Writes Trump, on Truth Social.
May 9, 2025
"The problem with even a 'TINY' tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept..."
"... in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, 'Read my lips,' the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I'm OK if they do!!!"
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48 comments:
Yes, Trump is absolutely correct. You need to understand the Democrats are controlled by Leftwing Billionaires and multi-millionaires. They're support for the poor and working class is just tactical, its the route to votes and power.
So, if trump wants the raise tarriffs to protect workers, the D's scream about "Inflation" and "Trade wars!!!". If he talks about stopping illegal immigration (which would help USA workers) the D's switch to "what about raising the minimum wage, huh huh?"
And if agreed to tax increase, they would just take and say it wasn't big enough, or change the subject to paid child care.
Notice, that Biden broke the RR strike and didn't do a Goddamn thing for US born workers, and the Left didn't care.
That's why all my Rich friends and Losertarian friends can stop worrying about "Socialism" - the Democrats are actually Big Business enjoyers. They just want power for corrupt deals and to impose their leftwing ideology on people.
When they finally publicized the love affair between Bill Clinton and Bush 41 (he regarded Clinton as another son), I was somewhat shocked. But then I realized, what was so leftwing about Bill Clinton? And what was so conservative about Georg H.W. Bush? The fact is they were both Globalist warmongers, and lovers of cheap labor and open borders.
Wow, talk about convoluted double-speak.
But, we all love it, right?
The trouble with a tax increase on the rich is that it's wildly counterproductive. It reduces investment by the same number of dollars, and those dollars bought heavy equipment for ditch diggers.
Tariffs are tax increases. They're a sales tax or a VAT on anything coming from overseas. And he's right; he'd better be ready to defend those tariffs at midterms, because he's going to be attacked over them.
Who government targets to pay a tax and who ultimately bears the economic burden of that tax are disturbingly different…
IT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAT DOGE CUT OUT THE COMMUNIST DEMOCRAT PARTY THEFT OF OUR MONEY.
It's not waste and fraud. It's Fraud and Theft.
Trump really wants to do it. That's clear to everyone, isn't it? And IMO he will, by and by, in an easy exercise of lame duckage. He understands that he needs to counterbalance all those impulsive, unwise, vote-buying tax cut promises he made in the campaign (tips, SocSec income, etc.)
You know what a tariff is? It's a tax on business owners who move jobs overseas. Democrats have zero problem calling that a tax on the poor.
There is no tax on the rich to reduce. Wealth taxes are forbidden by the constitution.
Income taxes too, but permitted by amendments.
Many "rich people pay little income tax because they have little income. See Buffet, Bezos, Musk and others.
Want to tax the rich? Pass an amendment
John Henry
Trump really wants to do it. That's clear to everyone, isn't it?
It is not particularly clear to me. I get more of a sense that he is agnostic towards the idea, that it really doesn't matter to his plans one or or the other.
I also generally don't go along with statements claiming to know the inner mind of a third party. 'Trump wants this' is a strawman setup. Much better if you admit that it is your opinion that Trump wants something, and then follow it up with evidence to support your opinion. Because I also cannot read your mind to understand why you feel the claim you make is true.
“ The trouble with a tax increase on the rich is that it's wildly counterproductive.”
Yes, that is so, globally. But if the American rich are not investing in companies that use the money to grow America jobs, then the American poor won’t benefit. Investment in China does not specifically create jobs for poor Americans.
Investment in China creates lower priced plastic crap, so the American poor can pretend to have good things, but no jobs.
And look at the markup US retailers put on Chinese consumer goods. US companies charge $500 for a dress that costs $12. I am not going to assume that the globalists are out there helping the poor in the US get low prices.
"agnostic towards the idea", in other words ...
Then I can put on my pissed off blue Chicago urbanite hat and say that the poor don’t need low prices because they steal everything from the stores at zero price anyway. But that is only for the poorest 10%.
>Aught Severn said...
Much better if you admit that it is your opinion that Trump wants something,<
Are you not familiar with the common internet initialism, "IMO" that I used?
>and then follow it up with evidence to support your opinion.<
Thanks for the tip but I'm simply stating an opinion, not writing a Masters thesis. It's nothing different from what most of us do here every day.
>I get more of a sense that he is agnostic towards the idea, that it really doesn't matter to his plans one or or the other.<
Much better if you admit that it is your opinion "that he is agnostic towards the idea, that it really doesn't matter to his plans one or or the other," and then follow it up with evidence to support your opinion.
"Tariffs are tax increases. They're a sales tax or a VAT on anything coming from overseas."
Only if those products continue coming from overseas. Tariffs are designed to end that practice. Jobs coming back to America result in massive tax receipts as those incomes slosh through our economy.
