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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On August 06 2016 01:48 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +Amid widespread chatter that Donald Trump could drop out of the presidential race before Election Day, Republican insiders in key battleground states have a message for The Donald: Get out.
That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 11 swing states. The majority of GOP insiders, 70 percent, said they want Trump to drop out of the race and be replaced by another Republican candidate — with many citing Trump’s drag on Republicans in down-ballot races. But those insiders still think it’s a long-shot Trump would actually end his campaign and be replaced by another GOP candidate.
“I’d rather take our chances with nearly anyone else than continue with this certain loser who will likely cost the Senate and much more,” said a New Hampshire Republican — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously.
“The effect Trump is having on down-ballot races has the potential to be devastating in November,” added a Florida Republican. “His negative image among Hispanics, women and independents is something that could be devastating to Republicans. Trump’s divisive rhetoric to the Hispanic community at large has the potential to be devastating for years to come.”
Trump has given no indication that he’s considering quitting, and his campaign insists his perseverance is one of his best attributes. But two network reports recently suggested senior GOP leaders were eyeing how that process would work, just in case.
A Trump exit from the race after he’s been formally nominated would trigger a rarely used vacancy rule in the national Republican Party’s rulebook. That rule empowers the Republican National Committee — a 168-member panel that includes three GOP leaders from every state and territory — to select a replacement. The RNC is also authorized to reconvene the national convention, which would be all but logistically impossible.
The RNC is extremely sensitive to any suggestion that it — the party establishment — is attempting to supplant the will of grass-roots Republicans, so invoking this process is already fraught with peril. But if the RNC’s 168 members convened to pick a substitute candidate, each state’s votes would be weighted based on the size of their delegation to last month’s convention.
In this scenario, Republicans would likely struggle to find a consensus nominee, but immediate options would include Sen. Ted Cruz (the runner-up in the GOP primary), Trump running mate Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Insiders suggested a handful of replacement candidates: A Florida Republican said Ryan “is the only one who can unite the party,” while multiple others plugged Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Source The Republicans created Trump, now they're in desperate damage control mode for having done so. Definitely hope they get some down-ballot trouble for being such a terrible party.
None of the suggested candidates would do well though. Cruz has less appeal than Trump to the population and the party hates him too. Kasich only appears moderate and reasonable until you stop ignoring him and listen to what he actually has to say. Pence is a reasonable bet but he's in trouble in his own state and that would probably cost him in the election. Ryan looks good at first but as the last VP debate against Biden showed he gets into a lot of trouble once people start fact checking his ideas.
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On August 06 2016 01:54 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 01:48 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Amid widespread chatter that Donald Trump could drop out of the presidential race before Election Day, Republican insiders in key battleground states have a message for The Donald: Get out.
That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 11 swing states. The majority of GOP insiders, 70 percent, said they want Trump to drop out of the race and be replaced by another Republican candidate — with many citing Trump’s drag on Republicans in down-ballot races. But those insiders still think it’s a long-shot Trump would actually end his campaign and be replaced by another GOP candidate.
“I’d rather take our chances with nearly anyone else than continue with this certain loser who will likely cost the Senate and much more,” said a New Hampshire Republican — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously.
“The effect Trump is having on down-ballot races has the potential to be devastating in November,” added a Florida Republican. “His negative image among Hispanics, women and independents is something that could be devastating to Republicans. Trump’s divisive rhetoric to the Hispanic community at large has the potential to be devastating for years to come.”
Trump has given no indication that he’s considering quitting, and his campaign insists his perseverance is one of his best attributes. But two network reports recently suggested senior GOP leaders were eyeing how that process would work, just in case.
A Trump exit from the race after he’s been formally nominated would trigger a rarely used vacancy rule in the national Republican Party’s rulebook. That rule empowers the Republican National Committee — a 168-member panel that includes three GOP leaders from every state and territory — to select a replacement. The RNC is also authorized to reconvene the national convention, which would be all but logistically impossible.
The RNC is extremely sensitive to any suggestion that it — the party establishment — is attempting to supplant the will of grass-roots Republicans, so invoking this process is already fraught with peril. But if the RNC’s 168 members convened to pick a substitute candidate, each state’s votes would be weighted based on the size of their delegation to last month’s convention.
In this scenario, Republicans would likely struggle to find a consensus nominee, but immediate options would include Sen. Ted Cruz (the runner-up in the GOP primary), Trump running mate Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Insiders suggested a handful of replacement candidates: A Florida Republican said Ryan “is the only one who can unite the party,” while multiple others plugged Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Source The Republicans created Trump, now they're in desperate damage control mode for having done so. Definitely hope they get some down-ballot trouble for being such a terrible party. None of the suggested candidates would do well though. Cruz has less appeal than Trump to the population and the party hates him too. Kasich only appears moderate and reasonable until you stop ignoring him and listen to what he actually has to say. Pence is a reasonable bet but he's in trouble in his own state and that would probably cost him in the election. Ryan looks good at first but as the last VP debate against Biden showed he gets into a lot of trouble once people start fact checking his ideas. Its not about the presidency. Its about losing congress.
The presidency is lost regardless but they want to gridlock for another 8 years.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On August 06 2016 01:56 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 01:54 LegalLord wrote:On August 06 2016 01:48 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Amid widespread chatter that Donald Trump could drop out of the presidential race before Election Day, Republican insiders in key battleground states have a message for The Donald: Get out.
That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 11 swing states. The majority of GOP insiders, 70 percent, said they want Trump to drop out of the race and be replaced by another Republican candidate — with many citing Trump’s drag on Republicans in down-ballot races. But those insiders still think it’s a long-shot Trump would actually end his campaign and be replaced by another GOP candidate.
“I’d rather take our chances with nearly anyone else than continue with this certain loser who will likely cost the Senate and much more,” said a New Hampshire Republican — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously.
“The effect Trump is having on down-ballot races has the potential to be devastating in November,” added a Florida Republican. “His negative image among Hispanics, women and independents is something that could be devastating to Republicans. Trump’s divisive rhetoric to the Hispanic community at large has the potential to be devastating for years to come.”
Trump has given no indication that he’s considering quitting, and his campaign insists his perseverance is one of his best attributes. But two network reports recently suggested senior GOP leaders were eyeing how that process would work, just in case.
