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The Biden Presidency

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dirtywick said:
One thing I think Biden is doing very well is pushing a very aggressive agenda. It’s rare to see this in a first term, but I think it’s wise. There’s a very distinct possibility he can poll well and do a lot of popular things and still lose next term due to the EC and inconsistent polling is. Better to be aggressive and let the chips fall
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It's well-established that the policies Biden is promoting are widely supported by the American people, even if not by Repub officials.
The latest Morning Consult-Politico poll, for example, has the president at 60 percent approval with only 37 percent disapproval. He’s off the charts among Democrats (92 percent) and wins independents 52 percent to 40 percent. Sixty-three percent approve of his handling of the covid-19 pandemic (compared to 24 percent approval for congressional Republicans). Despite the actions of many GOP governors, nearly 70 percent of voters think “Americans should continue to social distance for as long as is needed to curb the spread of coronavirus even if it means continued damage to the economy.”

Republicans’ quibbling about the definition of infrastructure has largely fallen on deaf ears. Voters generally have more expansive definitions for infrastructure, which in their minds includes schools (70 percent say it’s infrastructure), child care (53 percent), manufacturing (69 percent), water pipes (78 percent), Internet (68 percent), housing (69 percent). Biden’s overall plan gets 57 percent approval, with only 24 percent disapproval. Mention an increase in corporate taxes, and support climbs to 62 percent.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...cans-tell-us-how-popular-are-biden-his-plans/
 
It’s also well established that getting ~55% of the popular vote is barely enough to win and despite similarly favorable polls in the last election the votes didn’t reflect the polling. I think a more conservative agenda could be justified on those factors and I’m impressed Biden isn’t taking that approach
 
dirtywick said:
One thing I think Biden is doing very well is pushing a very aggressive agenda. It’s rare to see this in a first term, but I think it’s wise. There’s a very distinct possibility he can poll well and do a lot of popular things and still lose next term due to the EC and inconsistent polling is. Better to be aggressive and let the chips fall
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I think the politics of it is brilliant. It's been a huge mistake to ignore infrastructure for so long. This is something that Americans want in both urban and rural America.

But I also think that Congress should pass a voting rights bill that eliminates gerrymandering. Also they need to address reapportionment and make DC and PR states.
 
Bob001 said:
Would it have to? You already know how many hours you bill. If the tax was X%, you would pay X% of your hours as tax, and might have to adjust your hourly rate upward. You wouldn't necessarily need to have a separate line item for sales tax on every invoice.
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You have no idea how little paperwork is too much paperwork.

ETA: I actually think that services should be taxed. It is silly that they aren't, and the only reason I can think of to justify this exclusion from sales tax is that my profession writes most of the rules.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
No. The POTUS can't usurp Congresses' role in tax laws.


As to Amazon having a no sales tax advantage, that's BS given they have a huge cost in comparison with shipping charges.


Amazon beat out competitors by operating at a loss for a while.
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I didn't mean the company saved money. Amazon didn't make a profit for a long time. I meant they built their market share by undercutting brick-and-mortar prices, and not having a sales tax helped them do it. That was a core part of their founding strategy.
Bezos originally hoped to find a way to game the system and avoid sales taxes altogether. In the early days, he told Fast Company in a 1996 interview, he looked into “whether we could set up Amazon.com on an Indian reservation near San Francisco. This way we could have access to talent without all the tax consequences.” It didn’t work out. “Unfortunately, the government thought of that first,” he said.
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https://thecounter.org/amazon-a-whole-foods-south-dakota-wayfair-supreme-court-sales-tax/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/04/amazon-tax-loopholes-us

Amazon's also pretty good at avoiding/evading federal income taxes, too.
Amazon, the ubiquitous purveyor of two-day delivery of just about everything, nearly doubled its profits to $11.2 billion in 2018 from $5.6 billion the previous year and, once again, didn’t pay a single cent of federal income taxes.

The company’s newest corporate filing reveals that, far from paying the statutory 21 percent income tax rate on its U.S. income in 2018, Amazon reported a federal income tax rebate of $129 million. For those who don’t have a pocket calculator handy, that works out to a tax rate of negative 1 percent. The fine print of Amazon’s income tax disclosure shows that this achievement is partly due to various unspecified “tax credits” as well as a tax break for executive stock options.
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https://itep.org/amazon-in-its-prime-doubles-profits-pays-0-in-federal-income-taxes/
 
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Bob001 said:
As someone who has supported themselves for decades on the sale of services I vehemently oppose a tax on services because it would increase my paperwork if I ever go back to private practice.
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Would it have to? You already know how many hours you bill. If the tax was X%, you would pay X% of your hours as tax, and might have to adjust your hourly rate upward. You wouldn't necessarily need to have a separate line item for sales tax on every invoice.
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Depending on the details there may be a few extra calculations that need to be made.

For example, if you run some sort of business that provides a service, you probably also have to purchase supplies, which were subject to tax. But to avoid being taxed on something that was already taxed, you might be able to deduct sales tax on items you purchased from your overall tax bill.
 
Segnosaur said:
Depending on the details there may be a few extra calculations that need to be made.

