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Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 08:28 PM:

Trump and Russia Once Again

Well Russian has done the worst hacking in our history against the United States and all Trumps done or announced is he has stopped anyone setting in on the briefings. Trump being compromised by oweing many millions to Russia has a real concern. Trump will leave this mess like the many other things. There will no relief bill due to Trump and Moscow Mitch. If the Government shuts down again I will say the Republican party is dead from this point and on. What a total disgrace!! Just so you know, Trump is golfing while Russia is hacking us!!

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Posted by 4play on 12-18-2020 08:37 PM:

Treason......

Bill O'reilly{fair/reliable news source}
Says source in China reports 5 MILLION fake ballots were printed there and sent to USA.
"Conspiring to overthrow a Govt with a Foreign Govt. is TREASON"

__________________
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{Skuna River Bark x Trackman's Sassy}

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{Great White Shark x Brush Creek Patch}

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 08:41 PM:

Re: Treason......

Sorry but Trump got beat by 8 million plus, deverting from the Trump / Russia
facts.Trumps name will come out on this I'm betting, he may try to flee the country, should lock him down. You can watch Trump playing golf while hacking going on and record number of people dying, going hungry, no jobs, lost live savings, being put out on the street, unemployment running out but wait, he gave the rich a large tax cut, only the poorly educated could not catch on!

QUOTE]Originally posted by 4play
Bill O'reilly{fair/reliable news source}
Says source in China reports 5 MILLION fake ballots were printed there and sent to USA.
"Conspiring to overthrow a Govt with a Foreign Govt. is TREASON" [/QUOTE]

Posted by shadinc on 12-18-2020 08:58 PM:

Re: Trump and Russia Once Again

quote:
Originally posted by BEST EVER
Well Russian has done the worst hacking in our history against the United States and all Trumps done or announced is he has stopped anyone setting in on the briefings. Trump being compromised by oweing many millions to Russia has a real concern. Trump will leave this mess like the many other things. There will no relief bill due to Trump and Moscow Mitch. If the Government shuts down again I will say the Republican party is dead from this point and on. What a total disgrace!! Just so you know, Trump is golfing while Russia is hacking us!!

Best, for a guy that knows so much about President Trump's whereabouts, you can't seem to decide if he's golfing or hiding in his cellar.

__________________
Donald Bergeron

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 09:02 PM:

Re: Re: Trump and Russia Once Again

Don't Worry Fake FOX is covering his refusal to perform his job. Trump since the election he lost by millions of votes has golfed 9 times and has not addressed the major spike in deaths or the Worst hack in our history. Let's get back on track!

QUOTE]Originally posted by shadinc
Best, for a guy that knows so much about President Trump's whereabouts, you can't seem to decide if he's golfing or hiding in his cellar. [/QUOTE]

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 09:27 PM:

Where is Trump? They are calling this cyber attack a modern day Pearl Harbor and our President is off playing golf, WOW!

Posted by shadinc on 12-18-2020 09:28 PM:

Re: Re: Re: Trump and Russia Once Again

quote:
Originally posted by BEST EVER
Don't Worry Fake FOX is covering his refusal to perform his job. Trump since the election he lost by millions of votes has golfed 9 times and has not addressed the major spike in deaths or the Worst hack in our history. Let's get back on track!

QUOTE]Originally posted by shadinc
Best, for a guy that knows so much about President Trump's whereabouts, you can't seem to decide if he's golfing or hiding in his cellar.

[/QUOTE] LOL. GET BACK ON TRACK? LIKE YOU'RE GOING TO WORK IT ALL OUT ON THIS FORUM. RELAX.

__________________
Donald Bergeron

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 09:31 PM:

Just announced it looks like another Goverment shut down as the Republican do nothing Senate does Just that! I feel for the millions suffering due to Moscow Mitch and Ding Dong Donnie. Where is Ding Dong Donnie? Playing golf again says FOX news!

Posted by 4play on 12-18-2020 09:37 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by BEST EVER
Just announced it looks like another Goverment shut down as the Republican do nothing Senate does Just that! I feel for the millions suffering due to Moscow Mitch and Ding Dong Donnie. Where is Ding Dong Donnie? Playing golf again says FOX news!

