US 2024 Presidential Election

[Agema]

I would not say we shouldn't treat students like they are poor. I would say we shouldn't use their existence as evidence of tax reform failures. Undergrads in the US outnumber minimum wage workers 16:1, more than half of those students have no income. Conclusions pulled from a data set combining the groups are not going to lead to useful conclusions about income tax rates.

I think you might need to look into this a lot more carefully.

The calculations on relative benefit of the tax changes to different income classes (such as quintiles) are usually done by household income, not individual. The question then is where students fit in terms of household. I suspect that students - or at least a huge percentage of them - are not actually in low income households for the purposes of these sorts of statistics. Most obviously, they may be recorded via their parents' household.

I'd also be cautious about saying there are 16 times as many students as minimum wage workers, because the risk is that this means some limited idea of minimum wage. Most obviously, that it might mean strictly minimum wage, despite there being many more workers who earn trivially more and should be considered comparably poor.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

there no way anyone could've predicted this. what with object permanence being a thing of the fckin past

At least 404 people killed as Israel unleashes wave of attacks on Gaza

Israeli assaults across Gaza resume, effectively shattering the fragile ceasefire with Hamas.

www.aljazeera.com

At least 404 killed as Israel unleashes strikes on Gaza, breaking ceasefire

Israeli assaults across Gaza resume, effectively shattering the fragile ceasefire with Hamas.

Israel launches strikes across Gaza Strip, killing dozens and ending ceasefire

Published On 18 Mar 202518 Mar 2025

At least 404 Palestinians have been killed and 562 wounded as Israel launched a massive assault on Gaza, shattering the fragile two-month-old ceasefire with Hamas.

Tuesday’s attack took place across Gaza, including in Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, Gaza City in the north, and central areas like Deir el-Balah.

Many of those killed in the attacks were children, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said.

Palestinian Health Ministry said that “404 martyrs and 562 injuries arrived at Gaza Strip hospitals so far”, adding that “a number of victims are still under the rubble”.

Hamas, which governs Gaza, said it viewed Israel’s attacks as a unilateral cancellation of the ceasefire that began on January 19.

“Netanyahu and his extremist government are making a decision to overturn the ceasefire agreement, exposing prisoners in Gaza to an unknown fate,” Hamas said in a statement. It called on people in Arab and Islamic nations, along with the “free people of the world”, to take to the streets to protest the assault.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) armed group accused Israel of “deliberately sabotaging all efforts to reach a ceasefire”.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered the military to take “strong action” against Hamas over its refusal to release captives taken from Israel or agree to offers to extend the ceasefire.

“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

The Israeli military said on Telegram that it was conducting “extensive strikes on terror targets” belonging to Hamas.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Israel had consulted with United States President Donald Trump about the strikes.

Injured Palestinians are brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza on March 18, 2025 [Abdallah FS Alatta/Anadolu]

‘Remains of their children’ in their hands

Ahmed Abu Rizq, a teacher in Gaza, said he and his family woke up to the sound of “Israeli strikes everywhere”.

“We were frightened, our children were frightened. We had many calls from our relatives to check, to check [on] ourselves. And the ambulance started to run from one street to another,” Abu Rizq told Al Jazeera, adding that families started to arrive at the local hospital with the “remains of their children” in their hands.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the strikes were concentrated on heavily built-up neighbourhoods, makeshift schools and residential buildings where people have been sheltering.

“We have heard in the past hour a clear presence of Israeli drones and fighter jets across the skies in the central area and we understand that among those who were found as victims during the attack were newborn babies, children, women and the elderly,” Abu Azzoum said, adding that several high-ranking Hamas officials had also been killed.

Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks stalled

The Government Media Office in Gaza said: “These brutal massacres committed by the Israeli occupation army reaffirm that this occupation only understands the language of killing, destruction, and genocide.

“They expose the true intentions of the occupation in shedding the blood of innocent people without the slightest moral or legal restraint, proving that they have a premeditated plan to continue committing genocide against children and women, as seen on the ground. It confirms that this is an occupation thirsty for blood.”

Negotiations on the second phase of the ceasefire deal, which would see the release of nearly 60 remaining captives and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire, have been at an impasse over Israel’s insistence that the first stage be extended until mid-April.

Hamas has released about three dozen captives in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners since the start of the ceasefire.

While Israel did not explicitly declare an end to the ceasefire, senior officials indicated that the assault on Gaza would continue.

Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz said the “gates of hell” would open in the enclave if the remaining captives were not released.

“We will not stop fighting until all of the hostages return home and all the war’s aims are achieved,” Katz said in a statement.