For example, if you run some sort of business that provides a service, you probably also have to purchase supplies, which were subject to tax. But to avoid being taxed on something that was already taxed, you might be able to deduct sales tax on items you purchased from your overall tax bill.
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But your business expenses are already generally tax deductible. A tax on services would basically be on your time and labor. That's what you're selling.
 
Bob001 said:
Amazon's also pretty good at avoiding/evading federal income taxes, too.
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This issue came up in the Senate finance committee hearing last week. The avoiding, not evading. Evading is a crime, avoiding is perfectly legal. But the senator requested a review of the rebates being offered that allows this and we might see change in the next few years.
 
Leftus said:
This issue came up in the Senate finance committee hearing last week. The avoiding, not evading. Evading is a crime, avoiding is perfectly legal.
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Yeah, I understand the legal difference. But practically speaking, it sometimes seems to come down to how sharp your lawyers are. For example, I don't think the legislators who drafted the tax codes ever explicitly said "Please transfer ownership of your intellectual property to overseas shell companies so your profits aren't taxable."
 
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Bob001 said:
Yeah, I understand the legal difference. But practically speaking, it sometimes seems to come down to how sharp your lawyers are. For example, I don't think the legislators who drafted the tax codes ever explicitly said "Please transfer ownership of your intellectual property to overseas shell companies so your profits aren't taxable."
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David Mitchell probably has the best take on the tax avoidance vs. tax evasion issue ever.





"Ultimately, it's a tax on conscience."
 
Facing swift blowback from allies and aid groups, the White House on Friday said President Joe Biden plans to lift his predecessor’s historically low cap on refugees by next month, after initially moving only to expand the eligibility criteria for resettlements.
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https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-middle-east-africa-central-america-e692d180232fdd3cc2125bdb9cc1278f?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter

Seems that criticizing Biden sometimes pays off.
 
Segnosaur said:
Actually I think there's plenty of incentive. A retailer that says "Buy from me and I won't charge the sales tax" will probably make more sales than his competitor that always charges the proper tax rate. .
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Off-topic, but businesses that advertise that aren't really doing it. They've reduced the price so that the new price plus tax comes out to equal the old price.
 
The refugee flip-flop seems like an unforced error for Biden.

Really, he should have just done what he promised to do in the first place.

He promised to raise the cap to about 60,000 from 15,000, which is where Trump had it. Then he made a U-turn and said he was going to leave it at 15,000. Then, faced with backlash, he did another U-turn and said he was going to raise the cap after all (although next month, and I don't think they gave a specific number for what they will raise it to.)

This isn't even about the southern border. These are vetted refugees from around the world. They are following the rules, not trying to sneak across the border. They are just waiting to be allowed in. Some of them already have family in the United States who they are waiting to be reunited with.

Anyway, should have just done what he promised he would do in the first place.

After criticism, Biden says he will raise U.S. cap on refugee admissions

President Joe Biden said on Saturday he will raise the cap on the number of refugees admitted this year to the United States, a day after he drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers for agreeing to keep the historically low figure in place.

Biden signed an order on Friday extending a 15,000 refugee admissions cap issued by his predecessor Donald Trump through the end of September. In signing the order, Biden shelved a plan announced in February to increase the cap to 62,500.

Biden told reporters in Delaware on Saturday after playing golf that he would go beyond the 15,000 limit.

"We are going to increase the number. Problem was the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up at the border with young people. We couldn't do two things at once, so now we are going to raise the number," he said.
With Biden being criticized by lawmakers and refugee advocacy groups, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that he planned to "set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15."
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I really don't understand the highlighted part. "We couldn't do two things at once." Why not? And what exactly does the border situation have to do with it? This is about immigrants (refugees) coming through the UN refugee program, not illegal border-crossers.
 
The GOP before the election "Biden will be soft on Russia!"

The GOP now "Why is Biden being so tough on Russia?"
 
Puppycow said:
I really don't understand the highlighted part. "We couldn't do two things at once." Why not? And what exactly does the border situation have to do with it? This is about immigrants (refugees) coming through the UN refugee program, not illegal border-crossers.
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Having cut the number of refugees allowed in to 15,000, it's a near certainty that after four years, they don't have the number of trained staff needed to process 60,000. And the people they would tap to take those jobs with the least amount of hassle are probably the same people working with the people on the Southern Border.


This is just another lingering effect of Trump's policies. You need to quadruple the staff for this job, while also trying to do the job. Everyone you tap for training new people isn't doing the work of processing refugee claims, so even if you're being diligent in trying to fix this mess by increasing staff, your ability to process claims will actually go down at first, until the new staff are up to speed. I have no idea how long it takes to learn this job, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took more than a year before someone was really able to do it up to the standards needed.

And that doesn't even take into account the time and effort need to recruit people. Job interviews take time, and the government has lots of rules on hiring that can't be easily ignored.
 
Today would be a good day for Breyer to retire.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/politics/mondaire-jones-stephen-breyer-supreme-court/index.html?utm_source=twCNNp&utm_content=2021-04-19T02%3A38%3A04&utm_term=link&utm_medium=social

Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones on Friday said Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer should retire this summer, becoming the first congressional member to publicly call for the 82-year-old justice to step down.
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RGB's hubris cannot be repeated. We're already looking at decades of right wing domination of the courts.
 
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