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Category Archives: My Opinion

Trump Sells Tax Plan With False Claims


As the falsehoods continue, TOTUS is still touting this tax plan (not his tax plan, since he will blame someone else when it fails). I do not believe the TIC as read any part of this bill and has no idea what the long range affect will be. This lack of engagement is the Trump way of doing business, he will engage to the point of getting recognition for involvement until it appears that it will tarnish his image (such as it is). He has and will do the same as President. He appears to operate from a state of plausible deniability. He has now taken to retweeting the “fake news” that he delights in. If we the people do not scream foul to our representatives then it will become our Albatross.MA

 The New York Times

Linda Qiu

7 hrs ago

 

WASHINGTON — At a Wednesday afternoon rally in Missouri, President Trump played up what he called the “biggest tax cuts in history” and boasted about economic growth “in a nonbraggadocious way.”

“In fact, they’re going to say Trump is the opposite of an exaggerator,” he said of his rosy projections, in a speech full of exaggerations and falsehoods. Here’s an assessment.

He is wrong that “for years, they haven’t been able to get tax cuts, many, many years since Reagan.”

 

President Ronald Reagan, who enacted a major tax cut in 1981 and lowered tax rates again in 1986, was hardly the last president to have done so. President Bill Clinton signed the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. President George W. Bush enacted two major tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. The stimulus passed under President Barack Obama included hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, and Mr. Obama later extended the Bush tax cuts with the American Tax Payer Relief Act of 2012.

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He inaccurately suggested the plan wouldn’t help the wealthy.

Mr. Trump insisted that the tax bill is “not good for me” or the wealthy. Referring to Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, the president said: “I keep hearing Schumer, ‘This is for the wealthy!’ If it is, my friends don’t know about it.”

That is not supported by most analyses of the tax plans being considered in Congress.

Under the Senate plan, every income level would receive a tax cut in 2019, but people earning $20,000 to $30,000 annually would face a tax increase the next year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. By 2027, most people making under $75,000 each year would see a tax increase, while those making more would continue to receive a tax cut.

Under the House plan, every income group would see tax cuts through 2027, but the richest one-fifth of Americans would receive 56 percent to almost 75 percent of the cuts, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Based on his 2005 tax return, Mr. Trump himself could save more than $1.1 billion under the White House tax framework, according to an analysis by The New York Times, and the same amount under the House plan, a tax expert at Marcum L.L.P. told NBC.

He falsely called the current plan as the “biggest tax cut in the history of our country, bigger than Reagan.”

Mr. Trump has repeated this claim at least a dozen times since October, but it has not been true of any of the tax plans released in Congress or outlined by his administration.

A 2013 Treasury Department report assessed the size of major tax bills either as a percentage of the economy, by the reduction in federal revenue or in inflation-adjusted dollars. The 1981 Reagan tax cut is the largest under the first two metrics. It was equivalent to 2.9 percent of gross domestic product and reduced federal revenue by 13.3 percent. The 2012 Obama tax cut amounted to the largest cut in inflation-adjusted dollars: $321 billion a year.

For Mr. Trump’s tax cut to exceed the Reagan cuts as a share of G.D.P., the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates it would need to cost roughly $6.8 trillion over 10 years. To have a larger effect on revenue, it would need to cost $5.7 trillion. No version of the current tax cut plan meets those benchmarks.

The budget blueprint that Republicans released in mid-October, the bill passed in the House in November and the bill currently being considered in the Senate all amount to a tax cut of about $1.5 trillion over 10 years. This would place as the 12th-largest as a share of the economy.

He falsely suggested that the stock market was previously flat.

Mr. Trump spoke of tepid growth before he took office. “In all fairness, the stock market was going this way,” he added, drawing a flat line with his hand. The stock market has hit record highs under Mr. Trump, but the uptick began after the financial crisis in 2008.

The link he drew between market performance and G.D.P. growth also contradicts his own comments. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said the economy was “doing terribly” at 1.2 percent G.D.P. growth, which occurred in the first quarter of this year. But during that quarter, he jubilantly posted on Twitter about the stock market’s “longest winning streak in decades.”

