General Politics Thread

[Birdjaguar]

1. I didn't see an answer to my question, you wandered off into the various ways businesses might respond to the tax while ignoring the net effect I'm talking about.
2. Why wouldn't a higher tax export jobs and raise prices? Sure, wages could be cut too. I dont see anything good coming from it, the politicians are scamming people with this bs about not raising our taxes.
3. What will be the over all effect on jobs and prices with a significant tax hike on businesses?

1. Your question: "Will an increasing tax bill mean lower prices and more domestic jobs?" I did answer it. I said "No" and explained why. There is no general rule about the effects of tax increases on businesses. There is no "net effect". I have quoted some thoughts on the matter below. It does appear through that corporate tax increases positively influence GDP and top Corporations. GDP growth is a pretty good proxy for jobs and the economy.

2. Why would it? Taxes are a regular part of corporate financial life. They are predictable and can be planned for. Accountants are paid to find ways to minimize their impact. And they do. Changes in rates are not game changers. They are business as usual. Corporate tax rates change with our politics and who is in charge. Companies just roll with them. You pay taxes every year and you may or may not worry over them for a couple of weeks in March and April, but if you have bumped up a bracket or two and now owe 4% more than last year, you are going to pay it. You are unlikely to move, stop eating out, or make your kids get jobs.

At the company level jobs are created by customer demand: getting products and services to the people who will pay for them. How would a 4% rise in taxes have an impact on hiring? Please tell me. Make up an example if you have to. Likewise, why would a change in tax rates cause a company to raise prices? The two are not connected. Did you/do you work for a for profit company?

As I said earlier, companies move operations overseas to avoid taxes altogether on those operations. In doing so some companies do shut down US plants. You saw this in the 80s and 90s. Reagan tax cuts did not keep them here. They moved because overall to the company they would be stronger more profitable companies if they had overseas operations. They could create new foreign markets. They could buy profitable foreign companies. They could become global. US corporate tax rates had little or nothing to do with it.

Higher taxes provide dollars for more government programs for the underclasses. Now if you oppose those, well, then just say so. Are you getting SS payments yet? Your tax dollars at work.

3. Nothing you will notice except it is likely GDP will continue to grow and the stock market stay strong until it doesn't. Oh yes politicians will complain and spread fake news about it. Businesses will just pay what their accountants tell them they owe and move on.

"Conclusion
Corporate tax reform is a topic of discussion among policy analysts and policymakers. The proposed options range from broadening the tax base/lowering the rates to moving to a territorial system with low tax rates to outright elimination of the corporate income tax. Given that the corporate income tax serves several important functions, outright elimination of the tax is ill advised. The justification for lowering the corporate tax rate is that it will increase economic growth.

In 2012, corporate profits (before- and after-tax) as a share of national income were at a postwar high. Corporate profits were relatively high throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, and fell throughout the 1960s and 1970s to reach a low in 1982. Since then, corporate profits reversed course and have generally been rising to their current postwar high.

The top statutory corporate tax rate has been falling since the early 1950s. The top corporate tax rate was 52 percent throughout the Eisenhower administration—17 percentage points higher than the current top rate of 35 percent. U.S. GDP grew by almost 4 percent annually in the 1950s compared with a 1.8 percent growth rate in the 2000s. On the surface, it would appear that more robust economic growth is associated with higher corporate tax rates. Further analysis, however, finds no evidence that either the statutory top corporate tax rate or the effective marginal tax rate on capital income is correlated with real GDP growth."

https://www.epi.org/publication/ib364-corporate-tax-rates-and-economic-growth/


"In the 13 previous instances of tax increases just since 1950, the S&P 500, the stock index that tracks most of the major companies in the US, has shown higher average returns, and higher odds of an advance, in times when taxes are increasing, according to Chisholm's research, which analyzed the data in the calendar year of the tax changes, plus the year prior and year after. This pattern holds true even when you drill down into key sectors of the S&P 500."

https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/trading-investing/tax-hikes-history

 

[Sommerswerd]

He is also pushing absolute lunacy about public school teachers making white children feel bad with Critical Race Theory. If he (Youngkin) wins it will be a dark day for America.