A Trump exit from the race after he’s been formally nominated would trigger a rarely used vacancy rule in the national Republican Party’s rulebook. That rule empowers the Republican National Committee — a 168-member panel that includes three GOP leaders from every state and territory — to select a replacement. The RNC is also authorized to reconvene the national convention, which would be all but logistically impossible.
The RNC is extremely sensitive to any suggestion that it — the party establishment — is attempting to supplant the will of grass-roots Republicans, so invoking this process is already fraught with peril. But if the RNC’s 168 members convened to pick a substitute candidate, each state’s votes would be weighted based on the size of their delegation to last month’s convention.
In this scenario, Republicans would likely struggle to find a consensus nominee, but immediate options would include Sen. Ted Cruz (the runner-up in the GOP primary), Trump running mate Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Insiders suggested a handful of replacement candidates: A Florida Republican said Ryan “is the only one who can unite the party,” while multiple others plugged Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Source The Republicans created Trump, now they're in desperate damage control mode for having done so. Definitely hope they get some down-ballot trouble for being such a terrible party. None of the suggested candidates would do well though. Cruz has less appeal than Trump to the population and the party hates him too. Kasich only appears moderate and reasonable until you stop ignoring him and listen to what he actually has to say. Pence is a reasonable bet but he's in trouble in his own state and that would probably cost him in the election. Ryan looks good at first but as the last VP debate against Biden showed he gets into a lot of trouble once people start fact checking his ideas. Its not about the presidency. Its about losing congress. The presidency is lost regardless but they want to gridlock for another 8 years. Swapping out the candidate would hurt them just as much as going down with the Trump train.
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On August 06 2016 01:49 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 01:33 Dan HH wrote:On August 06 2016 01:30 LegalLord wrote:On August 06 2016 01:24 Dan HH wrote:On August 06 2016 01:19 Plansix wrote:On August 06 2016 01:05 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:04 Mohdoo wrote:On August 06 2016 01:01 pmh wrote: Would not be the least surprised if the republicans then try to impeach Clinton in the next year or the year after. Based on presently not known info about email or whatever. If Clinton was protected this well as SoC, don't hold your breath for her being more vulnerable as a president. They got plenty of baggage out of the way at this point. Aside from Wikileaks exposing the credit card information of donors, what are we really expecting? But Benghazi-ghazi? There must be topic secret crimes she committed, right? RIGHT????? I did hear some alt-righters say she forced Bill to bomb Yugoslavia in 99 No one in the US cares about that. Only some people in the US care about that. This is not coming from anywhere else. People in East Europe care about the US bombing Yugoslavia. The vast majority of people in the US either don't know, don't see its significance, or don't care. It was, however, a stupid act that Hillary shares some blame for. I put a lot more of the blame on Madeleine Albright, who is unfortunately known more for being a woman in a high position of power than for what she actually did in that position. I agree, but that's not what I meant at all. I didn't say that no one outside the US cares about the bombing of Yugoslavia, I'm saying the theory that it was Hillary's doing is a strictly US thing.
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United States41992 Posts
On August 06 2016 01:35 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 01:17 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:10 IgnE wrote:On August 05 2016 23:41 KwarK wrote:On August 05 2016 20:46 WhiteDog wrote:Pretty good article about Trump's wealth. It's pretty long, I just selected a part about taxation. Because Jacobin is not quoted enough and because it's relevant : How the Trumps Got Rich
Most Americans know Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a reality television star and a celebrity endorser. But in his home state of New York, he has a different reputation: he’s a real estate shmuck.
Trump inherited his business — which consists of gilded and glassed condos, clubs, casinos, office towers, hotels, and golf courses throughout New York City and beyond — from his father, Fred Trump. Like the Dursts, Rudins, Zeckendorfs, and LeFraks, the older Trump ran a family-based real estate empire.
Though these families still exert a great deal of power in New York City development politics, they are beginning to be outpaced by new corporate real estate titans — like Extell, Vornado, Related, BlackRock, and others — that use global investment capital to build glitzy new developments and buy out old affordable complexes. Donald Trump bridges these two modes, combining family business with corporate kitsch.
From a capitalist perspective, Trump is a hardworking — if obnoxious — businessman: he inherited money from his father and made it grow. From a socialist point of view, however, he got his wealth by very different means: theft.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that America’s richest families possess “twice stolen wealth – (a) profit sheltered from (b) taxes.” But in fact, Trump’s fortune is triply stolen by wage theft from the workers who build and maintain his projects; tax theft from the state that enables him; and land theft from the common spaces he encloses. While he extolls the benefits of private enterprise, Trump really got rich off public resources.
His behavior is by no means unique: all capitalists profit from worker exploitation; just about all corporations try to avoid taxes in one way or another; and in a settler state, all land is stolen. But as usual, Trump embodies the most exaggerated version of a rotten system. [...]
Stolen Taxes
Throughout his career, Donald Trump has adeptly dodged taxes and gathered subsidies. In this way, he has not only shorted the public, but also depleted budgets for socially beneficial programs.
The practice began with the money passed down from his father. Fred Trump excelled at getting public subsidies and tax abatements, allowing him to amass quite a fortune. While his son claims that his business started with a $1 million loan from his father, this isn’t entirely factual. Fred Trump had established million-dollar tax-sheltered trusts for each of his children and grandchildren, and, according to the Washington Post, Donald made $19,000 in 1977, $47,200 in 1978, $70,000 in 1979, $90,000 in 1980, and $214,605 in 1981. Trump also received about $12,000 a year from a 1949 trust set up by his father and nearly $2,000 a year from another 1949 trust created by his grandmother. He also received a $6,000 gift every December from his parents.
Trump’s father didn’t give him a loan, he provided a reliable source of income that increased every year. Then, when Fred Trump died, Donald received an estimated $40 million from his $250 million estate.
Donald Trump’s first big break came with the opportunity to buy and renovate the Commodore Hotel in 1980. In the process of turning it into the Grand Hyatt Hotel, he tore down the building’s landmarked sculptures, wrapped the façade in glass, and quietly demolished what he was supposed to preserve. Thanks to his father’s history of making large donations to city officials, Trump received a forty-year tax exemption from the Urban Development Corporation — double the standard, and the first of its kind. To this day, he pays no state taxes on the luxury hotel.
When he began building Trump Tower, he applied to New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for a $20 million tax break. Mayor Koch’s HPD commissioner, Anthony Gliedman, denied the application.