He exaggerated when he said a 3.3 percent growth was the “largest increase in many years.”

The Commerce Department adjusted its estimate of G.D.P. growth to 3.3 percent in the third quarter of 2017 from a previous estimate of 3 percent. This is the largest increase in about three years, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The economy grew at 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2015 and at 5.2 percent in the third quarter of 2014, and the increase was larger than 3.3 percent in five other quarters under Mr. Obama.

Hear a suspicious claim from a politician or public official? Email factcheck@nytimes.com. Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.

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It is unfortunate for us that we are now under the sway of a neer do well Congress abetted by an unapologetic liar in Chief. It is certainly what was expected by his supporters. The expectations were as follows:
Drain the swamp- change how Washington works (the same attempt by Barack Obama which was blocked by Republicans in Congress and tacitly condoned by some Americans) .
Repeal and replace the ACA (aka “Obamacare”, which most people enjoy but do not know they are the same program)
Tax reform, which will ultimately harm almost everyone who makes less than 300 thousand dollars annually.
Given this verifiable information where do we go from here? Our path is relatively clear, forget the party lines and look at the people who currently represent you and what they have or have not done so far. If you do not know any of this then it may be time to rethink your loyalty. A point to remember “Adolph Hitler devastated many countries and murdered millions based on lies that were told over and over until people who at their most vulnerable believed them.” I  personally make efforts to remain as neutral as possible on most issues until I can get all of the facts  however when our elected officials use lies to further their ambitions then I became radical and so should you.

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I Don’t Get It!


I don’t get it! We have a President who admittedly groped women. He has shown his inability to lead but can bully with the best(?) of them. Meanwhile his cabinet picks are little by little  picking apart established and working programs. Now we have the always neer do well Congress attempting to pass tax legislation that will affect everyone adversely except the very wealthy and at the same time affect the ACA (which they have tried to muck up for years). In his short span of dubious leadership we have had an increase in hate crimes and it seems mass shootings. This is not necessarily blaming TOTUS however these events seem to coincide with his Presidency. His recent overseas trip was more of an ego trip (ha ha) as the leaders of the countries he visited rolled out the Red carpet for him while I believe are just appeasing an ego attached to a person. This out pouring inflates the ego of a person who cannot move beyond electioneering. During this Presidency (or residency) we have  experienced a rise in Racism, anti-Semitism and anti immigrant incidents. All of this covers up the attempted land grab out west and the so called right to use protected public lands. These are the public lands taken from native Americans for use by immigrants. Now the big push for tax reform which is based on cutting out the part of the ACA which mandates that everyone have health insurance. This mandate’s purpose is to insure everyone is covered and at the same time reduce the price of insurance for all. The idea is that removing this mandate will free up funds to finance the tax plan. The same tax plan that will affect the least of us and at the same time shut the least of us out of the health insurance market. So I don’t get why the 535 who so often cite what “the American People” want are not thinking of what effect these actions will have on the “American People” which also includes many Trump supporters.

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The “ME” adminstration


The current administration appears to be all about themselves. The cabinet has several members who can’t pass up a photo op that garners attention on them (and theirs). Considering our TIC there should be no surprise there. Mr. TOTUS uses tweets as attention getters while rolling back rules and regulations on importation of exotic protected species with no regard to the ultimate consequences. There is the push for so called “Tax Reform” which will be accomplished by making changes in the ACA which will ultimately affect the health care of millions yet with this knowledge the neer do wells are still trying to move forward while espousing how good it will be for us. All of this is geared toward next years elections and the unrealistic campaign promises made by them. The wake up call was sounded long ago and many of us missed it or ignored it, the awakening will be rude and possibly devastating. Since TOTUS was elected hate , racism and sexual assault have seemingly become OK. This development has been ignored by our legislators or perhaps their response will wait until after 2018 elections when it’s too late. Now we have the potential gutting of the ACA which with all of it’s faults is working, this action is just to push along a tax reform that will harm as many people as the loss of healthcare. All of these actions are laying the groundwork for 2018 election and maintaining the status quo which is not in favor of the often cited “American people”. How can these folks speak for us when they never ask us? Their information appears to come from select groups rather than a true representation of  the cited “American People”. If you truly believe that your elected official represents you then perhaps you haven’t paid attention to them which they don’t mind at all. As I have stated before “Hitler used the same tactic to convince Germans that Jews and non Aryan’s were the reasons Germany was in such poor shape and not the previous war. Telling the same lies over and over convinced many Germans he was right until the end when Germany was devastated by allied forces and  Hitler took the easy way out. While this administration may not be as radical, they are just as devious.

