2016 Presidential Horse Race

[kmoose]

I don't want a handout. I'm just explaining why I had to do what I did.

I am dealing with my debt as best I can and I'm not relying at all on anyone to help me.

I don't want free healthcare. I don't want free education. I'm about as fiscally conservative as it gets.

But you would vote for Trump if he proposed forgiving your student loan debt?

 

[BleedBlueGold]

I agree with you on the bolded - I don't think you'll get much argument from either side of the aisle that the tax code needs to be simplified in order to avoid, for example, situations where a guy like Mitt Romney ends up with a 14% effective tax rate - but I don't think that really encompasses what Bernie's proposing. I'm a 24 year old single dude, I do my own taxes for free on H&R Block. I'm certainly not utilizing any sort of fancy loopholes to lower my tax rate, nor would I consider myself "rich," but Bernie still wants to take an additional ~$9k out of my pocket every year. That's why I cannot and will not ever support him.

Understood. I'll end with this: That additional $9k, if coming from Vox, I'd hesitate to take it as a hard truth. Those making $250,000 or less won't see an increase in Federal Taxes (payroll and healthcare, yes).

 

[koonja]

But you would vote for Trump if he proposed forgiving your student loan debt?

I would.

 

[woolybug25]

I was here also... I also went to school right during an era when higher ed. costs ballooned and the cost for my final year was significantly higher than what it was during my first year... I also wasn't eligible for some of the programs/help many of my friends took advantage of since I was a white male with married parents (who didn't make anything as already alluded to). I'm very much better off with my degrees but yeah,...

You're a teacher, correct? I'm sure it is a fulfilling career and you're happy with it, but let me use your career as a hypothetical example...

By "much better off", let's assume you mean decent wage, because I think all can agree, that there is no argument that could argue people are entitled to enjoym of their job. Do you think that if you avoided college all together, and instead went to work at a machine shop, that you wouldn't be making the same or more money?

You not only would probably be making more, but owe no student debt and have 4-6 years more of retirement savings. This myth that college is essential to prosperity is lie that is constantly shoved down our throat. That is the core of the rising higher education cost issue.

 

[gkIrish]

But you would vote for Trump if he proposed forgiving your student loan debt?

First of all, I wouldn't vote for anyone if they "proposed" something. I would have to think they could actually get it done.

Second, I already said I was joking about voting for someone if they would forgive my debt. I'm not an "absolute issue voter" and I also vote on what's best for the country rather than myself. Because ultimately what's best for the country is best for me.

Third I'm not affirmatively voting for Trump under any circumstance. I may abstain altogether but won't cast a "Trump" vote.

 

[ACamp1900]

You're a teacher, correct? I'm sure it is a fulfilling career and you're happy with it, but let me use your career as a hypothetical example...

By "much better off", let's assume you mean decent wage, because I think all can agree, that there is no argument that could argue people are entitled to enjoym of their job. Do you think that if you avoided college all together, and instead went to work at a machine shop, that you wouldn't be making the same or more money?

You not only would probably be making more, but owe no student debt and have 4-6 years more of retirement savings. This myth that college is essential to prosperity is lie that is constantly shoved down our throat. That is the core of the rising higher education cost issue.

Was, I'm in administration for a local University now... and you're right, everyone else in my family works/worked in labor of some sort... they're doing fine/okay/ well to varying degress, I wanted more and was told over and over higher ed was the way to go...........

 

[kmoose]

First of all, I wouldn't vote for anyone if they "proposed" something. I would have to think they could actually get it done.

Second, I already said I was joking about voting for someone if they would forgive my debt. I'm not an "absolute issue voter" and I also vote on what's best for the country rather than myself. Because ultimately what's best for the country is best for me.

Understood.

 

[woolybug25]

I don't think anyone's saying they're entitled to anything. But if a pres candidate promised to forgive federal student loans, I'd vote the F out of him.

I'm not sure you understand what the word "entitled" means.

You are pretty much saying that you know it's wrong, but if a Prez allowed you to steal other people's money to pay your debts, you would be all for it.

Strong character trait, brotato chip.

 

[gkIrish]

I'm not sure you understand what the word "entitled" means.

You are pretty much saying that you know it's wrong, but if a Prez allowed you to steal other people's money to pay your debts, you would be all for it.

Strong character trait, brotato chip.

To be fair though, increasing taxes on the rich to pay for the poor is a form of "stealing" other people's money. It's all about how you frame something.

 

[koonja]

I'm not sure you understand what the word "entitled" means.

