41–50 of 102 posts
Would this eliminate the federal income tax leaving state and lower taxes? Or is it going to be nothing but one rather impressive vat?
> Would this eliminate the federal income tax leaving state and lower taxes? The proposal “gets rid of the national personal and corporate income taxes and abolishes the IRS…as well as implements a national sales tax. Additionally, the bill gets rid of the death, gift, and payroll taxes.”
This is just the first in a long list of "messaging" bills that will come from a very slim Republican House, because there is Democratic control of the Senate. They know it won't become law. The point is to rile up the media, get hits on cable news, fund raise, and generally be useless as a governing body. This is what both parties do when they are out of power, and I would say is what they _prefer_ to do. It's easie…
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I have a hard time combining this sentiment with my lived experience in California.
Regardless, what's the alternative? Have corporations run everything and only majority share holders get any say? How do you think that'll work out? Yet, that's exactly what the "government doesn't work" crowd seems to be pushing for. It's great if you're a billionaire neo-feudalist and terrible if you're literally anyone else.
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The US is astoundingly well-functioning and most US citizens astoundingly lucky by historical and/or global standards, and certain kinds of minimally functional mutual accountability are part of the reason why we've gotten this far. There's also plenty of room for improvement of course (including learning from other industrial social democracies as well as recent internal issues), so that's relative, but the most rea…
Astoundingly well functioning maybe if you ignore literally every single other developed nation on the planet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a hard time combining this sentiment with my lived experience in California.
Regardless, what's the alternative? Have corporations run everything and only majority share holders get any say? How do you think that'll work out? Yet, that's exactly what the "government doesn't work" crowd seems to be pushing for. It's great if you're a billionaire neo-feudalist and terrible if you're literally anyone else.
I'm not sure what this tax issue has to do with the right to vote?
Don't follow the fact that only billionaire feudalists are allowed to think their government isn't working well? Why can't ordinary citizens be unhappy?
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Republicans have run on a platform of "Government is terrible at it's job" for 50 years, and every time they get elected they work really hard to prove it.
I have a hard time combining this sentiment with my lived experience in California.
It also doesn't pass muster with my own lived experience. I've loved all of the 15 years I've spent in both Northern and Southern metro California, and I'd do it again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless, what's the alternative? Have corporations run everything and only majority share holders get any say? How do you think that'll work out? Yet, that's exactly what the "government doesn't work" crowd seems to be pushing for. It's great if you're a billionaire neo-feudalist and terrible if you're literally anyone else.
I'm not following you. Are you saying we implement this alternative by removing income tax and replacing it with consumption tax, that corporations will run everything and only share holders get a say? I'm not sure what this tax issue has to do with the right to vote? Don't follow the fact that only billionaire feudalists are allowed to think their government isn't working well? Why can't ordinary citizens be unhappy…
> Don't follow the fact that only billionaire feudalists are allowed to think their government isn't working well? Why can't ordinary citizens be unhappy?
You can think a government isn't working well, but the solution is not "dismantle the government" (which would lead to corporate rule and kind of already has), it's "elect a better government".
For better and worse, this is pretty much what I'd expect. It's not a serious attempt to genuinely govern or otherwise make reasonable policy, it's sending up an ideological flag, and since the fundamental ideology is actually opposed to the idea of well-functioning social institutions with mutual accountability...
> since the fundamental ideology is actually opposed to the idea of well-functioning social institutions with mutual accountability A charitable interpretation of Republican "fundamental ideology", as it were, would be that they prefer more well-functioning social institutions at lower levels of government, closer to the people those institutions are meant to serve. It would make sense than beyond just a publicity st…
But at this point, no, I don't believe that's actually what's animating it. Selective election denialism is as nihilistic about local institutions as it is about national ones, while theories about state legislatures overridding citizen ballots sure isn't moving things closer to the people.
Whether you can take me seriously isn't any particular concern of mine, whether you can take the actual underlying topics seriously is the primary matter of concern.
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I have a hard time combining this sentiment with my lived experience in California.
If California were particularly terrible, it wouldn't be so damn popular, and most of its problems would go away. California does have some specific policy problems, but most of what it has are popular place problems. It also doesn't pass muster with my own lived experience. I've loved all of the 15 years I've spent in both Northern and Southern metro California, and I'd do it again.
At one point last year the median household income was $75k/year. The median house price was $525k or so. Basically this created the situation if you couldn't afford a house before the housing crisis, the $1500 to $2000 rent payments were going to eat into your income and make it harder to buy a house.
The NIMBY politics surrounding housing has got to go in California. We're beginning to get that here.