Youngkin (R) won (VA Governor). Looks like Ciatarelli (R) will win too (NJ Governor).

 

[Lexicus]

Youngkin (R) won (VA Governor). Looks like Ciatarelli (R) will win too (NJ Governor).

By the numbers i'm seeing i'm not counting Murphy out yet. It's way closer than it should be though and i really am now feeling like Americans collectively are too stupid for self-government...

 

[Drakle]

Correction. GOP win Virginia house by one seat

As for NJ, Wasserman is lean Murphy, but still unclear.

The late polls did have Youngkin still leading, so they ended up being right. But I don't think NJ was on people's maps (but also didn't get much polling).

This is within the year of an insurrection. This tells every wannabe Authoritarian that they can go nuts and suffer no consequences and within the year of absolute mass carnage from COVID. Doesn't matter. Republicans ripping up Roe V Wade. The Pro-choice majority just lets it happen.

Unless there is a serious bounce back by 2022, guarantee loss of Senate. This will only be deepened, because in 2024 Ohio, Montana and West Virginia are up, which are all guaranteed losses, even if Biden wins a solid reelection win. That cooks any hopes that Democrats have for a Senate majority, for a decade or more.

Stuck in a time loop. The GOP wrecks stuff up, voters briefly throw them out for wrecking stuff, then get mad when Democrats don't instantly fix things, so they bring the GOP back so they can get back to wrecking.

Other bad news. Maine Voters reject transmission lines to carry clean hydro-generated power from Quebec to New England. Voting for higher power bills and fossil fuels, because stupid NIMBYism. Biden admin backed this line, and now voters blew it up.

 

[innonimatu]

Biden's government is finished, a lame duck already - sitting politicians see the shift, they start deserting, changing policies: no new useful legislation will be passed by this administration, changes that matter will fail.
And it was self-inflicted. Between the "mandates" which he had promised wouldn't impose, winter wave of covid to come, worsening supply chain problems because no one is fixing the driver labour problem there either, and the "woke" labour the democracts willingly adopted, anyone will win against Biden or any other candidate from that party. His party's collapsing already. And has no alternative to offer because even Sanders has been playing team member.

Look at what the tories in the UK pulled off as a consequence of the brexit circus in their parliament, that's the future of the US: crushing conservative majority because they're the "alternative" to the train-wreck of the neoliberaliezed phony left. Corbyn and Sanders could have tuned the tine - if they had had the balls to be ruthless. Both lacked that. There's no one else in sight and the people who truly worked for their campaigns feel deceived by their ultimate meekness and won't easily go back to fighting soon i think. Both countries need new political parties, new people.

Just hope you won't get anyone worse than Trump or Boris in the US. Wokesterism and economic mismanagement is the clown circus of the US and the results will be the same, massive voter repudiation. People want real solutions to their problems, not economic circus. Of course the conservatives won't provide solutions either. But they will seem less clownish.

I think you are referring to the Virginia governor election, and I think you are wrong about the reasons the Democrat candidate is struggling. The GOP candidate has the knack for appealing to Trumptards while also coming off as just normal enough to not scare away the suburbs.

They're not "trumptards". They're half the voters, and clearly many who had been fooled into voting for Biden. You don't get it, this is not a performance, this is real life. From what I read on reports from there many, many people are pissed. Things are worsening. Promises were broken already.

Take the "vaccine mandates" issue. Which demographics are less vaccinated? "minorities" and the really highly educated. Two of the supposedly very dem constituencies. They're pissed.
Take the labour issues - compounded by firings over the vaccines. What are the demographics? Look at the truck drivers who are refusing to drive under the current labour conditions? Trumptards? They were the epitome of working class. And often now they are not just working class, bit also immigrants. And they're pissed also.
It's collapsing. The dems turned themselves into the party of managers. With some sprinkles of young fools who believe empty promises because life hasn't kicked them enough yet to become cynical about political promises. They're a small minority of voters. Next national elections will be a wipeout for them. I very much see parallels with the UK situation during the death throws of labour or the antics over brexit - performance politics. The conservatives will easily win those.