You are pretty much saying that you know it's wrong, but if a Prez allowed you to steal other people's money to pay your debts, you would be all for it.

Strong character trait, brotato chip.

You would twist a hypothetical candidate's policy on tax into personal theft for me, lol.

I'm not going into this, have a field day with it.

 

[Wild Bill]

Have you tried any of these programs?

Learn More – Freedom Student Aid

These repayment plans no doubt help some debtors maintain payments but they're also very self serving. Student loan lenders enjoy a nice perk in the bankruptcy code at the moment and the repayment policies work to prevent discharge in bankruptcy under the current law (nearly impossible to prove "undue hardship" if the payment is dictated by your income) AND prevent/delay changes to the law to eliminate their exception to discharge.

 

[kmoose]

These repayment plans no doubt help some debtors maintain payments but they're also very self serving. Student loan lenders enjoy a nice perk in the bankruptcy code at the moment and the repayment policies work to prevent discharge in bankruptcy under the current law (nearly impossible to prove "undue hardship" if the payment is dictated by your income) AND prevent/delay changes to the law to eliminate their exception to discharge.

That's probably the tradeoff for these banks risking billions of dollars on people who mostly have no credit history, and risking those billions at much lower interest rates than the borrowers credit score would otherwise indicate. But the idea behind the programs is to help the person avoid extreme measures like bankruptcy.

 

[connor_in]

#Gaffiganbacon2016

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Here's TAC's Daniel McCarthy on what he got wrong and right about Trump:

Last July I wrote that Donald Trump was merely a “blip,” a novelty candidate who couldn’t do much better than 17 percent in the polls. He would swiftly go the way of Herman Cain.

In August, I still didn’t believe the Trump hype. The 2016 race, I predicted, would see an early surge for a religious right candidate, followed by the inevitable nomination of the establishment favorite, probably Jeb Bush. After the Iowa caucuses, I was sure my scenario was playing out, only with Rubio in place Bush.

I was as wrong about Trump’s popularity as it’s possible to get. But I got a few things right, and it’s worth accounting for how I could miss the big story while getting much of the background right.

The simplest answer, if an incomplete one, is that Trump filled exactly the space I expected to be taken by the establishment’s candidate. The race has indeed come down to the front-runner and the candidate with the most appeal to the religious right (Cruz). Only the front-runner isn’t the establishment’s man, it’s Trump.

One mistake I made at the outset, in my July story, was to discount the value of Trump’s celebrity and command of the media relative to Jeb Bush’s super PAC millions. Earned media beat paid media hands down. But something more fundamental accounts for Trump’s success and Bush’s failure, a change in the Republican electorate that I willfully overlooked.

Evidence of that change was plain for all to see: Republican voters who once had seemingly prioritized electability were now prioritizing outsiderdom. The Tea Party had illustrated this as far back as 2010. In Delaware, a state not known as a hotbed of right-wing activity, Republican voters that year sacrificed a chance to win a U.S. Senate seat with the moderate Rep. Mike Castle and instead nominated a right-leaning minor media figure who had never held elective office: Christine O’Donnell. She was only the most telling of several weak outsider candidates the Tea Party propelled to victory in Republican contests and then defeat in November, that year and in subsequent cycles. The Tea Party did, of course, also notch up several victories with outsider candidates: with Rand Paul and Mike Lee in 2010, for example, and with Ted Cruz in 2012. All of these Tea Party Republicans, winners and losers, beat establishment shoo-ins. Republican voters seemed less concerned about winning or losing than about nominating someone who would take on the GOP’s insiders as well as the Democrats.

But those were mostly midterm elections, at any rate congressional or state elections, and surely the presidential nomination was another matter entirely. Grassroots activists might swing the outcome of an off-year primary or a state convention, but presidential primaries brought out your unexcitable, pragmatic, bread-and-butter Republicans, the ones who had nominated Ford in ’76, Dole in ’96, and who did, in fact, nominate Mitt Romney in 2012.

The party seemed to follow a pattern from 1968 onwards of always nominating the most familiar name, usually the previous cycle’s runner-up: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Dole, Bush II, McCain, and Romney. And the only nominees since World War II who weren’t favored by the party’s elite, Goldwater in 1964 and Reagan in 1980, were only partial exceptions to the GOP’s establishmentarian bent. Goldwater had paid his dues as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the conditions of the 1964 election made that year’s nomination a rather dubious prize for whoever might win it. Reagan, meanwhile, had been governor of California and only won the nomination in 1980 after having been rebuffed in 1976 and 1968.

