The Trump Tax Cut: Even Worse Than You’ve Heard

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by wdmso

fyi for those who forget history

https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/18/new...ges/index.html


Shocking the decline of the private sector pay is because of private companies

but lets blame public sector unions

The FIRST SENTENCE of your article says it was a big deal that last year, Walmart raised minimum wage and announced bonuses. But you and all the other liberals constantly said it was meaningless. So who is forgetting history?

Let's settle this once and for all. Were all those bonuses and wage hikes that stemmed from the tax cut, meaningful or not? Because you guys keep flip-flopping on that question, depending on which Maoist point you're trying to make at the time.

As for low wages at Walmart and other huge retailers...WDMSO, do you like low prices and getting good deals? If I had a department store and paid everyone a minimum of $50,000 a year, which forced me to charge $7.50 for a gallon of milk, would you shop at my store? Or would you go to Walmart?

You can't have low prices with razor thin profit margins, combined with across-the-board lucrative pay for all positions. That's not reality.

Public sector unions don't need to care about mathematical or marketplace reality, because they take what they need through force of law, I cannot decide not to pay my taxes. Private sector companies have it much, much harder. They have to make people CHOOSE to fork over their money, they have to make people want to do it. In order to make people want to give you their money, you have to have competitive prices. Your expenses cannot exceed your revenue.

That's what you fail to grasp. Public sector unions can confiscate whatever they want from the citizenry, we don't have the choice not to pay taxes. In the private sector, companies must (1) incentivize customers to voluntarily hand over their money, AND (2) expenses cannot exceed revenue. SO expenses need to be contained, or the company goes out of business. In the public sector, when expenses exceed revenue, you just raise taxes.

Big, big difference. I have worked in the public sector (I was a teacher for a very brief time), and now I'm in the private sector. Have you ever had a meaningful job in the private sector? Ever?

[The Dad Fisherman]

I think WDMSO is saying that his pension payments are calculated on a percentage of his base pay from his last 3 years of employment. So he's correct in saying that a raise has more of an effect on his pension, over the years, than a tax break does.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by The Dad Fisherman

I think WDMSO is saying that his pension payments are calculated on a percentage of his base pay from his last 3 years of employment. So he's correct in saying that a raise has more of an effect on his pension, over the years, than a tax break does.

butba raise if $1 has less benefit than a tax cut of $1. bevause the raise is then taxed.

but you’re probably correct in what he meant.
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[The Dad Fisherman]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

butba raise if $1 has less benefit than a tax cut of $1. bevause the raise is then taxed.

but you’re probably correct in what he meant.
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I guess if the tax cut is a static percent for many years, but pay raises are an annually applied percentage, and pay increases not given for a certain year(s) end up lowering your overall pay over, say, a ten year span as they are not compounded over the years.

I'm not an accountant, but I did stay at a holiday Inn Express last night

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

As has been claimed here by several for more than a year
“Skeptical reporting has still been too favorable.
The 2017 tax cut has received pretty bad press, and rightly so. Its proponents made big promises about soaring investment and wages, and also assured everyone that it would pay for itself; none of that has happened.

Yet coverage actually hasn’t been negative enough. The story you mostly read runs something like this: The tax cut has caused corporations to bring some money home, but they’ve used it for stock buybacks rather than to raise wages, and the boost to growth has been modest. That doesn’t sound great, but it’s still better than the reality: No money has, in fact, been brought home, and the tax cut has probably reduced national income. Indeed, at least 90 percent of Americans will end up poorer thanks to that cut.
Let me explain each point in turn.“
But you’ll have to open the link and read the concise point by point explanation.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&sour...46490561312958

Jan.4 AP headline:
US employers added 312,000 jobs in December

Full article:
https://www.twincities.com/2019/01/0...s-in-december/

Who knows how it will all shake out for the rest of "Trump's" economy. But to keep knocking his tax cut and tariff war and economic and regulatory policies as foolish, dumb, failures is obviously premature. And saying that the job and wage successes are merely an Obama carryover after two years is a stretch beyond reason. If I remember correctly wdmso claimed something to the effect that it would take two years before we could attribute success (or failure) to Trump's policies.

For me, I don't think presidential or political policies in general that try to "do" something are the main reason for US economic success. I believe more that federal government "undoing" overburdening tax and regulatory policies is more effective.

