Biden Hones Multi-Trillion-Dollar Budget
Biden rejected progressive spending plans but now Hones Multi-Trillion-Dollar Budget
Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination running as a moderate, rejecting the big-government plans of progressive rivals as unaffordable.
The former vice president has proposed a total of $5.4 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years, according to an analysis published Monday by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan group at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. That includes historically high allocations for sectors from education and health to child-care and housing.
Mr. Biden’s proposed budget is more than double that of Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee. It is a fraction of the $30 trillion to $50 trillion spending plans that progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren laid out during the Democratic primary. But since effectively sealing the nomination in March, Mr. Biden’s plan has grown in response to the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the resulting recession.
Federal Spending as a Share of GDP
Penn Wharton Budget Model Key Points
- Over fiscal years 2021 – 2030, the Biden platform would raise $3.375 trillion in new tax revenue while increasing spending by $5.35 trillion.
- Under the Biden tax plan, households with adjusted gross income (AGI) of $400,000 per year or less would not see their taxes increase directly but would see lower investment returns and wages as a result of corporate tax increases. Those with AGI at or below $400,000 would see an average decrease in after-tax income of 0.9 percent under the Biden tax plan, compared to a decrease of 17.7 percent for those with AGI above $400,000 (the top 1.5 percent).
- The largest areas of new net spending are education at $1.9 trillion over ten years and infrastructure and R&D at $1.6 trillion over ten years.
- In total, including macroeconomic and health effects, the Biden platform increases federal debt by 0.1 percent in 2030 before decreasing debt by 1.9 percent in 2040 and 6.1 percent in 2050; GDP decreases by 0.4 percent in 2030, sees no change in 2040, and increases by 0.8 percent in 2050.
Tax Plan
- Implement a Social Security “Donut Hole”,
- Repeal elements of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) for high-income filers,
- Raise the top rate on ordinary income,
- Eliminate stepped-up basis,
- Tax capital gains and dividends at ordinary rates,
- Limit itemized deductions,
- Raise the corporate tax rate,
- Impose a minimum tax on corporate book income,
- Raise the tax rate on foreign profits,
- Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies,
- Eliminate real estate loopholes,
- Impose sanctions on tax havens.
Those provisions are described in detail in PWBM’s analyses of the Biden’s original tax plan and his updated tax plan.
Progressives Happy – For Now
Party progressives, meantime, are satisfied—for now. “Where Biden has moved is an important set of steps forward,” says Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
“Do we want more?” she says. “Absolutely.”
Regarding point 4 above, rest assured no federal debt decreases will ever happen and the deficit will be worse, no matter who wins.
And the Progressives will never be happy until they turn the US into a socialist mecca like Venezuela.
Mish
Over the last 60 years we have had a variety of different administrations in charge, and a variety of different tax structures in place. Some had very high top tax rates, some had low tax rates. Some were more complicated that others. In the end, the result has been amazingly similar. The net taxes collected has always been almost exactly 18% of GDP. If you collect 18% of GDP, and you spend 25% of GDP, do you have a taxing problem, or a spending problem?
And what will Harris Do?
Why talk about a Biden budget when Harris will most likely take over?
Just saying.
Harris? Why turn the country over to Harris when they could just turn it over to Antifa? That is their real goal……
Does Biden have a brain in his head? Doesn’t he know that raising taxes raises prices? Doesn’t he know that deficits and printing scads of money debases the currency. God help us in a high tax and high price world!!
This puny budget will be spent dry in just the first year.
Always spend more money when you are going broke . . .
I am Joe Biden, and I have… forgotten.. this message…….
I agree that socialism is a slow creeping disease and I have posted enough on the subject to prove it. However we should not mistake the excesses and mania of crony capitalism that is if anything even sicker than socialism. It has gotten to the point where wealth inequality is the greatest threat to stability in the USA. In fact I believe that it is a threat to capitalism itself since capitalism requires a middle class willing to take risks in order to share in returns.
Wiki describes crony capitalism thus: “Crony capitalism is an economic system in which businesses thrive not as a result of risk, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class.”