Romney’s cruise to the nomination in 2012 fit exactly the model I expected—the one I went badly wrong with by applying to the 2016 race. I should have paid closer attention to something that had surprised me in 2012, something that in retrospect was an obvious harbinger of Trump: Newt Gingrich’s victory in that year’s South Carolina primary. That was significant because South Carolina, despite its reputation for being a right-wing state, had in fact been an establishment bulwark in past cycles. To be sure, John McCain, whose insurgent candidacy in 2000 was styled as more reformist and progressive than George W. Bush’s, was opposed by right-leaning Republican voters as well as establishmentarian ones in that year’s South Carolina contest. But South Carolina had also blocked Pat Buchanan in 1996, and for all the vaunted strength of the religious right in the Palmetto State, Christian conservatives like Mike Huckabee always lost South Carolina, even when they won Iowa.

Gingrich’s victory, however, showed that by 2012, South Carolina voters were not interested in robotically voting for the most supposedly electable candidate—the establishment’s pick and the last cycle’s runner-up. And if I’d really paid attention, I would have noticed that whoever the voters supporting Gingrich were, they were not the kind of religious right voters whose behavior elsewhere–in Iowa, for example—might be predictable. South Carolina in 2012 previewed a 2016 cycle in which neither electability nor ideological purity would be voters’ top priority. (Gingrich is viewed by many progressives as the living embodiment of conservatism, but on the right Gingrich has long been seen as a wildly heterodox figure. Gingrich is fervently but informally backing Trump this year.)

If Gingrich was a surprise in South Carolina four years ago, bigger surprises over the last two years should have been as much of a wake-up call as I, or anyone else, needed. In 2014, Republican primary voters in Virginia toppled the House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor, and nominated a right-leaning economics professor with no political experience in his place. Cantor, along with Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan, was touted by insider Republicans and the conservative establishment in DC as a “Young Gun”—the future of the Republican Party. But actual Republican voters opted for an alternate future. And last year, the rising tide of insurgency in the GOP took down an even bigger gun—if not a young one—the House speaker himself, John Boehner. After Boehner’s resignation, Paul Ryan picked up the gavel with some reluctance. Many mainstream journalists and establishment conservatives in the media have suggested that Ryan could be the GOP’s nominee this summer in a contested convention. I suspect Ryan can read the writing on the wall better than that: his fate will be the same as his predecessor’s and the same as his fellow young gun’s if he gets on the wrong side of the outsider wave.

Cantor’s fall and Boehner’s resignation showed that the establishment, whose fearsome power I overestimated in my predictions about Bush and Rubio, had already been crippled before Trump arrived on the scene. The Tea Party had shown, too, that from Delaware to Utah to Kentucky to Texas, Republican voters were as hostile toward their party’s establishment as they were toward Democrats. Maybe more so, in the case of places where hopeless candidates like O’Donnell were nominated, giving establishment Republicans a black eye but guaranteeing the Democrats a Senate seat. The Trump phenomenon expresses much the same priority among Republican voters: better to lose with Trump, a plurality of Republicans are saying, than win with Bush or Rubio. (And a fortiori, better to win or lose with Trump than lose with Bush or Rubio.)

My theory from August that the runner-up in this year’s contest would be the religious right’s champion has been half-correct. Cruz is indeed the second-place candidate in terms of votes and delegates, and Cruz has been winning those voters who are most religious—though Trump has proved to have plenty of pull with evangelicals himself. But in August I highlighted the differences between the religious right and other conservative voters. Cruz, by contrast, has become the candidate of movement conservatives, the religious right, and, however reluctantly, the Republican establishment itself, yet all of that is still not enough to beat Trump. I had thought that the split between the religious right and Goldwater-Reagan conservatives explained their failure to beat the establishment in years past. But even together with the establishment, they can’t overcome the outsider insurgency and the Donald.

But that leads me to reaffirm my analysis from July, when I got Trump and Bush so spectacularly wrong. Because what I did get right I was even more right about than I knew. Namely:

none of the factions—the libertarians, the religious right, the Tea Party—have much life in them. After all the sound and fury of the Obama years, no quarter of the right has generated ideas or leaders that compellingly appeal even to other Republicans, let alone to anyone outside the party. … The various factions’ policies aren’t generating any excitement, which leaves room for an outsize, outrageous personality, in this case Trump, to grab attention.

