What caused the eye roll were the assumptions he makes alongside the numbers. "Warren, whose profile in courage is to foment hostility toward a small minority (“billionaires”), should try an experiment — not at her rallies of the resentful, but with an audience of representative Americans. Ask how many in the audience own an Apple product? The overwhelming majority will raise their hands. Then ask: How many resent the fact that Steve Jobs, Apple’s innovator, died a billionaire? Few hands will be raised." The first question is weird. What if I bought cigarettes? Should the madmen behind Marlboro Man/Joe Camel be taxed 20%+ of their wealth if they were billionaires? Can I get a show of hands? Oh right...I changed the 2nd question, but I'm betting Will's reframed question (wrt to Warren's proposal) would get even fewer hands raised. Warren’s dependence on a wealth tax announces progressivism’s failure of nerve, its unwillingness to require anyone other than a tiny crumb of society’s upper crust to pay significantly for the cornucopia of benefits that she clearly thinks everyone wants — but only if someone else pays for them. As "fringe candidates" during their infancy, Warren and Sanders court using populist slogans with progressivism as its core. So his analogy w/ Warrent to Trump is apt, but I'm not buying that his original premise validates this point. Anyways, I'm not completely sold on Warren either, but that's one of the reasons why we have this convoluted process. How she adapts, manages and messages is the bigger insight for me than what Will is cooking.
At the same time it's silly to pretend like they are so far off that there couldn't be a reconciliation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-p...eth-warren-solve-medicare-for-all-tax-puzzle/
you know what they say . . . any fool can set goals Spoiler: any fool can set goals https://books.google.com/books?id=r...#v=onepage&q="any fool can set goals"&f=false
Moderate: "Want to protect consumers and the vulnerable in the USA? Great." Warren: "We need to get rid of the electoral college." Moderate: "Alright,,,, give my best to Bernie." Moderate: "The corrupt orange haired ******* it is, I guess."
Apart from any merits about the argument itself, politically these kinds of statements speak of bubble confinement, if you ask me.
I honestly don't get the point. The Senate is the part of the government that gives rural less dense regions their over-representation so they don't get drowned out.
And the electoral college gives rural areas/less populated states over representation in presidential elections as urbanization became more than just a trend.
Why do we need two branches that over-represent for the less dense rural pop? Doesn't it eventually just swing back to the point where urban voters become marginalized?
Sure, but it also turns off rural voters. Also getting rid of the electoral college is quite radical. It also isn’t coincidence that radical democrats want to get rid of the EC after losing the Presidential election twice. It sounds and looks like sour grapes. I am trying to remember who it was, but one of the candidates actually suggested increasing the number of Supreme Court Justices.
I don’t have too much of a problem with he proposing it, but the question is why is she announcing this now? What does she gain from this. She keeps going after the far left vote, but the far left vote is already spoken for between her and Bernie. Unless one of them drops out (unlikely) there really is nothing left to mine by continuously pushing these kind of policies. At some point, if she wants to win the primary and eventually the presidential election, she has to start pivoting to grab some of the moderate vote. Unfortunately, for her, it doesn’t look like she’s willing to do that. At this point, If Liz or Bernie want to try to ride the progressive end of the party to win, one of them needs to bow out and endorse the other now. Unless that happens, I don’t see either winning this race.
everything was rural when the electoral college was put in place drowning out urban votes was not the plan just kind of a byproduct it's pretty weird that we've had several recent presidents lose the popular vote yet win the presidency that's not typical so maybe it needs tinkering or abolishment
How to Start My Own Nacho Business https://smallbusiness.chron.com/start-own-nacho-business-11604.html
My guess is that when she tried appealing to moderates her poll numbers dropped. I will also mention that I didn't even realize that advocating popular vote elections was that radical. I've seen it addressed in a lot of mainstream sites. But I guess it is. I don't feel strongly about it one way or the other. I can see argument from both sides.
maybe dont preach this in Iowa. its not weird at all. Campaigns dont try to win the popular vote. They try to win the electoral vote. Unless you are Hillary of course who tried to run up the score in California.
