I love the circularity of the “liberal snobbishness” argument: a bunch of white voters are angry at the idea of being looked down on as stupid racists by liberals, so they support a stupid racist to prove those liberals wrong. Gosh, sure showed me.

I totally get that there are arguments for lower/higher taxes on any income group, but that’s a completely different question than the number of brackets. Still not seeing any case for X-Y brackets to be better than X brackets. I don’t think we need to go down the rabbit hole any further, since we seem to agree that…

Again, no dispute that adding more brackets isn’t especially important. There’s still no positive case for having fewer brackets. We agree that it’s not a priority, but there’s still no compelling argument for fewer brackets.

Am I too much of a wimp to be respected by punks? - frequent worry as a child thanks to Bad Religion.

Ok, we’re on the same page that there are diminishing returns for greater brackets (and that recognizing an argument isn’t an endorsement). The thing is, those returns are still positive. To be compelling, the argument would have to show a strong case for fewer brackets to be better than more brackets.

Less about corps than voters, but I’m done trying to predict what voters would do. That’s actually be biggest problem I have with Paul Ryan: maybe it wouldn’t have passed, but if it wasn’t for his walkout we would have at least had a vote on a major tax simplification proposal years ago.

I’m ok with corp taxes since corporate governance is inefficient, but if you gave me a trade of “no corporate taxation” balanced by “all income is the same,” I would take that deal in a second. That was actually one of the Bowles-Simpson Commission options that Paul Ryan walked out on.

Dude that’s nonsense. What compelling argument exists for fewer tax brackets? The better argument is for more brackets (or even infinitely many so that it’s just a curve). We have calculators now. You wrote this message on one. And tables are included in the instructions, so even someone without any modern…

You realize that Irving is also underpaid thanks to salary max rules too, right?

To be a pedant, Democrats had control of Congress for only the first 2 years. After that, it was stonewalling until very recently, where there’s been a slow and halting return to regular Congressional partisanship where a few centrists switch sides to allow things to pass.

For the tax documents, it’s because we have no idea what the extent of his business interests are. We know some of the LLCs he owns, but no one but Trump and his team have any clue what he actually owns and profits from.

“So when was EIA’s independence most challenged?”

Speaking as one liberal, it’s less the tax avoidance then the fact that we have no idea what the extent of the next President’s business interests are. Not only has he not made the disclosures everyone else makes, he also refuses to follow the ethics procedures everyone else has followed. If you care at all about…

Shame on Mr. Marshall for not appreciating the economic anxiety of the letter writer. Clearly it’s the job of liberals, and especially minorities, to have empathy for folks like that and not be mean to them. (cont) 1/436

Yes please. That’s the one real post-election impact. No idea where it’ll go, but it’s been a crazy month.

That is a good correction; I overspoke. Fondue was definitely around, it just became a cultural trend then. Props on getting the good stuff.

The best part is that fondue was invented by the Swiss (in the 60's I think?) to sell surplus cheese. Planet Money had an episode on it. Literally just a BS marketing scheme.

You’re right that there needs to be balance, but carmakers have always argued against every regulation. They literally thought it was impossible to build something as efficient as a Civic that would sell. These regulations have been planned for years and there’s been full notice and comment on them, so it’s not like…

Per the article, they do a shitty job with the headline. The claim is that Trump sold $40 million of stock he personally owned. As you correctly guessed, it has nothing to do with his interest in the Trump organization itself or any of the LLCs he wholly owns.

“I was like a god out there; I owned that stadium,” said the nut vendor.