Trump

[C0|dB|00ded]

I'm just amazed that there are people who actually think Trump's anti-trade platform is all just a ploy to get other countries to commit to lowering tariffs. Trump regularly refers to imports as "losses." The dude just doesn't understand trade.

Also, I am glad that he no longer seems to be trying to hide the idea that the tax cuts helped the wealthy get richer. Remember when he said about the tax cuts: "This is not good for me. Me, it's not so -- I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me. But that's OK. You know, I keep hearing Schumer: 'This is for the wealthy.' Well, if it is, my friends don't know about it."

Trump's current economic adviser is Larry Kudlow. Both have been very close since the campaign. I've watched and enjoyed listening to Larry on CNBC for years. Larry has a commanding knowledge of economic principles and fundamentals. Donald Trump has an above average IQ. Do you really think he hasn't heard/ doesn't comprehend the academic concepts of free trade - something I could teach a 5th grader in about 5 minutes? Obviously there's another angle going on here and the less the public understands it, the more advantage Trump has at utilizing it.

Make no mistake, TDS and the liberal media are working for DJT, not against him.


T


...:cool:

[Guest]

Trump's current economic adviser is Larry Kudlow. Both have been very close since the campaign. I've watched and enjoyed listening to Larry on CNBC for years. Larry has a commanding knowledge of economic principles and fundamentals. Donald Trump has an above average IQ. Do you really think he hasn't heard/ doesn't comprehend the academic concepts of free trade - something I could teach a 5th grader in about 5 minutes? Obviously there's another angle going on here and the less the public understands it, the more advantage Trump has at utilizing it.

Make no mistake, TDS and the liberal media are working for DJT, not against him.


T


...:cool:

Professor Kelley Wharton School - “Donald Trump was the dumbest ******* student I ever had.”

[ShockingButTrue]

The more haters one has the better it means one is doing. The President,when thinking about that Professor, if he ever does, laughs. It's music to his ears.

[C0|dB|00ded]

Professor Kelley Wharton School - “Donald Trump was the dumbest ******* student I ever had.”

^^^Fake News!

Donald Trump graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics and anthropology.

^^^Real News.


T


...:cool:

[C0|dB|00ded]

http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/02/trump-academics-at-wharton

A 1968 Wharton graduate who did not want to be named said that Trump “sat in the front row [of their Real Estate class], raised his hand a lot to answer questions and had a heavy New York accent.”

1968 Wharton graduate Roger Fulton Jr. made similar remarks, adding that he recalls Trump as “very focused on his studies.”

1968 Wharton graduate Edward Pollard also described Trumpas “very professional” and “different from the rest of the class.”

“He was really off by himself. He didn’t party or go to football games ... [h]e didn’t mingle with the guys going back to hang out and chatting, and stuff like that,” added Pollard, who was, like Trump, a junior year transfer student to Penn.

While some remember Trump as a studious and solitary figure, others remember an individual who was less invested in his formal education and more involved with his future in real estate.

1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don ... was loath to really study much.”

Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”

He added that Trump’s academic passivity likely stemmed from his passion for engaging directly in the real estate business.

“He spent all his weekends in New York because residential real estate is a weekend business,” Calomaris said. Five of Trump’s other classmates confirmed this.

More Real News.


T


...:cool:

[jdshock]

Guest, lol, no joke. The "Real News" is not even internally consistent.

[C0|dB|00ded]

At 72 yrs of age I have no doubt his IQ isn't what it was at his youth. But when referring to someone's IQ, it is still de rigueur to quote their highest attained IQ, not an age-adjusted number.

When DJT was a young man, he was considered extremely bright, articulate, creative, confident, and charismatic by those that met him. In fact, his reputation up until he won the Republican primary was nearly exactly the opposite of someone average or below average. Watch the following videos and ask yourself honestly if the man in them appears as someone who's elevator doesn't quite reach the top floor.

https://youtu.be/0-w47wgdhso

https://youtu.be/jxNkMkAe7F0


T


...:cool:

[ShockingButTrue]

http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/27/media-predicted-economic-collapse-under-trump-it-didnt-happen/

and, http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/27/me...-didnt-happen/
I suppose this guy is an intellectual that is way smarter than the President?

[WstateU]

Somebody just got pwned…

[C0|dB|00ded]

Speaking of videos from the past. This is really weird to watch for a host of reasons.

"You have really got the world by the ass don't you?" -Letterman 2013

Trump gave up so much when he decided to go to Washington: his reputation, happiness, family, business. He literally had everything up to the moment he decided to run for office. I bet he'd like to take a mulligan.