If the New Govt. Bailout was 100% for the USA people,it would have been done months ago!!
Pelosi,Schumer want extra USA Taxpayer $$$ for their crooked propaganda AGAIN.

__________________
Grnitech Pkc ch Skuna River Midnite Moe
{Skuna River Bark x Trackman's Sassy}

Nitech Stylish Clover Shark Jill - RIP 'Ole Girl
{Great White Shark x Brush Creek Patch}

Posted by sleepy head on 12-18-2020 09:39 PM:

Bestest, The days of idle threats will be back in a few weeks, but Trump doesn't play that way, so just stay calm and watch and listen

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 09:41 PM:

Let's get back on track. Where is Ding Dong Donnie with a modern day Pearl Harbor and Thousands dying daily and Hospitals max out. FOX is showing him playing golf. We will never see such a failed party ever again, hire a clown and get a circus.

Posted by Adams, Harold on 12-18-2020 09:48 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by BEST EVER
hire a clown and get a circus.

you did!!!!

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 09:55 PM:

Just in from the FBI !

FBI deputy has alleged that President Trump has been diverting money from cybersecurity resources to build a wall at a time when the “nation is under attack”.

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 10:02 PM:

A Trump administration official tells Axios that the cyberattack on the U.S. government and corporate America, apparently by Russia, is looking worse by the day — and secrets may still be being stolen in ways not yet discovered.

The big picture: "We still don't know the bottom of the well," the official said. Stunningly, the breach goes back to at least March, and continued all through the election. The U.S. government didn't sound the alarm until this Sunday. Damage assessment could take months.

Microsoft President Brad Smith told the N.Y. Times that at least 40 companies, government agencies and think tanks had been infiltrated.

The hack is known to have breached the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Treasury, Commerce, and Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — plus the National Institutes of Health.
8 countries: Microsoft, which has helped respond to the breach, said in a statement that 80% of its 40 customers known to have been targeted are in the U.S., plus others in U.K., Israel, UAE, Canada, Mexico, Belgium and Spain.
In unusually vivid language for a bureaucracy, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of Homeland Security, said yesterday that the intruder "demonstrated sophistication and complex tradecraft."

The agency said the breach "poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations."
If this had been a physical attack on America's secrets, we could be at war.

Imagine if during the Cold War, the Soviet Union had broken into a building in Washington and walked out with correspondence, budgets and more.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC: "It's pretty hard to distinguish this from an act of aggression that rises to the level of an attack that qualifies as war. ... [T]his is as destructive and broad scale an engagement with our military systems, our intelligence systems as has happened in my lifetime."
The gravity wasn't immediately apparent because this wasn't the "cyber Pearl Harbor" that experts have warned about : No one took out a power grid, or stole a bunch of money or destabilized the markets.

Instead, it's more like someone has been walking in and out of your house for months, and you don't really know what they took.
And they may have built a secret door. "For someone to have access that long, who's this sophisticated, it's pretty likely they built other ways to get in that are hard to find," one official told me.
What's next: President Trump has stayed silent on the hack, meaning that President-elect Biden's overflowing in-box now includes Russian reprisal, damage mitigation and future deterrence.

Promising to impose "substantial costs" on the perpetrator, Biden said in a statement that his administration "will make cybersecurity a top priority": "I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation."

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 10:06 PM:

Romney savages Trump for his 'inexcusable silence' on hacking scandal that the senator says is like 'Russian bombers repeatedly flying undetected over our country' - as president instead tweets about 'Russia hoax'
By Geoff Earle, Deputy U.S. Political Editor For Dailymail.com
13:47 18 Dec 2020, updated 21:25 18 Dec 2020

1k
shares
2.5k comments
Trump tweeted about the 'Russia hoax' Friday morning
He continues to seethe about the FBI's crossfire hurricane investigation
White House under fire for failure to comment on huge Russia hack
Treasury, Pentagon, and Energy Dept's nuke agency all compromised
Mitt Romney compared the breach to a long-range bomber
Joe Biden pledges not to 'stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults'
President Donald Trump tweeted about what he calls the 'Russia hoax' Friday morning – amid new revelations of what appears to be a massive hack being traced to Moscow that compromised huge swaths of the government.

Trump's tweet came as he is facing political criticism for failing to publicly acknowledge, no less counter, a cyber attack that officials suspect is yet another breach driven by a Russian foreign intelligence unit.