We've had lots of elections That kind of result is very atypical It's happened 4 times if you discount 1824 due to circumstances in which electors were placed legislatively Two of those times just happened recently Why should any state be overrepresented and others underrepresented? That's just weird
I doubt it would happen in practice or by popular vote. Without a simple unconstitutional "wealth tax", there'd be a lot of tax loopholes and special incentives to close. ~3 trillion/10 years is an incredible amount of revenue. Makes you wonder how rich are rich. What could the US afford if it raised billionaires' taxes? We do the math | US news Michael Linden 7-9 minutes “Every billionaire is a policy failure.” So says a key adviser to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez herself says that it’s wrong to have a “system that allows billionaires to exist” alongside poverty. And the New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo recently called for us to “abolish billionaires”. For most of the last four decades, the gains from economic growth have flowed overwhelmingly to the rich. Much of those gains to the rich weren’t “earned” in any traditional sense, but rather extracted, excess profits squeezed out of a system designed to favor those who already have power, position and wealth. Today, the top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. It’s no wonder “abolishing billionaires” has become a rallying cry. But what does it really mean? Is it setting a cap on the amount of wealth one household can own? Or does it entail something a little more structural: unrigging the system that gave us billionaires and instead creating an economy in which everyday people get the benefits from the growth that they have created. Tax Perhaps the most direct way to begin “abolishing billionaires” is by taxing them much more heavily. America’s overall tax system is only barely progressive – meaning that the richest Americans pay only a bit more in taxes as a share of their income than everyone else. And at the very top, among those taking home hundreds of millions each year, the tax code is actually regressive, meaning the more they make the less they pay. The richest 1% own nearly 40% of all the wealth, but pay only 20% of all the taxes. Boosting rich people’s taxes is sound policy. Extreme inequality is like economic pollution. It creates widespread harm that the polluters don’t pay for. Inequality makes bubbles more likely, it undermines the foundations for innovation and productivity, and it weakens and destabilizes consumer demand. Taxing it like pollution helps make the costs clearer and reduces the harm. And of course, taxing the super-rich would generate revenue that could be put to better uses than letting that money sit in a Bahamian bank account of a billionaire. Over the next 10 years, the richest 1% of American households will take home about another $22tn, after federal taxes. Their average annual post-tax income will be about $1.7m. Right now they pay about 30% of their income in taxes. Increasing their overall average tax rate by about 10 percentage points would generate roughly $3tn in revenue over the next 10 years, while still leaving the 1% with an average post-tax annual income of more than $1.4m. (That new tax rate, by the way, would be about the same as the overall rate the richest 1% paid back in the 1940s and 1950s.) Three trillion dollars in new revenue is enough to make college free at all public universities, make a massive new investment in infrastructure along the lines of what Senate Democrats have proposed, and triple the budget for the National Institutes of Health. Needless to say, all of these investments would pay enormous economic dividends. Of course, we could raise even more from the rich. We could raise the top 1%’s effective tax rate by as much as 25 percentage points and still leave them with an average annual after-tax income of over $1m. Doing that would generate about $8tn in revenue, which is enough to send every household in the bottom 75% a check for nearly $8,500 every year for 10 years. Wealth tax We could also tax wealth. Whereas income is new money that comes in each year, wealth is the accumulated money that has built up over time. As of 2016, the wealthiest 1% of American households owned about $27tn in total, an average of about $23m per household. A tax that took about 1% of that wealth each year would yield about $4tn over the next decade. To put that amount in perspective, $4tn is more than the federal government will spend over the next decade on foster care, school lunch, school breakfast, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, unemployment compensation, supplemental security income for the elderly, blind people and those with disabilities, and all the tax credits for working families combined. Income and wealth taxes at those levels would, of course, be a lot higher than we have now, but they wouldn’t be so high as to actually, directly, “abolish billionaires”. The rich would still be richer than everyone else, just slightly less so. Ignore the critics There will be those who claim the sky will fall if we tried to tax the rich like this. They’ll predict widespread economic damage, maybe even collapse. These warnings of doom and gloom rely on the theory that growth and prosperity come from rich people’s ingenuity and knowhow. If we tax them, they might take their ball and go home. That’s preposterous, of course. Rich people are neither the source of economic prosperity, nor will they decide to go off and form their own society in Antarctica or 10 miles off the coast of San Diego. In fact, taxing rich people will make our economy work more like it should. If we disincentivize hoarding at the top, money will more easily flow to the workers and families who really drive economic growth. And the tax revenue we generate can be put to good use, investing in working people, in communities across the country, and in our collective future. And before long, instead of a few hundred billionaires taking ever more, we could instead have a thriving middle class, widespread economic security, and real opportunities to give the next generation a better life. Michael Linden is the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute
