Ohio political strategist is essentially correct that Democrats need to rediscover the New Deal, but seems blissfully unaware that the implication would be a drastic tax cut for 98% of the American people

 

Democrats Need the New Deal, Not Socialism

Brendan Frasier, The Hill

 

The word "tax" comes up only one time:

 

 ... When I asked her why she called herself a democratic socialist, she listed ideas like raising taxes on the wealthy, expanding childcare, paid family leave and strengthening labor protections. I told her that these are not socialist positions. These are social capitalist policies. ...

 

In 1936, 98% of earners made less than $4,000 a year. The tax on that was effectively 3%, or $120. 

 

The average income was far less, about $1,000 a year. The tax on that was effectively 0% because of the $1,000 personal exemption.

 

Revenues were raised by soaking the rich, leaving the rest of us alone.

 

Democrats should by all means revive the New Deal. They'd win in a landslide. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be leftists, not Democrats.

 

Dhey no speaka da language. 

 

 

New so-called conservative Tax Foundation analysis says Trump/GOP tax and spending bill heralded on the Fourth of July benefits the richest taxpayers over the poorest taxpayers by 4,435%

 

 The One Big Beautiful Bill Cuts Taxes Across the US, New Analysis Finds

... At the county level, the largest average tax cuts are found in mountain resort towns. For example, we estimate Teton County in Wyoming will see an average tax cut of $37,373 per taxpayer in 2026, the highest in the US. Pitkin County, CO ($21,363), and Summit County, UT ($14,537), rank number two and three for the largest average tax cuts, likely representing the residences of business owners and higher-earning taxpayers. The smallest average tax cuts are found in rural counties, such as Loup County, NE, with an average tax cut of $824 in 2026. ...

Yes, the average tax cut of the richest taxpayers is 45.35 times the size of the average tax cut for the poorest.

Yeah, run on that GOP, run.

Unbelievably rosy GDP report contained core pce inflation data at 2.9% countering previous rosy core cpi inflation report at 2.6% and indicating rising inflation

 U.S. economy grows by 4.3% in third quarter, much more than expected, delayed report shows

 

The U.S. economy grew at a much greater-than-expected pace in the third quarter, boosted by strong consumer spending, a delayed report released Tuesday showed.

U.S. gross domestic product, a sum of all goods and services produced in the sprawling U.S. economy, expanded by 4.3% in the July-September period, the Commerce Department said in its initial reading of third-quarter growth. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect a gain of 3.2%.  ...

 

The economy moved forward during the period despite persistent signs of inflation pressures.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s primary inflation gauge, rose 2.8% during the period, and 2.9% for core which excludes food and energy. Both were above prior respective readings of 2.1% and 2.6% and remain well above the Fed’s 2% inflation gauge. Also, the chain-weighted price index, which accounts for changes in consumer behavior such as switching to less expensive products for pricier items, rose 3.8%, a full percentage point above the forecast. ...

 As for the GDP report, even if you accept the rosy number as reported, it remains that . . .

Trump's real GDP since 2017 is growing at a compound annual rate which is 5% lower than the rate for 1984-2017; and

 

Trump's GDP since 2017 is growing at a compound annual rate 21% lower than the rate for 1947-2017.

 

Meanwhile GDP since 1984 is growing at a compound annual rate which is 28% lower than for 1947-1984.

 

And GDP since the Great Recession in 2007 is growing at a compound annual rate 42% lower than for 1947-2007.

 

The results of the era inaugurated by Reagan have been devastating. Real GDP today would be much higher had the previous long term trend continued.

 

3Q1984 Reagan real GDP of 8252.46 at the pre-Reagan rate of compound annual growth since 1947 would be 36213.94 today instead of 24024.95, 50% higher.

 

The Trump era is doubling down on stupid, not breaking with it. It is guaranteed to get us nowhere, faster.

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. 

Even Larry Kudlow recognizes that GDP hasn't been good since 1984

... The last time real GDP hit 5 percent for the entire year was Ronald Reagan’s 1984, where the number was 5.6 percent for that whole year. ...

Here.

If Larry were completely honest he'd recognize that real GDP growth has been in steady decline in the entire post-war.

The percent change peaks are plain as day, unless you're an ideologue.

We've gone from 8.69% in 1950, to 7.23% in 1984, to 6.15 in 2021 (COVID panic spending), and the dozen or so routine percent change years above 5% between 1950 and 1984 when the economy was still holding its own have disappeared.

click to expand

 

The Reagan Revolution didn't do one thing to stem the decline, the Trump Gimmickry even less. In fact, the Reagan Revolution made it worse.

The answer why is paradoxical.

The debt-based economy of the United States ran out of gas under Reagan because he cut the taxes which paid for that debt, too much and on the wrong people. It's still a debt-based economy, but we don't want to pay for it anymore.