Reporting from Jordan’s Amman, Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said that while Israel has accused Hamas of rejecting various proposals made by negotiators, talks had been stalled after Netanyahu refused to begin negotiations on phase two of the ceasefire deal on February 6.

“Several Israeli analysts, several within the political opposition and several within Netanyahu’s own government said that this was the plan all along – a resumption of the fighting, to go back to full-scale war,” Salhut said.

“And in fact, there’s a new army chief of staff, one who said that 2025 is going to be a year of war – noting that Israel still has a lot of goals to accomplish when it comes to the Gaza Strip, meaning that they are in no way finished with their military action.”

Israel’s 18-month war on Gaza has levelled much of the enclave, reducing homes, hospitals and schools to rubble.

Israeli forces have so far killed more than 48,000 people in the territory, according to Palestinian health authorities

am not in belief it's unreasonable to consider noone would've done anything to stop the holocaust if germany hadn't invaded any white nations. this species makes me fckin sick, and you have the gall the sheer fckin gall to convince yourselves you're sorting yourselves out an eternal nest egg of bliss for all this after death. truly horrifying psychotic demonic shit

 

[Silvanus]

I told you why it doesn't match up.

No: you gave a simplistic little sum that looked at one form of tax in an entirely contextless, reality-divorced manner, ignoring all other taxes, alterations, etc.

They aren't doing anything fancy that you aren't capable of, I promise.

Indeed, they're not. But they're doing something you're seemingly not willing to do: looking at the whole federal tax burden. Nothing fancy, as you say, just taking more into account than the basic unaltered federal income tax rate as if its the sole determinant.

 

[Silvanus]

I think you might need to look into this a lot more carefully.

The calculations on relative benefit of the tax changes to different income classes (such as quintiles) are usually done by household income, not individual.

The Tax Policy One i cited (and which Tstorm is disputing) is explicitly by household income.

 

[Asita]

This feels relevant to the current tangent:

 

[tstorm823]

Indeed, they're not. But they're doing something you're seemingly not willing to do: looking at the whole federal tax burden. Nothing fancy, as you say, just taking more into account than the basic unaltered federal income tax rate as if its the sole determinant.

If you are implying that act raised taxes on the poor elsewhere, I challenge you to justify that with an actual argument.

 

[Silvanus]

If you are implying that act raised taxes on the poor elsewhere, I challenge you to justify that with an actual argument.

That is not what I'm implying.

It lowered federal tax across the board, as my own source shows. It did so much more for the wealthiest. A few hundred for the lowest quintile; tens of thousands for the highest quintile.

The argument outlining this has already been given, and in far greater detail than your napkin-maths.

 

[Agema]

That is not what I'm implying.

It lowered federal tax across the board, as my own source shows. It did so much more for the wealthiest. A few hundred for the lowest quintile; tens of thousands for the highest quintile.

This is not necessarily so bad given that the rich earn so much poor than the poor. Generally, one would argue any tax change as progressive as long as proportionally the change benefitted the poor more. The usefulness even of gross measures - irrespective of individual variation within income group - should give us some idea of this.

From most I've seen, the Trump tax cuts - using broad groups - proportionally benefitted the rich more than the poor, although the difference is small: something like just over 3% and just under 3% respectively. (I suppose were I trying to be kind, I might say that the best way to sell a tax cut for the poor to the rich is to make it a tax cut for the rich, too.)

My main objection to the Trump tax cuts is really just that the cuts ran up the national debt further for nothing. The justification was that the cuts would pay for themselves with increased growth, but any increased growth appears to have fallen vastly short of the amount required to get that tax revenue back. Trump promised 4% GDP growth, but even without Covid-19, it would never have happened. In essence, the tax cuts therefore appear to have been just a policy failure.

Trump 2 appears to be even worse for the budget. At least the tax cuts seem to be accompanied by spending cuts, although analyses I've seen suggest the tax cuts outweigh the spending cuts meaning the deficit will go up. As before, it's very doubtful it will deliver anything like enough economic growth to make up the shortfall. The poorest will likely be hit hardest by the spending cuts, and chances are for many that will offset, even outweight, the benefits of tax cuts.

 

[tstorm823]

That is not what I'm implying.

That may not be what you intended, but that only means you didn't think through the implications of your words. If the changes to income tax work to their benefit more than they say the total effect helps them, that necessarily implies that the other parts of the bill hurt them.

It being by household doesn't particularly help your case, the standard deduction and tax bracket breakpoints are doubled for couples filing jointly, the tax benefit will also be proportional. So now you've got to figure out why a couple with both making minimum wage are getting a $1500-3000 break from the income tax changes, but the Tax Policy Center claims their quintile averages only $500 in total.

