AT&T lied about everything it promised to do if it got a tax cut
vice.com
vice.com
Oh and the deficit will add $1T but no one's worried about that.
This is all fixable, but we cannot expect the current administration nor party to do it. Honestly, I wish I knew what was going on in the party such that they perform these long term losses for these extremely questionable short term gains.
I was just in Kansas, and all I saw were people that would benefit massively from Liberal/Democratic policies, and yet vote against their best interest Every. Single. Time.
Wrapping blue collar and middle class voters in a blanket of patriotism, near-worship of the military class and first responders, and positioning anything else as anti-American is very powerful.
An exercise I undertake to understand the current state of the Republican party is to watch the comment threads on Breitbart (not post, just lurk). Stories about when Trump proposes any amount of gun control will see many, many posts expressing betrayal and outrage--and you can watch them disappear in realtime.
I think this was a true statement a decade ago, but political ideologies have shifted dramatically within the parties.
For one example, look at who was fighting against illegal immigration in order to protect blue-collar union jobs in 2005 versus now.
The dehumanizing arrogance this kind of rhetoric betrays is profoundly disturbing and everyone who finds themselves thinking this way needs to stop immediately and do some soul searching. Half the country is not too stupid to discover their own values and preferences, and you are not the enlightened shepherd they need to guide them against their own will.
Regarding abortion, the general consensus among DEMs is that abortion should be legal, safe, and rare. Rare to be obtained by increasing the social safety net for having a kid is not such a profoundly negative economic consequence.
I find it difficult to understand how such positions could be considered "opposite" of "things that empirically matter most to middle America"
This is a very legitimate and real fear for many. Remember Beto? "Hell yes we're going to take your AR-15's!"
That was met with overwhelming cheer and praise at the debate. Clearly many Democrats are not that vigorous, but you get the point...
Regarding the AR-15 itself. Yes, I am aware that many DEMS want stricter regulation of "assault weapons" that are really only good as offensive weaponry. The AR-15 is a terrible hunting rifle and hardly any better for defensive purposes. Why does the right love it so much? I suspect because they are the victim of propaganda. However, I'm all ears if you have another theory?
And yet there's no mention of what's happening in Virginia regarding gun rights.
Edit: As my ability to reply is disabled, I will not.
Imagine somebody tells you that abortion should be more strictly regulated, but can't properly describe women's anatomy or the standing law for abortion restrictions.
Imagine somebody tells you that strong crypto should be reserved for the military, intelligence, and law enforcement, but shows a thorough lack of understanding of features like public keys, password hashes, etc. That would be an indicator that they do not really have exposure to the topic and are reacting out of fear rather than a deep consideration of the fundamental freedoms at stake.
Yet such a basic ignorance of the issue is a staple of gun control proponents, even career activists. It is an absolute farce that politicians and lobbyists are demanding to ban tools they cannot even properly identify and that ought to send chills down the spine of any clearheaded person.
"... In reality, actual DEM proposed legislation places controls on certain features that increase likelihood of successful mass-killing (fully auto, bump stocks, very high capacity mags) ..."
You stated that full auto was a feature that Democrats were proposing to control to decrease likelihood of mass killing. In reality, that problem has not existed for 85 years; proposing to make it less likely is meaningless.
>"OBUMER is gonna take yer guns and herd you into a FEMA camp and DONATE NOW"
Truly mystifying indeed that people don't vote for the culture that holds this caricature of them.
You completely missed the point. This is ACTUALLY the type of e-mail the NRA sends out daily (actually sometimes four times a day). Misspelling Obama in a purposefully derogatory way, actually mentioning FEMA concentration camp conspiracy nuttery, actually saying that if you don't act now you are going to lose your guns. This is all real. Not a caricature at all.
Yes. The Constitution specifically forbids all gun rights infringements and there is no exception for automatics.
It's easy to feel that way if you don't understand what is really important to that particular vein of person.
Adversity can be lived and reckoned with as long as there is safety, and overarching stability. People want to be part of something they can be proud of, and that they overcome difficult circumstances makes it all the sweeter. Most importantly though, people just want to be not-interfered with.