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Long Read On Taxes


Michael1942’s Blog
“Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur” (“what is freely asserted is freely dismissed”)

 

The article below are copied from the Tax Policy Center. The entire document is extensive and I believe we should all read it as TOTUS probably does or did  not. I urge you to look this up for yourselves to get the full picture and compare what has been said about tax reform to what the actual tax system shows as far as spending and income. Remember Congress is responsible for any laws creating or changing tax laws. Looking at current proposed “tax reforms”, where is the truth?MA
What are the sources of revenue for the federal government?  TO add insult to injury TOTUS has been consistently trying to undo whatever former President Obama did no matter what the resulting actions may have on all of us. His recent Asian tour shows how other leaders see him. They received him with great pomp and celebrity but he won nothing in return. He will return home and bloviate about his trip and what he accomplished which is actually  zero. MA
Federal Budget
1/4>
Federal Budget and Economy
Q.What are the sources of revenue for the federal government?
A.Roughly 80 percent comes from the individual income tax and the payroll taxes that fund social insurance programs (figure 1). Another 9 percent comes from the corporate income tax, and the rest is from a mix of sources.
Total revenues
In fiscal year (FY) 2016[1] the federal government collected revenues of $3.3 trillion—about 17.8 percent of GDP. Over the past 50 years, federal revenue has averaged 17.4 percent of GDP, ranging from 20.0 percent (in 2000) to 14.6 percent (most recently in 2008 and 2009).
Individual Income Tax
The individual income tax has been the largest single source of federal revenue since 1950, amounting to 47.3 percent of the total and 8.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016. In recent years, individual income tax revenue has climbed as high as 9.9 percent of GDP (in 2000) at the peak of the 1990s economic boom and dropped as low as 6.1 percent (in 2010) following the 2007-2009 Great Recession.

 

Payroll Taxes
The payroll taxes on wages and earnings that fund Social Security and the hospital insurance portion of Medicare make up the largest portion of social insurance receipts. Other sources include payroll taxes for the railroad retirement system and the unemployment insurance program and federal workers’ pension contributions. All told, social insurance levies represented 34.1 percent of federal revenue in 2016.
The creation of the Medicare program in 1965, combined with periodic increases in Social Security payroll taxes, caused social insurance receipts to grow from 1.6 percent of GDP in 1950 to 6.2 percent in 2009. A temporary reduction in employees’ share of Social Security taxes—part of the stimulus program following the financial meltdown—reduced social insurance receipts to 5.3 percent of GDP in 2011 and 2012. They remained below 6.0 percent of GDP in 2013 and 2014.
Corporate Income Tax
The tax on corporate profits yielded 9.2 percent of government revenue in 2016, a revenue source that has been trending downward. Revenue from the tax has fallen from an average of 3.7 percent of GDP in the late 1960s to an average of just 1.5 percent of GDP over the past five years.
Federal Excise Taxes
Taxes on purchases of a mélange of goods and services, including gasoline, cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, and airline travel, generated 2.9 percent of federal revenue in 2016. But these taxes, too, are on the wane: excise tax revenues have fallen steadily from an average of 1.7 percent of GDP in the late 1960s to an average of 0.5 percent over 2012–16.
Other Revenues
The federal government also collects revenue from estate and gift taxes, customs duties, earnings from the Federal Reserve System, and various fees and charges. Total, these sources generated 6.5 percent of federal revenue in FY 2015. They have averaged between 0.6 and 1.1 percent of GDP since 1965. In recent years, the figure has been on the high end of that range because of unusually high profits of the Federal Reserve Board related to its efforts to stimulate the economy since 2008.
Changes over time
The individual income tax has provided nearly half of total federal revenue since 1950, while other revenue sources have waxed and waned. Excise taxes brought in 19.0 per-cent of total revenue in 1950, but only about 3.0 percent in recent years. The share of revenue coming from the corporate income tax dropped from about a third of the total in the early 1950s to just over a tenth in 2016. In contrast, payroll taxes provided a third of revenue in 2016, more than three times the share in the early 1950s.