 

[Silvanus]

This is not necessarily so bad given that the rich earn so much poor than the poor. Generally, one would argue any tax change as progressive as long as proportionally the change benefitted the poor more. The usefulness even of gross measures - irrespective of individual variation within income group - should give us some idea of this.

From most I've seen, the Trump tax cuts - using broad groups - proportionally benefitted the rich more than the poor, although the difference is small: something like just over 3% and just under 3% respectively. (I suppose were I trying to be kind, I might say that the best way to sell a tax cut for the poor to the rich is to make it a tax cut for the rich, too.)

Indeed, according to the analysis posted earlier, it does indeed benefit the rich more as a proportion-- there's a -0.4 percentage point decrease in federal tax burden for the lowest quintile and a -1.7% pp decrease for the highest.

 

[Silvanus]

That may not be what you intended, but that only means you didn't think through the implications of your words. If the changes to income tax work to their benefit more than they say the total effect helps them, that necessarily implies that the other parts of the bill hurt them.

So, at this point we're debating a couple of hundred for the lowest earners; the difference between the TCP's 500 and your ~750. It's first important to note that even if we doubled the TCP's number, going beyond what you put, it would still be a -0.8 pp change, compared with a -1.7 pp change for the highest quintile. So the highest quintile would still be benefitting proportionately over twice as much.

Anyway. There are numerous provisions or alterations that could account for chunks of that ~250: the replacement of personal/ dependent exemptions with increased standard deduction; the new limit to refundable CTC, etc. In the face of the 1% gaining 60k, this quibble feels a bit besides the point. You know it massively benefitting the wealthiest by the most, even proportionately. You're fixating on disputing tangential details to shift focus.

It being by household doesn't particularly help your case, the standard deduction and tax bracket breakpoints are doubled for couples filing jointly, the tax benefit will also be proportional. So now you've got to figure out why a couple with both making minimum wage are getting a $1500-3000 break from the income tax changes, but the Tax Policy Center claims their quintile averages only $500 in total.

Household =/= couples. The point in bringing it up was to contextualise students. You attempted to argue that students shouldn't count as poor, and cast doubt on the dataset. The fact it is by household, not individual, mitigates any gripe you had about that substantially: because when students do have significant means that aren't reflected in their individual income, it is usually reflected in their household income.

 

[tstorm823]

So, at this point we're debating a couple of hundred for the lowest earners; the difference between the TCP's 500 and your ~750. It's first important to note that even if we doubled the TCP's number, going beyond what you put, it would still be a -0.8 pp change, compared with a -1.7 pp change for the highest quintile. So the highest quintile would still be benefitting proportionately over twice as much.

Could you show your work on that one? I'm not understanding how going from paying about 5% of your income in federal tax down to less than one percent calculates to -0.8.

the new limit to refundable CTC

Is higher than the entire child tax credit previously, as well as actually being attainable for the poor.

You know it massively benefitting the wealthiest by the most, even proportionately.

Except it didn't. Imagine someone making $10,000,000 a year in New York. The vast majority of their income is in the highest tax bracket which dropped 2%. But they also have significant state and local taxes to pay. New York State at that income level is about 10%, New York City is close to 4%. 14% of $10 million is $1.4 million, taxable income remaining is $8.6 million. So much of that is in the highest tax bracket, I'm just going to throw it all together to save time, at the old top rate of 39.6%, we get $3.4 million in taxes.

They lowered the top tax rate to 37%, but also capped the state and local tax write-off at $10,000. 37% of $9.99 million is $3.7 million in taxes, $300,000 more than before (without even considering that property taxes are also able to be written off, not just income). If you pull back the provisions that apply to income tax, as your sources recommend, the richest people in the country might pay less in taxes while the poor would pay more. (Subject to where the rich live and what form their wealth takes, different states tax in different ways. New York makes the math easy for me, states with no income tax and high property tax I can't calculate cause people will have different proportions of property to income, but rest assured, anyone anywhere with a million dollar home is being hurt by that SALT cap.)

There was a similar tradeoff with corporate taxes. Yes, the number dropped a bunch, but the mega corporations with the richest owners weren't paying almost any corporate income tax anyway. TCJA both reduced the rate and put limits on some of the ways debt and research were written off, preventing some indefinite tax avoidance from places like Amazon. The bill really, truly was not a hand-out to the rich

You attempted to argue that students shouldn't count as poor, and cast doubt on the dataset.