When your ostensibly Liberal party has some fiscally attractive ideas, but undermines the very traditional "heart and soul" of the overarching culture, you're going to have a very hard sell. Especially when the other party can sit back and say, "If not for us, they'd have destroyed the American dream, and turned it into a government operated nightmare." Which despite many admirable liberal causes, from the behavior of the political machine elsewhere finds a sizable portion of the populations agreeing with the other side.
Give up on the moral crusade on firearms, get off the Wall Street teat, refocus efforts on organizing and reempowering labor, actually focus on fiscal stability by putting entitlements on a back burner and revamp some of the more fundamental ways our economy is malfunctioning. Use the anti-trust hammer, hold large regional monopolies accountable and make it hurt when they don't deliver. Do something to thwart the problematic forms of financial engineering (private equity abuses, short-term gains over long-term stability, predatory financial products), and for the love of God, get healthcare sorted, and simplify/deantagonize the mechanics of taxation. Shift funding to Research and Education, simplify and raise awareness of ways of civic participation, and maybe consider whether or not some environmental issues can be tackled by the of establishment of Public Works programs.
If anything has stood out to me about the difference between my current generation, and my grandparent's it is that nowadays a civicly minded individual would be hard pressed to be able to actually make a living improving their community.
Funding is trapped in a Market driven by chasing the latest international money making hype scheme rather than actually getting physical labor/goods production done. The service/rent seeking/consumerist paradigm is death and stagnation incarnate. No one is enabled by forced dependence on someone else.
At least, that seems to be the vibe I've picked up on from the Midwest states I've frequented... Which I'll be the first to admit isn't that extensive.
Get real.
"Eschew flamebait."
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I don't label people, or toss am in buckets. I just ask em what they want. The general streak is leave me alone, I don't like the game being stacked against me, keep me safe, free, and capable of making an honest living, and most importantly don't rook me.
Also if you think Republicans have ever been pro-labor, you are sadly mistaken in that regard. Public Works are also generally non-starters except for those who were around in the early 1900's in my experience, and are the quintessential of fundamental interdependence, but also have a tendency to be small localized efforts;something appealing to conservatives more so than not. Enforcing responsibility for corporate actions has always been lackluster on the Republican side as well; Democrats haven't done great on that either. Anti-trust is starting to boot back up again bipartisanly, but it has taken some serious levels of gilded age to even rustletbings enough for that.
Did you even read half the things I mentioned? I'll give you there are quote "Republican overtones" there; but I don't ask people to talk to me about their political party, I ask them what they're concerned about. Think people's political label matters a whole lot less in the long run than their input in what represents the biggest problem to deal with. The "Party Branding" as I call it is just mud in the process of trying to chase down what needs to be prioritized and handled. Both sides are spending more time trying to look like they're the best side of humanity that it seems like actually being that seems to fall by the wayside.
The two States I frequent are Texas and Minnesota. If that helps any.
Frankly, I'd probably get thrown out of any modern political rally, because I think they're all doing a terrible job of running an effective government at this point. There are so many systematic warts that have taken root it'll likely be decades til we get to weeding them out, but hey, that's politics.
Just wanted to share my observation, and point out that to the Voters, they aren't voting against their best interest. They just have precious little to go from that the "other guy" will generate better results.
The real story is why the left isn't able to pull them back in, or reach out. There is no question that the Right owns that block and how they keep them, the actual question is what does the left do to change that? Maybe that means taking positions that're not crazy about, or maybe that just means people need to move en masse out of their blue enclaves.
Seems like a gigantic waste of future taxpayer dollars.
“By immediately lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, this bill will stimulate investment, job creation and economic growth in the United States,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at the time. “Research tells us that every $1 billion in capital invested in telecom creates about 7,000 good jobs for the middle class,” the CEO proclaimed.
Nowhere in this quote it says AT&T specifically promises anything if they get a tax cut, or that they perform any actions at all. It's a generic opinion about a nationwide economic policy, not a specific promise of an action of specific company. To call this "lied" is insane, it's like I'd say "lowering taxes is good for middle class" and the tax cut happens but then I get in financial trouble and some journalist writes an article claiming I am a liar because I am middle class, and taxes were cut but I am actually doing worse off! It should be crystal clear that no nationwide economic policy can guarantee every single company would post profits every single year and would never have workforce cuts.