ADVERTISEMENT

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah compared the attack, which went undetected for months, to a long-range bomber.

'What I find most astonishing is that a cyberhack of this nature is really the modern equivalent of almost Russian bombers reportedly flying undetected over the entire country,' he said in a tweet Thursday.

Romney said it revealed ‘alarming U.S. vulnerability,’ and called it an ‘apparent cyber warfare weakness.’ He called out ‘glaringly inadequate cyber defenses,’ and blasted ‘inexcusable silence and inaction from the White House. He said it was ‘past time for a national security re-set that prioritizes cybersecurity capabilities and defenses

Trump retweeted an article in the conservative Federalist website with a tag saying the FBI had been 'lying for years' about its crossfire hurricane probe of Trump associates with Russia ties.

'The Russia Hoax becomes an even bigger lie!' wrote Trump as he retweeted the article to his millions of followers.

President Donald Trump railed against the Russia probe Friday – but has yet to comment on a massive hack of U.S. government agencies that officials believe Moscow was behind

Posted by 4play on 12-18-2020 10:14 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by 4play
If the New Govt. Bailout was 100% for the USA people,it would have been done months ago!!
Pelosi,Schumer want extra USA Taxpayer $$$ for their crooked propaganda AGAIN.

__________________
Grnitech Pkc ch Skuna River Midnite Moe
{Skuna River Bark x Trackman's Sassy}

Nitech Stylish Clover Shark Jill - RIP 'Ole Girl
{Great White Shark x Brush Creek Patch}

Posted by Cotton 1927 on 12-18-2020 10:18 PM:

Reply

Self proclaimed (War time President) what a joke! What a disaster! You repukes gotta be proud!!

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 10:19 PM:

Where is Trump??

Russia’s Alleged Hack Could Be Worst in U.S. History
A sophisticated cyberattack has hit the heart of the U.S. government, affecting the Treasury, Defense, and Energy departments—among others.
BY FP EDITORS | DECEMBER 18, 2020, 6:21 AM
FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich appears for a news conference at the Department of Justice on Oct. 19, 2020, in Washington.
FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich appears for a news conference at the Department of Justice on Oct. 19, 2020, in Washington. ANDREW HARNIK - POOL/GETTY IMAGES
Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: A cyberattack on the U.S. government appears to be the worst ever, Nigerian schoolchildren released, and Germany plans to begin its vaccination program on Dec. 27 as coronavirus cases climb.

If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here.

Suspected Russian Cyberattack Strikes at Heart of U.S. Government

As more details are revealed about Russia’s alleged hack of the U.S. government, it’s becoming clear that the breach is much worse than previously thought. On Thursday, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned that is “poses a grave risk” to federal, state, and local governments as well as private companies and organizations.

Who’s been hacked? There is a growing list of reported victims: the Centers for Disease Control, the Defense Department, State Department, Commerce Department, Department of Homeland Security, Treasury Department, the U.S. Postal Service, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Energy were all affected. The DOE says the hack poses no threat to its national security operations—including the National Nuclear Security Administration—but did impact its business networks.

How bad is it? “This is, I think, appears to be at this point the most serious cyberattack this country has ever endured,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine said on NPR. Microsoft, which is helping to respond to the hack, noted that “the attack unfortunately represents a broad and successful espionage-based assault on both the confidential information of the U.S. Government and the tech tools used by firms to protect them … ongoing investigations reveal an attack that is remarkable for its scope, sophistication and impact.”

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 10:24 PM:

Directly from a Republican!

Romney: 'Stunning' for White House not to respond on Russian cyberattack
BY KAELAN DEESE
TWEET SHARE EMAIL

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday said it was "stunning" for the White House to not issue a response regarding multiple alleged U.S. government cyber attacks stemming from Russia.

The senator from Utah tweeted an abbreviated version of the statement he told SiriusXM's Chief Washington Correspondent Olivier Knox in a prerecorded interview, noting the recent reports of Russian hacks into government agencies showed "alarming U.S. vulnerability" and "apparent cyber warfare weakness."

"I think the White House needs to say something aggressive about what happened. This is almost as if you had a Russian bomber flying undetected over the country, including over the nation's capital, and not to respond in a setting like that is really stunning," Romney told Knox.