What they have just described is not even capitalism itself but fascism, and we are seeing the results in the form of brutal fascist repression tactics along with a divide and conquer strategy, and even that is coming more from the Kremlin than from Wall Street, but Wall Street encourages it because they envy the no holds barred wild wild west of unfettered mafia control of assets enjoyed by russian billionaires. In the meanwhile the average russian has no rights at all, and a much lower standard of living than Mexico.
Wall Street profits and the quality of life for the 1% are not the ONLY metrics by which we should be judging our government, economy, or overall success. There are some 327 million Americans sharing in well under half the assets while 3.3 million of us own the majority of assets. When those small minority of owners make an error it impacts us all, risk is far too thinly spread and we have discussed this over and over.
We have complained about short-term quarterly profit motivation for years. Looking to share prices in the next 90 days is no way to run a global economy.
I do not approve of socialism because it requires government to get ever deeper into your own decision making and freedoms, even where government has no business they make it their business, saying if you want income support, housing assistance, food stamps, etc. on and on, then you must comply with our rules, such things as forcing you to quit smoking or behaviors that used to be considered the sole discretion of the individual. Even when that is good for you like seat belt use coersion is still coersion. The socialist government simply cannot sit back and allow people to just live their lives as they see fit, the impluse to command obedience is just as ingrained in socialists as in fascists.
So, Biden’s approach does not strike me as massive socialism on the scale of Australia, but taxing UNEARNED income at a normal income level is fine with me. If we are going to have income tax then that has to be both progressive on TOTAL INCOME and not just wages from labor, as well as taxing financial transactions so that we end the billion trades per second frontrunning by Wall Street banks which is pure cheating and you all know that. A simple postcard tax code would be fine with me as long as it is progressive.
A tax on financial transaction that rewards planning and holding equity, and rewards responsible bond holding is badly needed before all smaller issuing entities simply go out of business and we have 7 stocks left – FAANG and a couple others.
From an economic point of view “socialized medicine” AKA single payer, would be the equivalent of the biggest tax cut American business has ever had by far. Yet nobody on the right supports it, please explain this. They will often say they want to keep their doctor, and I assure you their doctor wants to keep them for most well off white Americans that are fortunate enough to have private for obscene profit healthcare insurance that asks few to no questions on fees and prices.
For those few remaining middle class/affluent/wealthy people who decry the advancing socialism (especially in regards to the HUMAN RIGHT to adequate and affordable health care) and who hate Mexicans, I want to point out the irony that the reason Mexico has so many uneducated, structurally impoverished, and desperate “excess population” coming north is they have the very same rules your republican party are pushing for. A paternaistic society with deep roots of superstition and religios bigotry, and which is no less intrusive into people’s daily lives. You think a socialist economic system dictates your actions and behaviors? Just wait till your actions and behaviors are dictated by extreme poverty so that a very few can enjoy total sybaritic security.
What is happening in the nation today is only going to rapidly devolve into race and class wars that will not be fought with words or memes. And it would NOT be happening if justice was not for sale to the highest bidders with the vast majority locked out of the justice system. You cannot simply call 60 or 70 percent of the population “excess” and get rid of them, in mass incarcerations, via lack of care, or food, and NO your wealth does not make you better or more moral, poor people behave the same way you would if you were one of them. You can lie to yourself but you know deep down you are no different and that appalls and scares you.
Police state crackdowns may feel good for those who feel their entitled positions under threat but they will only make it worse, solve nothing.
Biden and his plans are the very best you can hope for if you want the nation to continue, and if you do not want it to continue then I condemn you as traitors. Though in that case I will get the last laugh because your feelings of moral superiority rest upon the number of dollars you have in your portfolio and when there is no more US Treausury will will have none. Everything you currently have requires the continuation of the US as a going concern economically and politically, upon the full faith and credit of the United States of America. You end that and you will find yourself as poor as everyone else, my bet is you are soft, do not know how to be poor or to compete in a free for all mafia world such as the russians are now enjoying. So you better be careful what you wish for.
You have really complicated a simple issue. We do not have a capitalist system, or a crony capitalist system, we have a socialist / fascist market system. It is the socialism within the system, which has caused it to go off the rails. When the government supports certain businesses by granting them a corporate charter, and giving them special privileges like immunity from prosecution for crimes, and passing laws and regulations which make competition against them impossible, and the ability to openly bribe politicians with huge amounts of money, that is not capitalism.
Corporations don’t exist. They don’t eat or drink or sleep. Eliminate C corps and make them S corps. That means tax the stockholders who do eat and drink and sleep.
As long as you tax them for idly holding stock, as opposed to taxing the income the stock generates for them, you are definitely on to something…
It was Joe Biden who wrote and sponsored as Senator the bankruptcy laws that made student debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy and therefore made student debt become forever-debt.
This led to banks and institutions giving out much larger dollar amounts in student debt easily and with practically not even a cursory look by the granter of the student debt if the student could even theoretically repay the student debt with the job prospects the students would have after studying the things they wanted to study and graduating.
This in turn led to colleges and universities hiking their tuition fees massively and offering all kinds of majors where unemployment after graduation or pulling lattes at Starbucks is much more likely than getting a well paid job from the area of expertise the student graduated with.
So Joe Biden is proposing to fix the problems HE CREATED with laws he wrote and sponsored by throwing more tax-payers money at it and making colleges and universities to be able to charge even more money for many times useless studies either from the student or tax-payers.
Can not get any more “politician” than that.
As a reminder after Joe Biden wrote and sponsored the current credit card laws and bankruptcy laws (that Trump has NOT fixed) Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden got a high position and huge salary and luxury office and with no apparent requirement to actually work from then largest credit card issuer MBNA which is based in Delaware and has now been bought by Bank of America.
That is a textbook example of corruption and in many other countries both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden would have been prosecuted after that after raids on MBNA offices and it would have been the end of Joe Biden’s political career but in USA authorities did NOTHING and media just turned a blind eye and treated Joe Biden like “aww shucks it is just Joe” and celebrated him as a wise elder that sometimes says crazy things and he ended up becoming Obama’s VP for 8 years and Republicans McCain and Romney and their VP candidates Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan were so feckless they did NOT even raise the issue.
There is a good analysis of this at Vox worth having a look at; I think you may be stressing his participation somewhat, it is true he “participated” in the legislation but you imply he deserves sole credit for it and that is just not so. As the article says the bill passed with wide BIPARTISAN support. But, I do agree with Senator Warren about the outcomes and to a large degree your analysis of the fallout is accurate.
I did not know about MBNA’s hire of Biden’s son, and no it does not pass the smell test, but were laws broken? I doubt it, but that just means to me the law needs to change because by any real definition of the word it does look like bribery and corruption.
A lot of things NEED to change, and it goes as deep as crony capitalism itself, but until they do you seem angry at the wrong person, you are judging a political beauty contest by saying every single contestant is ugly and has facial warts and scabies. Yeah they do, if you want that to change you have a lot more work cut out for you though. And I will do what I can to help short of voting for a Bernie Sanders.
“Biden, by contrast, saw the bill as an admittedly imperfect but fundamentally sound compromise that he improved by participating in crafting it. By cutting down on bankruptcies, the legislation helped not just credit card companies but also consumers who benefit from lower interest rates. The legislation contained provisions intended to protect low-income households and in part thanks to Biden’s work made some other changes that are favorable to the interests of divorced women and their children.”
LOL the part where consumers benefit from lower interest rates which our loving benefactors, Visa and Mastercard pass on lower interest rates. I still have a card with 29.9% interest. And I am a homeowner with the most secure income a person could wish for.
I agree that student debt should be dischargable in BK chapter 7, and anyone who says that is a free ride clearly knows NOTHING about bankruptcy. I agree with Warren that we have to reduce the pressures on average people which drive them to BK court. And to the right I would say as long as people like Trump are allowed to serially file BK so should the rest of us.