T


...:cool:

[ShockingButTrue]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws

[WuDrWu]

Also, I am glad that he no longer seems to be trying to hide the idea that the tax plan helped the wealthy get richer. Remember when he said about his tax plan: "This is not good for me. Me, it's not so -- I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me. But that's OK. You know, I keep hearing Schumer: 'This is for the wealthy.' Well, if it is, my friends don't know about it."

Why do those on the left hate wealth so much?

You talk all the time about the President's lying. You do the same thing on taxes. The wealthy usually get wealthier because they are smart, work hard and don't throw away their money.

You do don't like them because either you're jealous or in your own value system you think an X portion of their wealth should be redistributed.

Forget the oddities here and there. You know the highest earners pay the largest % and schmidloads more tax dollars than the rest of the country. And 1 in 5 profit company dollars goes to federal taxes. How much is enough? Seriously? How much are you and me and the rest of the country entitled to ? Of course slashing taxes helps the wealthy. The wealthy are PAYING the taxes!!! The top 1% of earners pay nearly 40% of the taxes...how much is enough?

The answer is everything isn't enough. What you want is redistributing wealth, which is never going to work. Obama is out there touting a base wage for everyone. It's seriously not possible for a person to be more stupid. You thought his ideas sucked before......What a colossal **** that would be.

First of all the numbers will never add up because the government is the worst spender of all time. And the unfunded mandates add up to something like $175 Trillon over the next 25 years or some figure no sane person could possibly fathom.

The Socialist experiment (so far) will fail in it's current form, it's just going to fail a lot faster with people in charge that think like you.

[jdshock]

I wasn't trying to get into a tax debate. We've done that a dozen times before on this forum, and I've made my views clear. To recap: I like incentives, but I think generational wealth is a real peoblem, I think there are too few tax brackets, and I think there are a lot of issues with capital gains tax rates.

I don't want to get into it, though. Your reaction is exactly how I feel: of course the tax cuts most benefitted the wealthy. It was absolutely absurd to keep saying stuff like "my wealthy friends hate me for my tax plan!"

[ShockingButTrue]

Who's calling who stupid?
2020.jpg

Keep hope alive...

[Kung Wu]

Question: Is paying a firm to hire a foreign national to make up stuff about your opponent, and then leaking that document to the U.S. intelligence community in order to publicly create the illusion that your opponent is a criminal (while knowing it is really a bunch of rubbish), a conspiracy to defraud the United States?

[wufan]

jdshock , I know you said you didn’t want to get into it, but if you don’t mind, would you describe what you mean when you say, “generational wealth is a real problem?”

I’m not sure if I agree or not, or what solutions might be proposed.

[jdshock]

We haven't actually had a ton of substantive discussion on this forum about the Witch Hunt led by 13 Angry Democrats (tm). I continue to think it's most likely that Mueller is going to end the investigation with some kind of recommendation or even just a report for Congress to decide what to do. I want to take a quick survey and see what folks think. At this time, we don't have the facts, so it's not really worth arguing the technical nuances of each point, but I think we can talk broadly about a few hypothetical situations. For the sake of discussion, let's assume the evidence shows each of these scenarios is true, so it's just a question about the legality or impact of the hypothetical. Tell me under which of the following (if any) situations you would support impeachment. Again, we don't know the facts, so this is me saying here are some possibilities, but I'm not making a prediction about the likelihood of any of them.

Scenario 1: Flynn/Comey
This would be some type of obstruction of justice case. The best way to present it would be to say Trump knew Flynn was under investigation by the FBI for his dealings with Russia and Russian officials. Trump ordered Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

Scenario 2: Hacking
Trump played a role in directing the Russian operatives' attempts at hacking. These attempts may range from the DNC hack we all know about it to directing attempts to hack state election systems. People talk about it quite a bit less, but at least 21 states were targeted and at least some states had their voter registration rolls successfully penetrated. As a bizarre note that basically no one is talking about, a fair number of people believe Georgia's system was successfully hacked but Georgia destroyed all of their election data immediately after a lawsuit alleging the systems were hacked was filed. So take your pick: on the "low" end, it's Trump publicly saying on TV: "Russians, go get those emails!" and then Russia getting those private emails from Clinton and the DNC or on the other extreme , Trump had officials working directly with Russians to encourage hacking into the various systems.

Scenario 3: General Awareness
It's tough to gauge what charges could be brought, but let's say the evidence shows Russia infiltrated Trump's campaign/administration and the evidence shows he knew. Under this example, guys like Flynn and Manafort were Russian operatives. Trump was aware that Russia wanted him to win. Trump was aware Russia was interfering in the 2016 election. He was aware of the cyber attacks, he was aware of the rallies, he was aware of the general Russian campaign to get him elected, and he didn't inform anyone. He didn't go to the FBI, etc. He continued to employ guys like Flynn and Manafort. Maybe the evidence even shows he took advantage of this connection with things like the Don Jr meeting.