On Sunday, reports emerged showing that the U.S. Treasury Department and a Commerce Department agency had been breached by a Russian military intelligence unit known as "Cozy Bear," which is responsible for past hacks into government agencies.

The Republican senator's comments come one day after Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) voiced similar thoughts about the recent alleged Russian hacks, calling it "virtually a declaration of war by Russia on the United States and we should take that seriously."

President Trump has not addressed the latest hacks reported by Reuters on Sunday, and White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday the administration is "taking a hard look into this," CNBC reported.

The Hill reached out to the White House but did not immediately receive a response.

President-elect Joe Biden has been outspoken regarding the latest suspected Russian hacking, saying his incoming national security team has been briefed by officials privy to the matter.

"My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government - and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office," said Biden, later adding, "Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation."

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) told congressional staffers this week the perpetrator behind the alleged cyberattack is "highly sophisticated."

CISA officials further said that "it will take weeks, if not months, to determine the total number of agencies affected by the attack and the extent to which sensitive data and information may have been compromised."

TWEET SHARE EMAIL

Posted by sleepy head on 12-18-2020 10:25 PM:

If there was one thing covid made clear, it would have to be that there is nothing more dangerous than a scared libtard.

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 10:28 PM:

Let's get back on track, no one liners here!

Romney: 'Stunning' for White House not to respond on Russian cyberattack
BY KAELAN DEESE
TWEET SHARE EMAIL

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday said it was "stunning" for the White House to not issue a response regarding multiple alleged U.S. government cyber attacks stemming from Russia.

The senator from Utah tweeted an abbreviated version of the statement he told SiriusXM's Chief Washington Correspondent Olivier Knox in a prerecorded interview, noting the recent reports of Russian hacks into government agencies showed "alarming U.S. vulnerability" and "apparent cyber warfare weakness."

"I think the White House needs to say something aggressive about what happened. This is almost as if you had a Russian bomber flying undetected over the country, including over the nation's capital, and not to respond in a setting like that is really stunning," Romney told Knox.

On Sunday, reports emerged showing that the U.S. Treasury Department and a Commerce Department agency had been breached by a Russian military intelligence unit known as "Cozy Bear," which is responsible for past hacks into government agencies.

The Republican senator's comments come one day after Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) voiced similar thoughts about the recent alleged Russian hacks, calling it "virtually a declaration of war by Russia on the United States and we should take that seriously."

President Trump has not addressed the latest hacks reported by Reuters on Sunday, and White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday the administration is "taking a hard look into this," CNBC reported.

The Hill reached out to the White House but did not immediately receive a response.

President-elect Joe Biden has been outspoken regarding the latest suspected Russian hacking, saying his incoming national security team has been briefed by officials privy to the matter.

"My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government - and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office," said Biden, later adding, "Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation."

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) told congressional staffers this week the perpetrator behind the alleged cyberattack is "highly sophisticated."

CISA officials further said that "it will take weeks, if not months, to determine the total number of agencies affected by the attack and the extent to which sensitive data and information may have been compromised."

TWEET SHARE EMAIL

QUOTE]Originally posted by sleepy head
If there was one thing covid made clear, it would have to be that there is nothing more dangerous than a scared libtard. [/QUOTE]

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 10:43 PM:

The fact that Donald Trump’s tax cut did not produce the investment and growth that was promised is widely known. There was a modest uptick in growth in 2018, from 2.4 percent the prior year to 2.9 percent in 2018, but this pace fell back to 2.3 percent last year. Virtually, all forecasts showed the growth rate falling still lower in 2020, even before the coronavirus began to impose large economic costs.

This is well below the 3.0 percent growth, for as far as the eye can see, promised by the Trump administration. In fact, the 2.5 percent average growth rate for the first three years of the Trump administration is only slightly better than the 2.3 percent average growth rate for the last three years of the Obama administration.

More important than the growth figures is the fact that there is zero evidence that it gave any substantial boost to investment. The investment share of GDP crept up slightly from 13.2 percent of GDP in 2017 to 13.5 percent in 2018, but it was back down to 13.4 percent last year. And, in the fourth quarter of 2019 it was back to 13.2 percent. The investment share never got as high as the 13.7 percent reached in 2014 under Obama. There certainly is not much of a boom story here.

