Did Trump tweet about Britain First to distract people from his tax plan?

@Pherick Most people know that now because of the evidence of failure and their own life experience. This is why Trump is needed, with his fake populism and Jerry Springer culture war.

Essentially, what is happening on economics is standard right-wing Republican agenda

@Pherick Since the deficit doubled during the BO administration what we were doing certainly wasn't working. Maybe we should get the half of the country that pays no income tax to step up.

@eli1601 [quote]Since the deficit doubled[/quote]

Why = legacy of banking crisis (due to trickle down economics)

[quote]half of the country that pays no income tax to step up.[/quote]

I am 100% certain that this is total bollocks but I can't be arsed Googling it.

@Pherick Its late here and I can't be dealing with this. Sorry mate, it's yours if you want.

@eli1601 So instead of some common sense tax reform, we just vote to give businesses giant permanent tax cuts? Do you honestly think when business have more money they are going to give more to their workers?

Does Walmart who makes half a trillion dollars in revenues need MORE money to pay their workers more?

@Pherick You do know that businesses just pass on any taxes to the consumer, don't you.

@Burnley123 [quote]Since the deficit doubled

Why = legacy of banking crisis (due to trickle down economics)[/quote]

Fiction

@eli1601 So you are claiming, once this tax cut for businesses goes through, we should see a 15% drop in all goods being sold by businesses? Thats what you saying and I am very curious if you actually think thats going to happen.

@eli1601 Not fiction.

I love this game where we just say random words like it means something in a debate ...

@Pherick
[quote]I love this game where we just say random words like it means something in a debate ..[/quote]

Look who's talking. That's all you do.

@eli1601 LOL right ... unlike your interesting "fiction" reply, I am always happy to provide sources and articles for what I say. You and people like you never seem to want to do that.

Without those, everything you said is just you ranting.

@Pherick Fiction. But keep pretending. I'm sure you think providing sources and articles from left wing sites is proof. But usually, you don't even do that. You state your opinion like everyone else.

Fiction ... see how easy it is!

@Pherick : lets see him call the CBO a leftist source 😂

@luckranger71 The CBO has never been right

@eli1601 : oh cool. Tell me what non partisan source I should give credence to?

@luckranger71 Look it up.

@eli1601 : thought so. Thanks for playing.

@luckranger71 Anytime

@eli1601 : Word

@luckranger71 Number

@eli1601 [quote]You do know that businesses just pass on any taxes to the consumer, don't you.[/quote]
No, they do not. Businesses charge - and pay, what the market will bear. Increased taxes are not automatically passed on to the consumer. Increased profits are not automatically passed on to the employees (or consumers in the form of lower prices). You're simplifying excessively and ignoring the fundamental forces that drive the market.

Businesses don't make a fixed profit, adjusting wages and prices to maintain it. They make as much profit as they can in a given market landscape.

@QuixoticSoul So prices never go up? Of course they do. For many reasons including increased costs like labor and taxes. The other alternative is layoffs.

@eli1601 Never said that, prices go up and down for a number of reasons - but the relationship between prices and corporate taxes is nowhere near as straightforward as you imply. Here is a slightly more rigorous but still accessible explanation of why this is a common economics myth.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ref/econ101e.html

[quote]The other alternative is layoffs.[/quote]
Also not directly related. You have to remember the role of profit in this context - and you can't lump in labor and taxes into the same type of "costs", because they are very different.

profit = revenue - expenditures, including salaries, reinvestment/costs of expansion, etc. Increased operating costs can put the company in the red. That can indeed force actions like restructuring, bankruptcy, etc just to keep the business viable. Increased taxes on profit/income will never do that.

Profit, and the tax burden that comes with it, is more of an investor relations issue than a matter of keeping the company running - and was more important back when investors expected to receive dividends on their shares, and those dividends were the point of investment in the first place.

But these days most companies don't do any dividend disbursement at all, and investors expect to make money on speculation - that is, they're more interested in their shares growing in value. It's why other metrics are so much more important now - revenue per share, etc. As an example, Amazon has been a fantastic investment for people despite posting only a handful of profitable quarters - they reinvest everything into growth, making their investor's holdings gain value. Bezos is the richest man on the planet now, and yet made no profit at all.

Profit is surprisingly optional for a modern corporation. Operationally speaking, it's mostly used as a cash buffer for lean times.

@QuixoticSoul: Thanks for the detailed analysis. Economics doesn't lend itself to easy catchphrases or shallow thinking. I'm going to guess the internal dialogue of our right wing friends as they read your two excellent posts will be something analogous to this:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfjzDR4RLSU]