[1] All years in entry are fiscal years.
Data Sources
Office of Management and Budget. Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2018, Historical Tables. Table 2.1. “Receipts by Source: 1934–2022” and Table 2.3. “Receipts by Source as Percentages of GDP: 1934–2022.”
Further Reading
Joint Committee on Taxation. 2014. Overview of the Federal Tax System as in Effect for 2014. JCX-25-14. Washington, DC: Joint Committee on Taxation.

How does the federal government spend its money?
Federal Budget
<2/4>
Federal Budget and Economy
Q. How does the federal government spend its money?
A. In fiscal year (FY) 2014, about 60 percent of federal spending paid for programs not subject to regular budget review, while just over a third covered discretionary programs for which Congress must regularly appropriate funds. Less than a tenth went for interest on government debt (figure 1).

Mandatory Spending
Mandatory spending covers outlays that are controlled by laws other than appropriations acts. Almost all such spending is for “entitlements,” for which expenditures depend on individual eligibility and participation; they are funded at whatever level is needed to cover the resulting costs. Mandatory spending has grown from about a quarter of the budget in 1962 to 60 percent in 2015 (figure 2). This is in large part because of

new entitlements, including Medicare and Medicaid (both of which started in 1965), the earned income tax credit (1975), and the child tax credit (1997). In addition, rapid growth of both the elderly and disabled populations has contributed to increased Social Security and Medicare spending.

Nearly 60 percent of mandatory spending in 2015 was for Social Security and other income support programs (figure 3). Most of the remainder paid for the two major government health programs, Medicare and Medicaid.

Discretionary Spending
Discretionary spending covers programs that require appropriations by Congress. Unlike mandatory spending, both the programs and the authorized levels of spending require regular renewal by Congress. The share of the budget going for discretionary spending has fallen from two-thirds in 1962 to about one-third now.
About half of FY 2015 discretionary spending went for defense, and most of the rest for domestic programs,

including agricultural subsidies, highway construction, and the federal courts (figure 4). Only 4 percent of discretionary spending funded international activities, such as foreign aid.

 

Debt Service
Interest on the national debt has fluctuated over the past half century along with the size of the debt and interest rates. It climbed from 6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1962 to more than 15 percent in the mid-1990s, fell to about 7 percent in the early 2000s, and has fallen even more recently, as interest rates have tumbled to historically low levels. While the national debt reached a peacetime high of 74 percent of GDP in 2014 and dipped just under that level in 2015, debt service accounted for just 6 percent of federal spending in 2015.
Data Sources
Congressional Budget Office. Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2016 to 2026, Historical Budget Data.
Office of Management and Budget. Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2017, Historical Tables. Table 7.1. “Federal Debt at the End of Year: 1940–2021”; Table 8.1. “Outlays by Budget Enforcement Act Category: 1962–2021”; Table 8.5. “Outlays for Mandatory and Related Programs: 1962–2021”; and Table 8.7. “Outlays for Discretionary Programs: 1962–2021.”
Federal Budget and Economy Federal spending

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Tax Reform or Tax Cut???