Trump succeeds because of more than outsize personality, of course. He attracts some support from everyone who thinks that Conservatism, Inc. and the GOP establishment are self-serving frauds—everyone who feels betrayed by the party and its ideological publicists. Working-class whites know that the Republican Party isn’t their party. Christian conservatives who in the past have supported Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson also know that the GOP won’t deliver for them. Moderates have been steadily alienated from the GOP by movement conservatives, yet hard-right immigration opponents feel marginalized by the party as well. Paleoconservatives and antiwar conservatives have been excommunicated on more than one occasion by the same establishment that’s now losing control to Trump. They can only applaud what Trump’s doing, even if Trump himself is no Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul.

Conservative Republicans™ somehow maneuvered themselves into a position of being too hardline for moderates and non-ideologues, but not hardline or ideological enough for the right. Trump, on the other hand, appeals both to the hard right and to voters whose economic interests would, in decades past, have classed them as moderates of the center-left—lunch-pail voters.

What’s even more remarkable is that movement conservatives, who have been given plenty of warning, ever since 2006, that their formula is exhausted, keep doing the same thing over and over again: they’ll dodge right, in a way that right-wingers find unsatisfactory but that moderates find appalling; then they’ll weave back to the center, in a way that doesn’t fool centrists and only angers the right. Immigration—which was another of George W. Bush’s stumbling blocks, lest we forget—has been the issue that symbolized movement-conservative Republicanism’s futility most poignantly. It’s not even clear that most GOP voters agree with Trump’s rhetorical hard-line on immigration—they just like it better than the two-faced talk of the average Republican politician.

Trump has a plethora of weaknesses, as general election polls amply demonstrate. But just look what he’s up against within the Republican Party: that’s why he’s winning. I should have recognized that last summer, but I thought voters would never break their habit of preferring “electable” candidates. It turns out that voters have much more capacity to learn and adapt—even if only by trial and error—than Republican elites do.

 

[EddytoNow]

To be fair though, increasing taxes on the rich to pay for the poor is a form of "stealing" other people's money. It's all about how you frame something.

If the salaries of the wealthiest were more modest to begin with (Let's say 5 x instead of 500 x the salary of the working class) there would be no need to tax the rich to pay for the subsistence living level living of the poor. The poor have no desire to take any money the rich have already earned. They are just asking for a more equitable distribution of income upfront.

When a major league baseball player or executive gets paid more for pitching one inning of baseball or working one day at the office than the average worker makes in a year (or in many cases over a career) there is something wrong with the wage structure that allows that to happen. It's not about taking money that you've got stashed in the bank or invested in stocks. It's about paying everyone a decent wage upfront, so they won't need your support.

 

[irishroo]

If the salaries of the wealthiest were more modest to begin with (Let's say 5 x instead of 500 x the salary of the working class) there would be no need to tax the rich to pay for the subsistence living level living of the poor. The poor have no desire to take any money the rich have already earned. They are just asking for a more equitable distribution of income upfront.

When a major league baseball player or executive gets paid more for pitching one inning of baseball or working one day at the office than the average worker makes in a year (or in many cases over a career) there is something wrong with the wage structure that allows that to happen. It's not about taking money that you've got stashed in the bank or invested in stocks. It's about paying everyone a decent wage upfront, so they won't need your support.

Why?

 

[gkIrish]

If the salaries of the wealthiest were more modest to begin with (Let's say 5 x instead of 500 x the salary of the working class) there would be no need to tax the rich to pay for the subsistence living level living of the poor. The poor have no desire to take any money the rich have already earned. They are just asking for a more equitable distribution of income upfront.

I know a lot of poor people that would disagree with you.

When a major league baseball player or executive gets paid more for pitching one inning of baseball or working one day at the office than the average worker makes in a year (or in many cases over a career) there is something wrong with the wage structure that allows that to happen. It's not about taking money that you've got stashed in the bank or invested in stocks. It's about paying everyone a decent wage upfront, so they won't need your support.

We have a fundamental disagreement on what "equitable" means. No one forces people to go to baseball games or watch baseball on television. The players make so much money because they generate a ton of revenue. If you don't want them to make what they do, you are going to have to convince people to stop going to games.

Also, let me flip the question on you. What incentive does a person have to become a doctor if they are only going to make 2x or 3x that of an average worker? It takes 7+ years of schooling/residency to become a doctor. No one is going to do that if they are going to make $100,000 per year long term. I personally want the brightest members of our society to become doctors so I have no desire to tax the hell out of them to the point that it's not worth it.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

If the salaries of the wealthiest were more modest to begin with (Let's say 5 x instead of 500 x the salary of the working class) there would be no need to tax the rich to pay for the subsistence living level living of the poor. The poor have no desire to take any money the rich have already earned. They are just asking for a more equitable distribution of income upfront.

