The Frankish Reich

And so what would that have to do with who is considered "American" in your sense of the word? I'll cut to the chase: you seem to be saying that the only true "Americans" in an non-purely legalistic sense are the descendants of white people who would have been able to naturalize under the first Naturalization Law of 1790. In other words, the rest of us are all kind of American citizens by law, but we're not, you know, really Americans.

Would you care to remind me of what the "history of the early laws of this country with respect to immigration" were? Could it be that there was no law at all with respect to immigration?

I can see what you're getting at with respect to what we would call ethno-nationalist states. You mention Japan. OK, let's go with Japan. You suggest there is something ethnically/racially/culturally/linguistically "Japanese" that is understood by the Japanese themselves, such that even the descendants of a white man from England who immigrated to Japan in 1890 would never qualify. Let's assume that's true. On some meaning of the term "Japanese," I suspect that most ethnically Japanese people would agree, even if that English family was otherwise fully acculturated. Where I must disagree is with America. This is the very idea of American exceptionalism. We are not an ethno-nationalist country. Indeed, probably the first non ethno-nationalist country in the world. There were empires composed of various conquered peoples, but those were understood to be agglomerations of different peoples/culture/ethnicities. That is simply not America. There is no "American-ness" akin to "Japanese-ness," no specific racial/cultural/ethnic identity to being American. You may argue that there is a linguistic (English) identity, but that's the one that changes most readily from generation to generation. So the question is this: who, in your definition, has the necessary "American national identity?" Only descendants of those English speaking white men in the colonies at the time of the revolution? Descendants of English speaking black slaves at that time? Descendants of English speaking black slaves at the time of the post-Civil War constitutional amendments? Descendants of Scottish and German 19th century immigrants like Trump? Descendants of Italians or Poles or Irish who immigrated in the early 1900s? Native Americans who do not live on a reservation? White Americans descended from colonists who have married Native Americans and who live in the sovereign Navajo Nation with their spouses? You posit a category that is hard and fast, but it seems to be "I know a true American when I see one." Maybe you can tell me exactly what you're seeing?

Because they are U.S. citizens by law. You may be a white man, descended from German stock, and living under the authority of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, just as you may be an American Indian man, of Navajo ancestry, living under the authority of the Navajo nation. Both Americans. Period. In disputes between a state government and the federal government or between two states, we often refer to these as "sister sovereign" matters.

True. It interests me only because it shows how stuck we are in the USA, thanks to historical inertia, with an extraordinarily complex, clumsy, and expensive system of raising government revenue. We section off (in theory, not in practice) social security and Medicaid from general revenues/expenditures. We rely only on the devices that have existed for a century or more: customs duties, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, progressive income taxes. We don't consider a VAT because everyone is scared to go there, and probably for good reason - I have to assume we'd never have a stand-alone VAT, but that it would be tacked onto existing taxes. We'll never mess with the fiction of the SS trust fund. So the ideas we're stuck with in this artificially limited debate are all bad ones, like those discussed here.

No, she believed a whole lot more than that. She took the QAnon bait hook, line, and sinker.

I don't think anyone is proposing that, since that would render 401ks and Roths essentially useless. Particularly Roths.

Thanks. Not quite as unworkable as what I thought. My partially informed take on competing proposals to bring in more tax revenue, from worst to best (well, least worst): - increased tariffs. Distort not only U.S. consumer/business decision-making; also invite retaliation and raise costs on virtually everything - increase corporate income tax (assuming it is a significant increase) - the high net worth unrealized gains/minimum tax thing cited here. Economic distortions tempered by the limited applicability. - social security tax, take away the ceiling on annual income (we need to shore up the so-called trust fund, and this is the least bad way of doing it) that's just the ones I've heard in the current election season. Bad tax breaks? - really bad: no tax on tips. Let's make everything a tip! - not so bad: increase child tax credit (but beware moral hazard)

OK, thanks for explaining. I get what you're saying now. The two thoughts ran together in the initial post. I guess you could say property taxes do in general tax unrealized gains. That was the impetus behind the famous Prop 13 in California - property taxes could only go up by a certain small percentage until the property was sold, thereby allowing older folks to hold onto their homes. Second point: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/capitalgainhomesale.asp#:~:text=The seller must have owned,the capital gains tax exclusion. So yes and no = "it depends." As for the high net worth individuals: this is how I understand the Democratic proposal. Not for sale of a home, but for taxing unrealized cap gains.