Tariffs are the most effective tax on the rich ever invented. It's why virtually every country lays them. The revenue come out of the pockets of shareholders, either directly ... or in the lowering of sales/profits.
As JH says, if you want to tax the wealthy you need an amendment.
The actually wealthy are very good at hiding income, basically as unrealized capital gains, which can of course be borrowed against as Mr Musk shows us.
In principle I would favor of such an amendment, but I would worry about it's misuse and the strategies for avoidance. An ideal wealth tax would slowly erode (confiscate) unproductive rentier wealth (i.e. what's tied in crappy NY real estate), while imposing only a minor penalty on productive and growing capital (again, Musk). The ideal is essentially impossible to achieve, and wealth taxes become just another tax accountant's game built for the rich.
Tariffs are a negotiating tactic, and a means to compensate for, and discourage labor and environmental arbitrage to restore a free market climate.
VAT. Sorry, it's the only way to fix the debt at this point. A consumption tax on expensive items is much more fair than a universal sales tax, tariffs, or cranking up the income tax. Unlike an income tax, it would encourage investment instead of buying another expensive car or plane or whatever. That's better for the country. Rich people have more money, so they matter more for taxes.
Raising tax on the rich. Its counter productive for who? For rich people. The idea that if we raised the top rate to 50 percent would "destroy investment" is absurd. Since the rich are the prime movers behind massive legal and illegal immigration and the drive for cheap labor, maybe we need less "Investment".
I see nothing incorrect in that post. Let's apply payroll taxes, which are taxes, to a portion of capital gains -- say, the same ceiling used for payroll taxes now, but free up some of the money to address debt.
Trump is a left-wing turd and always has been. He's pro-eliminant domain. Pro-welfare handouts. Remember the COVID gravy train? All that Pay Check Protection Act bullshit? Billions and billions in fraud? 100% on Trump. Taking American property to give it to Taiwanese conmen (Foxconn). More grafty, commie bullshit from "America First."
Trump is a fucking RINO and always has been.
"Billions and billions in fraud? 100% on Trump."
Is this a reference to the deals his kids are making? Or the crazy buying and dumping re certain big movers in the Trump Crime Family's crypto and media company stuff? Not to mention the elimination of the Justice Dept crypto enforcement team.
Billions and billions in fraud, 100% on Trump. Yep.
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump called for privatizing the air traffic control system by 2020 - a plan that went nowhere. Trump even suggested that slow sloggers and big spenders like Raytheon or IBM could be in charge, but nothing was ever budgeted.
Now, when Donny's second go-around begins, the alligators are crawling out of the Everglades. Further, the Don DOGES starring Elon Musk have reduced FAA headcounts in a department that is very understaffed and running old systems that lose contact with aircraft, which are killing some air travelers and endangering almost all others.
So Elon Musk is pushing SECTRANS Sean Duffy to exclusively grant SpaceX the right to use its Starlink satellites for air traffic control, although the FAA regulates SpaceX.
After announcing a program to hire and train 3,000 new ATCs, complete with huge bonuses and pay increases, Sean Duffy blows the lid off the top by taking the unusual approach of asking Congress to fund more than $31 billion over four years to replace 618 radar systems, rebuild outdated ATC and TRACON facilities, add six new centers, add more runways and install surface detection equipment to track landing aircraft for each controller.
"We’re confident that the system remains extremely safe,” President Donald Trump added during the announcement via phone. Translated, that means he will not wait to enrich himself and Elmo further by privatizing (if he can get away with it). SpaceX will suddenly be named Skylink which will be used in the privitization contract language.
One step forward. One step back. One piano falls on your head. One step over a cliff. No matter...
Trump painted himself into multiple tax-and-spend corners with his promises to not cut social programs, support the military, and do stuff like eliminating taxes on tips. Never mind his rapid crawl back from Peter Navarro's bizarre view on how tariffs function.
Musk's DOGE swung for the fences in pursuit of an imaginary $2T in "waste, fraud, and abuse" without a clue that Trump's FUNDING PROMISES were the overwhelming cause of potential "waste." Musk is also crawling back to his regular work (no remote work for government employees or Elon) after finding at most $150B to cut...so Trump and DC are going back to the generations-old status quo. Tax. Spend. Tax some more. Speak with a forked tongue to your voting base but don't rock the boat.
It's looking like the main thing to come out of Trump 47 is the hard right will make peace with the post-FDR government spending model and the Biden's puppet masters on the hard left will be ignored as the center left gets the lefty crazy oligarchs and woke folk under control.
Trump 47 = Clinton without NAFTA. Clinton and the 'triangulators' did in fact reduce the deficit during the 1990s. So...taxes will also go back to Clinton way?
