GOP is against education for non-wealthy, tax tuition waiver for grad students, college employees

Based on the evidence, you're correct. Throw in the useless (monetarily) repeal of the supplies exemption for K-12 teachers. And they've supported for-profit colleges, scumbags that in particular pray on the poor and on veterans.

I don't really understand any defense for these anti-education policies, unless it's purely the cynical "I got mine, now shut up and be poor." Even oligarchs need an educated workforce, right? Especially if we're going to restrict immigration? It just seems like short-sighted spite to me.

But I'm bitter. My workplace will suffer from these policies, and my family will see our federal income taxes increase, so yeah, B-Bob is salty.

 

I'm in the exact same boat but from the K-12 education part. I wish there would be an effort to highlight these attacks on education and make it a real issue.

 

I had no idea they were doing this. It was bad enough that it was only $250 or so, but to do away with it totally is [choose your expletives].

 

under educated mass is much easier to manipulate, see Alabama.

 

But hey, at least they're including a tax break for private aircraft owners:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...-tax-bill-includes-tax-break-for-private-jets

 

GOP is in the enviable position of having one of the most loyal and low intelligence bases (See BTG, Cohete, Mojo, etc), one could ever imagine.

They can seemingly do anything they want, and still be radically supported.

It really is very very strange.

 

This is just amazing. I mean, the plain "f you" in this bill...

 

Don't listen to the media. This is a middle class tax cut. Bigly.

 

There certainly is a "culture war" in America, but it's not the "coastal elites" versus "good ol' Christian values" we've heard so much about over the years.

 

I don't know how anyone can defend this

 

Nov. 2018 couldn't come fast enough. Yep, the GOP is farking the masses, lead by the liar-in-chief. At the same time, they are leaving a huge body of damning evidence from which political ads can be made.

 

Probably won't have any Trump supporters/republicans/conservatives post in this thread. Not when they have safe zones like Franken, Biden, and Clinton to post in.

 

Apparently the Senate plan doubles it to $500. I imagine they did that so they could compromise by not changing it at all. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/camp...lan_teacher_deduction_classroom_supplies.html

But, I think its ridiculous this is even a point of discussion or in the tax code at all. Teaching supplies should be purchased by the schools, which should be funded well enough to supply them, and the taxpayer should pay. No teacher should need to dip into their own pockets to get the things they need to teach a class. Schools and therefore tax payers essentially steal from their employees to allow this to happen. That's about the last thing I want immortalized in the tax code.

 

Rich get richer till the poor get educated.

 

Just straight scumbags.

 

LOL at all of you who think GOP wrote this bill. Lobbyists wrote it and they'll write the next one too when there is a Dem POTUS and Dem majority. Wake up for godsakes.

 

It sure seems this way. This is very carefully targeted. Given the miniscule part of the population that has been a graduate teaching or research assistant, the amount of tax dollars is very small in comparison to the tax system.

I think it similar to their desire to keep tuitions, high, laons expensive and bankruptcy of education debt nearly impossible. It all really worked for awhile to keep the masses distracted and so busy so that they wouldn't have their little heads concerned about inequality. However, they are pushing it too far.

No wonder so many millennials hate capitalism.

 

This is precisely why, while painful for many, this won't end well for the GOP. You throw that boomerang with too much force, it will come back and take your head off.

 

Lobbyists for whom? Usually, lobbyists put things into bills they write to benefit their clients. I don't see that any company that can afford a lobbyist benefits from taking tax benefits away from grad students. I think the likelier thing is that this change was dreamt up by a conservative think tank that finds tax exemptions for valuable payments-in-kind to be ideologically distasteful.

And honestly, I see the logic. Grad students get paid slave's wages but do work for the university because they are pursuing that degree. If you make name recognize the value of that non-monetary compensation on their taxes, students and universities will eventually adjust the work and compensation arrangements to where being a graduate student who pays taxes is sufficiently desirable for people to continue to do it. After all, it isn't really the grad student who is capturing this benefit, it is the university that can get away with taking this grad student's tax benefit in the form of a tinier stipend. It does, however, have class disparity implications which makes me not really like it. But I think I see some free marketeer logic here at least.