Some tax cut proponents insist that the tax cut would have led to the promised boom had it not been for Donald Trump’s trade war. While there is little doubt that the trade war has had a negative effect on investment and growth, the impact would have to be far larger than any models project in order for the trade war to have been the only thing that stifled an investment boom. Also, from the standpoint of touting Donald Trump’s economic record, it is a bit hard to maintain that his tax cut would have led to a great investment boom, if not for damage caused by his ill-conceived trade war.

The story of the tax cut and the economy is simple. We gave a large tax cut, a bit less than $200 billion a year (around 0.9 percent of GDP), with the main beneficiaries being rich people. And, the rich spent a reasonable portion of their tax cut, leading to a boost in consumption and a boost to growth. This proves the old theory that if we give people more money, they will spend more. Of course, that is more true if we give the money to low and middle income people, but even high income people will spend more when they have more money.

The tax cut did lead to a large increase in the budget deficit, which is not necessarily a problem, except that we could have instead done things with this money like provide free child care, extend health care coverage, provide large subsidies to promote clean energy and conservation. In effect, we targeted increasing consumption by the rich instead of these alternative uses of resources.

The Tax Gaming Continues!

While the investment and growth failures of the tax cut are widely known, there is another failure of the tax cut which has gotten less attention. The main selling point of the corporate tax cut, which was at the center of the Trump plan, was that it would lead to an investment boom, leading to more rapid productivity growth and higher wages, but there was another more plausible story they also pushed.

The pre-Trump corporate tax rate was 35 percent, but few businesses were paying taxes at anything close to this rate. The overall average was close to 21 percent. The 35 percent statutory rate put us at the top of the OECD. However, our actually tax collections were slightly below the median.

The Trumpers argued that they would lower the rate, but would eliminate the loopholes, so that we would actually collect something close to the new 21 percent statutory rate. If this were true, it would actually be a change for the better.

The point is that whatever our tax take actually is, we want to minimize the resources involved in collecting this tax. When corporations employ elaborate tax avoidance or evasion strategies to get their tax rate down, they are employing considerable resources in this effort. This is a complete waste from an economic perspective. We have highly educated people working as tax lawyers and accountants instead of engaged in work that could have social benefits, such as improving medical technology or teaching.

These tax avoidance and evasion strategies also contribute to income inequality, since there is big money in designing them. If a clever accountant can find a way to save Apple or Google $400 million on their taxes, then these companies would come out ahead paying them $399,999,999. We shouldn’t design our economy so that tax gaming is one of the best ways to make a big fortune.

Anyhow, whether or not their promises on eliminating tax gaming were ever sincere, it is now clear that they were not accurate. We have lowered the tax rate, as they intended, but tax gaming continues to be as robust as ever.

We can see this clearly from the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) projections on corporate tax collections. In April of 2018, after the tax cut had been passed into law, CBO projected that we would collect $307 billion in corporate taxes this year. In January of this year, it projected that we would collect $234 billion in corporate taxes, a difference of more than 20 percent. This comes to less than 11 percent of projected profits.

The failure to limit tax gaming is also apparent in the continuing growth in the foreign share of corporate profits. The simplest and most common form of tax gaming is to have profits recorded in a tax haven like Ireland or the Cayman Islands. It is very difficult for governments to determine where profits were actually earned. For this reason, companies would rather have their profits booked in a country with a very low tax rate.

The latest data on profits from the Federal Reserve Board show that the tax cut did not discourage companies from booking their profits abroad. In fact, the foreign share of corporate profits rose from 21.3 percent in 2017, the last year before the tax cut, to 26.1 percent last year.

Ending Tax Gaming

If anyone was actually interested in ending tax gaming, there is a simple solution that I have written about in the past. We just make companies give us a percentage of their stock as non-voting shares.

For example, if we want a tax rate of 25 percent, we require they give us shares equal to 25 percent of their total outstanding shares. These shares get treated just like any other shares. If companies pay a dividend of $2.00 a share to their other shares, they make a payment of $2.00 to the government on each of its non—voting shares. If it buys back 10 percent of its shares at $100 a share, it buys back 10 percent of the government’s shares at $100 a share. If the company is bought out at $150 a share, then the government gets $150 for each of the shares it holds.