But Trump sued and won, and the city was ordered to grant the abatement in full. Three years later, Gliedman went to work for Trump, advising him on future government negotiations. In 2004, the New York City Economic Development Corporation granted Trump an additional twelve-year abatement on the commercial portion of the Trump Tower — a $164 million tax break on a property worth $237 million.
As his business grew, Trump began consolidating his corporations and LLCs to a single address. The fictional companies that own 40 Wall Street, Trump Carousel Central Park, and almost four hundred other Trump businesses are not registered to his New York City headquarters, but to one sleepy office building in Delaware, America’s onshore tax haven. (Hillary Clinton uses the exact same building for her corporate registrations.)
On top of tax breaks, Trump has finagled a number of city and state subsidies. His Bronx golf course — which sits in the middle of a public park in New York’s poorest borough — is only the most recent example. The city paid $230 million to clean up the site and develop the course; Trump was only responsible for building the clubhouse and managing the park.
Yet public subsidies allow Trump to pay no rent for the first four years of his twenty-year lease; in year five he will pay 7 percent of the rent, and in year ten he will pay 10 percent. In the meantime, New York City residents are covering his water and sewer bills to the cost of roughly $1 million per year. None of the nearby affordable housing complexes have subsidies anywhere near as generous.
Trump also manages to avoid paying taxes on his residence. His Manhattan apartment receives an abatement to the tune of $20,493 a year, including a small credit from the New York State School Tax Relief Program (even though that program has an income cap of $500,000). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/trump-real-estate-theft-public-land-taxes/I need some kind of plan to pay less taxes. Come to America. I don't pay Federal income tax. That said, if I were to start a political career I would absolutely start paying taxes. At that point it's an investment. i think you said several pages ago that you and your spouse would be in the 1% soon? and you still don't pay any taxes? I'm public sector in a low cost of living state so I have more tax deferred room than I can really use until my income gets out of control. I mean if I was pulling in $250k/year I'd have to pay some but $100k/year can be done tax free easily enough if you don't actually want to spend it. A tax deferred is a tax avoided, the US system is set up that with tax deferred accounts you can convert them to post-tax accounts in a year of your choosing. Say you earn $100k one year and $20k another year. And that you're taxed 10% on anything over $30k. Year 1 you'd owe $7k in taxes. Year 2, nothing. However if you could shuffle income around from year to year you could use that extra $10k of space in year 2 to absorb $10k of taxable income from year 1. Make sense? There are kids who are not yet born whose tax exemptions are going to be used to offset the taxes on money I earn this year. Also we're both rich kids and the lifetime gifts exemption and the death tax both have absurdly high thresholds. So you basically don't spend anything either. Shopping at your glitzy walmart and living on desert land. I spend enough. I have a pretty new computer, an iphone, a paid off car, I go out to restaurants, I fly back to Europe a few times a year. Like honestly I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend.
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On August 06 2016 02:03 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 01:35 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 01:17 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:10 IgnE wrote:On August 05 2016 23:41 KwarK wrote:On August 05 2016 20:46 WhiteDog wrote:Pretty good article about Trump's wealth. It's pretty long, I just selected a part about taxation. Because Jacobin is not quoted enough and because it's relevant : How the Trumps Got Rich
Most Americans know Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a reality television star and a celebrity endorser. But in his home state of New York, he has a different reputation: he’s a real estate shmuck.
Trump inherited his business — which consists of gilded and glassed condos, clubs, casinos, office towers, hotels, and golf courses throughout New York City and beyond — from his father, Fred Trump. Like the Dursts, Rudins, Zeckendorfs, and LeFraks, the older Trump ran a family-based real estate empire.
Though these families still exert a great deal of power in New York City development politics, they are beginning to be outpaced by new corporate real estate titans — like Extell, Vornado, Related, BlackRock, and others — that use global investment capital to build glitzy new developments and buy out old affordable complexes. Donald Trump bridges these two modes, combining family business with corporate kitsch.
From a capitalist perspective, Trump is a hardworking — if obnoxious — businessman: he inherited money from his father and made it grow. From a socialist point of view, however, he got his wealth by very different means: theft.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that America’s richest families possess “twice stolen wealth – (a) profit sheltered from (b) taxes.” But in fact, Trump’s fortune is triply stolen by wage theft from the workers who build and maintain his projects; tax theft from the state that enables him; and land theft from the common spaces he encloses. While he extolls the benefits of private enterprise, Trump really got rich off public resources.
His behavior is by no means unique: all capitalists profit from worker exploitation; just about all corporations try to avoid taxes in one way or another; and in a settler state, all land is stolen. But as usual, Trump embodies the most exaggerated version of a rotten system. [...]
Stolen Taxes
Throughout his career, Donald Trump has adeptly dodged taxes and gathered subsidies. In this way, he has not only shorted the public, but also depleted budgets for socially beneficial programs.
The practice began with the money passed down from his father. Fred Trump excelled at getting public subsidies and tax abatements, allowing him to amass quite a fortune. While his son claims that his business started with a $1 million loan from his father, this isn’t entirely factual. Fred Trump had established million-dollar tax-sheltered trusts for each of his children and grandchildren, and, according to the Washington Post, Donald made $19,000 in 1977, $47,200 in 1978, $70,000 in 1979, $90,000 in 1980, and $214,605 in 1981. Trump also received about $12,000 a year from a 1949 trust set up by his father and nearly $2,000 a year from another 1949 trust created by his grandmother. He also received a $6,000 gift every December from his parents.
Trump’s father didn’t give him a loan, he provided a reliable source of income that increased every year. Then, when Fred Trump died, Donald received an estimated $40 million from his $250 million estate.
Donald Trump’s first big break came with the opportunity to buy and renovate the Commodore Hotel in 1980. In the process of turning it into the Grand Hyatt Hotel, he tore down the building’s landmarked sculptures, wrapped the façade in glass, and quietly demolished what he was supposed to preserve. Thanks to his father’s history of making large donations to city officials, Trump received a forty-year tax exemption from the Urban Development Corporation — double the standard, and the first of its kind. To this day, he pays no state taxes on the luxury hotel.
When he began building Trump Tower, he applied to New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for a $20 million tax break. Mayor Koch’s HPD commissioner, Anthony Gliedman, denied the application.
