Gotta say, as someone who identifies as a progressive, she’s really been beating my expectations compared to what she was saying and doing back in the 2020 primaries.
She needs to get tougher on Israel, otherwise everything I see is good.
I think she has to toe the line because she is still the acting VP. Going against the president in that position is not a good look. That said it makes knowing her actual position there really tough.
I’m hoping she’s mostly just playing soft on Israel for now is to avoid more criticism of being antisemitic. When Israel started their attempted genocide, most of the Biden administration was silent on it, and we didn’t hear or see anything from Harris, when she did eventually have a public appearance about a month later, she was pretty much the first person in the administration to say anything remotely pro-peace.
I’m probably just huffing copium but I hope she’s just taking AIPAC’s money (not sure if they are giving her any, but better in her hands than theirs) and getting through the election, and then going to go full prosecutor on Israel/Netanyahu.
Trump just called Netanyahu and told him to turn down the cease fire. All your complaints about Harris should be gone and Trump should be in prison for being a traitor promoting more death for political gain.
Doesn’t really matter what Trump does if she still supports giving Israel weapons. Netanyahu doesn’t care about the ceasefire anyway. That’s been obvious for awhile now.
doesn’t really matter what Trump does
Trump said on day one he’d let Israel “finish the job”. What is wrong with you? Bizarro delusion to even consider democrats approach anything other than vastly superior to Republicans.
I’m going to critize anyone who is currently enabling a genocide. That shouldn’t be controversial, but then I guess there’s more Nazi sympathizers in the US than I thought.
You can’t expect me to clap and applaud for Democrats as they send over bombs and run interference for Israel, just because they act a little sad about it. My advice: ignore what people say, especially politicians, and see what they do.
Also, “if we don’t do a genocide, someone else will” is a terrible excuse to do a genocide. And take a house like the Israeli settlers do lol.
As VP, she is not enabling a genocide. She is not the president. She cannot set that policy.
As a presidential candidate, she’s been perfectly clear that she does not intend to change that policy if elected.
You’re an idealist that wants to see people held accountable, I can understand that… But right now we have a choice between someone who is opposing genocide without enough fervor, versus one that will actively support and contribute to it.
Idk about idealism, it’s basic politics. There’s a reason Biden has tepidly supported abortion despite clearly not being a fan of it. Everyone else in the party got on board, but some people had to stand up for what was right first, and you don’t get that done by meekly going with whatever who is in charge is saying. Very few politicians lead from the front, they go with where the wind is blowing, and that requires some people to speak up.
Meanwhile, the comment above said all your complaints about Kamala should be gone because Trump tried to call Netanyahu to stifle a deal that wasn’t getting done anyway. Really? You don’t see the problem in that logic?
You guys, we don’t have to be in a cult like the Republicans. You’re allowed to criticize your leaders when they do wrong, I promise nothing bad will happen to you. I’m not even saying vote Trump or don’t vote Kamala, I was honestly just agreeing with the person saying I wish her Israel policy was better, but apparently we’re not allowed to bring that up or liberals go insane? If it worked that way, Biden wouldn’t have had to step down because denigrating Trump for 4 years would’ve crushed him in the polls long ago instead of making it so close. A random Lemmy user saying I wish Kamala said “the genocide is bad”, similarly isn’t going to doom her campaign.
Also it’s not just not opposing it vs someone who said they will support it. It’s someone’s who’s currently in the administration that is actively enabling it vs someone who isn’t, but said they would do the same but wag their finger less. Materially it’s not much of a difference. It’s like Trump’s complaints about Biden and the border. He already tried to pass a bill that would basically do what Trump would do, he’s just being less outwardly racist about it, so Trump is complaining about it when in reality he probably wouldn’t do that much different.
For those who oppose genocide, our only hope is that Kamala is being quiet about it because her boss is running the genocide, and she’ll be more outwardly opposed if she either wins or loses. I hope so, but the mood at the DNC has not been encouraging for people following Palestine, and her husband seems to be a pretty fervent Zionist; so just hoping without taking action, pressuring, or even just bringing it up in conversation, the literal least someone could do, seems naive if you want any change on the issue.
Tax those mother fuckers.
