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President Trump's Budget Includes a $2 Trillion Math Error (time.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TIME: President Trump's budget includes a simple accounting error that adds up to a $2 trillion oversight. Under the proposed budget released Tuesday, the Trump Administration's proposed tax cuts would boost economic growth enough to pay for $1.3 trillion in spending by 2027. But the tax cuts are also supposed to be revenue-neutral, meaning that trillion dollars is already supposed to pay for the money lost from the tax cuts. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called the oversight an "elementary double count" and "a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course" in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
Like everything else from this administration, it's a lie. We don't have a functioning democracy any more because we don't have an informed public, sadly.
I don't respond to AC's.
Hanlon's Razor applies here. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You guys are so picky, c'mon. Math is hard.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Disagree. This is malicious; intentional. Trump isn't stupid.
this is the president you deserve though
Partially disagree. It's malicious but that doesn't mean Trump isn't stupid too.
Hanlon's Razor applies here. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Gray's Law also applies [1].
"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
At some point the buck stops, and incomp etence is no excuse. Do you not think the buck stops with the POTUS? It doesn't matter if it's on purpose or a mistake - trillions of dollars of error should result in some firings.
[1] http://joshuabrauer.com/2007/0...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The Trump administration has done nothing counter to Constitution.
That remains to be seen. There's this thing in the Constitution called the Emoluments clause that restricts members of the government from receiving gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign states without the consent of the United States Congress. Trump maintains, through at least his family members and a paper-thin revocable trust, a LOT of property interests (hotels, resorts, golf courses, vacation homes) that rich foreigners can dump money into in return for a little kind attention from Herr Donald.
He still hasn't released his tax returns either (is he still being audited, not that that means anything), which might show substantial financial obligations to foreign stake-holders (there's a lot of borrowing that goes on in the real-estate business).
Then there's this little matter of involvement of a foreign power in the matter of an election, and obstruction of justice for trying to cover up any link to that foreign power.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
... when a democrat is in the white house. Don't act surprised!!!
Calm down, people, we don't want a fight here. Let's put aside our differences and try for the possibility of lasting peach on this site.
You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
I disagree. I think Trump is a complete idiot. He can't make a statement over two sentences long that doesn't become a rambling filler-filled pile of nothing that is also impossible to parse. My belief is that he's suffering from dementia, but whatever the cause, the man is a moron. Now Reagan was a moron too, but at least he surrounded himself with some fairly rational individuals, and that's fine, no one expects a President to actually personally run every branch of the Government. But now you have someone probably mid-way through a serious cognitive decline who still believes he's some sort of super-genius.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
TRUMP: We're gonna have the biggest math errors! Way better and bigger errors than the democrats!! Nobody makes math errors better than me, believe me. No one's every had more than a trillion dollar math error. They said it couldn't be done. I'm really smart - I went to the Wharton School of Finance. We're gonna have errors more than, more, er, than TWO TRILLION DOLLARS!
Can't you people leave him alone for a single day? He finished up his orb business, then left the middle east to arrive at Israel, had a great time at the Holocaust museum and randomly decided to confess to outing an Israeli spy in front of Netanyahu - but all you people can do is make fun of his tiny, tiny hands.
You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
Don't just claim it, prove it. Cite where you criticized an accounting error and were called a racist for it.
For that matter, also show that your cited error in the same linked post was accurate.
You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
You're right, math is hard. But way too many people who call themselves conservatives round-off whatever errors they get by claiming the economy will magically, dramatically, improve and wipe out their mistakes. According to TFA:
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, for Trump's tax cuts to pay for themselves, the economy would have to grow at 4.5 percent over the next 10 years. That's two and a half times the growth rate projected by the Congressional Budget Office.
That's always what these idiots do. Release the mythical tax strangle-hold on America's super-rich, and all the cuts to the safety net and spending for the military will magically be paid off, because the newly freed super-rich will invest their wealth and the whole country will soar like a pig full of hot air.
Conservatives who don't think very hard fall for this sucker-play because, to them, it's never been done, and it's waiting to happen, just begging to happen, and when it happens, it'll just totally work, and it'll be so great. Of course, nobody's holding a gun to the heads of rich people to do right with their tax relief and create jobs jobs jobs in America... they could spend it all overseas (a little more bang for the buck, there), spend it on yachts, spend it on cocaine... there's a lot of ways money can get spent... or not spent at all. Sunny-days, trickle-down budgets work just as well as Daddy's plan to move you into a nice house as soon as he wins his money back at the racetrack.
It's not a math error. It's a scam.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
One mistake is a million times larger than the other. A little beyond tomato-tomahto differences.
Seriously? You are accusing the left of petty insults, when you idiots have Donald Trump, who was fucking EMBRACED by the right because of his petty insults towards his opponents?
Like sanctuary cities that think they're above the law?
Actually, the vast majority of sanctuary cities are within the law, even by Trump's standards.