This is the infantile cry of libertarianism. 

We all think the growth of debt has been the problem when paying for that growth has been the problem. We threw a tantrum and decided to stop paying for it, and its growth naturally contracted, and along with it GDP, in self-defense so to speak.  

Growth of TCMDO, the total universe of debt, which steadily climbed the ladder in the post-war, plunged after 1985, from percent change 15.36% to 11.11% in 2004 to 9.51% in 2020 (COVID panic spending).

 

Debt draws future prosperity into the present, but what you get if you don't pay for it sufficiently is less prosperity when you reach the future from which you borrowed.

And as you pay less, you then borrow even more less so to speak, and get even more less. Rinse and repeat. 

Welcome to the future. 

It's really that simple.

Taxes have been much too low on the rich, and for a long time, and reversing that is the sober reflection of an age which realizes it made a mistake, starting long before Reagan with JFK, the libertarian cad who bedded more women in the White House than the rest of them combined. His Revenue Act of 1964 passed under LBJ cut the top income tax bracket from 91% to 70%.

The question we have to ask ourselves now is, are we ready to give our system another try and tax everyone, but progressively, and practice fiscal and moral restraint for a change . . .

or are we going to say yes to the billionaires who were made by all this obscene excess and who want to impose an un-American system of feudalism with themselves at the top and the rest of us their humble serfs?

George Washington wouldn't kneel even in church.

I'm with that guy. 

Palmer Luckey and all his fellow billionaires have to be taxed punitively on their foreign investments and their ordinary income in order to reindustrialize America

Make sure you tell him when he complains that he has to stop measuring such things in dollars.

 

Palmer Luckey: Reindustrializing The U.S. Is About Realizing Your Destiny Can't Be Measured In Dollars

This article in liberal VOX is a great defense of the metric called Gross Domestic Product

 The only number that really matters

 ... GDP tells you how much resource-generating capacity you have by looking at how much you are doing right now. ...

 

And as you know if you read posts here labeled GDP, we aren't doing enough.

GDP today would be DOUBLE what it is if the compound annual growth rate of GDP from the Great Depression to 1984 had simply continued on its trajectory after 1984, but it didn't.

Meanwhile, the steady decline in capacity utilization in the post-war tells you why.

Reagan administration policy prescriptions were only temporarily successful at staving off the trend lower. 

Among its biggest mistakes was lowering ordinary income tax rates because those punitive rates had forced the wealthy to invest their money in American productive capacity in order to get preferential long term capital gains tax rewards from those investments.

Instead like FOOLS we gave them low tax bills on ordinary income, and they promptly took the surplus gains and invested them in low labor cost foreign lands.

Middle classes were created abroad in the millions where there were none before, at the expense of ours here in America.

Ronald Reagan wanted us to believe that it's our money and we know best what to do with it.

WE DON'T.

 

 

Trump's FY2026 deficit through November is $457 billion but he thinks he has tariff revenue to play around with to bailout the farmers his own tariffs screwed

The National Debt these deficits increase stands at $38.35 trillion.

And people accuse Wall Street of short-term thinking. 

 

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.

 

 

The national debt quietly plowed through the $38.2 trillion level on Tuesday, adding $2 trillion more in red ink in just 4.5 months after Trump's Big Ugly Bill became law

 

The period is also marked by the phony utopianism of the libertarian Americanists who exalt the individual and deny that there are any limits

 In their idealism they are little different than Zohran Mamdani. 

... The United States is undeniably the beacon of hope for the world because it’s founded on the value of the individual and the ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence. We believe every person should have an equal opportunity to pursue their dreams and determine their destiny.

For free people, there is truly no problem too big or care too small. Free people don’t wait on a government middleman to solve their problems or redefine what’s possible. ...

More.

The choice isn't between this Americanism and Zohran Mamdani. They aren't really competing visions.  

On the contrary, both are impotent in the face of intractable problems.

New York City, with an annual budget of in excess of $100 billion, needs to spend well in excess of $50 billion to fix its water and sewer systems which limit population growth and drive up rents. The place is already $125 billion in debt. In his wildest dreams Mamdani will increase taxes "only" $10 billion, about which they are having a fit.

The so-called free people of the United States also have met problems which are truly too big for them, one in the Black Sea, one in the Red Sea, and one in the South China Sea, about which $38 trillion in national debt keeps them from doing very much.

Every person should have opportunity to determine their destiny, they prattle on, except for the people of Ukraine, of Israel, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan, who will just have to do it themselves. How long does this list have to get before it includes you, too? Or are you on it already? 

Their self-indicting answer?

So-called fiscal hawk Republican Jodey Arrington (TX-19) won't run in 2026, says Trump is committed to reversing the curse of public debt but doesn't know where the president is lol

 

Let me tell you where you are, Jodey. 