Apparently the Dupublican congressional leaders  had an epiphany The two leaders (?) are both now recanting the hype over the tax issue. They now recognize that their plan will not help the middle class (revelation?). The tax issue has been examined by many and yet these neer do wells kept insisting that this was good for us. Again I refer to pre WWII Germany, the Hitler regime, lie, lie,lie until people believe the lies. We all feel that the Government no matter who is President keeps many things from us. Yet we still elect and re-elect the same folks over and over, “therein lies the rub”! We have ignored their machinations for so long that they feel untouchable and we allowed it. Now we have a megalomaniacal Titular head of Government who cannot string 2  intelligible (informed or uninformed) words together without a writer. We have heard about tax reforms and tax cuts from both houses and  TOTUS for the better part of a year, now we see that the so called reforms and cuts do not and will not benefit the very people who elected them to office. An election based on the so far unfulfilled promises to get us a better deal. It is now clear as glass that these promises are impractical and unobtainable without hurting the working class of America financially and by extension the economy. The wake up alarm has been sounded and the administration is still trying to silence it with even more lies and deceit. How long will we stand for it? Article below tells more

McConnell Joins Ryan in Walking Back False Promise on Tax Bill

Steven T. Dennis

11/10/2017

 

(Bloomberg) — The top Republicans in the House and Senate have now walked back false promises about their tax bills’ impact on the middle class.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged to The New York Times Friday he erred when he said in an MSNBC appearance last week that “nobody in the middle class is going to get a tax increase.”
Now the Kentucky Republican says every income group would see a tax cut — on average.
“You can’t guarantee that absolutely no one sees a tax increase,” he told the newspaper.
McConnell joins House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin in walking back their statements on taxes. Ryan had said in a radio interview Wednesday, “So actually, even though there’s a lot of false information out there, everybody gets a tax cut.”
That statement was false, as there are millions of people who would face higher tax bills from the loss of deductions like the one for state and local taxes, which is rolled back in the House bill and eliminated entirely in the Senate bill.
A day later, Ryan’s language changed.
“At every income level, there is a tax cut for the average family,” Ryan said in a statement Thursday, citing a study by the Joint Committee on Taxation.
AshLee Strong, a Ryan spokeswoman, told The Washington Post that he misspoke.
(Updates with quote from Donald Trump in ninth paragraph.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Kotuku’s in Singapore at jkoutsoukis2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net.
©2017 Bloomberg L.P.

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For Consideration


With the current efforts to change the ACA and now the tax code, I have looked at some of the salaries and net worth of some of the people who are “conservative” (meaning they are pro tax reform). These Tax reforms will not benefit the now almost non existent “middle class”. It is odd to me that folks whose value or earnings will not be affected can advocate for reform that will ultimately impact the middle and lower class Americans. I have listed the net worth or salaries of some of the folks that most of us are familiar with :
1. Rush Limbaugh net worth 500 million
2. Sean Hannity        ” ” 80 million
3. Jesse Watters        ” ” 1 million  to name a few.

Now take the big push for  repeal and replace was designed to make money available for tax reform. Remember funding any national program has to have a source of funding so in order to not increase taxes, some programs have to be reduced or eliminated. As taxpayers and not in the 1% range of earnings these cuts, eliminations and reductions fall on us (middle to lower class as we are called). Since many members of Congress are in that 1% or approaching it, they will not be adversely affected. The medical benefits for legislators will not be affected by any change in the ACA but its repeal or  replace will benefit them in that they can show they have accomplished what they campaigned on. Please understand that this was always the plan, sacrifice (in essence) the healthcare of America for tax reform that will harm many more Americans and compounding the harm from lack of healthcare to millions. This may sound hard to believe but your elected representatives are not much more than Snollygosters.

(snollygoster[snol-ee-gos-ter]  noun, Slang. 1.a clever, unscrupulous person.)

If you take an exception to this post in any way at all, I challenge you to research this for yourself as I have done. There is no need to cite sources as they are readily available everywhere. If you consider yourself a Conservative, you are not alone we all are conservatives by definition no matter which political party you follow and following one or the other unflinchingly is the same as being brainwashed which is where they want you. Always remember Hitler was extremely successful to the tune of millions of live and billions in debt for the German people.