In the 1950s the top marginal tax rate for couples filing jointly making over $400,000/year was 91%. Adjusting for inflation, that’s $5,200,000. Just to put our current tax structure in context.
If Zucman is a fan, this is great news indeed. A 25% minimum tax on billionaire wealth sounds great, and with broad support, as the article notes (even 51% of Republicans).
Much better news, too, for those of us who only saw this part reported on til now:
The campaign spokesperson called the move—which would still leave the corporate tax rate lower than it was when Trump first took office in 2017—a “fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.” (emphasis mine)
IIRC, the corporate tax rate was slashed by Trump from 30-something percent, maybe 35%, to something like 18%, so to see that Harris was not interested in reversing this Trump tax cut fully (only to 25%) felt til now like yet another depressing instance of the ratchet effect, where the right does what they do, and neoliberals only undo part of it when they are in power.
“Neolib” is Republicans. Democrats are just “libs”. Confusing, I know. But it’s like the difference between anarchists and anarcho-capitalists.
There is some debate about the current usage, but many, if not most, Democratic politicians are arguably neoliberals. The model was promoted in the US by Bill Clinton, who championed a centrist, Third Way approach for the party.
There’s no debate, it’s very clearly right wing Republicans. There is a neat campaign on lemmy to conflate the American “liberal” with the European “liberal” and the term “neoliberal”. It’s absolutely obvious to anyone who’s ever paid attention to American politics before, but these propagandists always deny it and there’s a lot of kids whose only experience of politics is via TikTok starting last year, who get fooled.
The term neoliberalism has become more prevalent in recent decades. A prominent factor in the rise of conservative and right-libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them, neoliberalism is often associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, consumer choice, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society. The neoliberal project is also focused on designing institutions and is political in character rather than only economic.
That’s Republicans. Just Republicans.
And before you start saying “Democrats are right wing”, fuck you that’s some bothsides propaganda too. The Democratic presidential nominee supports raising taxes on billionaires. They are NOT neolibs.
There’s no debate
You’re right, but for the wrong reasons.
During Nancy Pelosi’s first terms in Congress in the late 1980s and early 90s, few Democratic leaders questioned the need to tack to the center to win over the prized white middle-class voters who could, they believed, make them the majority party once again. After the debacle of the 1994 midterm, Bill Clinton adopted that strategy—to win reelection and nudge the party toward embracing the business-friendly outlook of the Democratic Leadership Council—but without alienating his base among urbane liberals.
In his 1995 State of the Union Address, the president seemed to embrace the conventional Beltway wisdom that the conservatives who had just taken command in Congress had also won the battle to shape public opinion. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton declared. He called for “balancing the budget in a way that is fair to all Americans,” a goal he said enjoyed “broad bipartisan agreement.” Democrats, it appeared, would no longer abide by the Keynesian theory that budget deficits were fine as long as spending created jobs and lifted Americans out of poverty. The next year, Clinton signed a “welfare reform” bill that cut back payments to single mothers in need. By 1998, tax receipts from an economic boom had indeed made it possible for the government to balance the budget for the first time in almost three decades.
Before the president left office, he also signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed during the Great Depression, which had prohibited commercial banks from investing the money of their depositors on stock speculation and other risky financial ventures. The party once known for fighting for the interests of wage earners and small farmers against big business now seemed intent on rolling back nearly any regulations that made CEOs unhappy.
And before you start saying “Democrats are right wing”, fuck you that’s some bothsides propaganda too.
As usual, the question is “to the left of what” and “to the right of what”.
If you stack the Democratic Party leadership against the average Senator or Congressman, you’ll find a left wing candidate. If you stack them up against a mean voter, they’re solidly centrist. If you put an American Democrat on a global stage, they’re solidly to the right of the mean.
But modern Democrats are definitely a corporate party. They get their money from big business. They draw the bulk of their candidates, appointees, and administrators from big business. And they have their policies dictated to them by powerful corporate lobbying firms of various stripes. The populist democratic movement of the FDR era is thoroughly eviscerated. This is decidedly a party by, of, and for business management.
This may come as a shock to you, but Bill Clinton is not the President. Or even in office.
Democrats went through a period of trying to court right wing and centrist voters. That was thirty years ago. Let it go.
Democrats went through a period of trying to court right wing and centrist voters. That was thirty years ago.
