Gyroscopic Investing

Desert, how are you getting sadistic? Or rather, how are you considering him more sadistic than Obama?

Kriegsspiel wrote:Desert, how are you getting sadistic? Or rather, how are you considering him more sadistic than Obama?

Ok so putting aside any "policy preferences" and just sticking to style, and understanding we aren't privy to either Trump nor Obama's private interactions behind closed doors, so all we have to go on is how they carry themselves to the public, is it even slightly debatable that Trump is more sadistic than Obama?

Definition of sadistic: "deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others."

Now you could say that it's all an act and he's likely a statesmen (hence the Korea deal being struck), or that it's all part of a grander strategy, or that it doesn't matter because he has every right to be, and those might be true, but to argue that Trump behaves in a less sadistic manner than Obama is ludicrous to me. Maybe I'm missing something.

Personally, policy-wise, I think Obama was a modestly-left-of-center establishment Democrat, neo-liberal war-criminal. Nothing more, nothing less... Definitely not the boogeyman Faux News & the alt-right tried to make him out to be, but probably should be prosecuted for his crimes (as should Trump). But as a "dude," completely irrespective of policy positions, I like the guy. Trump, on the other hand, seems like the most insufferable personality to try to spend time with. I couldn't imagine having dinner with the guy trying to make conversation. He is an amalgamation of almost every slimy human trait that one might try to avoid.

If we bring policy preferences into it, I think you get the same effect, but Trump is pretty incoherent on all but a couple public policy topics.

So, that's it, be a nice guy, a community organizer, and a law professor, oh, and don't be "sadistic", and boom, you're ready to be president of the U.S. Got it.

Seriously, I don't get the sadistic stuff. Looking at the world situation currently versus the previous 16 years under Obama and Bush, I don't see where the U.S. is causing more mayhem now than they were then, probably less.

If you're thinking of Trump's goal of strengthening our border, give me a break. That's a serious policy position. It has nothing to do with the color of people on the other side of the border. All it has to do with is that a sovereign nation should be able to decide how many and which immigrants to allow in, rather than letting them self select. In fact, we have laws on the books, but they just aren't being enforced. So much for being a nation of laws.

stuper1 wrote:So, that's it, be a nice guy, a community organizer, and a law professor, oh, and don't be "sadistic", and boom, you're ready to be president of the U.S. Got it.

Seriously, I don't get the sadistic stuff. Looking at the world situation currently versus the previous 16 years under Obama and Bush, I don't see where the U.S. is causing more mayhem now than they were then, probably less.

If you're thinking of Trump's goal of strengthening our border, give me a break. That's a serious policy position. It has nothing to do with the color of people on the other side of the border. All it has to do with is that a sovereign nation should be able to decide how many and which immigrants to allow in, rather than letting them self select. In fact, we have laws on the books, but they just aren't being enforced. So much for being a nation of laws.

Bingo. And red lines by the former o.

Desert wrote:

stuper1 wrote:And yet the talk of impeachment continues unabated. The nation's so-called elite just can't get over the fact that somebody like Trump won the election. Frankly, I can't believe it either. It seems utterly surreal. And I'm one to believe he's not a monster, just another run-of-the-mill egomaniac, as I'm convinced anyone who would want to be president must be.

I was looking at an acquaintance's Facebook feed the other day. He's a very successful local businessman and apparently not a Trump hater. He has a big family and is not at all deranged. Back around the election time in 2016, he posted something which I found very interesting and read along these lines:

"To all the people out there who supported Obama and hate Trump, I have one question: what it is in Obama's life experience compared to Trump's life experience that makes you think that Obama was so much better qualified to be president than Trump?"

Wow. Well, Obama was a decent human being, not a ridiculous sadistic clown like Trump. I think the contrast is too obvious to even require comment. What has Trump shown us, other than a deranged, sadistic, uninformed showman? I can understand not agreeing with Obama's efforts to help the downtrodden. Conservatives are generally opposed to Christian values. But Trump takes the opposition to a whole new, ridiculous level.

Obama:

-death by drone program
-Paying Iran $2b to keep making nukes
-Abortion supporter (that's pretty sadistic, we can probably all agree)
-Allowed Isis to grow and thrive (probably created Isis with the help of the Neo-cons but that's conspiratorial).... don't hear much about them anymore. Took Trump about 6 weeks to squash that.
-Supported the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab Spring

Trump:

-Tweeted mean stuff to Rosie O'Donnell and Bob Mueller

clacy wrote:

Desert wrote:

stuper1 wrote:And yet the talk of impeachment continues unabated. The nation's so-called elite just can't get over the fact that somebody like Trump won the election. Frankly, I can't believe it either. It seems utterly surreal. And I'm one to believe he's not a monster, just another run-of-the-mill egomaniac, as I'm convinced anyone who would want to be president must be.

