Buelldozer

The easy way around the problem is to tax loans that aren’t being used to purchase an asset. This is the “living expenses” loan hack that the ultra-wealthy use and it absolutely needs to be removed.

Your example is a bit different because the wealthy person is selling stock to make the mortgage payment. In this case they should already be paying capital gains taxes on those sales. If they aren’t then figure out why and fix the tax code.

We can tie the two situations together by considering the annual sum of all stock sales and non-asset purchasing loans as regular income and thus subject to income tax, minus any capital gains taxes already paid.

That easily closes both of the common loopholes that the ultra-wealthy use while leaving us normal people untouched. The ultra-wealthy would suddenly be paying income taxes on the money they are spending to maintain their lifestyle, same as the rest of us are.

Walmart sells ammunition in more than half of their stores.

The FTC has already started the process of blocking it.

The issue is this massive monopoly, not really being mitigated by the anti trust regulators

The FTC has already sued to block this, what more is there?

I guess that’s an argument for also having a wealth tax.

I think it would be easier if they rewrote the tax code so that everything (loans, stock sales, etc) counted as regular income and was subject to taxes.

Why would they move? This is an income tax, not a wealth tax and the wealthy typically have relatively little “income”. Sure they may have a net worth of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of millions but their “incomes” (as defined by tax codes) can be surprisingly low.

Look at the CEOs like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos whose salary was a single US dollar. They were incredibly wealthy but had nearly no normal income.

So unless you jigger the tax code to capture the work arounds the wealthy use this income tax will hardly touch them. It will only catch high wage earners, like a software dev working FAANG or something.

Sounds great, now how are they proposing to tax the wealthy. You know, those people who have a jet set lifestyle but no income to tax?

I looked up your account and you now have your first official follower on Mastadon. :)

Most of us dont wanna live in the 1800s though…

Oh I’m not saying we should go back to the 1800s or that the States shouldn’t be held to the 1A. My comment is bemused / sad because you were attempting to make a dramatic argument without releasing that it was unironically correct. People need to be taught a LOT more details about how our Government works and how it came to be what it is today.

…and how can any government be of the people if it disregards what the people want

Overall I don’t think it can, at least not for too long. At some point a Government must either adapt to its Citizens wishes or it becomes illegitimate. There are a couple of “gotchas” though, the first being who is a citizen and the other is which or how many of them the Government should listen too.

The original setup of the United States with it’s Federalist structure was actually quite good, if somewhat inhumane, at answering those two questions. It’s a shame we busted the fuck out of it.

since the Constitution specified “Congress”.

It’s amazing to me how many people don’t realize that’s EXACTLY how it was originally meant. The first 10 Amendment, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, didn’t originally apply to the States and that most definitely included the 1st (and the 2nd for those of you keeping track at home.)

That didn’t happen until SCOTUS created the “Incorporation Doctrine” some years after the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, over 100 years after the founding of the United States.

So yeah, before 1930ish it would have been entirely legal for the State of Louisiana to establish a State religion and in fact some of the original States actually levied Religious Taxes and distributed the money to various Christian Denominations.

The United States was built from the ground up to function as a collection of sovereign States moderated by a relatively weak Federal Government, nearly the opposite of how things work today. Its a good chunk of the reason why our Government and Judiciary are such a mess, they weren’t designed for what they’ve become.

I’m glad that Justice, such as it is, is finally coming for WLP and his cronies.

The FTC has statutory authority over the regulation of trade. It doesn’t rely on Chevron except in highly specific edge cases and this likely wouldn’t be one.

Chevron only ever applied in cases where the law was ambiguous or had gaps. The removal of Chevron didn’t suddenly render every Agency under the Executive powerless and if you think it did then you need to go back to wherever Mass Media you got your education from and demand a refund.

This has nothing to do with Chevron. The Federal Trade Commission has had clear authority over issues like this for a very long time.

How am I supposed to back up a 100TB NAS, though?

By spending money. 100T is a quite a lot of data and big data sets cost money to properly maintain.

Based on their 100T of data the .00099 per GB pricing will have them spending $99 a month, or $1200 a year, for backup.

I watch a fair bit of this YT Channel. He plays with / evaluates a lot of hardware that I’d otherwise never see or even know existed. I also like that he evaluates using both Windows and Linux since I’m interested in both and from his perspective it widens his audience.

If the suit is against JJ, how could it be pointed somewhere else?

The parent company sells or transfers all of the assets related to the lawsuit to a separate company and along with those assets goes all the liabilities…like lawsuits.

What a complete load of bullcrap.

J&J’s “Two-Step” strategy has already been knocked down twice by Federal Courts and unless J&J appeals the cases will never reach SCOTUS and they won’t do that because they know they will lose. There’s also no “regulatory agency” in charge of the cases that Federal Courts can or must hear nor should one exist.

I agree J&J’s “court shopping” like this is unethical but its up to Congress to make it illegal. Congress, not the Judiciary, is to blame for continuing to allow this legal chicanery

Maybe I’m not remembering things right, but the solarwinds attack was a supply chain attack.

You aren’t misremembering, that’s what we were all told however the reality was a bit different. MS had been ignoring a serious security vulnerability for years. That vuln was eventually used to breech SolarWinds and then that was leverage to breech everyone else.

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-what-you-need-to-know-cybersecurity

Fair point, I can only speak directly about my local experience.

That’s true but we, that includes me, can look around and see what’s happening beyond our State and National borders to see if a theory fits.

Realistically, the standard of living has been falling for a while.

IMO that’s the crux of the problem right there. The Standard of Living has been falling everywhere and it’s been falling faster as “Globalization” took hold. The real issue though isn’t trade between countries that have roughly similar economic systems and lifestyles, it’s the one sided importation of goods between countries that do not have roughly similar economic systems and lifestyles.

The problem with Globalization is that it tears the floor out from underneath the vulnerable. The under-educated and the poor struggle to make a living because their jobs have been shipped away to another country where someone can live for less and thus work for less. It’s a race to the bottom.

Those vulnerable people, and even the once privileged who’ve watched their livelihoods ripped away, are increasingly desperate to find a way out of their situation and so they’re increasingly turning to the only people who seem to care. To paraphrase a bit “It’s the (real) economy, stupid!”

This isn’t my idea either as this outcome was widely predicted by Union Bosses and Business Leaders during the Clinton Administrations runup to NAFTA and MFN Trading Status for China.

If they were correct, and it appears they were, then the only way to stop the madness is to re-onshore the jobs as much as possible with a special focus on geographic areas that have the highest imbalance. The U.S. started doing it under the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration has accelerated the trend. If everyone will just hang tight for another 12-18 months the effects will start to get really noticeable and the Right Wing rise will ebb away.