I believe that higher education should be assisted or even free for those that demonstrate the ability to benefit from it because our society will benefit from it, kids should not be locked out by family income alone. However, I had to resort to using a student loan once in the 1980’s and I was also forced to repay it, how is it fair that I had to pay and the newer generation gets a pass? It isn’t so please do not try to defend the position that somehow younger people are screwed in ways we were not. Not one single borrower had a gun to their head when they signed that loan. If they have an ability to pay they should pay something, and I do think that the terms should be lenient. Low interest, and a grace period of up to 10 years till they can get the kind of employment that affords the payments. As it is we have WAY too many people getting post docs in underwater basket weaving just to avoid repayment of loans where they intentionally borrowed as much as they could. If we argue long and hard enough we will eventually simply see an end of student loans entirely, and with even more stringent repayment terms. It is possible that a lifetime cap on borrowing for school would force a student to rationalize their educational spending to that which is most critical to future success, and maybe there is a list of majors that should not be eligible for such aid because the history of repayment for those is poor to nil. But that really just complicates the matter, we will end up with FICO deciding who gets help in what field and who doesn’t.
There is a compromise out there that can reconcile your anger and mine, we just need to get creative and make that law. That was what Biden thought he was doing, unless he was actually doing it as part of a bribe legal or not. Still, when your choice in the voting booth is between Biden and Trump – well that really is not a choice is it? You have to vote for one or the other, anything else is a default to Trump, not voting is a vote for Trump, writing in a third party candidate is a vote for Trump, the only thing NOT a vote for Trump is a vote for Biden. And we cannot even get started on the path back to sanity which has a future your kids and grandkids will want to live in till Trump is gone. If we fail to get rid of him then the USA is dead, where will your descendents be then?
turn the power off and see what happens
I heard Biden plans to increase military spending.
Friends, you can oppose nominal tax increases all you want. But, if they don’t raise tax rates nominally, they’ll just tax you more via inflation. Regardless of official method they favor to raise revenue, they’ll devote the same resources (as a % of GDP) towards war. If the commitment of resources doesn’t change, then in terms of future wealth creation there will probably be no difference between the DR candidates. (There will be nominal but not real differences.)
Both Demopublican wings also approve of private central bank opacity. Every day you complain about the Fed, that’s another day of inaction by whoever you voted for.
The two teams in this league are too alike in the ways we disapprove of. There’s no compelling reason to vote for either. Vote no-confidence by not voting. Any other decision tells the conmen you remain susceptible to the same tricks — so they’ll continue “business as usual “.
And start participating in third parties or independent campaigns. Stop spending so much of your time following a race rigged to feature only pro-war, pro-Fed candidates. We have to start fielding our own team.
Based on the polls now that Joe Biden leads by about 5-7% nationally and about 2-4% in the states that actually decide the electoral college “not voting” is actually a vote for Joe Biden because whoever is on top of polls benefits MORE from people not voting .
I suppose, if one is partisan enough, not voting for my guy; can always be tortured into somehow being a vote for the not-my guy…
You’re talking about two turds in a sewer here. Trump and Biden, is effectively the same. Just in a, at most, very slightly different wrapping.
And, both are as bad as it is possible to get. There is no worse than them. Putin inserting his favorite warhead into The White House, would be a vast improvement on any of them. Ditto some ISIS commander taking charge. Or a Nazi. Or a Coronavirus. Anything, absolutely anything, would be be an improvement on the status quo, which is all that either a vote for Biden or Trump is a vote in favor of.
Trying to portray the choice between pure shit and pure shit as some form of relevant one, is what really is a vote for pure shit.
Also Trump is NOT pro-war candidate whereas Biden is a full-blown NEOCON that cheered and voted for Iraq war as the leader of Senate Foreign Relations committee in the early 2000’s and was no different from Cheney in that time period.
