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Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

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Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#961

Post by ainot »

sctb wrote: post #483
ainot wrote: post #235

Why is it when I post garbage comments, they get downvoted. But when people post garbage comments that slam one or more of: 1) Republican 2) Christian 3) Conservative 4) Anyone from Texas except Austin 5) Anyone who works in the energy industry outside solar They don't get downvoted?

Please stop posting them. We've detached this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12915030 . https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I wasn't saying that I literally or intentionally post garbage comments. That was rhetoric, to prove a point. I'd assumed HN readers and moderators would understand that.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#962

Post by ainot »

givinguflac wrote: post #561
albinofrenchy wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined This isn't true even on the face of it; it went up from ~10 trillion to ~18 trillion. And aside from that; the national debt exploded due to the economic collapse that happened months before Obama was sworn in. The accusation is wrong on the facts and disingenuous.

Yeah, I agree but unfortunately anyone who says that usually isn't going to be swayed in the face of objective fact. People act like the 2008 crash just happened spontaneously because Obama was elected, ignoring the shit show of the prior decade.

Yes the prior decade, starting in 1998 when Bill Clinton signed legislation that opened the financial doors which allowed the housing crisis to start. Bush didn't close that door and so it built momentum but it would not have been possible if Bill had not signed that legislation in the first place.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#963

Post by dagw »

JadeNB wrote: post #951
dagw wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing the number, length and complexity of regulation is a valid goal Sure, but the priority order should be: complexity,length,number. Simply concatenating 50 regulations into one super-regulation is not a win.

> Sure, but the priority order should be: complexity,length,number. I think that, of these three, reducing complexity is the only one to which we should directly aspire; reducing the length and number of regulations is, I think, helpful only to the extent that it reduces, or at least doesn't increase, complexity.

Completely agreed. That and reducing ambiguity. On the whole Increasing both length and number is perfectly acceptable if doing so reduces complexity and ambiguity.

Much like with code really. Your cleve 2 line function is really clever, but most of the time the easy to read 30 lines and 3 function version if probably better.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#964

Post by gok »

RealGeek wrote: post #817
tw04 wrote: post #595

So he's going to lower taxes on the wealthy, drop taxes on businesses, increase spending on military, destroy our national parks to extract oil, and lay off federal employees. This is going to help the middle class and the uneducated who are struggling through... magic. None of the lobbying stuff will ever see the light of day. The term limits won't happen. He's going to repeal the "illegal" Obama executive orders bu…

> A middle-class family will get a 35% tax cut. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculation to figure how our taxes could change for various income levels for married joint filers. This does not factor in any deductions. Nobody is getting a 35% tax cut. Tax rate for middle-class families will go down by around 1% only, and taxes will go up for low-income families by 2%. Single tax filers will also see an increase in…

Firstly, a X% tax cut means a X% reduction in amount of tax paid, not a X% increase in after-tax income. So $10,322 -> $9000 would be a 12.8% tax cut.

Secondly, you're forgetting standard deductions. It's $12,600 today; the Trump plan is to raise it to $30,000. So it would actually be:

$36,000 Current: $2,582 (7.2%) Trump: $720 (2.1%) $75,000 Current: $8,433 (11.2%) Trump: $4,200 (5.6%) etc…

(I hate the guy and don't think this tax plan is a terribly great idea, but the math above is wrong)

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#965

Post by salamisultan »

eppp wrote: post #938
bduerst wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing wealth is a terrible idea, because it means every asset has to generate income each year to offset taxes.

Why is that bad? Asking purely out of ignorance.

It skews asset creation. You do not want to macro the econmy like that

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#966

Post by finid »

zaphods-towel wrote: post #654
finid wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable term limit has to be in place. A person who has been in the Senate since 1986, like John McCain, should have been out of there if term limits were in place. Thirty years is a long time to be elected, re-elected and re-elected and ...

I don't see what the problem is with that? The term limits on the president are in place because he has such an inordinate amount of power. I am concerned about a president trying to seize non-democratic power. Not so for a Senator. Can you explain more about why you think reps need term limits?

Do you realize how much power and influence a Senator like John McCain has? Are you not concerned about that?

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#967

Post by everlost »

bduerst wrote: post #909
aliston wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually nobody making 10 million a year pays a 39% tax rate. They likely take most of their comp as stock and pay the long term capital gains rate. If they're in finance/VC, they are taking full advantage of carried interest. They have financial planners who structure their portfolio to favor low-tax investments. They form S-Corps and trust funds to defer tax liability, get paid in distributions, write off all sort…

Taxing wealth is a terrible idea, because it means every asset has to generate income each year to offset taxes.

I think it's a great idea. Every asset not being put to use, is similar to hoarding cash under the mattress - a waste of capital.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#968

Post by sandesp »

riskable wrote: post #376
SolarUpNote wrote: post #208

Replace health insurance with health savings accounts?

What's funny about this is that health savings accounts are really just a discount program based on your tax bracket . The higher your tax bracket the bigger the discount. So in other words, the richer you are the more you'll save with a health savings account. So if Trump pulls off his "huge tax cuts" he'll be undermining his plan for health savings accounts. Classic Trump cognitive dissonance.

Hey do you have another working link for Public penetration test results: https://ptr.iot.nist.gov/A2L7P9D23345 you posted a month ago. I had to send a message here because Hackernews does not allow direct messages.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#969

Post by b_emery »

krapp wrote: post #484
b_emery wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California tried term limits. They didnt work. Turns out you need to have actual political skills to do politics.

And yet if you ask most Americans what "actual political skills" are, they'll likely say venality, corruption and malice, which leads us to having elected a president primarily on the basis of his incompetence.

Good point. Also, the cult of personality or celebrity. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as an ineffectual governor, demonstrated that you need more than just celebrity to get things done.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#970

Post by luxuryballs »

cesarbs wrote: post #95

A lot of what's in there seems pretty reasonable, but: 1) The whole border wall thing is just ridiculous. I thought he had given up on that. Why would Mexico have to pay for that? If the US wants to build a wall, fine, build it and pay for it. It doesn't make sense to demand that Mexico pay for it. It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it. 2) The FDA thing is scary. Regulatio…

drug cartels are a problem in Mexico, they might lose substantial amounts of business due to the wall (lots of drugs are sold in the US), which would be good for Mexico
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