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Conservative


We are all conservative according one or more definitions, I have listed two common ones below, one noun and one adjective. Each one of wants their lives to be good and steady and getting better as they advance in life but for some reason there are rifts that on the surface separate us. These rifts are what the electeds want and need . Any small opening to get separation is what was used  in Pre WWII Germany and during. For the sake of a discussion I believe there are few if any citizen who doesn’t want the best for their families. The political establishment (this includes big money donors and the people we have elected sometimes too often) sends the constant stream of messages that extol the virtues of their party and the lack of virtues of the opposition. The reality is that neither party is doing us any great service. The ideal group is a mix of both extremes (yes they are extremes) but folks who are actually working for us instead of telling us more dare I say “lies” solely designed to get them elected where they can do the work of their rich supporters. Example: current proposed “tax reform”, this “reform” will at once benefit most people who are on the high side of income. The so called middle and lower class will benefit not at all after several years. If you espouse conservatism as your mantle then you probably part of the problem as you are narrowly focused allowing the richest to keep theirs and take yours.

Con serv·a·tive
kənˈsərvədiv/
adjective
adjective: conservative

holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.
synonyms:
traditionalist, traditional, conventional, orthodox, old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool, hidebound, unadventurous, set in one’s ways; More
moderate, middle-of-the-road, buttoned-down.

noun: conservative; plural noun: conservatives

a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in relation to politics.
synonyms:
right-winger, reactionary, rightist, diehard; More
Republican.

Again I call your attention to 1930’s Germany and after. Lies were the basis of the war and it’s aftermath.

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Robert Mercer, a prominent Trump backer, leaving hedge fund


It is well to remember that there are many big money folks who are leery of Trump’s presidency even if they do not make it known overtly. MA

Steve Peoples, Associated Press
Associated Press November 2, 2017
NEW YORK (AP) — Republican mega-donor Robert Mercer, a billionaire with close ties to President Donald Trump, is stepping down from his position as chief executive officer of the New York investment firm Renaissance Technologies. The 71-year-old Mercer is also selling his personal stake in the pro-Trump website Breitbart News to his daughters.
He announced his decision on Thursday in a letter to investors that also condemned white supremacists, distanced himself from former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, and declared he was mistaken for supporting alt-right hero Milo Yiannopoulos.
“I have decided to correct some of the misinformation that has been published about me,” wrote the 71-year-old Mercer, who cited “a great deal of scrutiny from the press.”
The notoriously private Mercer is considered one of the most powerful political benefactors in the Trump era.
After initially backing the presidential bid of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, he and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, poured resources into efforts to help elect Trump last fall. They are also major backers of Breitbart News, which is led by Bannon, Trump’s ex-chief strategist. The site has been criticized for encouraging white supremacists who make up the so-called “alt-right” movement.
“Of the many mischaracterizations made of me by the press, the most repugnant to me have been the intimations that I am a white supremacist or a member of some other noxious group,” Mercer wrote in his resignation announcement. “Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, creed, or anything of that sort is abhorrent to me. But more than that, it is ignorant.”
On Bannon, who is now leading an effort to take down congressional Republican incumbents, Mercer wrote that their politics are not necessarily in lockstep.
“I have great respect for Mr. Bannon, and from time to time I do discuss politics with him. However, I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon’s,” Mercer wrote.
At the same time, he condemned Yiannopoulos, one of Bannon’s protégés at Breitbart, who has inflamed racial tensions in a series of provocative speeches on college campuses across the nation.
“In my opinion, actions of and statements by Mr. Yiannopoulos have caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate,” Mercer wrote. “I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him.”
The development comes as another Mercer-backed company, the data firm Cambridge Analytica, faces new scrutiny for possible links to the federal probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 president election.
Wikileaks editor Julian Assange told The Associated Press last week that Wikileaks received a “request for information” from Cambridge Analytica prior to the election. Assange would not specify the request, which he said was rejected, but The Daily Beast reported that the head of Cambridge Analytica reached out to Assange during the presidential campaign about the possible release of 33,000 of Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.
Those emails have never been publicly released.
Renaissance has also been locked in a years-long dispute with the IRS after a Senate investigation determined that the firm used complex financial instruments to avoid paying nearly $7 billion in taxes.
Mercer said he would formally step down from his leadership role at Renaissance Technologies on Jan. 1.