Also, lets be honest about one thing, because recriminations and blaming will start now. Who is starting "culture wars" in the US? The republicans or the democrats? To me outside observer, it sure seems that the democrats are the ones sponsoring the start of culture wars. Demanding that curricula be changed in schools. Demanding in fact a series of changes. Conservatives are doing no more that opposing those changes. Aka being conservative. Playing in the defensive in those culture wars. And guess what? It's the easy play.

Newspapers are blatantly lying when they post headlines such as this saying "Youngkin stoked culture wars on education while walking political tightrope over Donald Trump".
He took the side of those reacting against the culture wars initiated ("stroked") by others, I suppose sponsored by the democrats? Any serious political analysis of the election must be based on facts, not on propaganda from one or the other side. The Guardian's headline is an example of propaganda. The reason this guy win votes with his pick of side in cultured war is that he was on the defensive. Against the changes, in effect against the "culture war", his voters want that "culture war" and the warriors who brought it to just go away. Apparently it was unwanted and unasked for by most of the people in his state?
You may even be aligned with the side demanding change, but in making political analysis of why the cultural warrior's offensive is failing you must be true to the facts: recently attempted school curricula changes are being rejected. You must accept the facts to then be able to analyze why and where those attempted changes are failing.
Amateurish politics...

Other ridiculous propaganda, from the same media piece:

The Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, had campaigned with Biden and Barack Obama but it was not enough to prevent the Republican Glenn Youngkin pulling off an upset.

Obama is toxic. The president who protected the bankers. The president that broke health care even more, to increase the business of insurance corporations. The ex-president who does big parties with wealthy celebrities in his mansion while the county is failing in multiple fronts.
Biden is also toxic The repeated liar. The man who pretends he couldn't have the legislation passed by his own party (now he can't really).
Either of these campaigning for a candidate is going to convert no one who wasn't converted already, and to turn pissed off voters against the candidate! It's a negative. They're as toxic as Trump would be campaigning for the other guy. Did they wish to throw the election, or are they just to arrogant to see?

The democrats can't win because they cannot attack the wealthy and privileged. I mean, how to oppose a candidate who had presided over a rapacious corporation? Denounce the oligarchy, make the mismanagement of the economy the issue. But that would mean the democrats attacking their real constituency also...

 

[Drakle]

I wonder if any of the people saying Biden is already destroyed, were saying the same, when Democrats won even more Republican states than this? This sucks, but there are Democratic Governors in Lousinia, Kansas and Kentucky.

But yes, please tell me how Biden is on a woke offensive by ... Doing a COVID relief bill, and an Infrastructure bill. This involves raising taxes on the rich and big business and cracking down on tax dodging by funding the IRS and getting nearly every country, plus all in the EU to agree to a minimum tax. Building bridges, solar power and doing it by taxing the rich, is woke according to some moon logic.

This is the problem with all this 'woke' politics panics. It's all unreal, and impossible to grapple with, because it's manufactured by the right wing media machine. A conservative activist's, weak pussy son, crying about a book that has been in schools for decades, which Republicans want to ban, somehow becomes Democrats woke offensive to ... What. I don't even really understand the point, and nor do conservatives when actually questioned. Then a trans panic story which turns out to be a run of the mill date rape, which was created by the conditions of Trump admin policy.

All of these both got more attention then the facts that Republicans just ripped Roe v Wade apart, which has been settled case law for decades, by deputising the citizenry to be moral police. And ripping scores of books that have even the slightest LGBT representation out of school.

@innonimatu clearly isn't operating in reality. The ACA has greatly reduced those without insurance, got rid of junk policies that don't cover anybody, expanded Medicaid to poor people, and other necessary reforms to stop healthcare markets spilling out of control.

The highly educated are much more vaccinated. Accusing them of being anti vaxxers is moronic.

And whining about vaccine mandates causing labor issue is stupid. Anti vaxxers and media fear monger about massive sections of the workforce being kicked out .. And every time it turns out to be almost nobody. The NYPD Trumpist Union promised 10,000 Officers off the street, and it Ended up being ... 34. In the massive workforce that is the NYPD.

Things would be worse for Biden if there was no mandates. Wages are up, personal savings are up, but people think the economy is bad because it's still dragged down by COVID, and anti vaxxers still dying in droves. Virginia might have been won, if Biden had gone harder in the mandate, far earlier.

