I think you’re right on this. As you say though - there’s no political will for either option. Over 50% of Americans don’t pay federal income tax - a laughable statistic and something that’s not sustainable. But good luck pushing through a tax hike in an election year when families can barely put food on the table and gas in their cars.
Similarly, I see no cleaver being taken to the federal budget until after the midterms. The GOP is almost always the “loser” in battles over government shutdowns, but I think this period of sky high inflation would be the one time that they would have the public’s support.
Following up in great detail on Biden’s latest begging for oil, here’s Greenwald on historical US-Saudi relations, US foreign policy, and the feckless US media coverage thereof.
Thus, it was not Trump’s embrace of long-standing U.S. partnerships with Saudi and Egyptian despots that represented a radical departure from the American tradition. The radical departure was Biden’s pledge during the 2020 presidential campaign to turn the Saudis into "pariahs” and to isolate them as punishment for their atrocities.
This is why it comes as absolutely no surprise, repellent as it may be, that Joe Biden aggressively abandoned this core 2020 campaign foreign policy vow regarding Saudi Arabia the first chance he got. Far from turning them into a "pariah” state as he pledged, Biden has seamlessly continued — and even escalated — the U.S. tradition of propping up and strengthening what is quite plausibly the world’s single most despotic and murderous regime.
After increasing the target zone for the federal funds rate by 50 basis points to 0.75-1%, at its May meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee indicated that it will stick with 50-bps hikes at its June and July meetings. According to the May meeting minutes, all participants agreed that the US economy was very strong, the labor market was extremely tight, and inflation was well above target. Yet they decided that the FOMC “should expeditiously move the stance of monetary policy toward a neutral posture” (emphasis ours).
There are two problems with this. First, the Fed’s monetary-policy stance should be restrictive , not neutral. Instead, the FOMC merely noted “that a restrictive stance of policy may well become appropriate depending on the evolving economic outlook and the risks to the outlook.” Second, there is nothing expeditious about two additional 50-bps increases. The policy rate’s upper bound will still be only 2%, below the consensus estimate of a 2.5% neutral rate (the sum of a neutral real rate of 0.5% and the 2% inflation target).
The Fed’s balance-sheet tightening is also minimal. Starting in June, its holdings will shrink by $47.5 billion ($30 billion in Treasuries and $17.5 billion in agency debt and mortgage-backed securities) each month for three months, followed by an open-ended sequence of monthly $95 billion reductions ($60 billion in Treasuries and $35 billion in agency debt and MBSs).
That sounds like a lot of unwinding. But it is worth remembering that the Fed’s balance sheet had ballooned to nearly $9 trillion by the end of March 2021. At the current pace of reduction, returning the balance sheet to where it was in early March 2020 (about $4.2 trillion) will take more than four years. And it will take more than seven years to reach the level in early September 2008 ($900 billion), before the Fed erected its Great Wall of Liquidity around financial markets.
What’s interesting is that despite rapidly accelerating fiscal deficits during the 1980s, inflation continued to subside. Was the decline in inflation due to a short-term spike in interest rates, mostly reversed a few years later? Or, due to longer-term policy changes that unleashed supply, while improving competition and efficiency? It clearly was a combination of the two, but I believe that far more of the credit should go to the policy side, not the monetary side.
This all has interesting implications as the policy apparatus is going haywire under the current administration. From repeated attacks on energy, to crazy regulations designed to force people out of the labor force, to all the carbon nonsense, to the extreme fiscal deficits, to all the other asinine regulation; the policy side currently appears to be overwhelming the monetary side when it comes to inflation.
Hopefully that means that you’ll see it tick down a little bit when democrats lose control of one branch of government in Nov. 2022, and then tick down some more if they lose the other elected branch in 2024. Even before the actual policies change, just knowing that they won’t be as bad as if Biden were still in office, it will help to push inflation down more.
Republicans winning in 2024 is, of course, contingent on Trump staying out or Biden staying in. A lot can happen between now and then. But if Biden stays in, boy would it be nice if Trump could stay out of the race. The republicans could put up a houseplant as their nominee and do better against Biden than Trump would.
Laughable because it should’ve been wider or because we have such crazy income inequality? You can’t take money from people who don’t have it. Not much anyway.
Laughable because there’s not a downvote option for you post.
Laughable because you believe that 50% of Americans should not pay income tax? If you do, then you must certainly have enough sense to know that we should not continue to import (outsource in-country work) people who cannot pay (earn enough to pay) income tax.
Afterthought … I’m “enlightened” enough (at this time of the morning) to respond to your post.
Thanks for the additional data. I’m not a big fan of DHL, so please take the following points, implying idiocy, with a grain of salt, slat, alst, or whatever else my fingers put out.
Port congestion should ease next year as new container vessels are delivered
Why? Short of some sort of coordinated computerization, what will ease the congestion? New container vessels don’t have room to get to the ports, because they are congested.
I don’t think we’re going to go back to this overcapacity situation where rates were very low.
Obviously, a self-serving prediction
Infrastructure, especially in the US, isn’t going to get better overnight, because infrastructure developments take a long time.”
Duh! To further the idiocy … Ignoring the US, where is infrastructure going to get better overnight?
Laughable because all the talk of tax reform centers on making people “pay their fair share”. Yet at the same time ignores the 50% who pay no share whatsoever and demands more from the 10% who already pay 90% of the tax collected.