But Trump sued and won, and the city was ordered to grant the abatement in full. Three years later, Gliedman went to work for Trump, advising him on future government negotiations. In 2004, the New York City Economic Development Corporation granted Trump an additional twelve-year abatement on the commercial portion of the Trump Tower — a $164 million tax break on a property worth $237 million.
As his business grew, Trump began consolidating his corporations and LLCs to a single address. The fictional companies that own 40 Wall Street, Trump Carousel Central Park, and almost four hundred other Trump businesses are not registered to his New York City headquarters, but to one sleepy office building in Delaware, America’s onshore tax haven. (Hillary Clinton uses the exact same building for her corporate registrations.)
On top of tax breaks, Trump has finagled a number of city and state subsidies. His Bronx golf course — which sits in the middle of a public park in New York’s poorest borough — is only the most recent example. The city paid $230 million to clean up the site and develop the course; Trump was only responsible for building the clubhouse and managing the park.
Yet public subsidies allow Trump to pay no rent for the first four years of his twenty-year lease; in year five he will pay 7 percent of the rent, and in year ten he will pay 10 percent. In the meantime, New York City residents are covering his water and sewer bills to the cost of roughly $1 million per year. None of the nearby affordable housing complexes have subsidies anywhere near as generous.
Trump also manages to avoid paying taxes on his residence. His Manhattan apartment receives an abatement to the tune of $20,493 a year, including a small credit from the New York State School Tax Relief Program (even though that program has an income cap of $500,000). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/trump-real-estate-theft-public-land-taxes/I need some kind of plan to pay less taxes. Come to America. I don't pay Federal income tax. That said, if I were to start a political career I would absolutely start paying taxes. At that point it's an investment. i think you said several pages ago that you and your spouse would be in the 1% soon? and you still don't pay any taxes? I'm public sector in a low cost of living state so I have more tax deferred room than I can really use until my income gets out of control. I mean if I was pulling in $250k/year I'd have to pay some but $100k/year can be done tax free easily enough if you don't actually want to spend it. A tax deferred is a tax avoided, the US system is set up that with tax deferred accounts you can convert them to post-tax accounts in a year of your choosing. Say you earn $100k one year and $20k another year. And that you're taxed 10% on anything over $30k. Year 1 you'd owe $7k in taxes. Year 2, nothing. However if you could shuffle income around from year to year you could use that extra $10k of space in year 2 to absorb $10k of taxable income from year 1. Make sense? There are kids who are not yet born whose tax exemptions are going to be used to offset the taxes on money I earn this year. Also we're both rich kids and the lifetime gifts exemption and the death tax both have absurdly high thresholds. So you basically don't spend anything either. Shopping at your glitzy walmart and living on desert land. I spend enough. I have a pretty new computer, an iphone, a paid off car, I go out to restaurants, I fly back to Europe a few times a year. Like honestly I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend.
You know that makes no sense right?
Homeless people have iphones brah.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On August 06 2016 02:01 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 01:49 LegalLord wrote:On August 06 2016 01:33 Dan HH wrote:On August 06 2016 01:30 LegalLord wrote:On August 06 2016 01:24 Dan HH wrote:On August 06 2016 01:19 Plansix wrote:On August 06 2016 01:05 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:04 Mohdoo wrote:On August 06 2016 01:01 pmh wrote: Would not be the least surprised if the republicans then try to impeach Clinton in the next year or the year after. Based on presently not known info about email or whatever. If Clinton was protected this well as SoC, don't hold your breath for her being more vulnerable as a president. They got plenty of baggage out of the way at this point. Aside from Wikileaks exposing the credit card information of donors, what are we really expecting? But Benghazi-ghazi? There must be topic secret crimes she committed, right? RIGHT????? I did hear some alt-righters say she forced Bill to bomb Yugoslavia in 99 No one in the US cares about that. Only some people in the US care about that. This is not coming from anywhere else. People in East Europe care about the US bombing Yugoslavia. The vast majority of people in the US either don't know, don't see its significance, or don't care. It was, however, a stupid act that Hillary shares some blame for. I put a lot more of the blame on Madeleine Albright, who is unfortunately known more for being a woman in a high position of power than for what she actually did in that position. I agree, but that's not what I meant at all. I didn't say that no one outside the US cares about the bombing of Yugoslavia, I'm saying the theory that it was Hillary's doing is a strictly US thing. Well, she played a small role in that she recommended that Billy authorize the bombing. That's pretty commonly acknowledged. Beyond that I have never seen it come up as an issue in the standard circles of discussion.
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The GOPe can't even work with their nominee, they're hurting themselves most of all.
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United States41992 Posts
On August 06 2016 02:06 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 02:03 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:35 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 01:17 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:10 IgnE wrote:On August 05 2016 23:41 KwarK wrote:On August 05 2016 20:46 WhiteDog wrote:Pretty good article about Trump's wealth. It's pretty long, I just selected a part about taxation. Because Jacobin is not quoted enough and because it's relevant : How the Trumps Got Rich
Most Americans know Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a reality television star and a celebrity endorser. But in his home state of New York, he has a different reputation: he’s a real estate shmuck.
Trump inherited his business — which consists of gilded and glassed condos, clubs, casinos, office towers, hotels, and golf courses throughout New York City and beyond — from his father, Fred Trump. Like the Dursts, Rudins, Zeckendorfs, and LeFraks, the older Trump ran a family-based real estate empire.
Though these families still exert a great deal of power in New York City development politics, they are beginning to be outpaced by new corporate real estate titans — like Extell, Vornado, Related, BlackRock, and others — that use global investment capital to build glitzy new developments and buy out old affordable complexes. Donald Trump bridges these two modes, combining family business with corporate kitsch.
From a capitalist perspective, Trump is a hardworking — if obnoxious — businessman: he inherited money from his father and made it grow. From a socialist point of view, however, he got his wealth by very different means: theft.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that America’s richest families possess “twice stolen wealth – (a) profit sheltered from (b) taxes.” But in fact, Trump’s fortune is triply stolen by wage theft from the workers who build and maintain his projects; tax theft from the state that enables him; and land theft from the common spaces he encloses. While he extolls the benefits of private enterprise, Trump really got rich off public resources.
His behavior is by no means unique: all capitalists profit from worker exploitation; just about all corporations try to avoid taxes in one way or another; and in a settler state, all land is stolen. But as usual, Trump embodies the most exaggerated version of a rotten system. [...]