Scenario 4: Pee Tape
I'll admit, I'm a sucker for a salacious political story. But for the sake of discussion, let's assume this is as bad as it gets. The evidence shows Russia has some form of black mail on Trump. Whether it's the aforementioned tape (in my personal opinion, there's just no way that is damaging enough to Trump's reputation to legitimately justify this scenario) or financial records or whatever, the idea is Trump knows the Russian government has dirt on him and he's doing what they ask. If Putin says to not enforce sanctions, Trump doesn't enforce those sanctions, etc.

Questions:
Would you support impeachment under any of these scenarios (assuming clear cut evidence)? If no, why not? If none of them independently rise to the level of impeachment, would a combination of any of them?

Personally, I think each of these independently rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. I will say that I think a combination of 1 and 3 or a combination of 2 and 3 would be clear grounds for impeachment, in my mind. If the evidence showed Trump was aware of Russia's support for his campaign, and he knew there were people in his campaign potentially compromised, it would be crazy to instruct Comey to stop investigating Flynn and/or crazy to not inform the FBI/CIA of Russian attempts at hacking.

[jdshock]

jdshock , I know you said you didn’t want to get into it, but if you don’t mind, would you describe what you mean when you say, “generational wealth is a real problem?”

I’m not sure if I agree or not, or what solutions might be proposed.

I think we've talked about it ad nauseum before, so I'll keep it brief:

It's clearly easier to make money if you have money. Our society is based on principles of equal opportunity. We're not ever going to have a perfectly equal society (obviously, right? Even if every person had identical wealth, some people are going to be born smarter than others). But Bill Gates can establish trusts and investment accounts to provide for 5 generations of his family, easy. Generations of his family (and to be clear, Bill Gates by all accounts is not going to pursue this path) would never have to work a day in their life if they don't want to, and they would never have to live off of less than a $1m a year. All because they won the birth lottery. When we're talking about billions of dollars, the scale of money is just absurd compared to what normal rich people have. Inheriting $5 million is one thing. Inheriting $500 million is radically different.

Quick proposals off the top of my head:

• Higher estate taxes, or apply brackets to estate taxes (maybe $1m under is tax free, $1m to $5m is 20%, $5m to $50m is 40%, etc.).
• That obviously requires modification of trust and estate law generally. There are a couple of ways people regularly transfer large assets without paying estate taxes.
• I think we need to significantly modify the step-up for capital gains. A wealthy family is obviously not going to sell a significantly appreciated asset when the "owner" is on their death bed. They aren't in need of the money, so there's no benefit in selling. Once they pass away, the inheritors get the stepped up basis and we're losing out on significant amounts of capital gains taxes on things like real estate, art, antiques, etc.
• Similarly, I am not a huge fan of how charitable deductions work with capital gains. If you donate an appreciated asset to a charity, you get to write off the appreciated value without ever having actually realized the appreciated value in your income. Obviously, in an ideal world, charitable deductions are only given when the charity is a good organization (probably not really the case in reality), but it's still a huge benefit to the massively wealthy.

[ShockTalk]

jdshock, I really enjoy your posts and doing a very good job at keeping the discussion civil.

However, I had to chuckle about your starting point on estate tax. It may be a surprise to many, but having $1m, maybe even $5m, at death today does not make one part of the "rich" and that that money should be taxed (again) at 20% or any rate. There is also so much difference between $5-10m vs $40-50m.

In many parts of the US, the "middle class" income will range up into the $100,000-150,000 range. Do the math on a conservative investment and what $1m generates pre tax at retirement. How about $5m? One needs to be clear on what that definition of "wealthy family" really means.

Also, middle America invests where capital gains are present. Do we treat them with a modified step-up (double taxation) as you would those who are truly wealthy?

[jdshock]

ShockTalk, I agree there's a huge difference between $5m, $50m, and $500m. I didn't put much thought into the numbers and percentages. It was meant to just lay out a framework for what I think makes sense. The difference between the numbers is why I think it's a good idea to have brackets for estate tax purposes, though. It's also why I think it's crazy our income tax brackets stop at $400k. You're telling me an executive making $400k a year should get taxed at the same marginal tax rate as someone making $250m? But that's exactly my point. I said it elsewhere, inheriting $5m is one thing. It's a lot of money, but it's not "screw you" money. $500m is. I wasn't clear, but by the "etc" I meant you have a progressive tax system that increases percentages as you get higher and higher.