Laughable because 50% ecompasses a LOT of people that aren’t poor. You can count me in that 50% in 2019 & 2021. In fact, I got back more than I paid in - and that’s before counting the economic impact payments. And I’m not poor. I live in a fairly low tax state (VA) and I paid into my state both years. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have also paid money to the Federal government. I worked all of 2019 & 2021 (2020 was weird for me because of pandemic related furloughs/layoffs, so I am not counting it - but suffice to say, I was paid not only to not work, but also paid at tax time). I should have some monetary stake in what’s going on with the Federal government, no?
No, I believe (1) you should not tax people who don’t make much money, and (2) even if you do, it’s not going to make much of a dent in the total revenue.
I would think that if in-country people wanted to do that work for that pay, we (1) wouldn’t have to import people, but more importantly (2) those in-country people would still not earn enough to pay income tax.
“enlightened” like a mosquito in a bug zapper, maybe.
“Paying your fair share” means the more you gain (from the system), the more you pay (for the system). It doesn’t contradict the reality of 50% (or whatever percentage) not paying anything and demanding more from the highest earners.
What were the reasons you didn’t pay? Was it all the one-time (three-times) COVID money?
Obviously I’m not against more people paying taxes, I’m just trying to illustrate a point that the lower rungs of income have nothing to give. I don’t know where the lower rungs start. You say a LOT, but you don’t provide the number. Is it one million out of ~65 million (50%)? Fine, let’s make it 48%. Heck, let’s make it 40%. How much less laughable is 40% than 50%? And how much actual money could it actually contribute to the ~3.5T+ revenue?
Exactly. And one person only gets one vote. Only has one butt to ride on highways. Only gets one health insurance policy. Only has one SSN to draw welfare. Oh, wait, those paying the most taxes are specifically excluded from receiving such benefits “from the system” like ACA subsidies and foodstamps - yet they’re still the ones expected to pay more tax as their ‘fair share’.
I’m assuming not the full 50% who pay no taxes, but a large chunk of those arent just not paying any taxes, they’re actually “paying” less than $0. And that’s on top of the other stuff they’re getting from “the system” that the wealthy arent even eligible to receive. Eliminate those net-negative contributors, and the 50% who do pay taxes are already paying plenty to cover their “fair share”.
I dont really care about the “haves” subsidizing the “have nots”, to an extent it’s an economic necessity. My problem is with the sales pitch trying to spin it as being “their fair share”. Call it what it is, without all the faux window dressing and “fair share” buzzword, and you’ll come off as a lunatic when trying to sell it as making sense.
Blame Trump, blame Putin, blame the greedy corporations or his dog. Today’s scapegoat for Bidenflation is shipping companies.
“Something must be done. This is Something, therefore it must be done.”
As for the impacts and supply chains,
Regulations often backfire, but this one likely helps exporters who couldn’t afford backhaul space + curbs wild fees. Decrease of detention fees + export requirements likely increases congestion.
No. My 2019 taxes had no COVID impact. Just the 2019 tax law.
In 2019, I had my second child. That’s $4,000 in refundable credits. Plus a $400 retirement saver credit. Those two credits were more than my calculated tax by a few hundred bucks. With the increase in 2021 refundable child tax credits, it was a lot more than a few hundred bucks.
There were 6.5 mil families below the poverty line in 2019. 76 million households didn’t pay taxes in 2019. At least half of that 76 million should be paying something, even if it’s a paltry 3-5%. I can at least say, people that make as much as me with 2 kids can afford it. I’d much rather prefer paying taxes than the current invisible tax I’m paying now (inflation).
That’s not the point. The more people are invested in the country, the better citizens they’ll be. And we could use more people acting like better citizens. We all know how much better the average homeowner cares for his home vs. someone who rents, not to mention how little care is taken in subsidized/public housing.
Right. If you pay even 5-10% tax on a low income, that’s probably still less than the government benefits you get and it gets you to think like an owner instead of a looter.
Or we could go back to the old days of “no representation without taxation” where you had to own property to vote.
The comments I’m about to make aren’t directly related to inflation, so my apologies in advance, but I think it’s worth poking at this statement.
In reality, the “system” as you put it has failed many people in the bottom rungs of society. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that many didn’t receive a quality education and that many came from bad family situations.
Similarly, many at the top are there in spite of the system. Many went to private schools (or very good public schools) and had good family situations. Others in this group may have had parents that found themselves in the previous group, and had the right genes to figure out on their own how to get out of it.
Aside: politicians and special interest groups with deep pockets (teachers unions, for instance) are the biggest beneficiaries of “the system”. Which gives them near zero incentive to fix it because they like things just the way they are.
Fixing the failures of government by giving handouts to the less fortunate might make their immediate situations better, but it doesn’t help them in the future. We’re seeing this play out in Seattle right now. King County spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to fight it - we’ve literally spent close to a billion dollars in the past few years to house people without any kind of accountability in terms of fixing the systemic reasons behind their homelessness, and as taxpayers we’re being told that they still don’t have enough money to keep people off the streets. Meanwhile despite these asks, the county tells us that the roads budget is empty and thus some paved roads may need to turn to gravel. I care about this because I live in a rural part of the county that’s dependent on this budget… but it’s very difficult to get the council to care about our concerns.
This all winds back to - if you don’t have any skin in the game in terms of taxes paid to the feds, what incentive do you have to demand good government? “Taxation without Representation” was a fighting call to the revolution. Which begs the question - if we never had to pay London, would we still be a British colony? Would we ever had incentive to better ourselves over those 250 years?
You are describing self-reliance, which is a fundamental difference between conservative and liberal beliefs. Whether it’s right or wrong (or in-between) is a huge and separate topic that I’m not going to get into here.
Way off-topic, but US would have probably gained independence sooner or later.
Besides, “taxation without representation” is not the same as “representation without taxation” .
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