Trump has started NO new wars and instead his instinct is to withdraw troops away and everytime he does that the Washington NEOCONS in both Democrats and Republican have a hissy-fit like happened when Trump pulled troops from Syria and NEOCONS in especially Democrats but also Republicans attacked Trump and wanted him to keep troops in Syria and send more troops to Syria to die and get maimed and USA to spend trillions to be as a buffer/protector of the kurds against Turkey’s aggression but Trump said in essence that “you are on your own” and “keep the guns we have given you” to kurds and withdrew most troops and left some on the oilfields to keep them secure and a week later kurds had made peace and alliance with Syria’s government and Syria’s government had sent tanks and promised air support to kurdish controlled cities near Turkey’s border and they had told Turkey that they will be fighting against Syrian army and kurds if they try to invade large parts of Syria like Erdogan had promised/threatened to do and there were some battles where turkish army advanced to Syria and Syrian army shot at them with tanks and made bombing runs with their russian made fighter jets and kurds fought fiercely and after few hundred turkish soldiers had died and Erdogan took part in their funerals Turkey’s public opinion turned fiercely against invading Syria and Erdogan stopped his plans to invade large parts of Syria and turned to threatening EU to release/push the millions of Syrians in Turkey toward EU instead and repeat the 2015 rush of millions through Greece to get free welfare, free apartments and free healthcare and free daycare and free school and free university in Sweden and Germany if they could only get there walking through several SAFE European countries.
That was stopped by Greece building a wall on their land border with Turkey and sending Greek army to patrol the border and EU commissions leader Von Der Leyen visited Greece and said EU supports Greece and that Greece is the protector of EU borders and few weeks of stone throwing and riots on the turkish side of border by Syrians, afghanis and iraqis and assorted Africans led to nothing and Greece just psuhed those people who got over the border back to Turkey and the rush of millions of asylum seekers to EU through Greece that Erdogan had threatened Greece and EU with fizzled out and Turkey sent the same buses to the border to take people back to Turkish refugee camps that had initially given people rides to the border.
It was crucial that Greece’s government had changed to a rightist government when in 2015 Greece’s government was run by socialist/communist Syriza that just stopped border patrols and pushed everyone onwards through the then open EU borders which attracted more to come when they heard one could reach Germany and Sweden by going to Greece and in the end Greece pushed 1+ million asylum seekers to other EU countries in 2015 and early 2016 and registered just 11 000 asylum seekers in 2015 despite EU directives and Dublin agreement requiring that the first EU country registers every asylum seeker and is responsible for all asylum seekers and no onward movement is allowed but Greece and syriza could do what they did in 2015 because Merkel was totally insane in 2015 and kept saying “there is NO limit how many asylum seekers Germany takes” and “EU borders must be kept open” and “there are too many people coming, they can NOT be stopped” and the then AfD leader was so idiotic that she started talking about shooting people at the border when a journalist asked about it and the internal discussion in Germany turned to only having too choices 1. Let millions come without limit or 2. Shoot them at the border and the then AfD leader later left AfD in huge disagreement because her total stupidity was criticized.
The route through Greece to Germany was blocked in early 2016 by Austria which called all neighboring countries and Balkan countries into a meeting (and did NOT invite Merkel) and they agreed on a deal and one day Austria informed that from then on they would only allow 80 asylum seekers into Austria per day and turn others away at the border (later ruled totally LEGAL by EU commission lawyers) since neighboring countries are SAFE and within hours Slovenia informed they would only allow 50 asylum seekers a month and turn others away at the border so Slovenia wold not end up full of asylum seekers unable to go forward and since neighboring countries are SAFE and these 50 needed to be exceptionally vulnerable like single moms with small kids and within hours Croatia stated they would STOP all asylum seekers at the border and turn them away because neighboring countries are SAFE and next day Serbia informed that they would have controls at their borders and Macedonia (now called Northern Macedonia) informed they would close their border with Greece so the asylum seekers would not get packed up in Macedonia and Hungary (which double-fenced it’s borders with Serbia and Slovenia already in autumn of 2015) and Poland and Czech Republic sent troops to help Macedonia guard their borders and build more robust and longer fences/walls and so the rush to EU and Germany and Sweden was OVER and few tens of thousands of “asylum seekers” got stuck in Greece and chanted Merkel and Germany for a few months in the muddy fields near Macedonian border and then agreed to move to well equipped and EU funded asylum seeker camps away from the border inside Greece.
