Regulation? I think you mean “guillotines”…

Bingo.

Either support the device until the heat death of the universe, or provide consumers with the access to maintain it themselves.

I feel pretty safe in assuming you are not a multi-billionaire. I also kinda doubt that you are the principal owner of a business that would come anywhere close to the top tier income tax bracket.

If those are reasonable assumptions, there is no reason why you should be thinking this way at all about your own investing.

I do know that I use 20% of my home exclusively for business purposes, and I count 20% of my housing costs as a business expense. That part of my home is paid out of my revenue (pre-tax) because it is a business expense, and the rest of it is paid out of my income (post-tax) because it is a personal expense.

I also know I have a fairly strong incentive to increase the area of my home dedicated to business purposes, and shrink the area I use personally. It’s the same dollar payment on the same mortgage, the same real estate taxes, but now it’s being made with pre-tax dollars, reducing my taxable income, and therefore my tax bill.

If my income tax rate was 91%, you can safely bet that I’d have no net income after my tax deductible business expenses. That’s the entire purpose of a 91% top tier tax: Force them to actually spend their money, rather than hoarding it, and using it to hoard more.

Working within an unfair system to try to undo it is understable, but why defend it only when it suits your interests? That’s the kind of thing fascists do.

While there may be a viable solution to the problems of the EC, you just explained why NPVIC is not that solution.

Can you honestly tell me that you would support your state casting their EC votes for Trump, even though a majority of your state voted for Harris?

Can you honestly say you expect the citizenry of every state to put the will of the nation ahead of their own? Ahead of their neighbors? I mean, most of these states are already using all sorts of shady methods to keep “undesirable” people from voting. The last president went so far as to attempt a coup, and his supporters loved him for it.

Do you honestly believe they’re going to tolerate their state voting against their professed wishes?

Would you actually tolerate your state going against its own voters?

The best that the NPVIC could possibly accomplish is to allow a simple majority of the Supreme Court the opportunity to appoint the presidential candidate they prefer.

Yeah, but like, the value of the stock (for a billionaire) itself drops if you can’t get dividends out of it as easily, so he’s actually choosing between investing an effective $900 or getting $900 after tax.

No. You forget what he is acquiring as “business” expenses. He’s either spending $10,000 on “business” or $900 in personal investments.

given that a campaign under a national popular vote would mean that there would be far more attention paid to places outside of Pennsylvania and the select handful of swing states.

Under popular vote, candidates will run to the urban centers, and completely ignore the rural populace.

NPVIC creates Panem.

That’s hyperbole, of course, but exaggeration for purposes of demonstration.

You don’t have to convince me of the merits of bypassing the EC.

You do have to convince me that the NPVIC will remain in effect after one election. Yes, repealing something like this generally takes time, and probably longer than the 5 weeks or so between the election and the day the EC votes are cast. But they don’t have 5 weeks. They have the entire election cycle.

The only way it stays in effect is if it has no effect. If it would ever change the outcome of an election, it will be repealed by every state compelled to flip its votes.

Think about the NPVIC critically for a moment. What would you have done if your state voted for Harris, but some agreement your state legislators made forced your state’s EC votes to go to Trump? Suppose the margins were narrow enough that your state’s EC votes were the deciding factor.

I would be contacting my state representatives and governor immediately, demanding they withdraw from that compact before the EC votes are cast in December.

Trump voters would make similar demands of their state if the situation were reversed.

The NPVIC will never actually affect an election, because the participating states would almost certainly withdraw long before it did.

Ok.

Let’s start with Gaetz.

Well, they have to pay the tax just the same on the 10,000

If you pay a worker $10,000 to make a widget and sell it for $15,000, you pay taxes on $5,000, not $15,000.

If you give that worker a $5000 raise, you don’t actually earn anything, and you don’t pay taxes on that $15,000.

So what happens is that the billionaire starts counting everything he spends as an operating expense. Which is fine. Because he is spending the money, rather than taking it as profit and buying shares. Every cent he spends is a cent in the pocket of a worker, somewhere. Maybe he doesn’t pay his own workers more. Maybe he hires an advertising firm, and they make some money. Maybe he buys a car “for business purposes”, and the car manufacturer (and their workers) makes some money. Maybe he buys a private jet, or a yacht, and those manufacturers make some money. Maybe he throws a giant party, and the caterers, the DJ, the venue, and everyone else in the hospitality industry makes some money.

With a 37% top tier marginal tax rate, he can put $10,000 into the economy on products and services that he claims are business expenses, or he can take $6300 out of the economy and put it into stocks.

Wih a 91% top tier marginal tax rate, he can spend $10,000 on products and services that he says is related to business, or he can buy $900 worth of stock. Even his fraud now benefits the economy. His claim of personal expenses as business expenses still puts money into worker pockets. The victim of his fraud is the IRS, not the American public.

I mean, it’s far more engaging and a bit more compassionate than most of my teachers…

Furthermore, $900 is still $900, I question if some random shareholder really cares about a stranger’s raise that much.

I’ll rephrase. The shareholder in question has the option of spending $10,000 on their business, or giving Uncle Sam $9,100 and pocketing $900.

The shareholder in question gets a lot more bang for their buck by figuring out how to spend it than paying the tax and trying to keep it.

Inheritance isn’t the root problem. The problem is that the only people with any money are people who were able to save it decades ago. And that problem is because labor has been devalued, wages stagnated, and cost of living soared.

And all of that is because for the past 40 years or so, there has been more benefit to taking profits out of business than spending money within the business.

When you reach the top-tier income tax bracket, and the IRS starts taking 91% of your income beyond that level, $10,000 of business income is only worth $900 to you.

When your best employee wants a $10,000 raise, that money comes straight out of your “excess” earnings. It is $10,000 of your earnings that are not subject to taxation. Paying that $10,000 raise only costs you $900 once you reach that tax bracket.

But we don’t have a 91% top-tier income tax bracket anymore. We had a punitively high top tier rate for most of the 20th century, but it got cut down in the 70’s and slashed in the early 80’s. Now, the top tier income tax bracket is just 37%. When you reach that bracket, giving your best employee a $10,000 raise takes $6700 out of your pocket, instead of just $900.

Reagan’s views on the Laffer curve were correct: raising the tax rate beyond a certain point will actually reduce tax revenue. But tax revenue is not why we need the high rates. The benefit of high marginal tax rates comes from what business does to avoid them. We need to restore the business incentives that come with a punitively high top-tier income tax rate. We need businesses to increase their labor expenses to avoid that tier. Businesses should benefit the whole economy, not just the ownership class.

For similar reasons, we need taxes on registered securities, payable in shares of those securities. The shares collected as taxes will be liquidated in small lots over time, comprising no more than 1% of total traded volume, to limit their effect on the market. Exempt the first $10 million held by a natural person; tax everything above.

Ketchup is for the fries, never the dog.

It’s not genocide. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.

–JD Vance, probably.

I’m hoping for a massive stroke on December 18th. Anything between December 17th and January 6th will have interesting results. We could theoretically get a Harris/Vance or Vance/Walz administration.

The Democrats won’t have absorbed the Guillotine Party by 2028.

It’s not genocide if they aren’t people.

–Trump, Probably

The Onion buys rightwing conspiracy theory site Infowars with plans to make it ‘very funny, very stupid’

They’re halfway there already.