I was looking at an acquaintance's Facebook feed the other day. He's a very successful local businessman and apparently not a Trump hater. He has a big family and is not at all deranged. Back around the election time in 2016, he posted something which I found very interesting and read along these lines:

"To all the people out there who supported Obama and hate Trump, I have one question: what it is in Obama's life experience compared to Trump's life experience that makes you think that Obama was so much better qualified to be president than Trump?"

Wow. Well, Obama was a decent human being, not a ridiculous sadistic clown like Trump. I think the contrast is too obvious to even require comment. What has Trump shown us, other than a deranged, sadistic, uninformed showman? I can understand not agreeing with Obama's efforts to help the downtrodden. Conservatives are generally opposed to Christian values. But Trump takes the opposition to a whole new, ridiculous level.

Obama:

-death by drone program
-Paying Iran $2b to keep making nukes
-Abortion supporter (that's pretty sadistic, we can probably all agree)
-Allowed Isis to grow and thrive (probably created Isis with the help of the Neo-cons but that's conspiratorial).... don't hear much about them anymore. Took Trump about 6 weeks to squash that.
-Supported the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab Spring

Trump:

-Tweeted mean stuff to Rosie O'Donnell and Bob Mueller

You're not even trying now, are you?

moda0306 wrote:

Kriegsspiel wrote:Desert, how are you getting sadistic? Or rather, how are you considering him more sadistic than Obama?

Ok so putting aside any "policy preferences" and just sticking to style, and understanding we aren't privy to either Trump nor Obama's private interactions behind closed doors, so all we have to go on is how they carry themselves to the public, is it even slightly debatable that Trump is more sadistic than Obama?

Definition of sadistic: "deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others."

Now you could say that it's all an act and he's likely a statesmen (hence the Korea deal being struck), or that it's all part of a grander strategy, or that it doesn't matter because he has every right to be, and those might be true, but to argue that Trump behaves in a less sadistic manner than Obama is ludicrous to me. Maybe I'm missing something.

If we bring policy preferences into it, I think you get the same effect, but Trump is pretty incoherent on all but a couple public policy topics.

I thought he had done something particularly egregious recently. But if it's just a feeling you get about him.. eh. Then again I don't think Obama was sadistic either, it's just not a concept I think factors into their presidential decisions. Especially with regards to policies. For instance, people saying "Trump wants to secure the border so people can't come into America, that's sadistic"... that's just PR spin. If someone found out that Trump is telling the Border Patrol to kneecap illegal immigrants and leave them in the desert, I could be swayed.

Or the list Clacy wrote... none of that is sadistic. To quote It's Always Sunny, "that's politics, bitch!" Except abortion, maybe, but saying "we could all agree" about ANYTHING abortion related is teh Übersnark.

Personally, policy-wise, I think Obama was a modestly-left-of-center establishment Democrat, neo-liberal war-criminal. Nothing more, nothing less... Definitely not the boogeyman Faux News & the alt-right tried to make him out to be, but probably should be prosecuted for his crimes (as should Trump).

IIRC this is a common point for you. I make a different distinction between war and war crimes.

But as a "dude," completely irrespective of policy positions, I like the guy. Trump, on the other hand, seems like the most insufferable personality to try to spend time with. I couldn't imagine having dinner with the guy trying to make conversation. He is an amalgamation of almost every slimy human trait that one might try to avoid.

I think it would be fun to have dinner with Trump. But I have a really wide personality-tolerance.

I've mentioned it before, but I'll do it again, because I thought it was striking. I came across some sort of thread on the internet (maybe Reddit) where it asked whether anyone had ever had any personal interactions with Trump. This thread was not on some right-wing website. If anything, I would have expected the people on that place to lean left.

Anywho, there were something like 100+ responses on that thread of people who had interacted somehow with the guy or knew someone who had been his housekeeper, etc. And something like 80% of the responses portrayed the guy to actually be relatively likable in person, and nothing I read made him seem to be a monster. Just because the media portrays someone as a monster doesn't mean that he actually is a monster. There is this thing called "spin".

For me, I don't really care about whether the president is likable or not (both for say Obama or Trump). All I care about is what their policies and actions are. So far, I haven't seen anything from Trump that seems unhinged.

The only position I've heard Trump take that I strongly disagree with is on torture of enemy combatants. That was my biggest complaint with Bush, although I really disagreed with most anything Bush did. I only hope that Trump's comments are just bluster. I certainly haven't seen any news reports that we've been torturing people lately.