The mistake EU made and the new rightist Greek government made in late 2019 however was that Greece asked for relocation of some asylum seekers from Greek islands and EU agreed and this was done mostly to young asylum seekers claiming to be 16-17 years old (in reality most probably 18-25 years old since Greece does NO age testing) and single moms with kids and this led to a rush of asylum seekers to Greek islands from Turkey (everyone of them was already SAFE in Turkey) and now asylum seekers are burning their camps in protest in Greek islands since they have become overcrowded and Germany is again drifting toward insanity by demanding all asylum seekers in Greek islands must be relocated around EU and this would of course lead to all asylum seeker camps in Greece setting their camps on fire and huge new rush of new asylum seekers from the African migrants and Syrians and Iraqis and Afghanis living SAFELY in Turkey to Greece if they heard one can get to Germany and other EU countries with welfare through Greece.
Luckily Austrian government has again said Germany’s ideas are lunacy and would incentivize asylum seekers to burn all of their camps in Greece if it was rewarded this way and lead to a huge rush of new asylum seekers to Greece.
Greece is trying to build a floating wall into the sea between Turkey and Greece to keep new asylum seekers away.
“The two teams in this league are too alike in the ways we disapprove of. There’s no compelling reason to vote for either. Vote no-confidence by not voting. Any other decision tells the conmen you remain susceptible to the same tricks — so they’ll continue “business as usual “.
Anna, I am sorry but that is EXACTLY the one of the most powerful messages Putin’s FSB is putting out on the net, it is in fact practically verbatim one of their strategies.
Our political two party system was and is flawed, but not voting or throwing away your voice for change because you believe there is no difference between Trump and Biden or democrats and republicans is so false you have to be embarrassed you even wrote those words. This year we have a harsh and stark choice between surviving to make those changes you think we need and the USA ceasing to exist with another illegitimate term for Trump (and Putin his master) because that is what is at stake.
Ah! What a sly willy! There is a little more to it if you click to read the actual report. He is correcting the horribly regressive payroll tax, great job, but in low underhanded way. Instead of making it revenue neutral by eliminating the top threshold immediately and lowering the rate for lower incomes, he is instead creating a donut hole which will eventually disappear. Thus he is boosting payroll tax revenue by buying votes in the donut hole, those making between 137k and 400k.
Why not just eliminate the hidden portion of the payroll tax and give it back to the employee in exchange for eliminating the threshold? That would be more fair.
Why are the democrats the ones who want to spend more on stimulus? I thought the way re-election logic works, the incumbent should want to spend more to get re-elected, while the democrats should be the ones raising budget concerns, so that the market tanks and Trump is voted out of office.
Democrats want trillions for Democrat controlled states who have decimated their economies by excessive lockdowns and by allowing lots of riots and who already were in bad shape before Covid because high earning tax-payers were escaping them in droves due to high taxes and this has only been increased by the riots which have been allowed by Democrats and said Democrats have already defunded large parts of police budgets or promised to do so and closed entire police units like New york’s De Blasio closed the plain clothes unit leading to 50%+ increase in shootings in New york in June, July and August compared to 2019 including 1-year old black babies being shot dead in their strollers in New York in drive-by shootings done either by car or by foot and whose state budgets were creaking already because of their Sanctuary policies have attracted so many ILLEGAL immigrants to those states which cost a lot to school and give free healthcare to and to whom Democrats have also opened their state welfare systems by NOT checking whether one is a citizen when they apply for welfare.
“Why are the democrats the ones who want to spend more on stimulus?”
Because children like the one promising them the most candy the best.
Stuki, I know you have a better mind than that.
First of all Trump disagrees with the senate GOP blocking assistance, so he says, he is willing to spend much more than they are, but, only if he both gets the credit for it and the democrats get the blame for the debt that comes with the debt it creates.
He literally wants a huge TRUMP in bold caps and gold ink on every single payment sent out, be it a check or debit card. He would ban electronic transfers for it because that is not such great advertising, he wants every American who gets that money to know they have been bought by him.
But seriously, our entire economy has been built upon credit that requires continuous expansion, when something like Covid comes along and knocks back consumers it has a lethal effect that if prolonged or deep enough will trigger a downward spiral of depression and unemployment; we complain a lot about the economy but we will have something to really bitch about once that gets started. It would be failure on every level.
If we could just remove the two words from the Fed’s charter “EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCE” we would be halfway to solving our problems. They need to have one mandate only, a strong and stable dollar. Any other economic mandates belong in the sphere of the political where the politicians are answerable (at least in theory) to the public.
