" So they can sell whatever is necessary to pay off the loans with the results that no taxes are paid."

So instead of money they paid in sales of tangible assets?

I get the "stepped up" basis inheritance part, but I don't get the "I'm not paying the loans back with real money while I live" part.

"Yeah, boy, England and Scotland are culinary wonderlands."

Mic drop.

"The "governments" you speak of consisted of a chief and a couple elders"

Oh...so you're moving the goalposts to re-define "government".

Got it.

"You two idiots are trying to compare Europeans migrating across the Atlantic 400 years ago to Dearborn, Michigan today. You're retarded"

We're not the moron who can't see the parallel. That's the guy in your mirror.

"Natives often killed each other, took slaves and sold their own children as property. Just STFU raetard."

And under your concept, Europeans should've adopted their ways.

"There was no established government here."

First off...NOT the barometer. Secondly: Yes there WERE governments, in every established Tribe.

"That has to be the saddest whataboutism I ever heard."

You're joking, right?

You didn't see the obvious parallel???

"Boomers it's you, and only you."

Sometimes folks admit they don't understand the equation in indirect ways.

"Okay for me; just not for thee."

" it makes sense to abide by their laws and assimilate to the already established ideals of said country."

Just like the Europeans did with Native American culture...right?

"Boomers always thinking its everyone else's fault"

The math is clear. So is the history: the pivotal moment was when Cheney and Dubya, without a single (D) vote, reset America's fiscal sights from Surplusville to Debtsylvania.

"The US never stopped selling treasuries, despite the supposed "surplus.""

Not the barometer, Einstein.

"Never heard of this ridiculous premise framing it as 0 to a 40 trillion though."

You're correct. I framed it wrong. I meant to mean we were on track towards zero (Clinton left True Surplus Budgets for Dubya), but Republicans, led by Cheney and Dubya, reset America's fiscal sights from surpluses as far as the eye could see, to, at that time, the largest deficits known to man since the dawn of time.

Since then, Republicans have refused at every turn to balance revenue with spending. The math basically works out that the deficit can be directly connected to borrowing new money to give it away for tax cuts.

Maybe this is a good time to bring up the fact trillions of dollars of tax cuts were expiring, and the OBBB extended them.

And, of course, whenever you're running a deficit budget, and choose to extend otherwise expiring tax cuts, that represents 100% new, additional borrowing. Extending the expiring cuts will cost over $2 trillion, plus service costs, of course.

All newly borrowed, and almost all to give away in tax cuts to the world's wealthiest.

Surprise, surprise! The authors seem to trace a large percentage to tax cuts.

" Income, in the form of a loan against your own assets, isn't taxed at all."

But it takes assets to repay the loans.

" Long term capital gains are taxed lower than labor income."

Same with qualified dividends.

A trust fund baby can open up $55,000 of dividend checks from say, Johnson and Johnson, and owe no federal taxes.

Meanwhile, a janitor who profits $55,000 by the sweat of his brow owes over $10,000 in federal taxes.

Of course, the janitor isn't dealing with the trust fund baby's nemesis:

Opening all those dividend checks could lead to some nasty paper cuts.

In summation, regarding the ten instances of VOTER fraud:

Felons were caught, as they should be.
Dead-spouse's mail-in ballot is garden-variety, and ONE vote.
"Guy gets back in line" is the classic idiot's belief of how voter fraud works. And we all know that self-proclaimed "unabashed conservative" did it for the most common reason given: "I thought the other side was doing it"

Well, according to the staunch, right-wing Heritage Foundation, the sizable majority of vote fraud is committed by Republicans...at least in Virginia.

Oh, and the lady who "misled"? A longtime critic of the school board, she designed a fake website and registered it in the name of a candidate for the board. On the fake website, she posted an election date one week after the real election.

"25 were Canvassers or Candidates...more on that later"

10 were canvassers.
1 Republican candidate lied about his residence.

And in 2007, Appalachian Mayor Sam Cooper and 13 co-conspirators bribed voters, and stole mail-in ballots!

Former Appalachia mayor sentenced in election fraud case
STEPHEN IGO Jan 29, 2007 Former Appalachia Mayor Ben Cooper was sentenced to two years in jail during a sentencing hearing in Wise County this morning.
Cooper was also sentenced to two years of home-electronic monitoring upon release from jail and three years of supervised probation.
Last year, Cooper forged cooperation and plea agreements with Special Prosecutor Tim McAfee and Assistant Special Prosecutor Greg Stewart after investigators unraveled the extent of an election fraud conspiracy. The conspiracy included wholesale plunder and corruption of the absentee mail ballot process. Cooper pleaded guilty to 233 felonies and entered de facto guilty pleas to 10 other felony counts.

Correction!

Upthread, I posted "...adding another barrier to voting would suppress more votes than all the convictions in your home state in the last three decades." Then I posted a link to VA (Bill's resident state), and stated: "They've had THREE CASES in the last 20 years."

I thought I'd read both pages of the list. There were actually four pages, a total of 36 cases, since January 1, 2007. The search goes back to 1985, but some states don't have older data. I read through all the cases. and here's what I found:

25 were Canvassers or Candidates...more on that later

1 conviction was for a woman who created a fake website to mislead voters.

And now....time for the VOTER PART of Virginia's vote fraud over the last 20 years.

8 convictions were Felons voting when they shouldn't have.
1 conviction for voting twice in line, a self-described "unabashed conservative"
1 conviction for a man who filled out an absentee ballot for his dead wife.

THAT's IT! And...stunner...not a single conviction of an illegal immigrant casting a vote. ZERO.

"Every rule in the Navy handbook is the result of a dead sailor."
"Most FAA rules for airlines are from the results of crash investigations and dead passengers."

Yup. ALWAYS reactive, and NEVER pro-active.

Back when I was President of our AFTRA Local, we negotiated the local TV contracts. I got a call one day because the exec at the CBS affiliate tried to cancel a worker's vacation the night before he and his family were leaving town.

The exec's reasoning was he saw no rule in the rulebook forbidding such an action.

I'm sure everyone can guess what we had put in the contract THE NEXT time around.

"Always. At least your lifetime"

I've never seen more sand fall out of your ears, Eb. Never.

^They're

" Always. At least your lifetime"

Absolute bald-faced lie.

"The others are real things but not republican policy."

Their MAGA policy. A difference without a distinction, these days.

" I've paid close to $1,000 to my lawn sprinker guy this past year in cash in probably 4 or 5 different service calls. $150-$200 in cash each time. No invoice, no checks and no record of the service calls. and?"

Well ...
Since you gave him over $75 at a time, and didn't ask him to sign for it, it's not a deductible expense for you, even if you have a home office and see clients there regularly.

And, unless you filed a 1099 with the IRS, you're out of compliance. It also sounds like you purposely didn't file the 1099, so the penalties are much steeper.

Best of all, you are a knowing participant in an illegal chain.

And no record of service calls? Really? Does he come without prompting, or is there a text somewhere?

" Considering recruitment numbers were well below target during the Biden years"

According to history, that's what happens in good economies ...

Why does the natural order of economics surprise you?