Hey Look! Labor's Share of Business Income has never been LOWER than under our lord and saviour, king and high muckety muck, Uniparty Poopulist President Donald J. Trump

 The Golden Age . . . for business, not for you.

 3Q2025, updated Jan 8, 2026:

If Trump had any true populist balls, he'd push for permanent 10% credit card interest rate caps

 

Trump calls for one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10%

 

... Independent U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a fierce Trump critic, and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, have previously introduced bipartisan legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for five years. This bill explicitly directs credit card companies to limit rates as part of broader consumer relief legislation. 

Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida have also introduced a bill in the House to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, reflecting cross-aisle interest in addressing high rates. ...

Populist taxes to match Trump's populist rhetoric

 The original personal exemption from the income tax was $3,000 in 1913. The equivalent of that in September 2025 is $97,440.

For married filing jointly the personal exemption was $4,000 in 1913. The equivalent of that in September 2025 is $129,920. 

This personal exemption, which Trump eliminated in 2018, should be reinstated, and indexed to inflation in this way from here on out, and this income should be entirely federal-tax-free, except of course for Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, and state and local taxes.

About 83% of individual wage earners made $97k or less in 2023.

That's what actual populist taxation would look like.

Remember, the roughly top 20% would not pay taxes on their first $97k either, so they would be just like everybody else in respect of basic income. If they can't live on that, then neither can we.

Standard deductions and/or itemized deductions for the top 20% are for the debates over the rates they should pay progressively, and should be a moot point for the majority because the majority wouldn't be paying federal taxes anyway. 

Corporate income taxes and capital gains taxes muddy these waters, but those taxes were originally placed on Wall Street fat cats at a time when farmers all across this land faced punitive taxes on property which the Wall Streeters did not. Corporate income and capital gains taxes were meant to address that inequity.

The income tax was subsequently added, on the rich obviously, in part because those other taxes didn't really work to address the inequity. But now we have this Rube Goldberg machine of taxation which Trump has merely tweaked again but is not fundamentally reformed.

The fact is that today we still have horrible tax inequity where some income is more equal than others, with much lower tax rates on capital gains held more than one year.

This overwhelmingly benefits the top 20% by wealth, who own about 90% of the stock market's value*. The owners of this wealth routinely take their income from this source, not from W-2 income, but they are taxed at much lower long term capital gains tax rates of 0%, 15%, and 20%.

* the top 20% of households as measured by income own about 87% of directly-held equities

-- Michael Hiltzik, here 

Let's compare a person's taxes on next year's income of $97,000 under the Big Ugly Bill's ordinary income tax rates versus the capital gains tax rates.

Starting in 2026, a single filer will get a standard deduction of $16,100. If he makes $97,000 next year in ordinary income, his taxable income will be $80,900 and his federal income tax will be $12,510 ($5,800 plus 22% of the amount over $50,400). The effective tax rate is 12.89% on $97,000.

The same filer without W-2 income but with $97,000 of long term capital gains income instead comes out way ahead. His taxable income is the same because his standard deduction is the same: $80,900. However, on the first $49,450 of taxable income he pays 0% capital gains tax because he held it longer than one year. The remaining $31,450 is taxed at just 15%, which is $4,717.50. The effective tax rate is 4.86%, not 12.89%! That's 62% lower.

If we treated all income from every source the same way and taxed accordingly, the playing field would be more level.

If the people are taxed at ordinary income tax rates, arguably all entities should be. Corporations are people, they tell us, so there should be no story ever again about a profitable company escaping federal taxation in this country.

But Tesla and Meta, for example, paid no tax in 2023. About 25% of companies don't on average. 

As for individuals, the data about how many escape taxation is harder to come by, but an estimated 90,000 households making $200k or more in 2022 escaped taxation legally, and about 3,200 individuals making $1 million or more paid no federal tax.

There is nothing populist about a system which treats the income of rich people worthy of a privilege the income of the rest of us is not. 

Trump is a phony populist and his tax code continues to make chumps of Americans who work

In 2026 a single filer making $97,000 in salary or wages will pay an effective tax rate of about 12.9%.

 

About 83% of the country earns no more than $97,000/year. 

 

The single filer who takes $97,000 in income exclusively from long term investments, however, will pay an effective tax rate of only about 4.9%, a rate 62% lower.

 

In 2021, 20% of tax filers did not report any wage or salary income.

 

In 2026, such people can receive income from long term capital gains up to $545,500 and pay an effective tax rate of only about 18% vs. a single filer earning that much in salary or wages who pays an effective rate of about 29.6%.

 

In 2Q2025 the top 10% by wealth in America owned 87.2% of the stocks and mutual funds.

