I actually 100% agree that he hasn’t thought it through that far but also 100% believe it will play out how I described.

He’s an instinctual fascist.

I’m pretty sure it’s to sort the congress-critters into those who will confirm whatever nonsense he picks and those who are “traitors”…

Damn. I knew I belonged on Mastodon but you didn’t have to be so blunt about it…

Even better, I bet he could sell the opportunity for his followers to do it for him.

That gives them a year or two to fix HKSV.

Not counting on it…

Washing machine drains to it to.

I hope you mean the dishwasher…

RIP K-9 units 😢

Honestly even putting this nonsense in a headline is negligent.

Exactly what I’d expect from someone that doesn’t know about sweat potatoes yet 🙄

But they don’t need an excuse. They can just do the thing.

I finally caught another of the YouTube ads and it was paid for by futureforwardusa.org.

The message, again, was very generic with friendly animation and cheery music. The message was the same. “Your vote is private; whether you vote is public” with the addition of “make a plan to vote”.

Let’s say “marginalized groups”…

I’ve mostly seen YouTube ads so not sure how to share those here. I happened to get another postcard today though, with the exact same wording is the one I linked to elsewhere in this thread:

If you look at votingmatters.org it says:

Paid for by the Democratic National Committee (202) 863-8000
This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

I’m honestly surprised Republicans are doing this unless it’s extremely targeted.

Increasing voter turnout generally works against them.

This is the first clearly partisan one I’ve seen.

Mostly I’ve seen them as videos that plainly state. “Who you vote for is secret. Whether you vote is public record”. I did get one handwritten postcard saying the same.

I found them mostly “interesting” as a concept, but others have felt they’re threatening:

The first one I saw I looked up the “Paid for by…” entity and it was a Kamala PAC so I just kinda assumed they all were before seeing this.

Both parties are running these style ads in my area.

This is BY FAR the creepiest iteration I’ve seen.

Yeah. I tried and failed to head it off at the pass. There are some good comments in here though.

I think the logical thing is to have those who most benefit from the infrastructure our taxes pay for

The poor benefit from roads, schools, firefighters, Medical/Medicaid, and utilities as much as anyone. But I think you had the super wealthy in mind. “Those who benefit from infrastructure” is an odd way to pinpoint the super wealthy.

Those who “most benefit” would be those who have been able to leverage the infrastructure and security provided to profit wildly. Not those who are just scraping by.

I think we do agree on all but degree like you said. And maybe mean/median income is too high. I was just trying to come up with a somewhat natural but objective breaking point. I think a more reasonable but also more subjective one might be the “living wage” which will certainly be much lower than mean/median but also much higher than $13k.

P.S. Tangentially related, I found this living wage calculator which put my current LCOL residence at ~$42k and my previous HCOL residence at ~$57k. Turned out to be much closer to Mean/median than I expected.

The standard deduction should be at least the median income…? Wouldn’t that mean that half of people would pay no income tax?

Half or more depending on mean or median. But that’s just a starting point for the discussion.

You might say this is what we should do, but I think it’s unreasonable to say that it’s a total head scratcher why we don’t already.

That’s not what I was intending to ask. Sorry if I phrased it poorly. I’m trying to understand the arguments against it because it’s what makes sense to me.

I just fail to see how this is placing the burden on the poor. It Is structured to do the exact opposite and give them the most breaks.

I think the logical thing is to have those who most benefit from the infrastructure our taxes pay for be the ones who contribute the most. And those that are seeing the least benefit be exempt.

I’d probably agree that the floor on the deduction should come up, and we should raise taxes on extreme wealth to make it up. But at least in its most essential form, income tax is already progressive.

This is almost exactly what I suggested. I think we’re basically on the same page.

Counterpoint: You’re the bad friend for asking your friend to help you with a dead body