First, even if your assessed value went up by $80,000, you would never pay 25% of that in increased property taxes. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/millrate.asp Second, any of these proposals would apply only to exceptionally high net worth individuals. Yes and no - if it's your principal residence for at least 2 years, no. I disagree that it's a stupid idea, as a pure idea. We tax income a whole lot on wealth very little at all. So there's a conceptual appeal. But I've got to agree on problematic to manage. In fact, I'd say impossible to manage. And as with all things taxation, it would be another accountant/tax lawyer's full employment act as wealthy people find any and every loophole to exploit to shift wealth into non-taxable forms. A bad idea that will fortunately die a quiet death.

I don't think you own a home or you would realize how wrong this is.

Gotta love how these alt media addicts are constantly pointing out that a MSM story has a misleading headline or buries the lede or some kind of journalism school error. But does anyone bother to go back and check on the accuracy of the alt media nonsense? Michelle Obama will be nominated. Kamala is just an interim figurehead. Or Bidenites will storm the convention and restore his candidacy. They are so idiotic that no one bothers to even track it. Make a bizarro wrong prediction, it will be forgotten tomorrow. Like it never happened.

They could be those noble housewives we keep hearing about! You know, the ones that the feminist Marxist are trying to force out of the home so we can send their children to the Local Trans Marxist Indoctrination Center euphemistically called the "Public School." Stupid. Stupid. Stupid article.

I'm talking about ordinary working people. Total debt as a percentage of income/assets. And yes, it does decrease with wealth, because that's kind of the definition of wealth.

And it's obvious that he has contempt for most of these "ordinary hard working Americans" and these noble men and women (you know, suckers and losers) who sign up to serve their country. Yet they think he is all about helping the common man. He is one helluva con man.

And by the way, we just had Melania's former communications stooge tell us that Trump would privately refer to his base supporters as "basement dwellers." Yeah, that's what he really thinks about his most ardent followers. Low class basement dweller losers.

Because Trump said it himself while looking out at his January 6 mob from the safety of the White House. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/trump-mob-capitol-riots-poor-low-class-b1785099.html And sadly, she wasn't a happy hard working woman. She was a mess. She had been addicted to drugs. She fell deep into a conspiracy rabbit hole, all the way down the QAnon spiral. She was a victim of stupid, made up misinformation. She was a victim of Trumpism. https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/07/09/georgia-today-why-family-says-conspiracy-theories-led-ga-womans-death-in-jan-6

Did you read the part about credit card debt? Borrowing costs in general? Because in general, the better off you are, the less debt you have. I'm fortunate. I've worked hard and steadily for a long time. I was able to save money for retirement. I don't have any debt. I am able to invest basically risk-free at about a 5% interest rate now. Rates go down, all of a sudden I'm not doing so well. Interest rate cuts will probably hurt me. But they will probably help a younger version of me, financing a car, upgrading to a better home thanks to a lower interest rate, lowering my monthly payments on the credit card debt I'm trying to get rid of, etc.

Yeah, lower rates = lower monthly payments for people with credit card debt. Lower rates = lower mortgage payments for people buying a house or refinancing. Who would want that? Honestly, you need to read up on some basic economics and take a break from these threads until you're up to speed.

This explains the revisions and why they happen. No conspiracy. No diabolical plot to make things look better or worse. Could this revision be explained in part by recent immigrants employment? I'd have to research that, but given the difference in the two surveys that result in the revisions, I'm guessing the answer is yes. https://www.epi.org/blog/outrageous-attack-bls/

So was I wrong? Jamal Bowman pulled a fire alarm to stop a vote. Silly, childish act like a high school kid pulling an alarm to avoid taking a test. No one hurt. Meanwhile, Trump sent in a mob. People trampled to death. Police injured. One particularly foolhardy woman, high on Q Anon, shot while smashing a window into the Speaker's inner sanctum.

And to think Trump denigrated his mob as looking "low class."

A Nixonian among us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Jew_count#:~:text=The "Nixon Jew count" of,of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Hey, no fat Democrats got trampled to death when Bowman pulled the fire alarm. On the other hand ....