The bigger question, IMO, is why, after consistently awful approval ratings in 2017, Trump’s approval recovered massively in early 2018 and only breached 2017 levels again in crises like the 2019 shutdown, the George Floyd Protests, and post-1/6.

The tax functions as a confiscation of pre existing capital and of future economic rents (don’t allow expensing of land and other privileges!), while making the state a silent partner in future productive investment. It also gets you halfway to Georgism, albeit with homeowner imputed rents untaxed.

This would raise trillions of dollars that, after filling in the gaping hole in the deficit, I would use to reduce or eliminate the payroll tax, which discourages work. This would collapse stock valuations, which is the point, but future investment would be unimpeded.

Taxation of capital income is now fully neutral, which means we can get rid of the separate capital gains category for non-corporate income, and then raise the corporate and top marginal personal rates to 90%+, and literally be more business friendly than before.

Next steps: -Make negative tax liability fully refundable, to extend full expensing’s benefits to new companies -Eliminate dividend and cap gain taxes on securities of taxable corporations -Eliminate business interest deduction (designed for pre-expensing depreciation deduction system)

My pet proposal is to achieve a similar effect through income tax reform. The GOP just made full expensing permanent in OBBBA. This is basically the only good thing in the bill, because it’s a major step towards making taxation of capital income fully neutral, which allows much higher rates.

We’re invading Taiwan before China can

Henry George: “What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.” Markwayne from Oklahoma: “got it boss”

Unfortunately, given that not a single objection was introduced to the certification of the election on these grounds, it appears that none of the credible candidates are willing to assert that Trump is a usurper and not the lawful President.

My plan is to vote for the same person Tom does. If we can get enough people to do this fascism will fail. Then I plan to spend the rest of my life explaining why Tom is wrong about limited government and he will spend his explaining why I don’t know what I am talking about. I look forward to it.

Having an honest-to-God "Oops! All Nathan Bedford Forrestts!" moment of horrified, furious realization [even at this late stage] about people you've worked alongside for decades has got to hit like a Mack truck

Pancakes, eggs, hash browns, toast, and I guess OJ if tea isn’t an option

It is funny that the left and the center will both take whichever position on Gaza and the election they think best serves their point “Gaza’s speaking now b—-h!” vs “it’s the economy stupid” as one argument and “we smol beans didn’t cost Dems anything” vs “leftist scum gave us Trump” as another

The problem with the urban renter basically is you need to keep them on the Light Side (YIMBYism) without falling to the dark side (rent control)

Like as a guy who is marrying a Jewish woman, his tattoo and his associates put my hair on end But as a guy who depends on complex medication and competent public health authorities to stay alive, both Collins and everyone else who voted for RFK need to go in the retirement home

One question I have: while he repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, he was open about “Agenda 47”, his *official* unmake-American-government plan. To what extent have his actions come from Agenda 47 material vs P2025-exclusive material?

I don’t think it was “Trump put his name on checks” or “Garland moved too slow” or Gaza or even inflation necessarily; if I had to have one overarching *framework* (not theory per se) it would be that COVID drove us collectively a bit mad as a society in unpredictable ways.

Political science research had, as I recall, found that politicians are SHOCKINGLY likely to keep their campaign promises

the virginia situation sucks shit but, maybe unpopular opinion On Here: I think we are probably fine not going the 'force every court justice to retire' route the justice who wrote the opinion will be replaced next year, rerun the decision, get the maps for 2028 dems will win the 2026 house anyway

Juice is just not worth the squeeze in this specific case, because it’s a hell of a squeeze and likely as not to squirt straight into our eyes.

I kind of doubt a proportional system for the House would do much to achieve a multiparty system. Senate races would still be winner takes all, and the electoral college would still be a disaster for a multiparty system.

