Yes, the rich must start paying their fair share of taxes

He is a foreign terrorist and should be treated as such

>tendency of those on the left being too nit-picky to vote for a viable candidate whose campaign fits their interests more that the other viable candidate. See: Kamala Harris 2024 and (Israel, economy, healthcare, immigration/border, foreign conflicts, etc.). This is a false analysis, though? People keep forcing this misread where it's some choice or nit-pickiness steering them away from awful candidates. That's completely out of sync with known voter behavior. Turnout is a product of enthusiasm. Hyper-engaged types like us always function at high enthusiasm and many of us will crawl over broken glass to vote, even for a candidate we hate. I think Hillary is an evil PoS who should be hell's problem and not mine, but I voted for her and kept my mouth shut about how much I hated her as soon as those primaries ended. Good soldier routine. But for lower engagement types, they need enthusiasm to drag themselves to the polls when they have a hangover. To stand in line without water for hours. To go to the DMV however many times it takes to get around their state's voter suppression. For every bit of enthusiasm you lose, you shave your electorate down. Whereas a high-enthusiasm campaign (e.g. Obama '08, Mamdani) drives turnout and gets people who normally aren't political to function as high-engagement types. The left keeps screaming that the Dem establishment is running candidates that poison enthusiasm, which is going to negatively impact turnout. And they're 100% right. That happened exactly with Harris over Gaza, for example. I think Harris is going to burn in hell for the "nothing different" answer she gave, but someone like me is still going to vote for her. Assuming that level of loyalty out of the wider electorate is so f****** stupid that I don't know how these consultants/strategists manage to dress themselves.

>Democrats are opposed to MAGA. Other than when our literal party leader, Chuck Schumer, openly favors the Trump-endorsed candidate in his own city over the official Dem candidate. For one of the most powerful positions in the country.

>it's just that most of that $800bn represents the market's trust in Elon as a person Tbf, I'm fully comfortable calling this a lie at this point. Our stock market is far more based in confidence than reality, leading to massively inflated estimates of value. And in the social media + shareholder meetings > customer service era, the way these people build wealth is fundamentally rooted in lying.

You are taking a very simple concept and overcomplicating it for a takedown. One man has more wealth by himself than half of America put together. This is not right or sustainable--especially not for someone like Elon Musk, who has made his wealth heavily off asset manipulation, government contracts, and outright corruption. Keep in mind, we passed French Revolution levels of inequality some years ago. Is that how you *want* this to end?

You can't have a wealth tax if there's no liquid wealth to take? Tell that to real estate taxes. Don't pay those and you lose the rights to that parcel of land. "Unrealized value" is a shell game to make things difficult for auditors, not a fundamental law of economics. Everything's value is unrealized until you sell it. The money Joe Public gets from a paycheck doesn't have a strictly defined value until the moment they spend it, but the tax man has no struggle taking a percentage. If the company is taking in money from customers or investors, it's able to go out through the tax door instead of the anonymous bank account door. For the vast majority of those "unrealized gains", there are thousands of banks willing to take them as collateral for below inflation interest rate loans, and somehow neither taking out that loan nor using the money from that loan counts as "realizing" the gain.

I expect the issue is that if the unrealized value can be used as collateral, then it is in-fact realized. It's a neat trick to be able to borrow against paper wealth without liquidating, but it's a loop-hole that badly needs closing.

I am not talking about the debt. I am talking about the deficit. At least understand the difference if you are going to have an opinion about this.

You are talking billions over a ten year period when we are talking $18 trillion. This is real, middle class needs to skip their Starbucks energy.

Fixing healthcare would help the most, and slashing the military budget would help some too. The US somehow spends twice as much per capita while getting worse health outcomes compared to other wealthy countries. The healthcare system is broken. The US Department of Defense keeps failing independent financial audits. It’s gotta be one of the most wasteful government agencies. They at least need to do something to stop contractors from overcharging them by an arm and a leg.

You are not going to convince me to vote Republican. Nice try. Fascism has done enough damage in just 5 years of Trump. You may like him, but rational people don't.