Stolen Taxes
Throughout his career, Donald Trump has adeptly dodged taxes and gathered subsidies. In this way, he has not only shorted the public, but also depleted budgets for socially beneficial programs.
The practice began with the money passed down from his father. Fred Trump excelled at getting public subsidies and tax abatements, allowing him to amass quite a fortune. While his son claims that his business started with a $1 million loan from his father, this isn’t entirely factual. Fred Trump had established million-dollar tax-sheltered trusts for each of his children and grandchildren, and, according to the Washington Post, Donald made $19,000 in 1977, $47,200 in 1978, $70,000 in 1979, $90,000 in 1980, and $214,605 in 1981. Trump also received about $12,000 a year from a 1949 trust set up by his father and nearly $2,000 a year from another 1949 trust created by his grandmother. He also received a $6,000 gift every December from his parents.
Trump’s father didn’t give him a loan, he provided a reliable source of income that increased every year. Then, when Fred Trump died, Donald received an estimated $40 million from his $250 million estate.
Donald Trump’s first big break came with the opportunity to buy and renovate the Commodore Hotel in 1980. In the process of turning it into the Grand Hyatt Hotel, he tore down the building’s landmarked sculptures, wrapped the façade in glass, and quietly demolished what he was supposed to preserve. Thanks to his father’s history of making large donations to city officials, Trump received a forty-year tax exemption from the Urban Development Corporation — double the standard, and the first of its kind. To this day, he pays no state taxes on the luxury hotel.
When he began building Trump Tower, he applied to New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for a $20 million tax break. Mayor Koch’s HPD commissioner, Anthony Gliedman, denied the application.
But Trump sued and won, and the city was ordered to grant the abatement in full. Three years later, Gliedman went to work for Trump, advising him on future government negotiations. In 2004, the New York City Economic Development Corporation granted Trump an additional twelve-year abatement on the commercial portion of the Trump Tower — a $164 million tax break on a property worth $237 million.
As his business grew, Trump began consolidating his corporations and LLCs to a single address. The fictional companies that own 40 Wall Street, Trump Carousel Central Park, and almost four hundred other Trump businesses are not registered to his New York City headquarters, but to one sleepy office building in Delaware, America’s onshore tax haven. (Hillary Clinton uses the exact same building for her corporate registrations.)
On top of tax breaks, Trump has finagled a number of city and state subsidies. His Bronx golf course — which sits in the middle of a public park in New York’s poorest borough — is only the most recent example. The city paid $230 million to clean up the site and develop the course; Trump was only responsible for building the clubhouse and managing the park.
Yet public subsidies allow Trump to pay no rent for the first four years of his twenty-year lease; in year five he will pay 7 percent of the rent, and in year ten he will pay 10 percent. In the meantime, New York City residents are covering his water and sewer bills to the cost of roughly $1 million per year. None of the nearby affordable housing complexes have subsidies anywhere near as generous.
Trump also manages to avoid paying taxes on his residence. His Manhattan apartment receives an abatement to the tune of $20,493 a year, including a small credit from the New York State School Tax Relief Program (even though that program has an income cap of $500,000). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/trump-real-estate-theft-public-land-taxes/I need some kind of plan to pay less taxes. Come to America. I don't pay Federal income tax. That said, if I were to start a political career I would absolutely start paying taxes. At that point it's an investment. i think you said several pages ago that you and your spouse would be in the 1% soon? and you still don't pay any taxes? I'm public sector in a low cost of living state so I have more tax deferred room than I can really use until my income gets out of control. I mean if I was pulling in $250k/year I'd have to pay some but $100k/year can be done tax free easily enough if you don't actually want to spend it. A tax deferred is a tax avoided, the US system is set up that with tax deferred accounts you can convert them to post-tax accounts in a year of your choosing. Say you earn $100k one year and $20k another year. And that you're taxed 10% on anything over $30k. Year 1 you'd owe $7k in taxes. Year 2, nothing. However if you could shuffle income around from year to year you could use that extra $10k of space in year 2 to absorb $10k of taxable income from year 1. Make sense? There are kids who are not yet born whose tax exemptions are going to be used to offset the taxes on money I earn this year. Also we're both rich kids and the lifetime gifts exemption and the death tax both have absurdly high thresholds. So you basically don't spend anything either. Shopping at your glitzy walmart and living on desert land. I spend enough. I have a pretty new computer, an iphone, a paid off car, I go out to restaurants, I fly back to Europe a few times a year. Like honestly I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend. You know that makes no sense right? Homeless people have iphones brah. Yeah but I have a home and an iphone, homeless people only have the one. Also at what point did iphones stop being luxuries? Like even if homeless people are allowed to have them too I'm always gonna be happy that I have access to the internet wirelessly from my pocket at all times. That's an amazing state of affairs and I refuse to be unimpressed by it.
And what I meant by "I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend" is that money isn't a factor in any of my decisions (beyond having a job at all I guess). The reason I don't spend more money is not because I would run out, it's because it's too much effort. Sure, I could go out and buy a new giant tv. But that'd take up a Saturday and then I'd have to watch the damn thing and then rearrange my living room and then call a cable company and deal with that bullshit where I have to be available during a day and probably buy a console and probably work out which game is best and then learn to play whatever game I got at a high level and I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Fuck all that shit.
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Amid scrutiny of Melania Trump's immigration status when she first came to the United States, an anti-Trump political action committee announced Thursday that it was filing a public records request for her immigration records.
The group, Democratic Coalition Against Trump, which is made of Democratic officials as well as activists, said Thursday it planned to request “any document that indicates the type of visa applied for or issued to Melania Trump from January 1, 1995 until she received her green card in 2001."
“After learning that Mrs. Trump might not have followed the law on her path to U.S. citizenship, the Coalition decided to take action,” Jon Cooper, the chairman of the organization said in a statement. “How ironic would it be if Mr. Trump, who has largely based his presidential run on his ridiculously extreme proposals related to illegal immigration, had actually married an illegal immigrant,” Cooper continued. “That would just go to show that Mr. Trump has been and always will be one thing: a hypocrite.”
Politico published a report Thursday raising questions about how Trump had described the process by which she immigrated to the United States when she was working as a model in the 1990s. Trump has said throughout her husband's campaign that during that period of her career she traveled back to her home country Slovenia every few months to have her visa re-stamped. The Politico report pointed out that the process she described resembled that used by immigrants with a tourist visa, which prohibits working in the United States. A work visa is valid for three to six years, and wouldn't have required Trump to return to Slovenia regularly to have it re-stamped.
