Monday, December 22, 2025
Good morning to everyone who is not a member of Congress
The median net worth of an American household in 2023 was less than $200,000.
The median net worth of a current member of the U.S. Congress is $1,000,000.
Sunday, December 21, 2025
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.
Grand Rapids, Michigan billionaire Doug DeVos admits America hasn't made all that much progress since 1976
... On the eve of the 1976 election, President Gerald Ford wanted to hold a motorcade parade in Grand Rapids, where he grew up ... filled with boarded-up buildings ... a downtrodden place ...
America on the eve of 2026 feels an awful lot like Grand Rapids in 1976. There’s a palpable sense that the country is struggling, if not starting to fail. It isn’t only the sorry state of big cities. It’s the state of the nation’s schools as kids fall behind in basic math and reading. It’s the state of the body politic as division and violence spread. It’s the sorry feeling that we’re a nation without a rudder, drifting toward inevitable decline. According to Pew Research, about half of Americans say the U.S. can’t solve many of its important problems. ...
More here.
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.
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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.
Saturday, December 20, 2025
30 people have died in ICE custody in 2025, 4 between Dec 12 and Dec 15 alone, the most since 2004, and it's costing TENS OF BILLIONS
Four ICE detainee deaths in four days spark alarm as arrests grow
... The recent deaths bring total detainee deaths to 30 in 2025, the highest number since 2004, when 32 people died in ICE custody. This year’s total includes two detainees who were killed after a shooting at a Dallas ICE facility. At least two others died this year, according to ICE, but not in immigration detention.
Nearly 66,000 people are in detention, according to ICE data, a record high, and the Trump administration is seeking to spend $45 billion to expand immigration detention after receiving an infusion of cash from Congress. ...
The unemployment rate at 4.6% in November 2025 can't be right
The unemployment rate at 4.6% in November 2025 can't be right with Initial Claims for Unemployment so low, averaging 223k.
The January to September averages were 4.2% unemployment with 222k initial claims.
Compare:
2024: 4.0% at 221k
2023: 3.6% at 221k
2022: 3.6% at 215k
2019: 3.7% at 217k
2018: 3.9% at 220k.
Household Survey response rates, from which we get the unemployment rate, have plunged since the pandemic, from above 80% before COVID to below 70% now.
As a consequence 2025 and 2024 look suspiciously higher than they probably are when compared with prior years.
Initial claims for unemployment is more certain as a measurement because the data is aggregated from state unemployment agencies which pay actual people who make actual claims, not people who answer (or don't answer) a poll.
With claims still historically low, the Fed is making a big mistake in reducing interest rates because it thinks employment is softening based on the Household Survey.
They risk reigniting inflation.
Under Trump America is for sale, to the highest bidder: Give me your best, your rich, your preening elites yearning to drink tea . . .
Pretty strange for a "movement" which is supposed to be P O P U L I S T.
... The card is a whopping $1 million for individuals to purchase, and $2 million for corporations, and gives recipients lawful permanent residence status as an EB-1 or EB-1 visa holder. ...
Trump T. Trump sat on a wall . . .
Doonesbury, November 20, 1988 . . .
My name means quality. It's synonymous with quality. I want to legally rename myself Trump T. Trump. It screams quality.
Friday, December 19, 2025
Trump's Department of Injustice will violate the law again today by not releasing the Epstein files
"One law for me, another for thee".
Alleged 2025 MIT and Brown University killer was a Portugese national who obtained permanent resident status under President Donald Trump in 2017
Brown and MIT prof shooter suspect Neves Valente is found dead, authorities say
... Authorities said he is believed to have originally been in the United States on a student visa and obtained lawful permanent resident status in 2017.
Trump immediately tries to cover his ass:
U.S. green card lottery suspended after Brown University shooting
... Noem said that Valente entered the U.S. through the DV1 program in 2017 and was granted a green card.
“In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people,” she wrote on X.
The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (DV Program) allocates up to 50,000 immigrant visas every year, according to the USCIS website.
The program is a lottery. Visas are randomly allocated to individuals from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S.
Bush didn't keep us safe on 911, and Trump didn't keep us safe in 2025. A young, talented College Republican is dead because of him.
If Trump can simply suspend the program in 2025, he could have done it in 2017 when he was president the first time, but he didn't.
Thursday, December 18, 2025
The BLS report of CPI is missing too much data for both October and November to be a reliable estimate of inflation
The 38-page pdf is full of tables with missing data like this " - ".
... CPI data collection resumed on November 14, 2025. ...
Trump gaslights America about affordability in last night's speech, says it only became an issue during the Biden administration
I've been talking about affordability until I'm blue in the face right here ever since the Great Recession wrecked America and Obama did nothing about it.
There's even a label for it, with over 120 posts about it going all the way back to the beginning.
Affordability has become an even bigger problem because of the recent episode of inflation, no question about it.
For example in 2025 the average sales price of a single family home in my county has been $433k, 87% higher than it was in 2019.
For that to be affordable, an income of $166.5k is necessary (2.6x = 433,000), but 94% of individual wage earners didn't make that much in 2023.