Boston has: * High wages (and jobs in the industry you studied in) * Good weather (no natural disasters, no excessive heat in summer) * Stable blue state governance * Adequate public transit There's not too many places which meet all of these criteria, so of course it's expensive!

lincoln was not a radical republican

One of my hot takes is that, so long as Grok-scale lobotomizing of LLMs doesn’t become standard (and even then, Musk has to keep doing it- Grok wants to be liberal!), normies getting their political views from AI is a substantial improvement on getting them from social media.

MA has one of the few full time legislatures in the country, but its dirty little secret is that, while the formal salary is bad for any decent professional work, leadership gives over half the legislature “leadership stipends”, meaning you get paid more than twice as much if leadership likes you

Under IAU conventions, Alderaan simply transitioned from "major planet" to "a collection of minor planets."

LOSS! I need somebody LOSS! Not just anybody LOSS! You know I need someone 🎶 Lossssss 🎶

“A second, higher rate assessed specifically against unimproved and speculatively held land makes idle land-banking economically irrational” This is where you lose me. The first tax already does this. Tax away the full land rent, and there’s no need to decide if a lot is held speculatively or not.

This is a very good article overall, but I’m confused about its argument for a land value surtax on vacant lots. “A federal LVT assessed on the full unimproved value of all land recovers for the public the socially created value that landowners currently capture by holding title.” So far, so good.

A lot of folks here resembling this remark

Current AI custom prompt: Assume low difficulty of analysis is based on bad input. User may struggle to exist but assigns low utility to this. Query: is the user permanently stuck in an imaginary field of fresh strawberries? And is this something to get hung about?

And sometimes not so elegant ones What on Earth do you *mean*, violating the basic rules of math and using the resulting impossible number produces useful information about the behavior of electricity?!

magic exists. it just has clear rules and follows elegant mathematical laws.

Someone who was 18 in 2024 was 14 in 2020 and 10 in 2016. Their parents might not have let them even *hear* about GHBTP.

The President of South Korea is a semi-closeted Georgist - he was pretty openly Georgist in his failed campaign, and walked some of it back the second time around. Surely he could funnel some money to Georgists around the world?

Being on Bluesky selects heavily for being extremely reactive to people who can plausibly be described as Nazis taking power

Also, the Constitution does in fact provide for judicial review 🤷‍♂️

This is actually pretty much verbatim how I became a Georgist We were talking about elasticity of supply and demand in literal Econ 101, I asked my professor if anything had inelastic supply, he offhandedly said land, and down the rabbit hole I went

Unqualified, total ideological victory for the ppl who signed that Declaration two and a half centuries ago. The staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. And they won the whole goddamn pot. Now it's a matter of stopping a later generation from squandering it all.

You still have trillions of dollars of spending to face down. More than half of all federal spending is on Social Security (needed to avoid old people eating kibble), healthcare (needed to avoid old and poor people dying in the streets), and interest (needed to avoid a total financial meltdown).

I’m honestly kind of surprised Republicans haven’t reacted to Democrats counter-gerrymandering by trying to shove a national gerrymander through Congress. You could get ridiculous margins once you’re allowed to gerrymander states in which you’re the minority party.

For a long time people (myself included) would argue that voters were being persuaded by the right-wing takeover of the media ecosystem. But since Trump took office, that takeover has only accelerated... and he's more unpopular than ever? The basic trajectory is "Trump's first term but worse"

I don’t understand why the stereotypical male history interest is the Roman Empire and not the Roman Republic

Basically the electorate has been, to this point, insufficiently virtuous to protect our democracy when put through mild material deprivation under a democratic government. Let’s see if more severe material deprivation under an aspiring autocrat does the trick.

Agreed on Afghanistan and Iraq but Nixon famously did not start Vietnam!

Random question: what happens if a SCOTUS justice is sent to prison but not impeached?

Doesn’t it basically kill ~all of the downside Basically the only things you need to do to make the corporate income tax perfectly neutral now are eliminate deductibility of interest on business loans and either make negative tax liability fully refundable or have net credits carry over at interest

10,000 people on bluesky who demand action rather than sternly worded letters: we demand impeachment* *in effect, a sternly worded letter