 

 

I wonder how much Heritage Foundation paid National Review to publish this populist-conservative fusionist screed in the pages of the magazine infamous for purging dissenters

 ... As Heritage Board Chairman Barb Gaby and President Kevin Roberts wrote in their note to staff, alumni, and the many friends gained over the past 52 years:

Ed believed in addition, not subtraction. Unity, not uniformity. One of his favorite mantras was ‘You win through multiplication and addition, not through division and subtraction.’ His legacy is not just the institution he built, but the movement he helped grow — a movement rooted in faith, family, freedom, and the Founding.

Feulner’s words contain practical wisdom. In this era of political polarization and cultural fragmentation, they continue to serve us as a powerful tactical roadmap. In the spirit of self-governance, they call for a movement that grows by building coalitions, not by purging dissent; that persuades rather than polarizes; and that unites Americans around shared values rather than dividing them by ideology. ...

More. 

 

The White House's Stephen Miller attacks libertarians for opposing the reconciliation bill's immigration enforcement spending

 ... the White House deputy chief of staff — and chief architect of Trump’s immigration agenda — is taking a sledgehammer to what remains of the libertarian-conservative fusionism that was prominent in the party pre-Trump.

“The libertarians in the House and Senate trying to take down this bill — they’re not stupid. They just don’t care,” Miller said in an interview with conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk last week.

“Immigration has never mattered to them; it will never matter to them. Deportations have never mattered to them; it will never matter to them. You will never live a day in your life where a libertarian cares as much about immigration and sovereignty as they do about the Congressional Budget Office.” ...

Miller’s aversion to libertarians, though, seems to go deeper than opportunistic messaging for the bill. He posted in 2022 that the uprising of the ideology in the House GOP is “how we ended up with open borders globalist [Paul] Ryan.” He blamed libertarian candidates for siphoning votes away from failed Trump-endorsed candidates in 2022 — Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire.

“Another example of how libertarians ruin everything,” Miller said in one post responding to a 2022 Georgia Senate poll. ...

More.

The CBS Poll referenced in the story indicates 55% like Trump's deportation goals but 56% dislike his approach.

Polling on the reconciliation bill indicates most think it will help the wealthy and hurt poor and middle class people, with a third admitting they have no idea what's in the bill. Well, neither did many in the US House who voted for the damn thing.

This points up the political danger of these Christmas Tree bills adorned with something for everyone. They're too complicated to understand and therefore capture little enthusiasm. But Stephen Miller fancifully thinks otherwise:

“By including the immigration language with the tax cuts with the welfare reform, it creates a coalition. Politics is all about coalitions,” Miller said in the interview with Kirk — also praising Trump in the interview as “able to create a winning formula for populist, nationalist, conservative government.”          

But not libertarian government.

 

 

 

Nigel Farage's UK Reform Party won new majorities in ten regional councils across England in the May 1 elections, stunning Labour and the Conservatives

 ... The races were local. But Reform UK’s unprecedented surge has recast political trends nationwide, sparking panic in Britain’s two major parties while drawing comparisons to the rise of populist movements that have come to power in Europe and the United States.

Reform’s breakthrough included wins in two of four mayoral races the party contested, and the poaching of an open parliamentary seat previously held by the Labour Party. The Conservative Party fared far worse, losing control of 15 county councils and, with them, almost 700 councillors. In all, the two long-dominant parties lost about two-thirds of the 1,600 offices on the ballot, most of them to Reform UK. 

“Both parties were wiped out in places where it would have been unimaginable before,” said Tony Travers, a professor of government at the London School of Economics. “This could mark a major shift in the electoral dynamic.” ...

More.

Populism means speaking fifty words of English: Pete Hegseth joins Marco Rubio in his own more welders, less philosophers moment

Take courage people!

You too can become populists just like Pete and Little Marco. Just get your degrees from Princeton and Harvard and the Universities of Florida and Miami.

 

 

Billionaire Marc Andreessen loves him some plutocracy, which his beloved Thomas Jefferson would have taxed into oblivion

Trump's so-called party of populism has given us a cabinet teeming with billionaires.

Welcome to rule by the rich. We deserve them, good and hard.

Andreessen's hero, Thomas Jefferson, would have taxed them all into oblivion to keep their baneful influence from destroying republican government. Thomas Jefferson was an advocate of what we have known as steeply progressive taxation.

But billionaire Andreessen thinks you are too dumb even to know that.

Hell, he's probably too dumb to know that.

 

"Exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."

Iraq combat vets wondered why National Guard member Pete Hegseth showed up in Iraq in 2005 leading a platoon

 “I showed up in the 101st Airborne Division, in one of the most storied units in our nation’s history, with a bunch of combat vets who’d already done a tour in Iraq and they looked at me like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’” Hegseth said in a 2021 interview on “The Will Cain Show” podcast.