 

[amadeus]

Congrats to the VA gov-elect but especially his lieutenant who after 30 years finally had Americans thinking about Sears.

 

[Samson]

I agree with what you are saying in your post, but what is going on with this bit:

On the surface, it would appear that more robust economic growth is associated with higher corporate tax rates. Further analysis, however, finds no evidence that either the statutory top corporate tax rate or the effective marginal tax rate on capital income is correlated with real GDP growth.

How can you show a bunch of numbers, including regression lines, and then say "no evidence" without:

• Statistical test/p values
• Power analysis
• Confidence/credible intervals

I have only skimmed it, but it looks like they have used an N of one (the US), not even tried to do any real stats, not examined any covariates, and just announced that it all adds up to no evidence. They are certainly not right by the bayesian definition of evidence, I suppose they may well be right by a more common definition but this paper does not show it. I would get laughed out of the room for trying to publish something like this.

 

[AdrienIer]

I've seen two different stats on how that republican win in Virginia came to be, one being that democratic voters didn't come to the polls (apparently 46% of voters for the governatorial election voted for Biden and 46% for Trump, when the state voted for Biden by 10 points) and the other that there was a strong swing with white women (from +14 Biden last year to -1D McAuliffe). It looks like the democrats got complacent in their messaging to voters, believing that anti-Trumpism would win elections even after 2020.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Obama is toxic. The president who protected the bankers.

And got criticized by the 'other side' for being too hard on bankers. I remember the wailing of "class warfare" from the GOP.

The long and the short of it is, you guys are screwed either way in 2024. The best thing that could happen is the GOP ditching T**** and coming up with a reasonable candidate. Not a good one, a reasonable one would do to be the better option. But that's so hypothetical it could be quantum mechanics. If it's not T****, it's going to be a T**** clone.

But yes, please tell me how Biden is on a woke offensive by ... Doing a COVID relief bill, and a Infrascture bill. Which involves raising taxes on the rich and big business and cracking down on tax dodging by funding the IRS and getting nearly every country, plus all in the EU to agree to a minimum tax. Building bridges, solar power and doing it by taxing the rich, is woke according to some moon logic.

This is the problem with all this 'woke' politics panics. It's all unreal, and impossible to grapple with, because it's manufactured by the right wing media machine. A conservative activist's, weak pussy son, crying about a book that has been in schools for decades, which Republicans want to ban, somehow becomes Democrats woke offensive to ... What. I don't even really understand the point, and nor do conservatives when actually questioned. Then a trans panic story which turns out to be a run of the mill date rape, which was created by the conditions of Trump admin policy.

All of these both got more attention then the facts that Republicans just ripped Roe v Wade apart, which has been settled case law for decades, by deputising the citizenry to be moral police. And ripping scores of books that have even the slightest LGBT representation out of school.

It's sad because it's true.

 

[Samson]

The long and the short of it is, you guys are screwed either way in 2024.

It is just mad, they are doing well running on reducing access to modern medicine and book burning. I do not understand it.

 

[Drakle]

The GOP and America are just endlessly getting crazier and crazier. On the same day as this, Qanon followers were gathering in Dallas Texas ... waiting on the grassy knoll for JFK Sr and Jr to return from the dead, or come out of hiding, to anoint Donald Trump as the President or King. (JFK was born in 1917, so he would be over 100 years old, and Jr died over 20 years ago).

This wasn't a small crowd. It was a decently big one. And while they waiting, they were chanting that lame code thing they've been doing lately, stuff about the moon landing being faked, and making up stories about dead celebrities showing up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/QanonKaren/comments/qljy2d/qanon_cult_humiliated_after_jfk_jr_fails_to/

Qanon isn't small either. On Facebook, there were millions of accounts regularly consuming it, and they were on most other social media in large number. And Facebook's own investigators found that making a dummy account for a Trump supporter very quickly got recommended to join Qanon groups.

The GOP Base is packed full of weaponised insanity.


Also, there is a common refrain that Democrats just need to do more, and they will win. But that really doesn't make sense for NJ and Virginia.