As for the idea that the "money should be taxed (again) at 20%:" well, that's just the heart of the disagreement. It hasn't been taxed yet, in my opinion. If you pay me for services, I have to pay income tax on that money because it's new to me. No one cares that you gave it to me in after tax money. It's getting taxed at 20% for the first time.

I think primary residences (maybe up to $1m?) should still get the step up in basis. A family home might just be one of the most important assets a middle class American can invest in. Without the step up in basis, you might hit ancestors with a huge tax bill if their parents bought the home for $50k thirty years ago but now it's $500k. As for the rest of the assets, I think you shouldn't get a step up. If you don't want to sell the asset, you don't have to and then you never realize the gain. If you sell it, you should be responsible for the capital gains. I think part of my really, truly out there proposal would be to still have lower long term capital gains rates, but have it only be 10+ years. That way it really only benefits purchases like houses, etc.

[Kel Varnsen]

I think we've talked about it ad nauseum before, so I'll keep it brief:

It's clearly easier to make money if you have money. Our society is based on principles of equal opportunity. We're not ever going to have a perfectly equal society (obviously, right? Even if every person had identical wealth, some people are going to be born smarter than others). But Bill Gates can establish trusts and investment accounts to provide for 5 generations of his family, easy. Generations of his family (and to be clear, Bill Gates by all accounts is not going to pursue this path) would never have to work a day in their life if they don't want to, and they would never have to live off of less than a $1m a year. All because they won the birth lottery. When we're talking about billions of dollars, the scale of money is just absurd compared to what normal rich people have. Inheriting $5 million is one thing. Inheriting $500 million is radically different.

Quick proposals off the top of my head:

• Higher estate taxes, or apply brackets to estate taxes (maybe $1m under is tax free, $1m to $5m is 20%, $5m to $50m is 40%, etc.).
• That obviously requires modification of trust and estate law generally. There are a couple of ways people regularly transfer large assets without paying estate taxes.
• I think we need to significantly modify the step-up for capital gains. A wealthy family is obviously not going to sell a significantly appreciated asset when the "owner" is on their death bed. They aren't in need of the money, so there's no benefit in selling. Once they pass away, the inheritors get the stepped up basis and we're losing out on significant amounts of capital gains taxes on things like real estate, art, antiques, etc.
• Similarly, I am not a huge fan of how charitable deductions work with capital gains. If you donate an appreciated asset to a charity, you get to write off the appreciated value without ever having actually realized the appreciated value in your income. Obviously, in an ideal world, charitable deductions are only given when the charity is a good organization (probably not really the case in reality), but it's still a huge benefit to the massively wealthy.

At the risk of being argumentative, it's their money. Why does the money belong to other people and not the original benefactor (and thus, his/her descendants)? I don't care one iota if Bill Gates or Charles Koch has obscene amounts of money. Their massive wealth means very little to me in my day-to-day life so long as they don't prevent me from pursuing my economic best interest.

[jdshock]

At the risk of being argumentative, it's their money. Why does the money belong to other people and not the original benefactor (and thus, his/her descendants)? I don't care one iota if Bill Gates or Charles Koch has obscene amounts of money. Their massive wealth means very little to me in my day-to-day life so long as they don't prevent me from pursuing my economic best interest.

Is there something I could say that would ever convince you to come around on this topic? This topic is so polarizing that here is what happened: (1) I said Trump lied when he said wealthy people were worse off under his tax plan; (2) WuDrWu interpreted that as me saying I hate wealthy people and demanding that I clarify why the left hate the rich so much; (3) I clarified that I was not making a tax argument, briefly said that I have gone on the record indicating my tax plan preferences, but that was not my original post; (4) wufan saw that and asked for clarification about why I might oppose generational wealth; (5) I explained; and (6) you have now picked an argument with the basis of my beliefs. You can't even mention the topic of taxes without people running it into the ground.

But whatever, we can rehash the same argument. Your base argument is it's their money. My argument is that it's not their money. By definition. I mean, how can it be? If Bill Gates gives money to his child, it's no longer Bill Gates's money. The extreme of your argument is why do I have to pay income taxes period? It's my money! If you pay income taxes on your salary, and then you hire me with your after tax dollars, why do I have to pay income taxes on that money? You should be able to do with it what you want, which means I shouldn't be on the hook for income taxes.

No one argues that service providers have to pay income taxes on money that comes in. Why shouldn't estate taxes be taxed at ordinary income levels?

As for the last portion of your argument, you not paying taxes has very little effect on my day-to-day life. In the aggregate, it does have an effect.