One former officer who served with Hegseth said he was surprised to see a National Guard member taking on such a role. He surmised that Hegseth probably wanted to run for office someday and thought a combat tour could help, the former officer said. ...

The former Army officer who served with Hegseth in Iraq said he believes he has latched on to “populist scenarios” in a quest for personal gain. When news of Hegseth’s potential nomination emerged, old acquaintances from those days got back in touch with one another, the former officer said.

One text he received especially stood out. All it said: “WTF?”

More.

German party Alternative für Deutschland wins in Thuringia, comes in close second in Saxony, still frozen out of governance by CDU member who heads German intelligence

 For the first time ever, the right-populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a state election. In Thuringia, the party gained 32.8 per cent of the votes – nearly 10 points ahead of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which came in second with 23.6 per cent. In Saxony, the AfD won 30.6 per cent and came just 1.3 per cent behind the leading CDU. ...

Meanwhile, the three parties of the ruling coalition government lagged far behind. Combined, their vote share amounted to less than 15 per cent in Saxony and just over 10 per cent in Thuringia. ... The AfD’s gains are not a one-off slip-up, but a continuation of its successes. The party was already the second-strongest force in both federal states in the last state elections in 2019. On a national level, the AfD came second in the EU elections this June. ...

The attempt to combat the AfD by merely dismissing it as beyond the pale clearly isn’t working. Even those who don’t like the AfD, but are principled democrats, can see the problem with freezing out a party that just won a democratic election. ... The polls are crystal clear about which topics matter most to voters – rising crime rates, unregulated migration, a sinking standard of living and the growing influence of radical Islam. These are all real, rational concerns.

More.

Another salvo at Kamala Harris: WaPo editorial board calls her anti-big business proposals populist gimmicks, says her first-time home buyer $25,000 down-payment plan will increase housing prices

 

 The whole thing makes sense, which is surprising coming as it does from The Washington Post, which ends this way:

 [Even] her [good] ideas would cost money, yet she insisted in her speech that she would hold to President Joe Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on any household earning $400,000 or less annually. That excludes 80 percent of taxable income, and does not take into account the recent surge in families earning over $400,000. The Harris campaign says it plans to raise revenue to cover these costs but did not provide specific offsets in its economic plan rollout. Without them, Ms. Harris’s full plan would add $1.7 trillion to federal deficits over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog.

To be sure, every campaign makes expensive promises that will never come to pass, especially with a divided Congress. Remember Mr. Biden’s pledge to make community college free? Even adjusted for the pandering standards of campaign economics, however, Ms. Harris’s speech Friday ranks as a disappointment.

Wow.

What's that old saying, When you're a liberal and you've lost The Washington Post, you've already lost?

Well ......................................................................................... is the Democrat Party still liberal though?

British conservatives are still blind to Nigel Farage's truth, which is identical with Henry Kissinger's long-held position that Ukraine should not join NATO

 Western civilisation is being destroyed by its own decadence

Zoe Strimpel, UK Telegraph

Last week, Nigel Farage outed himself as deeply unfit for leadership by piping the same line as other populists in Europe and the United States: that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is effectively our fault because, through Nato expansion, we had “poked” the Russian bear . . ..

Henry Kissinger was US Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford.

This position has nothing to do with populism, except by the accident of thinking correctly.

Who needs FreedomWorks 1984-2024, its mission accomplished by BIDEN letting in 10 million illegals ha ha ha ha ha

The libertarian political action organization FreedomWorks is calling it quits effective immediately as funding evaporates and it is no longer able to sell its pro-immigration and free-trade message to Republicans now transformed into populists by Trump.

Politico reports here.

The world is drunk on debt: Global debt at all levels reached $307 trillion in 3Q2023

IIF CEO Tim Adams sounded the alarm on rising levels of debt while speaking to CNBC’s Silvia Amaro at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ... "We need sobriety . . .."

The global banking industry’s premier trade group said late last year that worldwide debt climbed to a record of $307.4 trillion in the third quarter of 2023, with a substantial increase in both high-income countries and emerging markets.

The IIF said it expected global debt to reach $310 trillion by the end of 2023, warning that elections in more than 50 countries and regions this year could usher in a shift toward populism that brings with it still-higher debt levels.

More.

For a good time, call Angela: The Libertarian Party is very interested in RFK Jr for Election 2024 but not Justin Amash lol

 In July, Mr. Kennedy met privately with Angela McArdle, the chair of the Libertarian Party, at a conference they were both attending in Memphis — a meeting that has not previously been reported.

 “He emphasized that he was committed to running as a Democrat but said that he considered himself very libertarian,” Ms. McArdle said in an interview, adding that they agreed on several positions, including the threat of the “deep state” and the need for populist messaging. “We’re aligned on a lot of issues.”

 “My perspective is that we are going to stay in touch in case he does decide to run,” Ms. McArdle said. “And he can contact me at any time if that’s the case.”