The results should cast doubts on the data set for you. They don't pass the initial sniff test. The act passed and economic confidence soared, unemployment dropped, the freaking GINI coefficient stabilized and is now on a downward trend with these tax laws in place. They show you opaque statistics justifying why all of that is just mass delusion and it's really a big handout for the rich, and you believe it. I show you the exact provisions calculated out for concrete examples that lead to the exact economic end results that really played out in the lives of normal people, but you can't even begin to imagine Trump's policies, from taxes to tariffs, might ever benefit regular people at the expense of the rich. But that's what happened.

 

[Silvanus]

Could you show your work on that one? I'm not understanding how going from paying about 5% of your income in federal tax down to less than one percent calculates to -0.8.

Because they're not going from 5% of their income to under 1%. These things will start to make sense if you stop treating federal income tax as the entirety of the federal tax burden.

Going from 4.3 to 3.9 calculates to -0.4. Generously double the reduction and you get 3.5.

Is higher than the entire child tax credit previously, as well as actually being attainable for the poor.

That point is in context with the point about personal/dependent exemptions. This CTC expansion replaced the former. So you have a potential 5k dependent exemption replaced by a 1k increase in CTC, that falls to 400-600 for those with lower liability.

Except it didn't. Imagine someone making $10,000,000 a year in New York. The vast majority of their income is in the highest tax bracket which dropped 2%. But they also have significant state and local taxes to pay. New York State at that income level is about 10%, New York City is close to 4%. 14% of $10 million is $1.4 million, taxable income remaining is $8.6 million. So much of that is in the highest tax bracket, I'm just going to throw it all together to save time, at the old top rate of 39.6%, we get $3.4 million in taxes.

They lowered the top tax rate to 37%, but also capped the state and local tax write-off at $10,000. 37% of $9.99 million is $3.7 million in taxes, $300,000 more than before (without even considering that property taxes are also able to be written off, not just income). If you pull back the provisions that apply to income tax, as your sources recommend, the richest people in the country might pay less in taxes while the poor would pay more. (Subject to where the rich live and what form their wealth takes, different states tax in different ways. New York makes the math easy for me, states with no income tax and high property tax I can't calculate cause people will have different proportions of property to income, but rest assured, anyone anywhere with a million dollar home is being hurt by that SALT cap.)

There was a similar tradeoff with corporate taxes. Yes, the number dropped a bunch, but the mega corporations with the richest owners weren't paying almost any corporate income tax anyway. TCJA both reduced the rate and put limits on some of the ways debt and research were written off, preventing some indefinite tax avoidance from places like Amazon. The bill really, truly was not a hand-out to the rich

I'm really uninterested in your napkin-maths. You've so far tried to explain it away by disingenuously portraying the fed income tax as the entire federal tax burden. Even now, you're offering a series of top-level numbers that don't properly account for the various other adjustments and taxes that make up a federal tax burden. You're just taking one or two of the numbers involved, whacking them in a calculator, and showing that they should help everyone if that was all there was to it. This is meaningless.

The results should cast doubts on the data set for you. They don't pass the initial sniff test. The act passed and economic confidence soared, unemployment dropped, the freaking GINI coefficient stabilized and is now on a downward trend with these tax laws in place.

Lol. If you can trace any improvement in these things to Trump's 2017 tax code changes, I'd love to see that causal relationship.

You're falling into the most basic trap of economic analysis: attributing macro trends to the most immediate headline actions taken by the favoured gov (when it's convenient, of course; I'll bet you won't lay the recent collapse in share price at Trump's door).

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana: Mahmoud Khalil

Note from Juan Cole: I used to write letters to totalitarian governments on behalf of Amnesty International complaining about their detention of political prisoners for mere thought crimes. One of the worst offenders was Communist Czechoslovakia, which did not even bother to reply. I could not...

www.juancole.com

Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana: Mahmoud Khalil
Mahmoud Khalil03/19/2025

Note from Juan Cole: I used to write letters to totalitarian governments on behalf of Amnesty International complaining about their detention of political prisoners for mere thought crimes. One of the worst offenders was Communist Czechoslovakia, which did not even bother to reply. I could not have imagined in 1987 that in 2025 people in Prague would have the right to freedom of speech but that there would be permanent residents of the United States held as prisoners of conscience. It is a dark day.

Mahmoud Khalil:
Dictated over the phone from ICE Detention
Original document here.

March 18, 2025
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.

Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.

On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.

I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.

While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked

Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

Mia and James discuss how Chuck Schumer and the Democratic collaborators handed Trump extraordinary power by passing a devastating continuing government funding resolution and political core of Democratic collaboration with Trump.