Going this route, there is no way the company can cheat the government out its tax obligation unless it also cheats its shareholders. I describe this plan in somewhat more detail here. (The best description is probably Matthew Klein’s Financial Times write up, which is unfortunately behind a paywall.)

If for some reason this sounds too much like socialism (it is just collecting taxes that are owed) we can make the shares purely notional. The companies will just have to make payments “as if” the government owned shares.

The neat thing about this is that states can adopt the same approach with their corporate taxes. If, for example, they tax 10 percent of a company’s worldwide profits at a 2 percent rate, they can just set a basis for the company’s tax as the returns on 0.2 percent of its shares. Since there is a large amount of fluctuation in share prices, they can just make the basis the average of the last five year’s returns, adjusted for an inflation factor. (The inflation factor would mean, for example, that the basis for the tax would be 10 percent more than the average of the last five years.) Here again, there is no way to avoid the tax unless the company cheats its shareholders.

People have proposed many convoluted and expensive mechanisms to reduce tax avoidance and evasion. The non-voting share route is a very simple way to go. That probably means it will never be taken seriously by people in policy making positions.

Posted by Cotton 1927 on 12-18-2020 11:00 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by sleepy head
If there was one thing covid made clear, it would have to be that there is nothing more dangerous than a scared libtard.

Lol how bout a repuke scared to get a shot! You repukes gotta be proud!

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 11:06 PM:

No one liners, let's keep on track!

The fact that Donald Trump’s tax cut did not produce the investment and growth that was promised is widely known. There was a modest uptick in growth in 2018, from 2.4 percent the prior year to 2.9 percent in 2018, but this pace fell back to 2.3 percent last year. Virtually, all forecasts showed the growth rate falling still lower in 2020, even before the coronavirus began to impose large economic costs.

This is well below the 3.0 percent growth, for as far as the eye can see, promised by the Trump administration. In fact, the 2.5 percent average growth rate for the first three years of the Trump administration is only slightly better than the 2.3 percent average growth rate for the last three years of the Obama administration.

More important than the growth figures is the fact that there is zero evidence that it gave any substantial boost to investment. The investment share of GDP crept up slightly from 13.2 percent of GDP in 2017 to 13.5 percent in 2018, but it was back down to 13.4 percent last year. And, in the fourth quarter of 2019 it was back to 13.2 percent. The investment share never got as high as the 13.7 percent reached in 2014 under Obama. There certainly is not much of a boom story here.

Some tax cut proponents insist that the tax cut would have led to the promised boom had it not been for Donald Trump’s trade war. While there is little doubt that the trade war has had a negative effect on investment and growth, the impact would have to be far larger than any models project in order for the trade war to have been the only thing that stifled an investment boom. Also, from the standpoint of touting Donald Trump’s economic record, it is a bit hard to maintain that his tax cut would have led to a great investment boom, if not for damage caused by his ill-conceived trade war.

The story of the tax cut and the economy is simple. We gave a large tax cut, a bit less than $200 billion a year (around 0.9 percent of GDP), with the main beneficiaries being rich people. And, the rich spent a reasonable portion of their tax cut, leading to a boost in consumption and a boost to growth. This proves the old theory that if we give people more money, they will spend more. Of course, that is more true if we give the money to low and middle income people, but even high income people will spend more when they have more money.

The tax cut did lead to a large increase in the budget deficit, which is not necessarily a problem, except that we could have instead done things with this money like provide free child care, extend health care coverage, provide large subsidies to promote clean energy and conservation. In effect, we targeted increasing consumption by the rich instead of these alternative uses of resources.

The Tax Gaming Continues!

While the investment and growth failures of the tax cut are widely known, there is another failure of the tax cut which has gotten less attention. The main selling point of the corporate tax cut, which was at the center of the Trump plan, was that it would lead to an investment boom, leading to more rapid productivity growth and higher wages, but there was another more plausible story they also pushed.

The pre-Trump corporate tax rate was 35 percent, but few businesses were paying taxes at anything close to this rate. The overall average was close to 21 percent. The 35 percent statutory rate put us at the top of the OECD. However, our actually tax collections were slightly below the median.