More.

Lolbertarian says the worst possible thing which could happen to the economy (i.e. "to me") is higher future taxes

More self-absorbed than your average tranny.

Scott Sumner, here:

The consequence of the reckless fiscal policy will not be a financial crisis. Nor will it be a default. Even the permanent monetization of the debt is unlikely, in my view. The most likely consequence will be higher future taxes and slower economic growth. This will lead to reduced living standards. It might also push politics in a more “populist” direction, with consequences that are difficult to predict (but unlikely to be desirable.)

Four true words

 Trump lacked the discipline.      

Stated here.

That's still the fundamental problem, but that's been the case from the beginning.

Character counts. Trump has never had it and never will. I cut my losses with Trump in 2018 when he exposed himself as a phony on his chief plank, illegal immigration. He already did that in August 2016, so fool me once, shame on Trump. I am not ashamed to state it over and over again.

The rest of the party still hasn't come around, however, with so-called conservatives still yammering on about stuff like pOPuLiSm. But that's because opposition to illegal immigration was never a GOP value. The GOP would never be upset because he lied about that.

It's hard to imagine the GOP pointing to anything in particular which was a line too far. 121 voted in the House to object to the 2020 Arizona vote, 138 to the Pennsylvania vote. Not even three horrible elections in a row is proving to be decisive.

Meanwhile Democrats have exploited Trump's weakness, and therefore the GOP's, to consolidate power with extraordinary new depth. The new regime of mail-in voting everywhere changes everything. The chain of custody of ballots in voting precincts is broken forever.

It's the end run around representative government we only imagined the National Popular Vote Compact would be. It's the path to pure democracy. It's the end of legislatures, the end of republicanism, and makes the tyranny of the majority and the repression of the minority the new, terrible future.

A Supreme Court in principle deferring to the states on everything from election law to drugs, marriage, abortion, gender, etc. is no bulwark against what's coming, indeed, what's already here.

The people will decide by referendum.

The people be damned.

The Fed was supposed to tighten its balance sheet starting Jun 15th: Nearly three months later it's down a measly $110 billion to . . . $8.822 TRILLION

 The Fed is all talk about combating inflation, no action.

Because the top 10% of the country has 89% of the money that way, dummy.

True populism would throw the bums out and end The Fed, but we haven't got any.

WALCL.

Joel Kotkin has come around, now calls it what it is: Global fascism

In 2018, Kotkin was still tip-toeing around the obvious, but not anymore:

Mussolini’s notion of fascism has become increasingly dominant in much of the world . . .

Mussolini, a one-time radical socialist, viewed himself as a “revolutionary” transforming society by turning the state into “the moving centre of economic life”. In Italy and, to a greater extent, Germany, fascism also brought with it, at least initially, an expanded highly populist welfare state much as we see today.

Mussolini’s idea of a an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal capitalist model. ...

fascism — in its corporate sense — relies on concentrated economic power to achieve its essential and ideological goals. ...

China, in many aspects the model fascist state of our times, follows Il Duce’s model of cementing the corporate elite into the power structure. ...

But in the battle between the two emergent fascist systems, China possesses powerful advantages. Communist Party cadres at least offer more than a moralising agenda; they can point to the country’s massive reduction of extreme poverty and a huge growth in monthly wages, up almost five-fold since 2006. At a time when the middle class is shrinking in the West, China’s middle class increased enormously from 1980 to 2000, although its growth appears to have slowed in recent years.

Like Mussolini, who linked his regime to that of Ancient Rome, China’s rulers look to Han supremacy and the glories of China’s Imperial past. “The very purpose of the [Chinese Communist] Party in leading the people in revolution and development,” Xi Jinping told party cadres a decade ago, “is to make the people prosperous, the country strong, and [to] rejuvenate the Chinese nation.”

Kotkin recognizes at least that American right-wing libertarianism is part of the problem, not part of the solution:

the consolidation of oligarchic power is supported by massive lobbying operations and dispersals of cash, including to some Right-wing libertarians, who doggedly justify censorship and oligopoly on private property grounds.

Regrettably, however, Kotkin still does not connect this failure of the old liberal order in the West with the failure of the old moral order which gave it birth and on which it depended. This is because Kotkin still sees things in primarily materialistic terms.

Kotkin is oddly politically correct when he denounces possible recourse to nativism, which blinds him to the nativism which is at the heart of Chinese state capitalism and gives it much of its appeal and strength. He calls for "a re-awakening of the spirit of resistance to authority" in the West, not realizing that it was Protestantism which made that even possible in the first place.

The problem of the West is spiritual, and Catholicism will never be able to rise to the occasion of refounding it as long as globo-homo defines Rome. The whole idea is inimical to the notion of founding a nation "for our posterity".