Sources:

https://apnews.com/article/dc-budget-trump-congress-gop-29738c7281955d77075c8b98009f860e

https://archive.ph/35bXs

https://apnews.com/article/house-gop-budget-trump-tax-cuts-agenda-7d29a6840fa474b841228d20e5e96b55

https://time.com/7268499/senate-democrats-budget-vote/

https://www.commondreams.org/news/republican-spending-bill

https://nlihc.org/resource/congress...w-year-long-stopgap-funding-bill-underfunding

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/schumer-trump-budget-senate-dems-aoc/

https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/250308_johnsons_yearlong_crpdf.pdf

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/politics/democrats-gop-government-funding-bill/index.html

 

[tstorm823]

Because they're not going from 5% of their income to under 1%. These things will start to make sense if you stop treating federal income tax as the entirety of the federal tax burden.

Going from 4.3 to 3.9 calculates to -0.4. Generously double the reduction and you get 3.5.

Where do those numbers come from? $500 benefit calculating to 0.4% would imply a household income of $125,000. That is not the lowest group.

 

[Silvanus]

Where do those numbers come from? $500 benefit calculating to 0.4% would imply a household income of $125,000. That is not the lowest group.

From the source provided;

"The breaks are (In 2017 dollars): 20% $27,300. 40% $53,400. 60% $91,700. 80% $153,800."

According to the model, the lowest quintile are not 500$ better off; they're $70 better off. Fourth quintile $390, third quintile $910. Making 60% and averaging ~$450.

I was probably a bit unclear at some point, but the 0.4 is for the lowest quintile, whereas the $500 was an average for the three lower quintiles.

 

[tstorm823]

From the source provided;

"The breaks are (In 2017 dollars): 20% $27,300. 40% $53,400. 60% $91,700. 80% $153,800."

According to the model, the lowest quintile are not 500$ better off; they're $70 better off. Fourth quintile $390, third quintile $910. Making 60% and averaging ~$450.

I was probably a bit unclear at some point, but the 0.4 is for the lowest quintile, whereas the $500 was an average for the three lower quintiles.

Oh, so they're wrong by at least a factor of 10. Got it.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Trump's new head of the Department of Justice calls attacks on Tesla dealerships "domestic terrorism".

Attorney General Bondi Statement on Violent Attacks Against Tesla Property

Attorney General Pamela Bondi released the following statement this evening regarding a spate of recent attacks on Tesla property:

www.justice.gov

Because storming the Capitol, breaking windows, beating cops and hunting down officials with the intent to hang them... well, that's just good ol' red-blooded American protesting. But when you throw a Molotov at a Tesla dealership, YOU'RE ATTACKING AMERICA!

 

[Silvanus]

Oh, so they're wrong by at least a factor of 10. Got it.

Care to provide some more napkin-maths to substantiate?

 

[Agema]

They don't pass the initial sniff test. The act passed and economic confidence soared, unemployment dropped, the freaking GINI coefficient stabilized and is now on a downward trend with these tax laws in place. They show you opaque statistics justifying why all of that is just mass delusion and it's really a big handout for the rich, and you believe it.

1) Business confidence is a predictor of whether businesses think they'll make more money in the near future, and doesn't mean very much. Propose an act that means more people are going to be able to spend and invest more money, obviously business confidence goes up. That doesn't necessarily mean it's good policy.
2) US unemployment was already trending down after the post-financial crisis spike. It's unclear to what extent the tax cuts will have contributed.
3) The US gini coefficient has been effectively stable for 30 years, mostly just random fluctuations. Also, please note that official US statistics are far from supportive that Gini is on a downward trend.

* * *

I don't see why it isn't a valid criticism to say that the tax cuts were a big handout to the rich.

The tax cuts gave the US people a load more money, which was paid for by state borrowing. In fact, the most clearly definable and substantial achievement of the Trump tax cuts was increasing the size of the US deficit/debt. To a certain extent this is just basic stimulus spending: the government borrows to boost the economy, all very Keynesian. The big difference from normal Keynesianism being that Trump did it when the economy was already flourishing and government borrowing was likely to be least beneficial. And I cannot help but notice that non-partisan sources do not appear to view the Trump tax cuts as achieving much, or that they fell well short of the Trump administration's claims. Although some would point out Covid-19 obscured much of the cuts' impact.

However "big handout for the rich" could be contextualised by there also being a handout for the middle and poor. However, you can surely understand why a lot of people view alleviation of poverty as legitimate, societally useful act in a way that giving the rich opportunities to buy an extra Porsche or three is not.