In New Jersey, Phil Murphey did a bunch of clean energy and climate change provisions putting NJ to net-zero by 2050, expanded public transit, signed a $15 Minimum wage into law, implemented paid leave, legalized and decriminalized marijuana, raised the minimum age of marriage to 18 (why was it it below this before now), automatic voter registration and raised taxes on millionaires and corporations.

In Virginia, the two-year Trifecta, took Virginia from nearly the bottom in voting rights access to the 12th easiest, with stuff like same-day registration, election day as a holiday, absentee ballots, automatic voter registration, and loosening the existing strict photo ID laws, the first southern state to mandate a 100% carbon-free grid by 2050 with big investments to get started, the implementation of a Carbon market, stricter emissions standards for vehicles, investment in electric vehicles infrastructure, raised education spending, free state community college for low to middle income students and in demand fields, removed medically unnecessary requirements for abortions designed to torment women exercising their right to choose, expanded Medicaid, implemented a state run healthcare marketplace, funded a reinsurance program, implemented major privacy legislation, raised the minimum age for juveniles to be tried as adults, decriminalized and legalised marijuana, abolished the death penalty, banned no knock police searches, limits on chokeholds, authorising the attorney general to investigate police departments, ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, implemented a bunch of basic gun safety legislation, banned conversion therepy, repealed the state's ban on same-sex marriage, also repleaded 100 other outdated discrimatory laws still on the books, allowed local governments to remove confederate statues, implemented new policies to protect trans students, became the first southern state to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, banned suprise medical billing, increased the minimum wage to $12, gave access for undocumented immigrants to get drivers licenses, and expanded workers protections.

Sources

https://www.virginiamercury.com/202...government-for-two-years-heres-what-they-did/

https://sisterdistrict.com/b/virginias-blue-trifecta-miracle/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governorship_of_Phil_Murphy#Environment_and_energy

 

[mitsho]

Yeah, it's time to just pull the plug on Facebook. Do we need it anymore?

As for what the election tells us on the future, it will be quite interesting. Apparently, Democrats have to achieve something to count as delivering, Republicans can just deconstruct things and shout on the international stage, and it counts as a win. Constructing Treaties is immensely different than just announcing tariffs. Internally, keeping things as they are (Republicans) is harder than implementing progression (Democrats). So if we take that as a thing, Democrats need to do something now, since they will probably lose the power of making policy in the midterms. But since policies will take 3-7 years to take effect, they are basically already too late for the next presidential elections. I do hope the absolute toxicity of Trump will be enough, as Trump will get older and crazier still. But I'm not sure what they really can do - maybe throw out Manchin and Sinema so the media narrative will shift from "The Democrats have a majority in Senate, House and Presidency and did nothing" to "The Democrats just need two more senators, and they finally can do what you ask of them"?

But yeah, this is not a surprising and gamechanging result. But simply, American Democracy is broken.

 

[Drakle]

Wasserman has officially called NJ for the Democratic incumbent. A Democratic incumbent Governor hasn't won reelection in NJ since 1977.

Still Way too close.

While they still have the Trifecta, they should really try moving it to a midterm or Presidential year, if they can.

McAuliffe meanwhile has conceded. I don't know, I still think he should go sack the State Capitol before he retires to Florida. I mean he might as well, its clear voters don't actually care.

Somehow the Republicans will rationalize, that Democrats stole the Presidency (after losing in 2016), but somehow forgot to turn the Vote Rigger 2000 Back on for this election.

 

[Joij21]

Apparently, Democrats have to achieve something to count as delivering

Lol, no. You guys keep thinking the Democrats lost because they were unable to pass their agenda. The truth is the American people simply don't want their agenda to pass. The average American is therefore more like Manchin and Sinema rather then the rest of the Democratic party.

The only reason people voted in the Democrats into power was because of anti-Trump hate and blaming him for the pandemic. But the green new deal and anti-capitalist policies are totally against what the Americans wanted, instead they wanted a plain old boring neoliberal centrist that's pro business and pro capitalism.

Cut the green new deal, cut out the higher taxes, and stop printing more money. People don't want to be paying high carbon taxed gas, they don't. They don't want their incomes disappearing to Uncle Sam. And lastly they hate it when Uncle Sam kills them with all this inflation.