Not even six months ago.
Stop being obtuse.
I’m just a millionaire. I’m worth diddly squat “on paper” because I intend to stay a millionaire. This isn’t a difficult fiscal apparatus to create. Billionaires have much more effective methods at their disposal.
It doesn’t matter what the tax rates are so long as the loopholes remain wide open and there’s very little enforcement.
Loopholes are a consequence of tax law and enforcement. In theory, you can raise a lot of money for popular programs by aggressively pursuing tax cheats. In practice, we’ve built a society that hates the idea of taxation and yields social and financial rewards to people who open and defend new loopholes in the system.
At what point does the neighborhood PTA put two and two together, to conclude a big cut to property taxes must necessitate a big cut to school budgets? Idk. Seems like redder and poorer states have been forced to square up with this reality sooner. But these states also tend to be captured by the corporate interests that dominate their political systems.
But the real methods that the billionaire class have to stay free of taxation and regulation are in mass media and corporate lobbying. You can only do so much to hide your assets without rendering them valueless. Apple can bury its trillions in cash in a big hole in the ground, but then they can’t spend it on anything for the business. The real way to free up that cash is to convince voters that a big tax cut for repatriating all that money will benefit the country more than a higher tax rate on the Jobs Family Trust.
You can only do so much to hide your assets without rendering them valueless.
non sequitur. My assets and earnings are concurrently mine and not mine in accordance with state and federal law. Nothing is hidden or devalued.
The methods by which businesses evade taxation routinely place the assets out of reach for general spending and utilization. This reduces their value to the business, sometimes even beyond what they’d save if they simply ate the tax bill.
If you’re not doing that, I’m not surprised. Its very rarely a productive proposition unless your assets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
If all I ever did was tell people what I think I know then I’d never have became a millionaire, let alone protected my assets and earnings so well.
Ah, see, I just stuck all my money in the S&P and rode the historic overblown equities returns.
But I’m sure you’ve got a special mysterious secret that made your million a little more special.
I just stuck all my money in the S&P and rode the historic overblown equities returns.
Hard to beat.
I’m sure you’ve got a special mysterious secret that made your million(s)
Yes, in both the making and the protecting.
In 1945 the top tax rate in the USA was 94%. This should be a goal.
But please based on wealth rather than income.
Rich people don’t become rich from income.
I support a wealth tax as well, but even taxing income aggressively is a good start especially if it includes higher capital gains taxes.
I’m not super familiar with US tax law, but in Canada benefits like stock are taxed as income when granted. This would still be great.
Wealth taxes are unconstitutional in the United States. It would require an amendment to change that.
Capital gains should just be taxed an ordinary income. That would solve a lot of issues such as Medicare, social security, etc.
Whether they are constitutional seems to be a fairly open source of debate currently.
Not sure who those people are but they don’t seem well versed on the topic.
If you haven’t read the most recent SCOTUS ruling. It foreshadows their views on the topic. SCOTUS determines want is constitutional.
There hs enough case law from scotus to point to wealth taxes as being unconstitutional
In 1945, we operated under what was functionally a command economy at the tail end of a globe-spanning total war.
I mean, we can debate the efficacy of that economic model (re: The People’s Republic of Walmart), but I’d rather the US be funding and fighting fewer wars, not more of them. FFS, if you give any number of shits about climate change, a global mobilization of killing machines is not going to point us in the right direction.
All talk. I have yet to see a single politician actually give the people what they want. She had 4 years to do it, and crickets.
Idk what she’s done, or even can do as VP, but Joe’s helped get some good legislation passed, negotiated drug prices and I think he passed some gun control? Those seem like things some people want, although you might have a specific people in mind that I’m not aware of.
That’s just distraction legislation, not what people truly need. This has been happening since the early days of the election process, but none of these measures address the real needs of the public because it’s all political theater. The actual control lies elsewhere (i.e. global elite). I’ve been aware of this for decades, but only recently have others started to see it too.
Do you know who these global elite are and how exactly they exert their control? My conspiracy theory alarm bells are goin off lol. Also how does lowering prescription drug prices not address some “real need” of some portion of the public? Not to mention the infrastructure bill which put a ton of money towards renewable energy, which is a step towards stopping global warming… You may argue these steps aren’t proportional to what actually needs to be done, but looking pragmatically its kinda hard to do really good stuff when half the country (and thus half the legislature) is whipped into a populist fervor, which you seem to also support given the main thing populists hate are the elite!)