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No one can agree what ‘middle class’ means, but it matters now more than ever


 

Our expectations from the current administration should be quite low. The constant stream of  lies with ever flinching is disturbing to say the least. Add the Right and far right pundits and you have the reason America is America, in some other countries, these pundits would be arrested or censored. Only in America can leaders lie with impunity and the worst of it is that so many Americans would  rather believe the lies than the truth since it apparently supports their biases or ignorance of the facts. It well to listen to whoever you want for information and not for entertainment. Facts are not entertainment, the truth is often dry as toast and buttering it will not make it less true. We all need to pay attention to what’s out there and collect real information.MA

Ester Bloom, CNBC 21 hours ago

Last Sunday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on Twitter, “The average American family would get a $4,000 raise under the President’s tax cut plan. Her claim seems to be based on
a paper released by the White House Council of Economic Advisors that says, “Reducing the statutory federal corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent would, the analysis below suggests, increase average household income in the United States by, very conservatively, $4,000 annually.”
Other Republican leaders in Washington and members of the Trump administration have promoted the proposed tax plan as being materially helpful to “middle-class” Americans. But one of the problems that those trying to sell the plan keep running into is that the definition of “average,” “typical” or “middle-class” remains unclear. In an interview for FOX Business, GOP Senator Rob Portman said
the tax plan “is focused on the middle class.” When pressed by the host to define what that meant for a family in Ohio, he said, “about 150 grand for a family.”
That’s twice the median household income of a three-person, middle-class family in Ohio, which is $73,458, according to the Pew Research Center. .
Nationwide, the average American family currently makes about $74,000 a year before taxes, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and while the median American income is $59,000 a year. To some degree, “middle-class” seems to be a state of mind. 70 percent of Americans think of themselves that way, according to a new survey by Northwestern Mutual. But a 2015 report from Pew Research Center shows that, in practice, the middle class has been shrinking over the past four decades and now makes up only 50 percent of the U.S. “When Americans talk about the ‘middle class,’ they are usually thinking about a range, not just the specific income dead in the middle,” explains the Washington Post. It’s also situation specific. “The more people in a family, the more money they typically need to live a comfortable middle-class lifestyle,” writes the Post. Likewise, the more expensive your area, the more you need to make to qualify. Overall, “America’s middle-class ranges from $35,000 to $122,500 in annual income, according to The Post’s calculation” approved by the Pew Research Center. “The bottom line is: $100,000 is on the middle-class spectrum, but barely: 75 percent of U.S. households make less than that,” writes the Post. So would “average” or “middle-class” Americans actually be helped or hurt by tax reform? Politicians and economists continue to argue the point. Economic adviser Gary Cohn took some heat for acknowledging that he “can’t guarantee” taxes wouldn’t go up for some middle-class families. An NPR analysis concludes, “there are many reasons for American taxpayers not to expect $4,000 from this tax overhaul package.” It says, “Already, with the word ‘average,’ there’s reason for a taxpayer to doubt that she would receive $4,000 from this change in tax policy. After all, extremes make averages — the CEA report, for example, estimated the median household could get $3,000.” One now viral rejoinder to Sanders also makes the point that even thinking in terms of “average” can be misleading. If one person is given ten apples and nine others are given zero, each person will have an average of one — but only the first recipient has anything of value. Some experts have made a similar point about the Republican tax plan which, they argue, in practice will heavily favor the rich, including various members of President Trump’s cabinet and Trump himself. “The Republican plan offers almost no direct benefit to the middle class,” wrote Harvard Kennedy School professor and economist Jason Furman for the Wall Street Journal in an op-ed titled, ” No, the GOP Tax Plan Won’t Give You a $9,000 Raise.” And the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi writes, “The big winners are the top 5 percent of taxpayers, with current incomes well over $300,000 per year.” Those “making less than $150,000 will take home a modestly higher sum after-tax,” he predicts, though he