Four months after you passed the Big Ugly Bill under reconciliation rules, rules which Mike Crapo in the Senate turned on their head, you are a whisker away from another $2 trillion in debt added to the public debt since July 4th.

Jodey's just puttin' lipstick on the pig and saying, See ya! 

 

... Arrington said he had faith Republicans in Washington would pick up his mantle of fiscal hawkishness, or as he's often called it, "reversing the curse" of public debt.

"The president's committed to it, he talks about it all the time. He's actually doing something about it with very difficult decisions, not politically popular decisions. This is all about political will," Arrington said. "Trump's doing it. Mike Johnson is committed to it… And we have a growing number of fiscal hawks who are absolutely dogged on this issue."

But he said he would continue to push for further fiscal reforms for his remaining year on Capitol Hill, including another budget reconciliation bill to follow up on the big, beautiful bill.

"I don't know where the Senate Republicans are. I don't know where the president is and can't speak for the White House. But the House is at the ready," Arrington said. "It's been our most consequential tool to support the president and the strength of the country, and I don't see any reason we wouldn't utilize it to its fullest extent."

More. 

National Debt hits $38 trillion

 Nov 21, 2024: $36.034T

July 4, 2025 ONE BIG UGLY BILL 

Aug 11, 2025: $37.004 T

Oct 21, 2025: $38.019 T

 

 

One nutball era takes over where one left off: Trump's big ugly bill had no money in it to replenish the Strategic Oil Reserve gutted by Joe Biden, at a time when WTI is half the price it was in 2022

 US seeks 1 million barrels of oil for Strategic Petroleum Reserve

... The previous administration of former President Joe Biden sold record amounts of oil from the SPR, including a 180-million-barrel sale after Russia, one of the world's top oil producers, invaded Ukraine in 2022. The reserve, which has about a 700-million-barrel capacity, is now holding nearly 409 million barrels. ...

 

Trump's tax and spending bill included about $171 million for the SPR oil purchases and maintenance, much less than the $1.3 billion that had originally been in the legislation. Buying more oil for the SPR will likely require the passage of new legislation. ...

 

Buying a million barrels is a drop in the bucket. Maintenance costs are eating up most of the $171 million. Joe Biden reduced the reserve by 244 million barrels during his tenure.

 

A reserve of 600 million barrels would run the country for only 30 days in a real emergency, max. 

 

We are governed by imbeciles, who think we currently have about 50 national emergencies. 

 

 

 

The Uniparty: It will never not be funny how Trump insists that his tariffs are not new taxes same as Obama insisted fines for not having health insurance were not new taxes

 

People are right to doubt government data when Trump's Treasury Department under Scott Bessent leads off with this chart crime of September 2025 federal outlays

 You can access the Treasury's Monthly Treasury Statement here to see for yourself.

The OUTLAYS BY FUNCTION for September 2025 in the Figure 1 graphic DO NOT ADD UP TO $346 BILLION, as stated.

They add up to $560 billion.

The receipts DO ADD UP, almost, to $543 billion.

That the graphic indicates $544 billion, not $543 billion, is another clue that the entire thing is a tendentiously fabricated interpretation of the data from within the report, obviously. 

Well duh.

Meanwhile that "Other" category isn't a Red Flag for nothing!

"Hello! Hey! Yes, you! We're about to pull a fast one! Pay Attention!" 

In the end outlays of $560 billion minus receipts of $543 billion = a September DEFICIT of $17 billion, NOT A F^@KING SURPLUS OF $198 BILLION.

They are asking you to deny the evidence of your own eyes, and they know it. 

It's a total lie, as in Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

When you can't trust the U.S. Treasury Department, who can you trust?

 

The upshot is that Fiscal Year 2025 ends with a deficit of $1.973 trillion, far worse than FY 2024's $1.816 trillion . . . by 8.6%.

But the Trump Regime wants you to think the deficit is smaller than in 2024, at $1.775 trillion, that they're cutting spending by closing agencies and departments and firing federal employees, and increasing revenues through tariffs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and that the Big Ugly Bill is working.

LIES, DAMN LIES, I tell you. 

 

Typical GOP wants to fight about spending . . . later

 GOP leaders say Obamacare tax credit fight can wait until after government shutdown is averted

The top 10% wealthiest Americans are 47% richer after five years, up $36.25 trillion

Current U.S. Debt to the Penny is $37.46 trillion, he he.

They say we could never pay it back. 

 

You know, at this point I'd settle for billions and billions coming in

 

The fiscal year is rapidly coming to a close, and Trump has spent us $1.973 trillion deeper into the hole with one month left to go, compared with Biden's last year at $1.897 trillion through August

 

Meanwhile ...

... [Charlie] Kirk, who had millions of social media followers, co-founded the non-profit Turning Point USA in 2012 as a teenager, which he dubbed a 'national student movement.' 

Its mission is to 'identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.' ...