When a major league baseball player or executive gets paid more for pitching one inning of baseball or working one day at the office than the average worker makes in a year (or in many cases over a career) there is something wrong with the wage structure that allows that to happen. It's not about taking money that you've got stashed in the bank or invested in stocks. It's about paying everyone a decent wage upfront, so they won't need your support.

This is one of the obvious examples: Top CEOs Make 300 Times More than Typical Workers: Pay Growth Surpasses Stock Gains and Wage Growth of Top 0.1 Percent | Economic Policy Institute

Robert Reich (The Outrageous Ascent of CEO Pay)

The Growth of Executive Pay by Lucian A. Bebchuk, Yaniv Grinstein :: SSRN

 

[kmoose]

Also, let me flip the question on you. What incentive does a person have to become a doctor if they are only going to make 2x or 3x that of an average worker? It takes 7+ years of schooling/residency to become a doctor. No one is going to do that if they are going to make $100,000 per year long term. I personally want the brightest members of our society to become doctors so I have no desire to tax the hell out of them to the point that it's not worth it.

Because it's better than being an attorney?

There are plenty of altruistic reasons that people would continue to pursue careers in medicine, even if they weren't getting wealthy from it.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

I know a lot of poor people that would disagree with you.



We have a fundamental disagreement on what "equitable" means. No one forces people to go to baseball games or watch baseball on television. The players make so much money because they generate a ton of revenue. If you don't want them to make what they do, you are going to have to convince people to stop going to games.

Also, let me flip the question on you. What incentive does a person have to become a doctor if they are only going to make 2x or 3x that of an average worker? It takes 7+ years of schooling/residency to become a doctor. No one is going to do that if they are going to make $100,000 per year long term. I personally want the brightest members of our society to become doctors so I have no desire to tax the hell out of them to the point that it's not worth it.

See my above post. I don't believe the problem is with salaries 2x, 3x, even 10x average salary. It's the 300x that bothers people. Especially when that is combined with outsourcing jobs/American layoffs, corporate tax dodging, subsidies, etc.

Edit: I want to add (specific to Bernie, since it's a huge deal to some people) that he says the 1% often...but he refers to the 0.1% a lot. These are the people he wants to go after. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon makes over $25M a year, yet Walmart is notorious for paying shit wages and having shit benefits and also storing over $75B in offshore tax havens. This is what outrages Bernie and it's what's outraging a lot of American citizens. This isn't about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. It's about not stacking the deck against anyone who isn't in the bottom 90% in this country and making corporations like Walmart act a little more fairly. Costco is a fantastic model.

 

[irishroo]

See my above post. I don't believe the problem is with salaries 2x, 3x, even 10x average salary. It's the 300x that bothers people. Especially when that is combined with outsourcing jobs/American layoffs, corporate tax dodging, subsidies, etc.

Edit: I want to add (specific to Bernie, since it's a huge deal to some people) that he says the 1% often...but he refers to the 0.1% a lot. These are the people he wants to go after. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon makes over $25M a year, yet Walmart is notorious for paying shit wages and having shit benefits and also storing over $75B in offshore tax havens. This is what outrages Bernie and it's what's outraging a lot of American citizens. This isn't about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. It's about not stacking the deck against anyone who isn't in the bottom 90% in this country and making corporations like Walmart act a little more fairly. Costco is a fantastic model.

He doesn't make $25M a year in spite of doing all of this, he makes $25M a year because he does it. He maximizes shareholder value to the fullest extent possible within the law, and shareholders are willing to pay him a lot because of it. If I were a Wal-Mart shareholder that's exactly what I'd want the CEO doing, too.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

He doesn't make $25M a year in spite of doing all of this, he makes $25M a year because he does it. He maximizes shareholder value to the fullest extent possible within the law, and shareholders are willing to pay him a lot because of it. If I were a Wal-Mart shareholder that's exactly what I'd want the CEO doing, too.

The difference is I'm looking out the employees and you're looking out for the share holders...

 

[irishroo]

The difference is I'm looking out the employees and you're looking out for the share holders...

Yep, and we'll just have to agree to disagree on that because it's essentially a foundational disagreement on the role of business.

 

[NorthDakota]

The difference is I'm looking out the employees and you're looking out for the share holders...

The CEO's job is to look after the latter's interests.

