Don't take this the wrong way, I don't mean it as an insult, but in closing, you called for honesty, but some of your points lacked it themselves.
Those tax cuts weren't just for the super rich. The vast majority benefited from it. It wasn't just Apple and Google who saved money, it was that mom and pops corner store too. How can you say with a straight face that "the wealth disparity has only increased by virtue of the enormous tax breaks given to the supremely wealthy who have chosen to use those huge funds to just buy back their own stock and keeping their stock prices inflated." when it is well publicized how many of those companies gave their employees substantial bonuses as a direct result of those tax cuts? How can you call them "unwarranted trade wars" when the threat of those tariffs just resulted in a deal with Mexico to secure our southern border? Frankly, many people feel the war with China is long overdue, too.
Our turn is right now, now that we have a nationalist in office who has both the balls and power to make things happen for us. I can only speak for myself, but I know that I'm better off now than I was 2 1/2 years ago.
you're criticising him for lack of honesty by presenting arguments based on random un-substantiated "facts" without any evidence yourself...
what is not in doubt is that wealth inequality is huge and it gets regressively worse each year because trickle-down economics do not have any evidential success in providing improvements and opportunities to employees, tax breaks like the 2017 one disproportionately help the wealthy over the lower-income families to the extent that In 2013 wealth inequality in the U.S. was greater than in most developed countries, in 2011 the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined (and that was 8 years ago)... According to a June 2017 report by the Boston Consulting Group, around 70% of the nation's wealth will be in the hands of millionaires and billionaires by 2021. In 2013 UNICEF data on the well-being of children in 35 developed nations ranked the United States at 34 out of 35 (Romania is the worst).
the best way to redistribute wealth is through taxes (especially those that target billionaires who's wealth is often under-taxed by virtue of it being used as a working asset etc. and therefore can avoid taxes on income) and by limiting stock buybacks
I defer to
@Inqui on the trade war stuff because he knows way more about that stuff but i would suggest those trade wars might not necessarily be as successful as you think they are
and with specific regards to the trump tax breaks - you seem to like the brookings institution:
The Tax Policy Center (TPC) estimated that the bottom 80% of taxpayers (income under $149,400) would receive 35% of the benefit in 2018, 34% in 2025 and none of the benefit in 2027, with some groups incurring costs. TPC also estimated 72% of taxpayers would be adversely impacted in 2019 and beyond, if the tax cuts are paid for by spending cuts separate from the legislation, as most spending cuts would impact lower- to middle-income taxpayers and outweigh the benefits from the tax cuts.
and as far as i can see the tax cuts did not ultimately lead to bonuses or payrises to employees that needed it but instead... In 2018, companies spent a record-setting $1.1 trillion to buy back their own stock, and a majority of major firms (84%, as polled by the National Association for Business Economics) did not alter their hiring practice or their investment in their business in response to the tax cuts they received. This pattern was evident even in early 2018, when Bloomberg reported (based on an analysis of 51 S&P 500 companies) that an estimated 60% of corporate tax savings was going to shareholders, while 15% was going to employees.
Analysis of first-year results released by the Congressional Research Service in May 2019 found:
- "a relatively small (if any) first-year effect on the economy"
- "a feedback effect of 0.3% of GDP or less,” such that the tax cut did not pay for itself
- "pretax profits and economic depreciation (the price of capital) grew faster than wages,” meaning shareholders benefited more than workers
- inflation-adjusted wage growth “is smaller than overall growth in labor compensation and indicates that ordinary workers had very little growth in wage rates”
- "the evidence does not suggest a surge in investment from abroad in 2018”
- "While evidence does indicate significant repurchases of shares, either from tax cuts or repatriated revenues, relatively little was directed to paying worker bonuses"
The tax cut was enacted three months into the 2018 fiscal year. Corporate tax receipts for the full fiscal year ended September 2018 were down 31% from the prior fiscal year, the largest decline since records began in 1934, except for during the Great Recession when corporate profits, and hence corporate tax receipts, plummeted. Analysts attributed the fiscal 2018 decline to the tax cut