Trump has denied that she broke any immigration laws, but the campaign has not provided specific details about the circumstances of her immigration.
Source
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Trump is fumbling the general so hard the jokes about him being a Clinton plant might be true rofl.
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Those are higher numbers than Trump has
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Wow. I wonder how endorsing Ryan just after saying he wasn't ready to do so as a power play can be reconciled with the "tough guy machismo" thing Trump has going.
Then again, backing out of the debate with Bernie also ended up being reconciled with "tough guy machismo" so it's probably doable.
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On August 06 2016 02:18 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 02:06 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 02:03 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:35 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 01:17 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:10 IgnE wrote:On August 05 2016 23:41 KwarK wrote:On August 05 2016 20:46 WhiteDog wrote:Pretty good article about Trump's wealth. It's pretty long, I just selected a part about taxation. Because Jacobin is not quoted enough and because it's relevant : How the Trumps Got Rich
Most Americans know Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a reality television star and a celebrity endorser. But in his home state of New York, he has a different reputation: he’s a real estate shmuck.
Trump inherited his business — which consists of gilded and glassed condos, clubs, casinos, office towers, hotels, and golf courses throughout New York City and beyond — from his father, Fred Trump. Like the Dursts, Rudins, Zeckendorfs, and LeFraks, the older Trump ran a family-based real estate empire.
Though these families still exert a great deal of power in New York City development politics, they are beginning to be outpaced by new corporate real estate titans — like Extell, Vornado, Related, BlackRock, and others — that use global investment capital to build glitzy new developments and buy out old affordable complexes. Donald Trump bridges these two modes, combining family business with corporate kitsch.
From a capitalist perspective, Trump is a hardworking — if obnoxious — businessman: he inherited money from his father and made it grow. From a socialist point of view, however, he got his wealth by very different means: theft.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that America’s richest families possess “twice stolen wealth – (a) profit sheltered from (b) taxes.” But in fact, Trump’s fortune is triply stolen by wage theft from the workers who build and maintain his projects; tax theft from the state that enables him; and land theft from the common spaces he encloses. While he extolls the benefits of private enterprise, Trump really got rich off public resources.
His behavior is by no means unique: all capitalists profit from worker exploitation; just about all corporations try to avoid taxes in one way or another; and in a settler state, all land is stolen. But as usual, Trump embodies the most exaggerated version of a rotten system. [...]
Stolen Taxes
Throughout his career, Donald Trump has adeptly dodged taxes and gathered subsidies. In this way, he has not only shorted the public, but also depleted budgets for socially beneficial programs.
The practice began with the money passed down from his father. Fred Trump excelled at getting public subsidies and tax abatements, allowing him to amass quite a fortune. While his son claims that his business started with a $1 million loan from his father, this isn’t entirely factual. Fred Trump had established million-dollar tax-sheltered trusts for each of his children and grandchildren, and, according to the Washington Post, Donald made $19,000 in 1977, $47,200 in 1978, $70,000 in 1979, $90,000 in 1980, and $214,605 in 1981. Trump also received about $12,000 a year from a 1949 trust set up by his father and nearly $2,000 a year from another 1949 trust created by his grandmother. He also received a $6,000 gift every December from his parents.
Trump’s father didn’t give him a loan, he provided a reliable source of income that increased every year. Then, when Fred Trump died, Donald received an estimated $40 million from his $250 million estate.
Donald Trump’s first big break came with the opportunity to buy and renovate the Commodore Hotel in 1980. In the process of turning it into the Grand Hyatt Hotel, he tore down the building’s landmarked sculptures, wrapped the façade in glass, and quietly demolished what he was supposed to preserve. Thanks to his father’s history of making large donations to city officials, Trump received a forty-year tax exemption from the Urban Development Corporation — double the standard, and the first of its kind. To this day, he pays no state taxes on the luxury hotel.
When he began building Trump Tower, he applied to New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for a $20 million tax break. Mayor Koch’s HPD commissioner, Anthony Gliedman, denied the application.
But Trump sued and won, and the city was ordered to grant the abatement in full. Three years later, Gliedman went to work for Trump, advising him on future government negotiations. In 2004, the New York City Economic Development Corporation granted Trump an additional twelve-year abatement on the commercial portion of the Trump Tower — a $164 million tax break on a property worth $237 million.
As his business grew, Trump began consolidating his corporations and LLCs to a single address. The fictional companies that own 40 Wall Street, Trump Carousel Central Park, and almost four hundred other Trump businesses are not registered to his New York City headquarters, but to one sleepy office building in Delaware, America’s onshore tax haven. (Hillary Clinton uses the exact same building for her corporate registrations.)
On top of tax breaks, Trump has finagled a number of city and state subsidies. His Bronx golf course — which sits in the middle of a public park in New York’s poorest borough — is only the most recent example. The city paid $230 million to clean up the site and develop the course; Trump was only responsible for building the clubhouse and managing the park.
Yet public subsidies allow Trump to pay no rent for the first four years of his twenty-year lease; in year five he will pay 7 percent of the rent, and in year ten he will pay 10 percent. In the meantime, New York City residents are covering his water and sewer bills to the cost of roughly $1 million per year. None of the nearby affordable housing complexes have subsidies anywhere near as generous.