Here's an interesting analogy to the 2016 election that I came across today:

"Okay, so you need to hire someone to manage your ranch and mend the fences. Two dozen guys show up wanting the job. All but one are known criminals. They range from thieves to fraudsters to paid hit men. You know that most of them actually work for your rival rancher down the road and would have no loyalty to your business whatsoever.

The odd man out is a loudmouth braggart who claims he can do anything and has actually built and managed some pretty great stuff. You can tell he’s mostly full of hot air.

Those are your only choices.

With your great wisdom, who do YOU hire?"

Well, see, that's the thing isn't it. The only reason we know that he is LITERALLY HITLER is because the media has force-fed us that story for quite a while (even though I still haven't seen any death camps springing up in the countryside). Could it be that maybe the media is in cahoots with that rival rancher down the road that was mentioned in the story?

stuper1 wrote:Well, see, that's the thing isn't it. The only reason we know that he is LITERALLY HITLER is because the media has force-fed us that story for quite a while (even though I still haven't seen any death camps springing up in the countryside). Could it be that maybe the media is in cahoots with that rival rancher down the road that was mentioned in the story?

No one is allowed to think that! You can expect a visit from the reprogramming squad any moment now...

The media stopped being objective the moment Eve reported to Adam that the devil made her do it.

The snake... a Russian agent? Tune in to find out!

If I had dinner with Donald Trump, I'd probably treat him exactly like that garrulous uncle we all have with the strong opinions who dominates family holiday dinners: Smile, nod and agree with everything, say nothing, and get away from the table at the first opportunity. To be honest, if I had dinner with Barack Obama it probably wouldn't be all that different.

Fortunately, electing someone president does not mean you have to have dinner with them. Even though Trump's tweets and silly statements make me squirm, they're irrelevant in the end. All that really matters is the legislation that outlasts the presidency. So far that's the new tax law. It looks like it may indeed be a good thing for corporations & small business, but it's definitely made it less pleasant to be a resident of a highly taxed blue state who itemizes deductions and not clear yet whether GDP will benefit measurably from an improved business climate given that many of the headwinds faced by businesses are unchanged. So not sure yet if it's going to be a net positive.

WiseOne wrote: So far that's the new tax law. It looks like it may indeed be a good thing for corporations & small business, but it's definitely made it less pleasant to be a resident of a highly taxed blue state who itemizes deductions and not clear yet whether GDP will benefit measurably from an improved business climate given that many of the headwinds faced by businesses are unchanged. So not sure yet if it's going to be a net positive.

I look at that facet of the new tax code in a different perspective. Instead of making it less pleasant, it makes it correctly pleasant. People who live in prodigal high-tax high-spend areas shouldn't expect people living in other states to subsidize their high local taxes.

WiseOne,

If you were high into AMT you might be pleasantly surprised. We've been seeing a lot of people we thought were going to take a tax hit actually improve their scenario because AMT was taking away so much of their state tax benefit anyway. Especially if they have children in the home with the new expanded child tax credit.

And certainly anybody with self-employment income is in better shape.

Kriegsspiel wrote: I look at that facet of the new tax code in a different perspective. Instead of making it less pleasant, it makes it correctly pleasant. People who live in prodigal high-tax high-spend areas shouldn't expect people living in other states to subsidize their high local taxes.

+1

Most people I know who ultimately chose to leave high tax states know exactly who to attribute their financial roadblock to. And it ain't the feds.

Tyler wrote:

Kriegsspiel wrote: I look at that facet of the new tax code in a different perspective. Instead of making it less pleasant, it makes it correctly pleasant. People who live in prodigal high-tax high-spend areas shouldn't expect people living in other states to subsidize their high local taxes.

+1

Most people I know who ultimately chose to leave high tax states know exactly who to attribute their financial roadblock to. And it ain't the feds.

Except the fact that people in high-tax (blue) states tend to also contribute a substantially higher proportion to the federal coffers as well, even with the deduction, which a lot of the higher income folks got limited on due to AMT anyway.

High-tax states have been doing well-more than their "fair share" towards the feds. Looks like red states will be even more on the welfare dole than they have been in the past...

Take a look at this and sort by revenue per capita or revenue per GSP...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_t ... e_by_state

Us commies pay our fair share and then some.

moda0306 wrote:Take a look at this and sort by revenue per capita or revenue per GSP...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_t ... e_by_state

Us commies pay our fair share and then some.

As a former Bay Area engineer, I get it! But I think it's a mistake to conflate people and places.