declines to name a figure, and overall, for individuals, he predicts, it will be “a wash.” Bridgewater Associates CEO Ray Dalio agrees that “looking at ‘average’ conditions could provide a misleading picture as the concentration of wealth at the top skews the numbers. Instead, he advises a closer look at the plight of the middle class,” CNBC reports. Of course, that strategy only works if everyone agrees what “middle class” means. Here’s how much money Americans think you need to be considered middle class. Last Sunday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on Twitter, “The average American family would get a $4,000 raise under the President’s tax cut plan.” Her claim seems to be based on a paper released by the White House Council of Economic Advisors that says, “Reducing the statutory federal corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent would, the analysis below suggests, increase average household income in the United States by, very conservatively, $4,000 annually.” Other Republican leaders in Washington and members of the Trump administration have promoted the proposed tax plan as being materially helpful to “middle-class” Americans. But one of the problems that those trying to sell the plan keep running into is that the definition of “average,” “typical” or “middle-class” remains unclear. In an interview for FOX Business, GOP Senator Rob Portman said the tax plan “is focused on the middle class.” When pressed by the host to define what that meant for a family in Ohio, he said, “about 150 grand for a family.” That’s twice the median household income of a three-person, middle-class family in Ohio, which is $73,458, according to the Pew Research Center. Nationwide, the average American family currently makes about $74,000 a year before taxes, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and while the median American income is $59,000 a year. To some degree, “middle-class” seems to be a state of mind. 70 percent of Americans think of themselves that way, according to a new survey by Northwestern Mutual. But a 2015 report from Pew Research Center shows that, in practice, the middle class has been shrinking over the past four decades and now makes up only 50 percent of the U.S. “When Americans talk about the ‘middle class,’ they are usually thinking about a range, not just the specific income dead in the middle,” explains The Washington Post. It’s also situation specific. “The more people in a family, the more money they typically need to live a comfortable middle-class lifestyle,” writes the Post. Likewise, the more expensive your area, the more you need to make to qualify. Overall, “America’s middle-class ranges from $35,000 to $122,500 in annual income, according to The Post’s calculation” approved by the Pew Research Center. “The bottom line is: $100,000 is on the middle-class spectrum, but barely: 75 percent of U.S. households make less than that,” writes the Post. So, would “average” or “middle-class” Americans actually be helped or hurt by tax reform? Politicians and economists continue to argue the point. Economic adviser Gary Cohn took some heat for acknowledging that he “can’t guarantee” taxes wouldn’t go up for some middle-class families. An NPR analysis concludes, “there are many reasons for American taxpayers not to expect $4,000 from this tax overhaul package.” It says, “Already, with the word ‘average,’ there’s reason for a taxpayer to doubt that she would receive $4,000 from this change in tax policy. After all, extremes make averages — the CEA report, for example, estimated the median household could get $3,000.” One now viral rejoinder to Sanders also makes the point that even thinking in terms of “average” can be misleading. If one person is given ten apples and nine others are given zero, each person will have an average of one — but only the first recipient has anything of value. Some experts have made a similar point about the Republican tax plan which, they argue, in practice will heavily favor the rich, including various members of President Trump’s cabinet and Trump himself. “The Republican plan offers almost no direct benefit to the middle class,” wrote Harvard Kennedy School professor and economist Jason Furman for the Wall Street Journal in an op-ed titled, ” No, the GOP Tax Plan Won’t Give You a $9,000 Raise. ” And the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi writes, “The big winners are the top 5 percent of taxpayers, with current incomes well over $300,000 per year.” Those “making less than $150,000 will take home a modestly higher sum after-tax,” he predicts, though he declines to name a figure, and overall, for individuals, he predicts, it will be “a wash.” Bridgewater Associates CEO Ray Dalio agrees that “looking at ‘average’ conditions could provide a misleading picture as the concentration of wealth at the top skews the numbers. Instead, he advises a closer look at the plight of the middle class,” CNBC reports. Of course, that strategy only works if everyone agrees what “middle class” means.