Trump also manages to avoid paying taxes on his residence. His Manhattan apartment receives an abatement to the tune of $20,493 a year, including a small credit from the New York State School Tax Relief Program (even though that program has an income cap of $500,000). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/trump-real-estate-theft-public-land-taxes/I need some kind of plan to pay less taxes. Come to America. I don't pay Federal income tax. That said, if I were to start a political career I would absolutely start paying taxes. At that point it's an investment. i think you said several pages ago that you and your spouse would be in the 1% soon? and you still don't pay any taxes? I'm public sector in a low cost of living state so I have more tax deferred room than I can really use until my income gets out of control. I mean if I was pulling in $250k/year I'd have to pay some but $100k/year can be done tax free easily enough if you don't actually want to spend it. A tax deferred is a tax avoided, the US system is set up that with tax deferred accounts you can convert them to post-tax accounts in a year of your choosing. Say you earn $100k one year and $20k another year. And that you're taxed 10% on anything over $30k. Year 1 you'd owe $7k in taxes. Year 2, nothing. However if you could shuffle income around from year to year you could use that extra $10k of space in year 2 to absorb $10k of taxable income from year 1. Make sense? There are kids who are not yet born whose tax exemptions are going to be used to offset the taxes on money I earn this year. Also we're both rich kids and the lifetime gifts exemption and the death tax both have absurdly high thresholds. So you basically don't spend anything either. Shopping at your glitzy walmart and living on desert land. I spend enough. I have a pretty new computer, an iphone, a paid off car, I go out to restaurants, I fly back to Europe a few times a year. Like honestly I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend. You know that makes no sense right? Homeless people have iphones brah. Yeah but I have a home and an iphone, homeless people only have the one. Also at what point did iphones stop being luxuries? Like even if homeless people are allowed to have them too I'm always gonna be happy that I have access to the internet wirelessly from my pocket at all times. That's an amazing state of affairs and I refuse to be unimpressed by it. And what I meant by "I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend" is that money isn't a factor in any of my decisions (beyond having a job at all I guess). The reason I don't spend more money is not because I would run out, it's because it's too much effort. Sure, I could go out and buy a new giant tv. But that'd take up a Saturday and then I'd have to watch the damn thing and then rearrange my living room and then call a cable company and deal with that bullshit where I have to be available during a day and probably buy a console and probably work out which game is best and then learn to play whatever game I got at a high level and I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Fuck all that shit.
That's fine man. But surely you can see that you saying you have an iphone as a way to prove that you spend money isn't strong evidence. So yeah, bully for us and our 21st century internet. It's awesome.
It is kind of touching though that when you think about a possible way to spend more money it involves a different kind of gaming on a different kind of screen.
edit: iphones stopped being luxuries when the internet/email/socialmedia became required job skills. every professional has access to those things; having access is a required employee trait for the american job market. libertarians consistently seem to have a disconnect between what they consider "luxuries" and how social mobility interacts w the job/consumer markets.
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Some people just like to live very cheaply, and don't need that much stuff. Content personality trait ftw! (ck2 reference)
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On August 06 2016 02:45 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 02:18 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 02:06 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 02:03 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:35 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 01:17 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:10 IgnE wrote:On August 05 2016 23:41 KwarK wrote:On August 05 2016 20:46 WhiteDog wrote:Pretty good article about Trump's wealth. It's pretty long, I just selected a part about taxation. Because Jacobin is not quoted enough and because it's relevant : How the Trumps Got Rich
Most Americans know Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a reality television star and a celebrity endorser. But in his home state of New York, he has a different reputation: he’s a real estate shmuck.
Trump inherited his business — which consists of gilded and glassed condos, clubs, casinos, office towers, hotels, and golf courses throughout New York City and beyond — from his father, Fred Trump. Like the Dursts, Rudins, Zeckendorfs, and LeFraks, the older Trump ran a family-based real estate empire.
Though these families still exert a great deal of power in New York City development politics, they are beginning to be outpaced by new corporate real estate titans — like Extell, Vornado, Related, BlackRock, and others — that use global investment capital to build glitzy new developments and buy out old affordable complexes. Donald Trump bridges these two modes, combining family business with corporate kitsch.
From a capitalist perspective, Trump is a hardworking — if obnoxious — businessman: he inherited money from his father and made it grow. From a socialist point of view, however, he got his wealth by very different means: theft.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that America’s richest families possess “twice stolen wealth – (a) profit sheltered from (b) taxes.” But in fact, Trump’s fortune is triply stolen by wage theft from the workers who build and maintain his projects; tax theft from the state that enables him; and land theft from the common spaces he encloses. While he extolls the benefits of private enterprise, Trump really got rich off public resources.
His behavior is by no means unique: all capitalists profit from worker exploitation; just about all corporations try to avoid taxes in one way or another; and in a settler state, all land is stolen. But as usual, Trump embodies the most exaggerated version of a rotten system. [...]
Stolen Taxes
Throughout his career, Donald Trump has adeptly dodged taxes and gathered subsidies. In this way, he has not only shorted the public, but also depleted budgets for socially beneficial programs.
The practice began with the money passed down from his father. Fred Trump excelled at getting public subsidies and tax abatements, allowing him to amass quite a fortune. While his son claims that his business started with a $1 million loan from his father, this isn’t entirely factual. Fred Trump had established million-dollar tax-sheltered trusts for each of his children and grandchildren, and, according to the Washington Post, Donald made $19,000 in 1977, $47,200 in 1978, $70,000 in 1979, $90,000 in 1980, and $214,605 in 1981. Trump also received about $12,000 a year from a 1949 trust set up by his father and nearly $2,000 a year from another 1949 trust created by his grandmother. He also received a $6,000 gift every December from his parents.
Trump’s father didn’t give him a loan, he provided a reliable source of income that increased every year. Then, when Fred Trump died, Donald received an estimated $40 million from his $250 million estate.
Donald Trump’s first big break came with the opportunity to buy and renovate the Commodore Hotel in 1980. In the process of turning it into the Grand Hyatt Hotel, he tore down the building’s landmarked sculptures, wrapped the façade in glass, and quietly demolished what he was supposed to preserve. Thanks to his father’s history of making large donations to city officials, Trump received a forty-year tax exemption from the Urban Development Corporation — double the standard, and the first of its kind. To this day, he pays no state taxes on the luxury hotel.
When he began building Trump Tower, he applied to New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for a $20 million tax break. Mayor Koch’s HPD commissioner, Anthony Gliedman, denied the application.
But Trump sued and won, and the city was ordered to grant the abatement in full. Three years later, Gliedman went to work for Trump, advising him on future government negotiations. In 2004, the New York City Economic Development Corporation granted Trump an additional twelve-year abatement on the commercial portion of the Trump Tower — a $164 million tax break on a property worth $237 million.
As his business grew, Trump began consolidating his corporations and LLCs to a single address. The fictional companies that own 40 Wall Street, Trump Carousel Central Park, and almost four hundred other Trump businesses are not registered to his New York City headquarters, but to one sleepy office building in Delaware, America’s onshore tax haven. (Hillary Clinton uses the exact same building for her corporate registrations.)
On top of tax breaks, Trump has finagled a number of city and state subsidies. His Bronx golf course — which sits in the middle of a public park in New York’s poorest borough — is only the most recent example. The city paid $230 million to clean up the site and develop the course; Trump was only responsible for building the clubhouse and managing the park.