A baby-boomer couple of our acquaintance are both Federal government lifer-employees, she now retired ex-USAID (never fails to mention this), he State Dept. Multiple foreign postings, overseas trips, and plenty perks; now the nice Fed pensions. They are of course outraged, in full TDS outrage, that income tax cuts should occur for us tail-end baby-boomer private-sector wage-slaves, with our puny 401K accounts rather than plush six-figure pensions, should be excused from any of our tax burdens. Same couple are busy lobbying city hall for more affordable housing, more homeless housing, more freebies and subsidies for low-income low-skill newcomers arriving in our modest working-class city from the Big City expecting instant Sec 8 certificates and cell phone.
Just curious, what would it take to make Enigma stop bellyaching?
Well, that didn’t last long.
"Trump pivots, says GOP should ‘probably not’ raise taxes on rich"
"The suggestion came one day after reports surfaced that the president was making a fourth-quarter push to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans in the GOP’s megabill."
It must be scary — losing your marbles so publicly.
Just extend the current rates, which are supposed to go back up this year, and that will be enough.
Is Trump "hard right"? Are his supporters? Did the "hard right" ever seriously oppose the "post-FDR government spending model"? Barry Goldwater might have that said he did -- he certainly would have prevented the "post-LBJ government spending model" from taking hold -- but even he wasn't going to "go back" to 1932. Neither was former Democrat Ronald Reagan, who didn't mount a real-world challenge to LBJ's model either. The dismantlement of USAID and DEI and the government-NGO complex, if that's what we're seeing, is a major step -- a bigger step than most certified conservatives in politics have taken or would take.
With Trump you never have to resort to lip reading.
good gravy, the first real curbing of the administrative state in two generations, and the belly aching,
Want to tax the rich? Pass an amendment
It would be un constitutional. Something about bills of attainder?
"Just curious, what would it take to make Enigma stop bellyaching?"
DOGE backing off the pressure on his civil service pets might help. Or not, who knows?
“It must be scary — losing your marbles so publicly.”
I’d imagine it’s enough to prompt a poster to change his moniker several times, no?
kaKAW! kaKAW!! kaKAWWWwwwww!!!!! 🤨
What the hell?
America has a tax and spend culture rooted in fantasy. It's why there's a $36 trillion national debt that's never talked about, until recently. Almost $1 trillion of tax revenue is directed to just service the interest on that debt. Social Security will soon pay out more than it takes in, yet if that reality is openly discussed you might end your political career. So, the really important issues are never discussed. America's favorite pastime is kicking the can down the road with a wink and a nod.
Nobody costs anyone the election other than the voters. We always look for anyone else to blame.
With the top 1% paying 46% of the entire tax burden at an average of 26%, 8 times the rate of bottom half who average 3%, this idea seems a little misplaced and shows why democracy leads to theft by a mob.
Like everybody else, but better, the wealthy will do whatever it takes to avoid taxation. Ask places like France, New York, and California. If you want less tax income and less prosperity for all, raise them taxes. We all know the government spends money better than any rich guy. They will make much better investments with it. We've seen it over and over.
How many of us would stay in a club that charged you 8 times the dues of the other members, half the members paid no dues, and then repeatedly voted to waste the money and give it to their friends and family?
Just today: "Highest Tax State of California Bracing for Budget Shortfall of Ten Billion or More"
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/05/report-highest-tax-state-california-bracing-budget-shortfall/
Just today: "Highest Tax State of California Bracing for Budget Shortfall of Ten Billion or More"
California's population is 40 million. If a quarter of those people went out and each shoplifted $1000 worth of stuff and gave it to the government, that would cover the shortfall.
And the insurance companies would pay for it all.
Gavy and his hand jive must be put in the rearview mirror. The man has no sense at all, much less a soul.
One bloke's opinion - Take all tax rates to where they were when Slick Willie was President. We ALL have to sacrifice to get to a balanced budget. Let's be honest and drop the dogma/theory.
"With the top 1% paying 46% of the entire tax burden at an average of 26%, 8 times the rate of bottom half who average 3%, this idea seems a little misplaced and shows why democracy leads to theft by a mob."
They pay more money because they make more money. If the Richest 1 percent made 99 percent of the money, they'd pay 99 percent of the taxes.
Poor rich men. Sads. Look, Bill Gates doesn't work any harder then Joe blow at the Gas station. Or Sarah the Nurse. And Gates contributes less to society. He basically has a monopoly. Is anyone gonna get a zillion dollars and put MS out of business? LOL.
Further, I'd suggest you look at how many rich people got that way through (1) Government contracts helping their business through (2) Government approved monopolies (3) Inheriting lots of money or (4) Gambling in the stock market.
Rich people need to pay more because they have more. During the USA's "boom years" 1946-1985 the top tax rate was over 50 percent and we did just great.
Basically all losertarian philosphy can be boiled down to (1) wah, wah, i don't like paying taxes and (2) why aren't hookers and Coke legal?
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