they’ll just blame everything on Obama
EVERYTHING that Dickhead does is a disaster for the American 99% .
But Alice, you didn’t check to see what the ultimate anti-Keynesian economist Milton Friedman thinks about deficit-spending to stimulate the economy right at the moment that the Obama recovery delivered effective full employment with low inflation! Oh right … he’s dead. Well, I’m sure that he would be in favor of eliminating SALT deductions to punish residents of those blue states actually pulling their own weight in terms of tax dollars delivered to the IRS.
I think they know who’s going to play the fall guy, the guy who perverted the noble aims and goals of the GOP and its proud American voters for his own selfish ends. He’s perfect for the role. And he’ll never see it coming, never see the smart mean kids getting ready to throw him out to the howling mobs, until it’s happening.
Why do all that when Congress can just shave off a little excess military spending?
Remember, we’re going to be paying more taxes now on a war Congress doesn’t even know anything about.
I can’t believe we even have to have the debate. This trickle-down nonsense has never worked (and I’m using “worked” in the accepted meaning of the term), and never will. The problem is, Reaganomics is a religion for these people. And just as you can’t have a debate about whether Jesus came back from the dead, you can’t debate whether St. Ronnie was wrong.
And we all suffer, with the exception of a few stinky rich folks.
…the bill will drive up the federal deficit, shrink and destabilize the health care market, exacerbate already historic income inequality, and pressure Congress to make deep cuts to the social safety net and government programs
These aren’t bugs. These are features. Silly economists.
But the gamble may not pay off as expected. If the tax bill becomes law, its impact will hit people across the country just a few months before they go to the polls.
“A lot of people will discover their home deduction is not allowed anymore, that their state and local income tax isn’t deductible anymore, and they’re going to be angry,” predicted Collender. “Plus, it’s almost certain that interest rates are going to rise. Homes will be more expensive. Loans will be more expensive. Car sales will go down. So I think Republicans are really going to pay a political price.”
The problem with this theory is that the tax implications are not going to show up on their 2017 tax returns. They won’t see this until 2019 when filing for 2018 - after the mid terms next fall.
What they might see is efforts to cut the entitlement programs in next year’s budget negotiations.
Exactly.
This is ALL about squeezing social security and medicare.
18 Months ago I went to a talk/Q&A session at which Tom Price, when he was still in congress, basically told the audience that we cannot expect to have good government unless they cut “non-discretionary” spending.
It was, frankly, chilling.
I believe they will delay the most onerous provisions until after the 2018 elections.
Donnie and the GOP are rapidly moving beyond treason and striving for crimes against the global economy and humanity.
…So I think Republicans are really going to pay a political price.”
While the rest of us pay…with our lives - savings, homes, health. Gee whiz, Mr. Scandling, thanks for clarifying that. I feel much better now.
OT: As if her acting in “9 to 5” and writing “I Will Always Love You” and getting Whitney Houston to record it wasn’t enough:
Dolly Parton: basic income trailblazer?
This is the problem here. Fiscal Conservatives have lived so long with so many lies about their own economic ideas that half of them probably believe Laffer was a biblical figure who spoke directly to God. The current Republican Congress is comprised of true believers and nothing is going to stop them or get through to them that their shit plan will just fuck over a vast majority of Americans with zero benefit to anybody but a few rich people in the short term. And when it does, it’ll be everybody else’s fault but their own.
Back in September there was a great FT article, link below (but maybe a paywall) called I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The idea of “moats” is key to value investing and nobody does moats like Buffett. He says his ideal investment has a really wide moat and a big valuable castle in the middle of it. The moat protects profitability. Makes sense and he’s great at identifying and widening moats.
Trump and the modern GOP are trying to put moats and walls everywhere to protect themselves at the longterm cost of the nation. They’re protecting their families, companies, religions, tribes, races, and ideas from ever having to endure the strain of competition. That’s their goal. And it’s killing us.
d
How Warren Buffett broke American capitalism
I’ll just post it. But there will be glitches.
Growing up, I admired nobody more than Warren Buffett, the greatest investor ever. His achievement is towering. The market is an implacable opponent but here was a man who beat it year after year, making $75bn out of nothing but wisdom and charm. There was moral purity in his modesty, his ethics and his quiet attachment to home in Omaha, Nebraska. What footballer, politician or thinker could compare?
Now 87, Mr Buffett wields huge influence over US business and finance, usually positive. He pushed companies to expense stock options, warned of danger in derivatives and taught the public to invest long term in low-cost index funds.
But however much you admire the man, his influence has a dark side because the beating heart of Buffettism, celebrated in a thousand investment books, is to avoid competition and minimise capital investment in the real economy.
A torrent of recent studies show how exactly those forces — diminished competition, rising profits and lower investment — afflict the US. Economists Jan de Loecker and Jan Eeckhout chart a rise in corporate mark-ups, a measure linked to profit margins, from 18 per cent in 1980 to 67 per cent today. In a paper presented at the Brookings Institution last week, Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon show how investment has fallen relative to profitability. Mr Buffett did not cause these trends. However, they are central to his fortune. When you celebrate him, you celebrate them.
If he had found a few truly unusual companies and bought them on the cheap there would be no issue. But acolytes are taking his methods economy-wide
Mr Buffett is completely honest about his desire to reduce competition. He just calls it by a folksy name — “widening the moat”. “I don’t want a business that’s easy for competitors. I want a business with a moat around it with a very valuable castle in the middle,” he said in 2007.
He tells Berkshire Hathaway managers to widen their moat every year. The Buffett definition of good management is therefore clear. If you have effective competitors, you are doing it wrong.
As with many aspects of his career, Mr Buffett used to act more visibly. An example is his 1977 purchase of the Buffalo Evening News. He bought this newspaper for $32.5m, a high multiple of its $1.7m operating profit, then launched a Sunday edition and drove the competing Buffalo Courier-Express out of business. By 1986, the renamed Buffalo News was a local monopoly making $35m in pre-tax profit. At the time, it was Mr Buffett’s largest single investment.
His concept of a moat is linked to his views on capital investment: the beauty of one is you do not need the other. One of his most celebrated purchases is See’s Candies, a company he bought for $25m in 1972. Every year, Mr Buffett raised prices. So strong was its brand that despite sales growing little, profits grew mightily, with barely any need for capital investment. “The ideal business is one that takes no capital, and yet grows,” he said last year.
His statement is unquestionably true for an investor. For an economy, it produces the pattern above: low investment relative to higher profits. A line attributed to business partner Charlie Munger in Alice Schroeder’s biography of Mr Buffett, The Snowball, is revealing: “Munger had always kidded Buffett that his management technique was to take out all the cash from a company and raise prices.” That does sum it up.
If Mr Buffett in his brilliance had found a few truly unusual companies and bought them on the cheap there would be no issue. But acolytes are taking his methods economy-wide.
These days, Mr Buffett has two main ways of putting his money to work. On one hand, he is finally investing in physical assets, although only in regulated industries such as electricity and railroads where returns are largely guaranteed. On the other, he is working with Brazilian private equity firm 3G as it slashes costs to the bone and drives up margins at Burger King and food company Kraft Heinz.
The fallout will be measured in living with our parents and working until we die.
No you will live with your children.
The children will not be able to afford us.