My fear is that America is a lot like a complex structure where you cannot remove bits (or add them for that matter) infinitely because one day you will remove a bit that triggers a collapse of the whole thing, like a jenga puzzle on an enormously more complex level.
As noted politicians need to be accountable for this to work, so term limits, but not so strict that they have no incentive to do what is best once in, if you did only radicals would ever run, eveything has a balance.
I think we have gotten to the point where it is all about to unravel, and you cannot fix just one or two things without destabilizing others. What is needed is a complete overhaul with agreement on some fundamental principals, and the reluctance of the right to agree with ANYTHING on the left is going to end the nation. The extremism just is to structural now. Driven by and reflecting the extremism in the economy between rich and poor. Wealth inequality is the very foundation of the rot, and the right fights for the rich with every breath they take. They literally give the poor the bird and blame them for their own poverty when the vast majority of those poor are acting in perfectly rational and predictable ways to the forced deprivation with no real opportunity left to succeed. And it is too bad because their success is our success, their anger is our anger, and the future of the US depends on the happiness,contentment of the great majority of the people who provide that success through their labor. Take that away and see how long the nation lasts, after a brief period of brutal repression we are going to fail and break apart.
My advice is start learning russian and Chinese, you will need them.
These are all just plans. The one thing we do know is budget deficit was trending down until Trump got into office. The TCJA from 2017 was a disaster for the budget and debt. Somehow the Republican party thinks bankrupting the government and states will be great for the economy and lower the deficit but it hasnt worked out.
C_O, they do want to bankrupt the nation and states, but for political reasons not economic. They need the people to be angry enough so that they not only accept fascism but beg for it.
The more that Biden reveals, the worse for him. The far-left will say it’s not enough and the moderates will say it’s too much. Same thing is going to happen if Trump manages to goad Biden to publish a list of possible supreme court nominees. Normally, I’d say this would hurt Biden’s turnout, but that’s where the vote-by-mail comes in; lowers barriers for the lazy/disenfranchised. If you live here in California, you already know how door-to-door vote “harvesting” can cajole those ballots to get filled out and handed in.
In several tight races in California in 2018 bundles of 100-200 ballots arrived in large numbers after election day and were approved and postal votes with no date stamp were also approved and Democrats won each of those races where a Republican was leading in election night.
Just a lucky coincidence?
Sanders is already complaining that Biden is not far-left enough and is not using AOC and himself as surrogates and exciting young voters and minorities like they do/did with their free everything message and AOC’s world is going to end in 10 years due to climate change if driving is not cut and flights stopped and cow farts controlled delusions.
FALSE!
It’s just a proposal for the purposes of reaching HIS base, exactly the same as what Trump is doing. It would still have to pass Congress.
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Projections for 2030, 2040, and 2050 are $3 bills in confederate money.
Demographers can project the future with remarkable accuracy. So, say, social security’s cost in 2050 is a known dollar amount. But how much those dollars will be worth at the time is blindfold darts.
I can predict with 100% accuracy that the value of the dollar will always be less in the future than it is today. This assuming the present economic and political system remains inplace.
Which is why nickle loafs of bread in the 1930’s are now $3-5. And so forth.
Do tell.
What I find interesting about that “value of a dollar” is that it’s true, but not true. Loss of dollar value is huge in certain areas, but relatively non-existent in others.
Electronics is the leading counter example, for instance. Too, manufactured goods in general have had net-zero or less inflation if you compare fairly. By “fairly” – consider a “car” of 1970 and a “car” of 2020. The label is the same three letter word. They both have things called “wheels” and “seats”. They are even used for similar activities. But they ain’t the same thing.
I’m reminded of the question of which would you take, a $2000 “car” you buy now or a $2000 “car” you buy in 1970. Easy choice. The junker used car now will last more miles. Better rubber. Better “radio”. Will be superior to the 1970 POS in 11-teen different ways. And, should you play the collector card to note how valuable a brand new 1970 car would be on the collector-car-show market of today, compare that value to what you’d get in 1970 for a working junker from 2020. Score! Straight out of the Terminator. Millions of 1970 dollars, easy. Just for the sound system.
