But instead, they did nothing to stem the tide of fascism. If you want to blame people, blame the technocrats Trump was projecting on during his campaign. As if he is a small portion of who he says he is, he will show everyone what the Dems should have done.

You misspelled 44 billion dollar.

Yeah, Neil saying that Elon is not a god genius pushing the boundaries of space, but instead finally getting commercial viability for stuff NASA did decades ago means he’s a target.

Any sane person needs to GTFO out of Florida anyway. The weather is only going to get more extreme and so are the christo fascists.

Us vs them too. It’s different, people hate change. So now there is a them and an us…

They are now saying, we got the mandate, we gotta do it. I even heard a rep senator say that they will go after companies employing illegals because then they will go home.

Get ready, because this will cripple agriculture and other sectors.

Also, the IRS knows who employs illegals… easily. They know how much revenues companies make per employee from massive datasets, they can easily point out the companies that over earn compared to their employee numbers in a specific sector. Same as they can easily determine someone’s income from their yacht, house or jet size.

In the Netherlands they for example audit hair salons if their purchase of hairspray (or other consumables) does not line up with their listed revenue… they know the revenue per bottle of hairspray… Or at least the range it should be in.

Yup, he said he will. I don’t know how this works in practice, but this is dangerous. Project 2025 is very clear about stacking the institutions.

If you are asked where you differ from a whildly unpopular president in a time where all normal Americans are hurting bad, and you answer “nowhere”.

And your points on the economy are essentially, the economy is booming…

You disqualify yourself, as we saw.

People did not want more of the same or small incremental change. And apparently the worry some have about fascism taking over is not believed by many… politicians say a lot… but they won’t do that.

Time will tell.

Polio on the rise outside the Bible Belt.

America will withdraw from anywhere without a direct financial benefit to the administration. This creates a vacuum and blind spots that will be filled by the US’s adversaries, creating an even more opaque playing field for the US.

Heavily tarrifed sales to the US will be paid for by the US citizens while at the same time non US companies will see their sales in the US decline. If he removes income tax, this might be a bump in take home, but won’t offset the rise in prices, especially not if US companies will just raise their prices to as close as possible match the non US alternatives making record profits.

Trump will demand countries pay for us protection, but having shown to be unreliable, this might mean some short term income for the US, the countries will scramble to be independent from the US and the US MIC as they cannot be trusted either (the us might stop sales, or even turn of supplied weapons).

The same for Ukraine, most likely Trump will just tell Europe to poney up the money and as long as the EU has no alternative they will have to, or they will allow Ukraine to fall, blaming it on trump. Regardless the relationship between the US and the EU will dramatically sour.

Since the EU is in an energy crisis, most likely Trump will try to price gouge the EU here as well… on the other hand, drill baby drill could mean cheaper energy overall giving him severe leverage over countries in the middle east.

Luckily the police and the military have a bit different standards. Army generals are mostly well educated and very well read men who deal with the whole world and not just their neck of the woods, and possibly more important is that in the world of the military they do not have the monopoly on violence. They have to deal with adversaries who are equals and thus changes the power dynamic A LOT. A police captain can in the end just escalate all the way to the national guard and stomp out anything… in the military they cannot as their escalations immediately leads to deaths and escalates all the way to nuclear Armageddon. So luckily they are of a different breed.

But now, trump might replace the top brass with his loyalists, (loyalty > competence) fast tracking some appointments of people that normally not have made it to that level.

The guard rails are off… the world is in for a wild ride.