Like the federal government under Obama not enforcing immigration laws on the books.
It is well within the powers of the President to prioritize law enforcement, especially immigration. It's not like deportations dropped suddenly under Obama. Would you rather deport X felons or X/2 felons + X/2 otherwise innocent people? This kind of thing happens all the time at every level of government. District Attorneys don't prosecute every case that comes in front of them, they have to prioritize. Would you claim a cop is "not enforcing the traffic laws" because they choose not to pull over a speeder while on their way to a homicide? Probably not.
The Trump administration has done nothing counter to Constitution.
Well not successfully at least. Federal judges from all over the country found enough of a Constitutional issue in Trump's travel bans to warrant indefinite injunctions until the cases are settled (assuming the Administration still intends to fight them at all).
Keep in mind, the Administration didn't try to justify the bans in court, but instead claimed that they didn't have to provide justification. From the 9th Circuit Ruling (source):
[T]he government has taken the position that the president’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections. ... There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
You don't understand. When Republicans/Conservatives/Righties do it, it's noble and bravely challenging rampant over political correctness. When Democrats/Liberals/Lefties do it, it's proof that they're all evil monsters.
Yeah, but Trump is both malicious and stupid.
No, when "republicans/conservatives/righties" get caught cheating on their wives, get outed as gay, or it comes out they are drug addicts they look like hypocritical douche bags.
When "democrats/liberals/lefties" get caught being racist, sexist, homophobic, name callers they look like hypocritical douche bags.
Anytime anyone gets caught blatantly behaving in the opposite manner that they profess to be their "core values", they look like a lying ass. It doesn't matter if they are left, right or center.
I'm aware of how the Laffer curve works, but most reputable economic studies show the top of the curve is at around a 60% top marginal tax rate. Anything lower than that and you are losing revenue. In any case, I am just going by what the budget itself claims. It counts the same two trillion twice, read the articles, it's a basic math error.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nothing above the law about sanctuary cities. The federal government can request assistance with immigration enforcement but the local governments are not compelled to cooperate. There is no law that says they must assist the INS on demand.
INS claims (falsely) that they're only focusing on undocumented immigrants if they have committed serious crimes, and in such cases even sanctuary cities cooperate and turn the prisoners over. The case that riled so many against sanctuary cities when an illegal immigrant killed someone in San Francisco, there was no active warrant for the killer and there was no reason to continue detaining him. ICE requested he be detained but there was no legal basis for further detaining. The killer had no history of violent crimes, his deporations were due to drug laws and attempting re-entry to the US.
Now would it have been above the law to detain a person when no charges had been filed, no warrant or evidence presented, but merely because a federal agent asked for this?
At some point the Trump apologists are going to have to stop deflecting to Clinton. Your guy is in office now, he's the one that you have to defend. Clinton lost the election, therefore isn't worthy of your time. What should be worthy is the constant stream of fuckups and potentially treason coming out of the current administration. You're not in a campaign anymore, you're in government.
Not to mention that Laffer himself repeatedly stated that exploiting the curve to grow revenue is ONLY possible if it's coupled with austerity measures. You can't just cut taxes, you HAVE to cut spending enough to offset it until the growth comes.
The idea is that, at around 60% you could grow revenues over-all by instituting a combination of spending cuts and tax cuts. No republican ever does the spending cuts part - because it's impossible to do the cuts Laffer describes without HUGELY cutting the military budget. Even if you flat out remove EVERYTHING ELSE from the budget it wouldn't be enough without also cutting defense.
Then comes the other factors - generally spending cuts INCREASE deficits and debts because they cost more revenue than they save in expenses (austerity in general is about as sensible as trying to save money on your heating bill by burning your paycheck for warmth). The only time austerity measures can safely be introduced is EXACTLY the opposite of when conservatives tend to push them: during boom times. Cutting spending in a recession is a great way to make the recession worse and the government poorer. You cut spending, if it needs cutting, during boom times when there is enough revenue that you can afford to carry the losses it cause.
So to successfully use the Laffer curve three conditions MUST hold:
1) Marginal tax rates needs to be at the peak of the curve, that's around 60% usually.
2) Spending cuts must match every tax cut
3) It must be during an already-in-progress boom cycle when there's lots of economic growth already happening and you can afford to take a medium term, but severe, shock to the system.
Even then you're likely to trigger a short to medium term recession - you may come out ahead at the end, but make no mistake - getting there is going to be painful. To get the promised holy land you will need to walk barefoot through a field of broken glass.
Republicans however, they don't much care for these facts. They just like to pretend that Laffer said "Tax cuts lead to economic growth which raises revenue" and ignore everything else he said and everything every other economist said so they can keep doing the exact same set of policies they always do - even though they NEVER work, and in fact, consistently produce exactly the outcomes that economists predict: deficits get worse, debts increase, the economy slumps and people suffer.
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