In the digital age, money is just a stroke on the keyboard. The Fed can create infinite amount of money. So instead of giving free money only to the top 1% and corporations, more should be given to the average people. Universal Basic Income should be installed.
The Fed can create money but it cannot really spend it. Buying assets on loans does not count.
They can create money and digitely spend it.
If you have yet to commit time to truly understanding the influence of newly printed money once it is circulating in the money supply, you should do some homework on that. Come back and tell us if you still feel so good about the money printers making up a fresh batch of dollars whenever they feel like it. Velocity of M1 Money Stock (M1V) is something you should make sure you truly understand.
Where do you suggest we look for an unvarnished primer on the influence of newly printed money?
How about taking whatever is given to the 1% and corporations and spreading that amongst the 99% ? It would be a net zero gain in money printing.
“How about taking whatever is given to the 1% and corporations and spreading that amongst the 99% ? It would be a net zero gain in money printing.”
The problem is not “giving.” As long as the giver has anything to give, giving is generally a good thing.
Problem arises when, as is the case with The Fed and goverment, they have nothing to give. Hence every penny “given” to someone, has to first be taken from someone else. The process of taking from others via the printing press may slightly more obfuscated than doing it via direct taxation and burglary, but it is no less taking. Were it not, The Fed would have nothing to give as they aren’t exactly putting in the hours producing anything.
Now, who are they taking from? In order to have something worth taking, ultimately someone has to produce something. In the early years of theft, stealing savings built up by previous generations may have worked, but ultimately that pool runs out. And then, the takers are stuck taking fro those who still produce. Which isn’t exactly the brightest thing to do, if production, hence economic growth, is the goal.
And then, who is the loot give to? Since the productive has it taken from them, guess who that leaves as recipients……
That’s what we have today. The productive being robbed to feed zero-or-less-value-add leeches. That’s the problem. Not whether the productive victims, nor the idle leeches, are currently nominally “rich” or “poor.” But rather, that the victims are productive people, while the beneficiaries are value destroying leeches. No different from a farmer cutting down his grains, in order to use it to fertilize weeds.
Leading the former to dwindle, while the latter (temporarily) thrive.
Hence why complete idiots, utter wastes of resources like the idle, or at most pure make-working, half-literates in FIRE “sectors” are making any money at all, instead of simply starving to death with their families, which they would be if America was still Great Again.
While productive industries ad people, are so starved of resources from being robbed to feed the above utter parasitic vermin, that they can no longer even compete with something as universally useless as a bunch of communists.
All while the dupes are told the relevant demarcation is somehow between; “the rich” and “the poor.” Not between deadweights “making money off their home” and “their portfolio” and all manners of other theft no less crass than straight up burglary; and the productive people which by necessity has to be robbed in order for the illusion to be maintained; that the idle, or purely makeworking, idiots are somehow “making money” while sitting there like monkeys mindlessly opining about childish systems for predicting the future of random sequences, and other such nonsense.
Economies thrive by allocating scarce resources to those who can make productive use of them. As opposed to the diametric opposite. And when economies thrive, all boats are lifted. Exactly whether someone who makes productive use of resources is classed as “poor” or “rich” matters not at all. Just that whatever he had, was obtained by creating the value required to obtain it. Rather than being handed wealth he never created at all, whether that wealth was nominally obtained by “asset appreciation,” awarded by some kangaroo court, or membership in some mafia or union.
Exactly. The choices are socialism for the wealthy or everyone .
“The choices are socialism for the wealthy or everyone .”
Both of which, thank goodness, invariably leads to Islamism for everyone.
UBI is nothing but a mechanism that elites hope to use to placate the masses and ensure their continuing serfdom. The modern version of bread and circuses. What we need to do is do away with the corporate socialism (fascism) not add more socialism into our diet.
“money is just a stroke on the keyboard”
This is how money goes from a tool for retaining and controlling one’s production as private property, to a tool for theft.
And using keyboard-click-money to universalize theft, aka UBI, is quite obviously dystopian to anyone who rubs two brain cells together.