The Trumpers argued that they would lower the rate, but would eliminate the loopholes, so that we would actually collect something close to the new 21 percent statutory rate. If this were true, it would actually be a change for the better.

The point is that whatever our tax take actually is, we want to minimize the resources involved in collecting this tax. When corporations employ elaborate tax avoidance or evasion strategies to get their tax rate down, they are employing considerable resources in this effort. This is a complete waste from an economic perspective. We have highly educated people working as tax lawyers and accountants instead of engaged in work that could have social benefits, such as improving medical technology or teaching.

These tax avoidance and evasion strategies also contribute to income inequality, since there is big money in designing them. If a clever accountant can find a way to save Apple or Google $400 million on their taxes, then these companies would come out ahead paying them $399,999,999. We shouldn’t design our economy so that tax gaming is one of the best ways to make a big fortune.

Anyhow, whether or not their promises on eliminating tax gaming were ever sincere, it is now clear that they were not accurate. We have lowered the tax rate, as they intended, but tax gaming continues to be as robust as ever.

We can see this clearly from the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) projections on corporate tax collections. In April of 2018, after the tax cut had been passed into law, CBO projected that we would collect $307 billion in corporate taxes this year. In January of this year, it projected that we would collect $234 billion in corporate taxes, a difference of more than 20 percent. This comes to less than 11 percent of projected profits.

The failure to limit tax gaming is also apparent in the continuing growth in the foreign share of corporate profits. The simplest and most common form of tax gaming is to have profits recorded in a tax haven like Ireland or the Cayman Islands. It is very difficult for governments to determine where profits were actually earned. For this reason, companies would rather have their profits booked in a country with a very low tax rate.

The latest data on profits from the Federal Reserve Board show that the tax cut did not discourage companies from booking their profits abroad. In fact, the foreign share of corporate profits rose from 21.3 percent in 2017, the last year before the tax cut, to 26.1 percent last year.

Ending Tax Gaming

If anyone was actually interested in ending tax gaming, there is a simple solution that I have written about in the past. We just make companies give us a percentage of their stock as non-voting shares.

For example, if we want a tax rate of 25 percent, we require they give us shares equal to 25 percent of their total outstanding shares. These shares get treated just like any other shares. If companies pay a dividend of $2.00 a share to their other shares, they make a payment of $2.00 to the government on each of its non—voting shares. If it buys back 10 percent of its shares at $100 a share, it buys back 10 percent of the government’s shares at $100 a share. If the company is bought out at $150 a share, then the government gets $150 for each of the shares it holds.

Going this route, there is no way the company can cheat the government out its tax obligation unless it also cheats its shareholders. I describe this plan in somewhat more detail here. (The best description is probably Matthew Klein’s Financial Times write up, which is unfortunately behind a paywall.)

If for some reason this sounds too much like socialism (it is just collecting taxes that are owed) we can make the shares purely notional. The companies will just have to make payments “as if” the government owned shares.

The neat thing about this is that states can adopt the same approach with their corporate taxes. If, for example, they tax 10 percent of a company’s worldwide profits at a 2 percent rate, they can just set a basis for the company’s tax as the returns on 0.2 percent of its shares. Since there is a large amount of fluctuation in share prices, they can just make the basis the average of the last five year’s returns, adjusted for an inflation factor. (The inflation factor would mean, for example, that the basis for the tax would be 10 percent more than the average of the last five years.) Here again, there is no way to avoid the tax unless the company cheats its shareholders.

People have proposed many convoluted and expensive mechanisms to reduce tax avoidance and evasion. The non-voting share route is a very simple way to go. That probably means it will never be taken seriously by people in policy making positions.

QUOTE]Originally posted by Cotton 1927
Lol how bout a repuke scared to get a shot! You repukes gotta be proud! [/QUOTE]

Posted by BEST EVER on 12-18-2020 11:09 PM:

What is the real story of Donald Trump and Russia? The answer is still unclear, and Democrats in Congress want to get to the bottom of it with an investigation. But there’s no doubt that a spider web of connections—some public, some private, some clear, some murky—exists between Trump, his associates and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

These charts illustrate dozens of those links, including meetings between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign and administration; his daughter’s ties to Putin’s friends; Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant; and his short-lived mixed martial arts venture with one of Putin’s favorite athletes. The solid lines mark established facts!

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