Yet public subsidies allow Trump to pay no rent for the first four years of his twenty-year lease; in year five he will pay 7 percent of the rent, and in year ten he will pay 10 percent. In the meantime, New York City residents are covering his water and sewer bills to the cost of roughly $1 million per year. None of the nearby affordable housing complexes have subsidies anywhere near as generous.
Trump also manages to avoid paying taxes on his residence. His Manhattan apartment receives an abatement to the tune of $20,493 a year, including a small credit from the New York State School Tax Relief Program (even though that program has an income cap of $500,000). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/trump-real-estate-theft-public-land-taxes/I need some kind of plan to pay less taxes. Come to America. I don't pay Federal income tax. That said, if I were to start a political career I would absolutely start paying taxes. At that point it's an investment. i think you said several pages ago that you and your spouse would be in the 1% soon? and you still don't pay any taxes? I'm public sector in a low cost of living state so I have more tax deferred room than I can really use until my income gets out of control. I mean if I was pulling in $250k/year I'd have to pay some but $100k/year can be done tax free easily enough if you don't actually want to spend it. A tax deferred is a tax avoided, the US system is set up that with tax deferred accounts you can convert them to post-tax accounts in a year of your choosing. Say you earn $100k one year and $20k another year. And that you're taxed 10% on anything over $30k. Year 1 you'd owe $7k in taxes. Year 2, nothing. However if you could shuffle income around from year to year you could use that extra $10k of space in year 2 to absorb $10k of taxable income from year 1. Make sense? There are kids who are not yet born whose tax exemptions are going to be used to offset the taxes on money I earn this year. Also we're both rich kids and the lifetime gifts exemption and the death tax both have absurdly high thresholds. So you basically don't spend anything either. Shopping at your glitzy walmart and living on desert land. I spend enough. I have a pretty new computer, an iphone, a paid off car, I go out to restaurants, I fly back to Europe a few times a year. Like honestly I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend. You know that makes no sense right? Homeless people have iphones brah. Yeah but I have a home and an iphone, homeless people only have the one. Also at what point did iphones stop being luxuries? Like even if homeless people are allowed to have them too I'm always gonna be happy that I have access to the internet wirelessly from my pocket at all times. That's an amazing state of affairs and I refuse to be unimpressed by it. And what I meant by "I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend" is that money isn't a factor in any of my decisions (beyond having a job at all I guess). The reason I don't spend more money is not because I would run out, it's because it's too much effort. Sure, I could go out and buy a new giant tv. But that'd take up a Saturday and then I'd have to watch the damn thing and then rearrange my living room and then call a cable company and deal with that bullshit where I have to be available during a day and probably buy a console and probably work out which game is best and then learn to play whatever game I got at a high level and I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Fuck all that shit. That's fine man. But surely you can see that you saying you have an iphone as a way to prove that you spend money isn't strong evidence. So yeah, bully for us and our 21st century internet. It's awesome. It is kind of touching though that when you think about a possible way to spend more money it involves a different kind of gaming on a different kind of screen. His point is that you don't have to spend spend spend to be happy or just because you have the money.
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On August 06 2016 02:49 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2016 02:45 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 02:18 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 02:06 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 02:03 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:35 IgnE wrote:On August 06 2016 01:17 KwarK wrote:On August 06 2016 01:10 IgnE wrote:On August 05 2016 23:41 KwarK wrote:Come to America. I don't pay Federal income tax. That said, if I were to start a political career I would absolutely start paying taxes. At that point it's an investment. i think you said several pages ago that you and your spouse would be in the 1% soon? and you still don't pay any taxes? I'm public sector in a low cost of living state so I have more tax deferred room than I can really use until my income gets out of control. I mean if I was pulling in $250k/year I'd have to pay some but $100k/year can be done tax free easily enough if you don't actually want to spend it. A tax deferred is a tax avoided, the US system is set up that with tax deferred accounts you can convert them to post-tax accounts in a year of your choosing. Say you earn $100k one year and $20k another year. And that you're taxed 10% on anything over $30k. Year 1 you'd owe $7k in taxes. Year 2, nothing. However if you could shuffle income around from year to year you could use that extra $10k of space in year 2 to absorb $10k of taxable income from year 1. Make sense? There are kids who are not yet born whose tax exemptions are going to be used to offset the taxes on money I earn this year. Also we're both rich kids and the lifetime gifts exemption and the death tax both have absurdly high thresholds. So you basically don't spend anything either. Shopping at your glitzy walmart and living on desert land. I spend enough. I have a pretty new computer, an iphone, a paid off car, I go out to restaurants, I fly back to Europe a few times a year. Like honestly I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend. You know that makes no sense right? Homeless people have iphones brah. Yeah but I have a home and an iphone, homeless people only have the one. Also at what point did iphones stop being luxuries? Like even if homeless people are allowed to have them too I'm always gonna be happy that I have access to the internet wirelessly from my pocket at all times. That's an amazing state of affairs and I refuse to be unimpressed by it. And what I meant by "I don't really have enough time to spend much more than I currently spend" is that money isn't a factor in any of my decisions (beyond having a job at all I guess). The reason I don't spend more money is not because I would run out, it's because it's too much effort. Sure, I could go out and buy a new giant tv. But that'd take up a Saturday and then I'd have to watch the damn thing and then rearrange my living room and then call a cable company and deal with that bullshit where I have to be available during a day and probably buy a console and probably work out which game is best and then learn to play whatever game I got at a high level and I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Fuck all that shit. That's fine man. But surely you can see that you saying you have an iphone as a way to prove that you spend money isn't strong evidence. So yeah, bully for us and our 21st century internet. It's awesome. It is kind of touching though that when you think about a possible way to spend more money it involves a different kind of gaming on a different kind of screen. His point is that you don't have to spend spend spend to be happy or just because you have the money.
ok i didn't contend the opposite. he could have agreed that he doesn't spend money and is happy about it
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On August 06 2016 02:49 zlefin wrote: Some people just like to live very cheaply, and don't need that much stuff. Content personality trait ftw! (ck2 reference)
most people in cities spend money on services/rent/experiences not "stuff". the "i dont need to spend money on stuff" line of thought is only really appropriate when you live in cheap suburban sprawl or if you are an acquisitive baby boomer
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