But in Trump's America in 2019, when the average sales price of a single family home in my county was only $232k, 85% couldn't afford it because they didn't make the necessary $89.2k a year.
Same shit, different day. Illegal aliens weren't to blame in 2019 any more than they are in 2025.
Millions of Americans lost their jobs in 2009 and never got them back. Many of them lost their homes, too, and much else. Zero interest rate policy for a subsequent decade is what made housing unaffordable then, and Trump is calling for more of the same now.
People like me voted for Trump in 2016 because we thought that finally we had someone who meant business about stuff like that, but his failure to prioritize illegal immigration in 2017, his signature campaign issue, indicated that he wasn't a serious person, and the rest of his tenure proved it.
And he still isn't serious.
He's wasting billions of dollars rounding up illegals whom he now laughably says number 25 million when he should be rounding up their employers and passing legislation which puts the screws to THEM instead of to some grandma with a sign at a protest rally.
He's also wasting billions going after Venezuela, which hasn't paid ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips about $10 billion for expropriating their oil assets in 2007. Fighting this small potatoes matter is also costing us a fortune.
He also wasted $9-$12 billion in the Red Sea trying to stop the Houthis, but cut and ran when it got too expensive, leaving shipping the sitting duck it was in the first place, so it still goes around Africa instead. Transits through the Suez are down 50% and tonnage is down 66% compared with 2023.
America is no longer the guarantor of freedom of navigation on the seas. It doesn't care about freedom in Ukraine, and it certainly doesn't care about economic freedom at home. If it did it wouldn't spend the country into oblivion, and would tax the bejeebers out of the billionaires and leave the rest of us alone.
We do not have a serious president.
It's all theatre.
Trump's energy price fantasies last night: Gasoline is $2.50 in much of the country, other energy prices will fall dramatically
Gasoline averages $3.22, and average prices for electricity and natural gas rose in November from September.
The Trump Regime wants you to believe that core cpi inflation dropped from 3.01% year over year in September to 2.63% in November, lower than April's 2.77% and lower than at any point since 2021
October 2025 is missing.
The BLS remains in the hands of an acting commissioner since Trump fired McEntarfer in August.
Trump says inflation has stopped in last night's speech, but what stopped was their collection of the inflation data
Do you remember when COVID hit and Trump said we should just stop testing to make it go away?
So fast forward to today where we get another chart crime, this one for the consumer price index which omits the month of October, and another dose of skepticism about the Trump Regime's honesty about government data.
They warned us they would do this, too, even though during the first Trump Regime they collected both the employment and the inflation data during the 2018-2019 government shutdown.
This is all deliberate obfuscation.
... Because the October CPI was canceled, Thursday’s report did not have all the usual data points of a typical CPI release. The BLS said it was unable to retroactively collect the October data, but did use some “nonsurvey data sources” to make the index calculations.
Economists may be hesitant to read too much into this report as the start of a downward trend in inflation because of the lack of October comparison data in the release. ...
More here.
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
Congress has authorized no such expenditure by the president and they've already left town for the Christmas holiday
... “And the checks are already in the mail,” he said. ...
Federal employment is now down 271k since January, almost 9% vs. the 75% promised by Elon Musk
Employment by state governments is down 47k through November.
Employment by local governments is up 130k.
That means employment by government at all levels is down 188k net . . . to 23.4 million nationwide lol.
The Trump-Limbaugh dumb ass unemployment rate holds at 37.56% in November 2025
103.165 million were eating but not working in November 2025.
Many of these people were over 65 and under 20, but I don't make the rules criticizing the lazy people of the United States. Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump made that rule before the 2016 election. It is a dumb rule because elites like them screwed this economy for working people but they blame the people for giving up. The rule deserves to be trumpeted because those miserable hypocrites stopped talking about it as soon as Trump became president the first time. It continues to demonstrate how they have never understood what the hell they were talking about.
In Realville, the official unemployment rate rose to 4.6% from the recent low at 3.4% in April 2023 under Joe Biden, an historic low not seen since 1969. Rising unemployment off the lows like this is widely taken for a recession indicator, but initial claims for unemployment have averaged just 213k weekly in 2H2025, which is historically very, very low.
On the other hand, people not in the labor force but who want a job now has spiked, excluding the COVID episode, to levels last seen in 2016 during the long painful unwind of the Obama unemployment of the Great Recession, a level which before that was a rare outlier. That's an indicator of stress in the economy right now, which supports the view that we are building to a recession.
Meanwhile the country overall remains chronically underemployed with just 48.82% with a full time job, when as many as 9 million more full time jobs could easily exist if this economy were truly booming as it has in the past.
The shock of the November jobs report is that all of the full time jobs added since January, some 2.1 million, plus some, have simply evaporated, most of them in October and November.
Poof!
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
White House Press Secretary Komrade Karoline lies about foreign born employment, says foreigners took 100% of the jobs under Biden
Foreign born employment increased 6.5 million under Joe Biden, Jan 2021-Jan 2025.
Native born employment increased 7.5 million.
That's 46.4% for the foreign born, not 100%.
No one asks who hired them.
No one asks why we aren't going after those employers.
No Republican repudiates this obvious lying.
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