“Top Economist” is a funny phrase. Kinda like saying “leading soothsayer”.
Don’t think I don’t have sympathy or respect for the economist. I just notice that it’s the only academic discipline that pledges and is expected to predict the future.
Just like experts in criminal trials, economists can be selected to prove what you already know. And just like horoscopes, it’s all very convincing until you measure the predictions against reality.
for realsies this time? is anyone really expecting this to happen? is this really news?
i mean come fucking on.
No, we aren’t. We’re hoping. Which, much as you might dislike it, is a huge reason why we fight.
i’m sorry but it sounds like you are coping. you know this won’t happen.
are you seriously exchanging a few empty promises from a politician for what will be covert fascism again?
i might have put the word “harris” on my filterlist. why is this “news”
is anyone really expecting this to happen?
Something’s got to give. The hard split with Russia and the increasing soft split with China is threatening the global dominance of the petro-dollar. At some point, the US is going to need to in-source large parts of its economy, and that’s going to require public sector investment in a period of retreating dollar-dominance. That means either we gut spending on education, transportation, and health care (which would undermine re-industrialization at home) or we raise taxes.
Twelve years ago, you had Mitt Romney talking about putting more lower-class American “skin in the game” by imposing a higher taxes to cover the 47% of Americans who don’t owe income taxes. That was a prelude to the modern moment, which we’d been kinda-sorta fortunate enough to forestall by deepening our trade relations with “enemy” nations and riding a new DotCom bubble out of the COVID crisis.
But now we’ve got serious revenue problems at the federal and state levels. We’ve cut too deeply on upper class taxes, and our political incentives are only to cut deeper. Gotta make that up from somewhere, or you’re back to another inflationary spiral as the US floods with its own cheap money.
Correct if I’m wrong here, but is this article just “Economist comments on something it has been claimed the Harris campaign team said, but is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in writing or in speeches”?
If she planned on taxing billionaires, she’d be shouting it from the rooftops. That’s a popular policy. It’s not going to be something she keeps in her back pocket and then when she’s president goes SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS. Not that she could do it by EO anyway, but honestly, this is so far from a reality it just barely qualifies as news.
The article cited the 2025 budget [PDF]. It’s under the section “Proposes a Minimum Tax on Billionaires”.
To finally address this glaring inequity, the Budget includes a 25 percent minimum tax on the wealthiest 0.01 percent, those with wealth of more than $100 million.
Though the Harris campaign is not directly mentioned, I think we may assume it’s coming from both Harris and Biden.
This is actually really helpful clarification, I did just miss some of that. It’s no wealth tax, but it’s better than nothing.
If she planned on taxing billionaires, she’d be shouting it from the rooftops. That’s a popular policy.
Not among corporate mega-donors, it isn’t! Keeping it in her back pocket – not until she’s president, but until shortly before the election and, crucially, after their checks clear – is exactly what she should do.
Nobody would be happier than me to see that happen, but seeing how nobody’s ever done something like that before I have my doubts. Can’t remember the last Democrat that actually got more radical than the platform they ran on. Certainly wasn’t anybody in the last 50 years.
Vice President Kamala Harris will push to increase the corporate tax rate to 28% from the current 21%, her campaign said Monday, the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Coming days after she unveiled a four-part economic package that would provide tax relief to working and middle-class Americans, the corporate tax proposal marks Harris’ first effort to detail how she would pay for her policy platform should she win the presidential election.
"As President, Kamala Harris will focus on creating an opportunity economy for the middle class that advances their economic security, stability, and dignity,” campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a statement. “Her plan is a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.”
The commondreams article says “endorsement of taxes on ultra-wealthy individuals and large corporations” - your linked article says she’s raising the corporate tax rate not even up to what it was before Trump. So, sure, I guess that technically counts as the “large corporations” part, but it doesn’t meet the “ultra-wealthy individuals” language or the “billionaires tax” claim in the headlines.
I love that she says she wants to raise it somewhat. I love that she wants to give tax breaks to working class people. I don’t love that this makes it out to be something it’s not.
