VV wrote:

Dude, you can't say Ilk, It's elitist and that's why they voted for trump. The death of democracy is on you now.

 VV wrote:

Yay!

This seems like a good opportunity to thank Kurtster and his ilk for their support in the ongoing f*cking over of America by the current cruel and utterly clueless Administration.
 
Job well done boys!!
 
Go grab a beer ya knuckleheads!

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:

This feels a bit like someone sitting in one of Titanic's lifeboats  and shouting "ICEBERG!"

 Red_Dragon wrote:

😂 Spot on!

 rgio wrote:

Yes, that was me (and others). It would be dead simple, an proper/appropriate, to change the tax rules to say that if you use your stock as collateral, you have recognized a gain in the value and it should be taxed. This is simple, common sense, and it would eliminate 90+% of this practice (you could still do it, but it wouldn't have the tax advantage).

I listened to Ezra's Klien's podcast this week "Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won".   In the context of this website and the discussions with Kurt (et al), I think it provides some interesting insights into the country.  Here is an AI summary of the discussion:

Ezra Klein’s podcast discusses why Democrats lost to Trump, citing insights from David Shor. Trump gained among nonwhite and younger voters, and economic concerns like inflation were decisive. Educational polarization grew, with less-educated voters favoring Republicans. Democrats focused on Trump’s anti-democratic behavior, but voters prioritized economic improvements. Shor suggests Democrats should address economic issues and Trump’s unfulfilled promises. Klein concludes that Democrats must adapt to voter concerns to regain ground. The party needs to confront these realities to effectively compete in future elections.

As I listen, I can't help but hear Kurt saying "no shit, that's what I've been saying for years!"    No really... but this explains a lot of things we all sorta know but struggle to organize/verbalize.  

Here is a gift link to The NY Times article (with the podcast as a video).  It's worth viewing, because all of the charts are in the very long article below the video.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0...

 islander wrote:
Regarding the tax discussion....I'm 99% sure you wrote about the Buy, Borrow, Die strategy.  There's an article about it in the New Yorker recently, but it's paywalled.  It's available on Apple News too (where I'm reading it).

Beyond the strategy, they list some pretty compelling facts for change:

Much of the debate around American tax policy focuses on the income-tax rate paid by the very wealthiest Americans. But the bulk of those people’s fortunes doesn’t qualify as income in the first place. A 2021 ProPublica investigation of the private tax records of America’s 25 richest individuals found that they collectively paid an effective tax rate of just 3.4 percent on their total wealth gain from 2014 to 2018. Musk paid 3.3 percent, Jeff Bezos 1 percent, and Buffett—who has famously argued for imposing higher income-tax rates on the superrich—just 0.1 percent.

Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle and America’s fourth-richest person, has pledged more than $30 billion of his company’s stock as collateral in order to fund his lavish lifestyle, which includes building a $270 million yacht, buying a $300 million island, and purchasing an $80 million mansion. A Forbes analysis found that, as of April 2022, Musk had pledged Tesla shares worth more than $94 billion, which “serve as an evergreen credit facility, giving Musk access to cash when he needs it.”

This strategy isn’t as common among the merely very rich, who may not have the expensive tastes that Ellison and Musk do, but it isn’t rare either. Liscow and Fox calculated that the top 1 percent of wealth-holders, excluding the richest 400 Americans, borrowed more than $1 trillion in 2022.

Trillions of dollars per year in untaxed wealth...while the rabble fight over the scraps.  In Musk, you have a guy not paying taxes at all talking about the damage that inefficiency is doing to the country.  The same country that created the infrastructure and systems that allowed him to become so wealthy.

 islander wrote:
Luigi was one of those pitchforks.

 rgio wrote:

and Nick Hanauer: 

I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising.


Politicians have learned that there is no consequence for giving away public funds. Unfortunately, that is all under the 'spend' side of the ledger that will need to be fixed someday.

 islander wrote:
There are a lot of wealthy, smart, reasonable people who agree....

Bill Gates “Under the tax system I would go for, the wealthy would, say, have a third as much” money.
Warren Buffett  - “The wealthy are definitely undertaxed relative to the general population.”
George Soros - “I am in favor of taxing the rich, including a wealth tax.”
Mark Cuban - “It’s patriotic to get obscenely rich then pay big taxes.”
Marc Benioff - “Increasing taxes on high-income individuals like myself would help generate the trillions of dollars that we desperately need.”
Eli Broad - “It’s time to start talking seriously about a wealth tax… It’s time for those of us with great wealth to commit to reducing income inequality.”

A lot of very rich people have signed the "Giving Pledge".... including Elon and Zuck.  These folks know their wealth is ridiculous and needs to be distributed.  It's totally fair to say that the government isn't a good steward for the money, but the reality is they are spending it regardless.  That needs to be fixed, and government should be more efficient, but DOGE and lower taxes aren't the way.

I noted this before here... Trump is talking about reducing the debt by selling "Gold Card" US residency status to lower the debt, meanwhile he supports a $5,000 per person DOGE refund to "share the savings".  Insanity.  Raise taxes, lower the cost of the government, balance the budget.  2/3rds of that used to be Republican bedrock.

 black321 wrote:

I don't disagree, but their policies are a lot closer to this than donald's. So saying I'll vote for the felon who we know to be unstable and will likely damage our world standing because the democrats didn't make a strong enough argument is a not a great position.

Both parties have abandoned fiscal responsibility in the last 2.5 decades. Clinton/Gore were the last ones to pay down any of the debt. They also eliminated 400K plus government jobs and closed truly wasteful agencies. Republicans spend worse than democrats and cut taxes (revenues to pay for spending).

If we have any hope of addressing our fiscal problems, spending will need to be addressed. Healthcare and Defense are the slices that are big enough to make an impact. And again - Clinton (Hillary in this case) is the one who made a reasonable proposal decades ago, that we did nothing with.

And for the record - yes we should be taxing the rich far more than we are now.