If somebody is lying here, it is the author of the article. He obviously have read AT&T statements, as he is quoting them, he should be smart enough to understand what is being said in them, and still he claims AT&T promised what it clearly never did. This is textbook definition of lying.
Now, its legitimate to argue that maybe tax cuts were not as good as their proponents promised, and maybe their real effects were different. But one can not do it on the example of one single company! AT&T is indeed in big trouble, as somebody who recently cut off all ties with the company after being a client for more than a decade, I can confirm their service have gone way downhill, while their prices continue the steady march upwards. This company is in trouble, no question about that. But making from that the conclusion that it somehow is related to the tax policy and constitutes a "lie" is plain idiotic and insulting to the reader's intelligence.
Further down the article, you can see that investors are mad only because AT&T's mergers and acquisitions don't seem to be paying off fast enough.
No it doesn't. I don't know which Economic 101 you had, but you may want to ask for a refund on the money you paid for it. Economics says nothing of the sort. For a company to be successful, its services should find willing consumers.
> the dominant market is not a company's customers, it's the company ownership.
Can somebody translate this to English for me? I recognize all the words, but I can't make any sense of them being arranged this way. What does it mean "dominant market is the company ownership"? It just doesn't compute.
You could argue that the strategy may have been to stanch their losses in the 2018 election....but that election went almost as badly as it could possibly have gone for the right anyway (depending on who you ask).
The folks pushing for the cut don't care about any particular politician's career, they want their mofo-ing tax cut, and they got it, and it's probably gonna stick with a GOP Senate (which will likely stay that way).
You're saying it like it's a bad thing?
Why do we expect cutting corporate taxes to increase investment? Aren't costs associated with infrastructure, hiring, wages, etc. considered deductible business expenses? I suppose there are some edge cases there like payroll taxes, but it seems like most of what a corporation spends money on is effectively coming from pre-tax dollars.
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
A tax break is never a long term incentive for an organization. Each year the financial plan is re-base against last years performance. The expectations is always set at continual growth and improvement. A tax break is only seen as a tax break for a single year... especially when you consider a different political establishment could drastically swing the country in the opposite direction.
So while you're not strictly wrong, I wouldn't consider it particularly positive distinction.
Edit: If the rich shareholders disproportionately benefit from this then raise capital gains. I'd wonder though what proportion of shares are actually held by the 1% though, I'd think a large amount of shares are held in people's pensions/ETFS/401k etc. Theres always calls for taxing the evil corporations more but in the end all taxes are paid by people - either shareholders or employees.
We could cut the corporate tax rate to zero, tax capital at a rate slightly higher than labor (in exchange for using a corporation as a tax-free investment vehicle). We could have a carbon tax and a VAT, with all the proceeds refunded equally to households, which would serve as a UBI.
Eliminating the corporate tax would remove all manner of distortions from our economy, and would free-up huge amounts of resources currently allocated towards avoiding taxation.
Instead of offering insidious tax credits/expenditures to support industries we want, we could offer an equivalent amount of subsidies, which would be on balance sheet, and much easier to judge their effectiveness.
There's no particular reason we must tax corporations, and there are a lot of reasons why it makes sense not to. But certainly we should not cut corporate taxes without capturing that revenue elsewhere in a progressive way.
So: morally corporations should pay income tax because all persons are subject to income tax. And we have decided that corporations are persons. It's no more a "bonus" tax than it is a bonus tax when I pay my accountant and she also has to pay tax on that income (even though I have already paid tax on the money).
Another reason is distribution. You might want employees to pay no taxes at all on their salaries. And you might want shareholders to pay no money at all on their capital gains or dividends, and yet you'd want company revenue to be taxed. The big difference is in theory, a company can just rotate money within itself forever, take revenue and use it for expansion, or investment, or whatever. So all that money only gets taxed once a shareholder sells, or an employee gets paid, but a large portion gets re-invested in the company itself, which you'd want taxed as well, in order to get a steady flow of cash and also capture its real value.