States don't pay federal taxes -- people and businesses do. Be sure to check that list again in a few years to see how the numbers redistribute once those people and businesses move on to greener pastures now that they're no longer receiving federal welfare to stay in their high-tax states.

moda0306 wrote: Except the fact that people in high-tax (blue) states tend to also contribute a substantially higher proportion to the federal coffers as well, even with the deduction, which a lot of the higher income folks got limited on due to AMT anyway.

High-tax states have been doing well-more than their "fair share" towards the feds. Looks like red states will be even more on the welfare dole than they have been in the past...

My argument is that that everyone's fair share is independent of state/local taxes, since theoretically federal taxes benefit all citizens. Even agreeing that people choosing to live in high SALT areas send a good chunk of change to the IRS, they shouldn't be getting a break for choosing to live somewhere that has high additional taxes. They're presumably getting higher quality/quantity services, "beach" tax, higher-paid teachers, or whatever.

Tyler wrote:

moda0306 wrote:Take a look at this and sort by revenue per capita or revenue per GSP...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_t ... e_by_state

Us commies pay our fair share and then some.

As a former Bay Area engineer, I get it! But I think it's a mistake to conflate people and places.

States don't pay federal taxes -- people and businesses do. Be sure to check that list again in a few years to see how the numbers redistribute once those people and businesses move on to greener pastures now that they're no longer receiving federal welfare to stay in their high-tax states.

Tyler,

I'll be happy to compare my state of MN to others in 5-8 years when we are still cream of the crop in many statistics, just as we have been for years with high taxes, rich social safety net, and stronger environmental regulations, as well as having a huge amount of our incomes siphoned off to "subsidize" poor, white conservatives all over the red states. And I realize people pay taxes, not states. Like the liberal people who want people to have universal healthcare, for instance, who pay a ton of tax in blue states.

I'm not even a "liberal," from my point of view, nor would I want to presuppose that it's self-evident that a "welfare state" is the preferred model, but I hate how these garbage arguments float around conservative circles like they are the only people that work, especially when the meat of this tax bill has nothing to due with the state tax deduction limitation, and much more to do with rearranging deck chairs for lower-to-middle class folks while significantly helping business owners and corporations through lower tax rates and fake deductions.

And like I said, the effect isn't even that great, as many of the higher income folks who at first glance would be most affected by this were paying AMT before, which severely muted the benefits of the state income tax deduction.

MangoMan wrote:

moda0306 wrote:Take a look at this and sort by revenue per capita or revenue per GSP...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_t ... e_by_state

Us commies pay our fair share and then some.

How/why does MN have such a high revenue per capita? I get DC and Delaware, but MN?

I was surprised at that too. I'm really not sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U ... _by_income

We are near but definitely not tip-top of the income per capita measure.

One thing I'm thinking is that we have a lot of wage-earning income, which is taxed incredibly high compared to taxing capital, but anyone that has enough wealth to separate themselves from their sources of income usually won't stay in MN. A lot of them turn to snow birds and move to Arizona, Florida, etc. It's a lot easier when your wealth is in the form of assets and not a body you have to put to work.

Just my initial hypothesis...

But I'm certainly not trying to be smug. I was just born here and probably lean left with some "angry leftist" opinions as well as some "anti-leftist" ones. I just don't like people parroting garbage analysis of the facts in ways that divide people along lines that are entirely artificial. Lots of liberals are great people and work their @sses off, and lots of conservatives are irresponsible, entitled f*ckheads. And vice versa.

The tax code isn't about blue states vs red states. It's about wages/salaried/self-employed vs capital. Wages/SE pay fica/medicare. Capital does not. Wages/SE pay ordinary tax rates. Capital often is gifted sweetheart rates. Wages/SE often don't get to deduct their basis in an asset (their education, for instance) when determining taxable income. Capital does. Wages/SE is entirely immobile and is often stuck where they are no matter the tax load. Capital, via trade deals and other lobbying, is now hugely mobile globally, and use that mobility to justify sweeter deals from governments to play them against each other. Capital benefits from a massive military industrial complex design mainly to defend and enforce their trade interests overseas. Wages/SE barely benefit at all from such a contraption.

I think we're kind of losing the forest when we talk about blue state tax rates and how it affects people's decisions. It's a tiny part of the bill when adjusted for the AMT having been around before. Like I said... rearranging the deck chairs... while the plutocrats get on the life boats and we debate over crumbs.

I can't answer for Desert on the sadistic thing, but I do think our commander in chief is pretty mean-spirited. I mean, bringing up the "Pocahontas" jibe (Elizabeth Warren) during a quick speech where he was supposed to be honoring Native American war vets?

It certainly is not an impeachment-level sin, but classy he is not.