Trump Tax Plan Seattle/WA State Implications? (Bellevue, Republic: health insurance, mortgage)

[homesinseattle]

Not buying it, Tall. This plan takes away much from the disadvantaged with only vague hopes that the corporate overlords will magically invest all the windfall and lift everyone up. It doesn't work like that in the real world. Wall Street is salivating right now because most CEOs plan to use the money to reward investors with higher dividends and buy loads of stock back. That does nothing to help the guy on the street. It's a money grab, plain and simple.

[CrazyDonkey]

The long-term impact of what is a huge transfer of wealth to the rich, uber-rich, and giant corporations on future deficits (as far as the eye can see) is not the worst thing about this bill, but that it is a huge tax cut at the peak of a financial bubble. One need only look at Bitcoin going up 1,000% in 2017 to see what is really happening - massive broad-based speculation driving values far above what the underlying economy can support.

Bubbles are "money-trees" which implode because they weren't real to begin with (money does not grow on trees). This is the inflating of the bubble of all bubbles, which when, not if, it implodes will be an economic Armageddon the likes of which we haven't seen since 1928.

[leastprime]

I liquidated 95% of Discretionary IRA trading acct last Wednesday-Friday. I am up +18% YTD on this account while holding large cash position. I am looking at covered calls for Discretionary Taxable trading account. I voted with my investments.

[mhays25]

It's definitely a transfer to the rich. but more broadly...the 20%? 30%? That would be based on income, 401(k)s, and so on.

One of these days the working class will realize that they just did.

[tommy64]

Originally Posted by homesinseattle

Not buying it, Tall. This plan takes away much from the disadvantaged with only vague hopes that the corporate overlords will magically invest all the windfall and lift everyone up. It doesn't work like that in the real world. Wall Street is salivating right now because most CEOs plan to use the money to reward investors with higher dividends and buy loads of stock back. That does nothing to help the guy on the street. It's a money grab, plain and simple.

WHO has announced plans to misuse this to up dividends to stimulate stock price? Are you making assumptions? The chart in your earlier post is short on numbers and long on predicting a future that's 20 years away, BTW.

WHAT aren't you buying, specifically? Besides your own misguided predictions and 'grey area' math?

[Ira500]

The House passed their bill, and the Senate passed a different bill, and they're supposed to find a compromise between them soon.

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Has it passed both the House and the Senate?

There was a big article in the NY Times a few days ago, about how part of the tax cut is being pulled off by slashing the State Department's budget--the diplomatic service is being gutted. Trump has failed to appoint a slew of ambassadors, considering foreign service and diplomacy unnecessary, seriously!

You all may not remember, or be aware of the fallout from, Congress in the 90's--remember when Newt Gingrich & his Holy Rollers took over?--slashing US foreign aid. One thing that happened is that the funding for ALL the government "area foundations", the orgs that channeled USAID money and other federal foreign aid money to developing countries, very suddenly were told they were on their own. No more USAID funding for their work. Overnight, they had to scramble to send in proposals to charitable foundations to continue their work, and to develop fund-raising capacity, asking for donations from the public. If you go on their websites, you'll see that they're now listed as non-profits , meaning--charitable organizations, not government entities.
The newest one to be created in the early 90's, in response to the USSR's crash, Eurasia Foundation, had its doors shut and locked, and everyone was told to go home and look for other jobs. They were in the middle of carrying out projects in Russia, they'd awarded grants to non-profits working in Russia, who had hired expertise based on those awards, but the checks to pay those experts in the field never came. Eventually, they were able to re-open.

There are interesting implications for this. If former government agencies are no longer supported by the government, and depend on public charity to continue their work, why should they be beholden to supporting government interests abroad? They could disengage completely from collaborating with diplomatic initiatives, and just do their own thing. If they had closed completely, as Congress wanted them to, the US would have lost a very important component of foreign policy, a key way in which the US builds goodwill and fosters allies. An unanswered question is: why didn't the Dems, when they regained control of Congress for a few years, restore foreign aid funding? I guess they'd have had to reverse the tax cuts, first.

But the people who see no value in foreign aid, and now--who see no value in maintaining a diplomatic corps are ignorant about these things, or just plain don't care.


It's shocking, and alarming. Note, however, that the military budget is not being cut to fund this tax cut. I guess---who needs diplomats, or foreign aid, when we have bombs?

[flyingsaucermom]

It's my (limited) understanding that I'll do better under the new tax laws. Good for me!

If this hurts the poor, well, they'll just have to suck it up. They either
1) voted for this crap
2) didn't come out to vote

[Tall Traveler]

Originally Posted by homesinseattle

Not buying it, Tall. This plan takes away much from the disadvantaged with only vague hopes that the corporate overlords will magically invest all the windfall and lift everyone up. It doesn't work like that in the real world. Wall Street is salivating right now because most CEOs plan to use the money to reward investors with higher dividends and buy loads of stock back. That does nothing to help the guy on the street. It's a money grab, plain and simple.

Not buying that this takes anything away from "the disadvantaged." What exactly will be taken from them?

Obviously the current system is concentrating money in the 1%...that is undeniable.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by homesinseattle

Not buying it, Tall. This plan takes away much from the disadvantaged with only vague hopes that the corporate overlords will magically invest all the windfall and lift everyone up. It doesn't work like that in the real world. Wall Street is salivating right now because most CEOs plan to use the money to reward investors with higher dividends and buy loads of stock back. That does nothing to help the guy on the street. It's a money grab, plain and simple.

There is no such hope. That's not what the Republicans are peddling, this time. They're much more cynical about it now, knowing, as they do, that "trickle down" economics failed miserably under Reagan, and many voters remember that. They're not even attempting to justify it credibly, this time.

It's very ironic, if you think back to the early days of the American democracy, when only landowners were allowed to vote, because it was believed that ordinary workers and the poor would rob the public coffers, if they had the vote. Who is robbing the public coffers now?

The problem is, that if this passes, there will be so much at stake in future elections, that the Party of the Haves will intensify its efforts at vote suppression, and other mechanisms, to hang on to their goodies. And, of course, it won't be enough to get someone into the White House, as we saw with Obama. The Dems will have to get more people into Congress, to make a clean sweep of the entire government. And that will be even more difficult to do, than winning the Presidency, because the local and state elections are easier to control by the various suppression tactics, in contested areas. Expect more gerrymandering, and so forth. Why is gerrymandering even legal?

In order to turn this trend around, and rescue the country fiscally, voters will have to get super-motivated, as they did leading up to the first Obama election, the Dems will have to raise more money to fund more campaign offices (New Mexico went from 2, during Bush/Kerry, to 10 or more, for Obama1), and to get good leadership talent in the state pipelines. I'm not observing that happening, or even being discussed and planned for, much. There's no strategizing going on.

[American Expat]

Originally Posted by homesinseattle

While the peasants were doped up on patriotic jingles, the super rich pulled off quite the coup last night. Heartlessly cruel and ruthlessly executed. Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that the deduction for state and local taxes (with the exception of $10,000 a year in property taxes) was taken away. Creative way to slap those blue states!

You can bet many people are waking up in California and NYC this morning, sipping coffee and escalating the timeline of their plans to relocate to states like ours with no state income tax. We've actually gotten emails this morning from relatives in both of those places, quite aware of this significant new reality. I truly don't believe WA state will institute a state income tax, I think the Amazon HQ2 fallout will prove to be one of the best things that could have happened in that respect.

No state will benefit more than Washington state with this change because we are a high income but low state tax state...both of which categories benefit under the Republican plan.