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comment by OftenBen
OftenBen  ·  1485 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Amy Klobuchar will end 2020 presidential campaign and endorse Joe Biden

She used to give me the occasional warm fuzzy then she started attack ads on Bernie with the rest of the pack.

Make no mistake, that if the time comes and the DNC has chosen her as the anointed one I will be voting for her come November.

But she's just another politician. Bernie isn't.





mk  ·  1485 days ago  ·  link  ·  

How is Bernie not just another politician? I'll vote for him, of course. Is it because he has been consistent in his message for so long?

OftenBen  ·  1485 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's essentially it.

Decades of consistent advocacy for principled beliefs in combination with a refusal to take the money at the core of our corrupt government.

There are exactly zero other candidates that can be expected to reign in the abuses of the oligarchs.

mk  ·  1485 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    There are exactly zero other candidates that can be expected to reign in the abuses of the oligarchs.

I follow until this. We've reigned in the abuses of oligarchs before. Look at the marginal tax rate over the last century:

https://bradfordtaxinstitute.com/Free_Resources/Federal-Income-Tax-Rates.aspx

With some lobbying reform and some progressive tax reform, we're in a much better spot. Create a public option, and employers are going to dump everyone on government healthcare in no time.

IMO Bernie frames things in black and white. History suggests that leaders that do so, on either side of the spectrum, govern poorly. I'm hopeful that a President Sanders will encourage legislation that can pass. I worry that he'll won't, and we'll be no better, but lose time.

wasoxygen  ·  1483 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    In 1944, the top rate peaked at 94 percent on taxable income over $200,000 ($2.5 million in today’s dollars). That’s a high tax rate.

It sounds like a high rate, but it wasn't the effective rate. The Individual Income Tax Act of 1944 PDF specified a tax of $156,820 for net income of $200,000 (78.41%) and 91% for excess over $200,000.

It also set an overall limit: "The tax imposed by this section and section 11, computed without regard to the credits provided in sections 31, 32 and 35, shall in no event exceed in the aggregate 90 per centum of the net income of the taxpayer for the taxable year."

The rate alone doesn't explain much without looking at the exemptions. For example, parents did not have to count income received as a result of their working children. Of more interest to the oligarchs, trade and business deductions, work-related travel and lodging expenses, rent and royalties deductions, depreciation and depletion, losses from sales or exchange, charitable contributions, medical expenses, capital losses all provided opportunities to reduce the amount of net income exposed to the tax rate.

Collections are also dependent on enforcement. I doubt that the tax-avoidance schemes we hear about today are much more effective than those used in the past.

OftenBen  ·  1485 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Shrug.

Maybe that's the wiser opinion to hold.

I know that it was the perspective held by many in 2016 and look where that got us.

Like I have said in the past, show me a candidate who is truly anti-war, anti big business, pro union, pro - universal health care, they will have my vote.

Other than Bernie there is not a single Democratic candidate who has shown themselves to be in favor of these goals.

Without exception the rest of the democratic field has been content to take corporate money and Pander to corporate interest.

I am certain that if any of the others were elected they would not take on the major donors of the DNC.

A candidate who takes corporate money will never get a cent from me.