 

[gkIrish]

The CEO's job is to look after the latter's interests.

Exactly. There are millions of Apple of Amazon or Facebook shareholders that have made a nice little profit on the gains from the stock values. The CEO might be getting paid $20 million dollars but he has a direct impact on BILLIONS of dollars in gains for the shareholders like you or me. So I think he has earned every penny he makes.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

So am I to gather you look at Bernie absolutely curb stomping Hillary as having nothing to do with her being a criminal, and everything to do with people hating Trump. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there is some Trump crossover....but thats change my party anger...where Hillary is just a simple screw her crooked ass. I'm going with him winning due to response to Hillary's crooked ass...

I think the 'Clinton Criminal Effect,' is minimized by the fact that so many in the progressive voting block want a female President.

Don't get me wrong, as big a crook as Bill was, he was still the best Republican President since Eisenhower.

NAFTA, loosening market trading rules, etc.

 

[kmoose]

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon makes over $25M a year, yet Walmart is notorious for paying shit wages and having shit benefits and also storing over $75B in offshore tax havens. This is what outrages Bernie and it's what's outraging a lot of American citizens. This isn't about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. It's about not stacking the deck against anyone who isn't in the bottom 90% in this country and making corporations like Walmart act a little more fairly. Costco is a fantastic model.

I'm always suspicious of the claims about WalMart. I know a dozen or so people who work full time at WalMart, and they are ok with the wages they make(who WOULDN'T want to make more), and they are THRILLED with their benefits. However, WalMart has a ton of part-time workers that could account for all of the accusations. But, beyond that........ I think roo makes a good point:

He doesn't make $25M a year in spite of doing all of this, he makes $25M a year because he does it. He maximizes shareholder value to the fullest extent possible within the law, and shareholders are willing to pay him a lot because of it. If I were a Wal-Mart shareholder that's exactly what I'd want the CEO doing, too.

It is Wall Street that drives a good portion of these practices. And Wall Street answers to investors............... in other words; me, you, wooly, and everyone else on this board with a 401K or an IRA. But they also answer to all of the "day traders". "Day Trading" has become some kind of supplemental income that it shouldn't be. Short term investing on Wall Street is putting incredible pressures on CEOs to maximize returns. THAT is the issue we really should be looking at addressing. Get rid of those pressures, THEN shame the CEOs who don't adapt back to better compensation for their workers.

 

[woolybug25]

The difference is I'm looking out the employees and you're looking out for the share holders...

Why do you think the employees are more important than the shareholders? The latter are the ones ponying up their money to give those employees the ability to have a job. The employees can simply go get a different job if the company fails, the shareholder loses their money.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

I get what you all are saying. Maybe I should make it clear that I think it's more of a moral issue with me. Because, Wooly, I don't think employees are "more important" than shareholders. I just feel like employees, in some companies, are taken advantage of. And then when you look at the lack of unions, said employees are losing their bargaining power to grow their pay and grow their benefits. All while this is happening, the fat cats are getting fatter.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

The idea behind that tax calculator for each candidate is cool but this is hardly accurate. But I'll play along anyways. Even if my taxes go up the $10k this suggests. Is it subtracting out the costs of healthcare, which in my family is more than $12,000 per year? Lets say after it's said and done, my taxes Do go up. Personally, I'm ok with that because I don't vote based on my bank account. Voting and politics (for me) is about the country, not just my pocket book. So if my taxes go up, but it means tax revenues have money to pay for better infrastructure, better schools, better medical care, etc for everyone...then yeah, sign me up.

The difference between Cruz and Bernie for me is over $25k. I loathe Ted Cruz, but if my choice was between those two, how do I not cast a vote for that? If they both were able to put their plans in, then Bernie getting elected = me writing a check for $100k for his first term... for which I will see ZERO improvement to my status quo.

HillDog makes my taxes go up $400ish. Once again she comes through as the most pragmatic choice, even if she is dislikable... or corrupt... or a criminal... or tried to silence/smear rape victims... or...

BleedB&G has the answer.

This tax table is disingenuous, bordering on libelous.

It is just as fair for me to say that for every dollar increase in taxes you suffer, you will receive a $1.50 in benefits that would eliminate expenses for which you are currently paying.

I am pretty close. Closer than the smoke and mirrors provided by this tax calculator.

I don't have to work another day in my life. My assets are paid for. Life is good. I am certainly not a high income, high overhead individual. But I would save damned close to half again as much as every dollar additional I paid in under Bernie's plan.