I'm not being "anti-government." I'm for government staying out of the way of what should be our constitutionally based inherent right to a free and open market. One of the federal government's few and important duties is to protect that freedom, not to regulate it.

Should there be any regulation of the market? For sure. But that should not be done by unelected bureaucratic agencies. It should begin with an actually free market's inherent tendency to self regulate. And it should be fortified by the direct and elected will of the people. And that should be "regulated" as constitutional by a Supreme Court guided by interpreting the actual text of the Constitution, not by Judge's personal opinion of what is right and just.

[JohnR]

Interesting: CNN / Yahoo and others reporting that the refunds (cough Federal interest free borrowing of your money for a year) of taxes are about the same or slightly higher.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/irs-n...170638232.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...mn/3026996002/

Now, can we go back to the Debt? The actual National Emergency?

[Got Stripers]

You got that right boss, borrow and spend until the credit runs out, then file for bankruptcy; it's the American way. The problem is who bails out the US government? Trump probably has some good financial ties to Russia and Jarad of course can work his Saudi buddies for a bailout package.

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by Got Stripers

You got that right boss, borrow and spend until the credit runs out, then file for bankruptcy; it's the American way. The problem is who bails out the US government? Trump probably has some good financial ties to Russia and Jarad of course can work his Saudi buddies for a bailout package.

How much do you blame on Trump?

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

How much do you blame on Trump?

Not all of it, some he blames on Bush.

The debt, as you have said, is critical. But Obama ran up the debt, and I don't know anyone who got anything from it. At least in this case, regular people are benefitting, as opposed to powerful congresspeople whose spouses own the companies that got hugeamounts of federal spending. I mean that's happening here too, but at least many of us got something.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

Interesting: CNN / Yahoo and others reporting that the refunds (cough Federal interest free borrowing of your money for a year) of taxes are about the same or slightly higher.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/irs-n...170638232.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...mn/3026996002/

Now, can we go back to the Debt? The actual National Emergency?

Another liberal myth debunked, and I wonder if CNN and MSNBC issued a correction.

It really doesn't matter if refunds decrease, if withholdings decreased by a larger amount, you paid less.

[detbuch]

Doing my taxes now. I'm getting almost twice as much refund than last year, and my monthly take home pay has comfortably increased. And I'm barely, if that, in the lower end of the "middle class," whatever that is.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by detbuch

Doing my taxes now. I'm getting almost twice as much refund than last year, and my monthly take home pay has comfortably increased. And I'm barely, if that, in the lower end of the "middle class," whatever that is.

Liar!!

[Got Stripers]

Lots of blame to go around and Trump and the GOP own their fair share.
They certainly are willing to add to the problem, without much talk about that problem. The fing wall is more of a problem to them and it certainly isn't anywhere near the magnitude of the deficit IMHO; not even in the same ballpark.

I'm retired so I can't comment on income, since I have none, but at a risk level of 3, I still have a long way to go to regain all the money I lost out of my retirement accounts. So the tax cut did zip for me, the stock market dive eat away a lot of my savings and even though I'm gaining some of those losses back; not even close to where I topped out before the correction started.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Got Stripers

Lots of blame to go around and Trump and the GOP own their fair share.
They certainly are willing to add to the problem, without much talk about that problem. The fing wall is more of a problem to them and it certainly isn't anywhere near the magnitude of the deficit IMHO; not even in the same ballpark.

I'm retired so I can't comment on income, since I have none, but at a risk level of 3, I still have a long way to go to regain all the money I lost out of my retirement accounts. So the tax cut did zip for me, the stock market dive eat away a lot of my savings and even though I'm gaining some of those losses back; not even close to where I topped out before the correction started.

The S&P500 is less than 5% off it's all-time high. If you lost a lot more than that and you're retired, (1) I am sorry and hope you get it all back and then some, but (2) that's more your advisor's fault and not so much Trumps.

[PaulS]

The only thing that I know is that I was doing a lot better in the stock market when I left for the gym than when I got back.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by PaulS

The only thing that I know is that I was doing a lot better in the stock market when I left for the gym than when I got back.

that’s true, apparently trump shot his mouth off at the fed, and the mrjet didn’t like it. if only his handlers could
handle him a little bit.
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[PaulS]

And I learned today that alcohol takes sap off nylon jackets.