 

[Farm Boy]

I've seen two different stats on how that republican win in Virginia came to be, one being that democratic voters didn't come to the polls (apparently 46% of voters for the governatorial election voted for Biden and 46% for Trump, when the state voted for Biden by 10 points) and the other that there was a strong swing with white women (from +14 Biden last year to -1D McAuliffe). It looks like the democrats got complacent in their messaging to voters, believing that anti-Trumpism would win elections even after 2020.

Anti Trump doesn't work when Trump isn't in play. Democrats currently do not win in many states without some measure of significant support from people who are generally Republicans is what that tells us, and the progressive wing of the Democratic party, support them or not, has been not impressive with its ability to do what it can with what its got. Give Manchin his bill that both Democrats and Republicans want, and have wanted. Right now, it looks from here, like a two part failure. One, failure to give him what he's been clear about, and two, failing that, the unwillingness of representatives from the wealthiest states in the union refusing to pork up enough to buy off West Virginia. And this is the party that wants to give Washington DC two senators to represent what would be by far the wealthiest concentration of voters in a political entity the country has ever seen. Seems consistent to me.

 

[Lexicus]

Things would be worse for Biden if there was no mandates. Wages are up, personal savings are up, but people think the economy is bad because it's still dragged down by COVID, and anti vaxxers still dying in droves. Virginia might have been won, if Biden had gone harder in the mandate, far earlier.

A New York Times piece I read a few days ago said that Democratic voters in VA felt demotivated because they felt the party would not deliver for them, and young voters were demotivated because without Trump on the ballot they figured the country was already saved.

Both of these are problems I predicted, particularly the latter.

 

[AdrienIer]

Anti Trump doesn't work when Trump isn't in play. Democrats currently do not win in many states without some measure of significant support from people who are generally Republicans is what that tells us, and the progressive wing of the Democratic party, support them or not, has been not impressive with its ability to do what it can with what its got. Give Manchin his bill that both Democrats and Republicans want, and have wanted. Right now, it looks from here, like a two part failure. One, failure to give him what he's been clear about, and two, failing that, the unwillingness of representatives from the wealthiest states in the union refusing to pork up enough to buy off West Virginia. And this is the party that wants to give Washington DC two senators to represent what would be by far the wealthiest concentration of voters in a political entity the country has ever seen. Seems consistent to me.

Not sure I completely agree beyond the first sentence. The larger spending bill is generally popular with the population (according to every poll) including republicans. Wealthy donors don't want it, but they're not the majority.
And while DC is richer than the US population in general, it doesn't mean that it's only rich people there, nor does it mean that they don't deserve representation...

 

[Samson]

And this is the party that wants to give Washington DC two senators to represent what would be by far the wealthiest concentration of voters in a political entity the country has ever seen. Seems consistent to me.

Not that far, and only recently. Top 5 states by median household income, from wiki:
[table=head]
Rank|State|2018|2017|2016|2015|2014
1|Washington,DC|$85,203|$82,372|$75,506|$75,628|$71,648
2|Maryland|$83,242|$80,776|$78,945|$75,847|$73,971
3|New Jersey|$81,740|$80,088|$76,126|$72,222|$71,919
4|Hawaii|$80,212|$77,765|$74,511|$73,486|$69,592
5|Massachusetts|$79,835|$77,385|$75,297|$70,628|$69,160
[/table]

 

[mitsho]

Lol, no. You guys keep thinking the Democrats lost because they were unable to pass their agenda. The truth is the American people simply don't want their agenda to pass. The average American is therefore more like Manchin and Sinema rather then the rest of the Democratic party.

Funnily enough, progressive policies seem to get good majorities on their own, but when combining them together and slap the label "Democratic Agenda" on top of them, they suddenly become bad.

I'm not versed well enough to counter you with numbers and data. That can get very complex since it's just abstract polls and not real voting data, which is why I hate that same discussion even in my own country. So maybe someone else has to bring the facts, I just don't think that there is any "average American". Also, that average American must have been livid with what Trump did since that was also miles away from the position of Manchin and Sinema, wouldn't you agree?