Cole Younger wrote: ↑Sun Nov 01, 2020 9:14 pm
I guess I don’t know why you don’t understand. People who are in love with the idea of being led are going to choose people who will see to it that we are more centralized and “leadership” or government if you prefer will have more and more say in our lives rather than less. That is what that quote means to me. Knowing what I know about the person that said it I am almost a hundred percent certain that’s what he meant but I can’t say it for sure because he didn’t elaborate. He closed a long form interview by saying that.
Again, I’ve posted here for a long time. There are plenty of things a person could say that wouldn’t be to my credit but would be accurate. But how anyone could seriously entertain the idea that I want a dictatorship or that I like the idea of oligarchy seeing as how I have spent nearly every minute that I’ve been here expressing my hatred of both of those things is beyond me. I get that some things don’t translate well over the internet. But that would be like me thinking you had become a war hawk simply because I wasnt clear on something you said. Oh well. I’ll check in on y’all again Wednesday. If Tailgunner Joe wins I imagine the atmosphere here won’t be quite so heavy.
I blame myself. I think that in an attempt to not be argumentative and perhaps to be too "clever" I sacrificed clarity and plain speaking. In retrospect I wish I had done it differently. Don't know that it would have helped but it couldn't have hurt.
So now I'll just try a few of declarative sentences and a long quote to make one point and document another and call it a day:
Cole Younger wrote: ↑Sun Nov 01, 2020 2:24 pm
As Michael Malice said recently, the people who need leaders are the ones you don’t want choosing them.
I wasn't kidding or being oblique when I said I didn't understand this, but now get why I didn't. As you've explained it, which I have no reason to doubt is the correct interpretation, I completely disagree with it. We don't have a misunderstanding we have a disagreement based on very different understandings of what leadership and government are and about whether some generalizations have any utility at all.
You will be paying higher taxes in January. That's a fact. It's also a fact that the increase will be courtesy of the Republican Party. I don't know why you think the Democrats are after your money. As far as I can tell there is no factual reason for you to believe this, nor have you provided any.
Coincidentally, after my earlier posts, I discovered that Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, explained it all very crisply, clearly and conveniently in the 10/31 NYT. Here are some quotes from that piece, emphasis added, link at the bottom.
"The Trump administration has a dirty little secret: It’s not just planning to increase taxes on most Americans. The increase has already been signed, sealed and delivered, buried in the pages of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
"President Trump and his congressional allies hoodwinked* us. The law they passed initially lowered taxes for most Americans, but it built in automatic, stepped tax increases every two years that begin in 2021 and that by 2027 would affect nearly everyone but people at the top of the economic hierarchy. All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019.
"
For most, in fact, it’s a delayed tax increase dressed up as a tax cut... Trump and his allies ... surmised — correctly, so far — that if they waited to add the tax increases until after the 2020 election, few of the people most affected were likely to remember who was responsible....
"By 2027, when the law’s provisions are set to be fully enacted, with the stealth tax increases complete, the country will be neatly divided into two groups:
Those making over $100,000 will on average get a tax cut. Those earning under $100,000 — an income bracket encompassing three-quarters of taxpayers — will not....
"
[An analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation] makes clear that the vast majority of Americans will be better off with the likely tax reforms that will emerge from a Biden administration than they would be by sticking with Mr. Trump’s ill-conceived tax bill."
*I assume Professor Stiglitz is going for a rhetorical flourish with this "hoodwinked" description because plenty of people understood exactly what the game was and what the law said at the time the 2017 law was passed. This exaggeration doesn't change any of the substance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opin ... Position=1