Admins, please answer this.

In the United States, the right to trial by jury is absolute. Once of the consequences of that right is that juries can choose to follow the law, or not, a they see fit to ethically administer justice. “Should a jury nullify if…” regarding hypothetical future crimes is a completely legitimate topic of conversation, to explore the ethical issues of nullification.

Good things take time

Like a watch repossessor

(Credit to The Wordburglar )

Shockwire!

For what it’s worth, this particular case happened 2 years ago, in Missouri:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/15/missouri-abortion-ban-pregnancy-complications/10496559002/

People can come to their own conclusion. I did not vote for Trump and I won’t defend him, but I think the people complaining are ignoring the full context.

Here’s the quote in context:

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying ‘Oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’ But she’s a stupid person, and I used to have, I have meetings, with a lot of people, and she always wanted to go to war with people.

That was my reading in 2016 – before the election, I realized that the “thrill vote” would go to Trump, and the average folks were going to sit it out because Hillary Clinton couldn’t energize anybody.

I’m getting a lot of those feelings around KH too. I just hope folks come out for the anti-Trump vote, at least.

They just took an old Matt Gaetz investigative report and did a search-replace on it.

Is the US government (or any national government) going to evaluate the value of paintings or baseball memorabilia or the portfolio of song rights for the The Turtles?

My sense is that it’s easier to establish value for things – and make a case for taxes – when they are sold in a market or used as a financial instrument (e.g. to collateralize a loan).

making compliance easy and cheap/mostly free

I’m not sure that’s how taxes work, though.

That wealth is just paper until somebody spends it to buy something… capital goods, or services, or political influence, or whatever. Let people sit on their paper fortunes, but tax it consistently whenever it’s used to buy stuff, or collateralize a loan, or whatever that allows people to realize value.

I wouldn’t necessarily oppose a wealth tax, I just don’t think it solves the problem. The problem we need to solve is passive income being taxed far less than wage income, and then we need to tax both kinds of income at rates that make sense.

n some special financial scheme that effectively hides/reinvests any profits without triggering the tax obligation

If that happens, then the system is fundamentally broken. If cross-border complications allow for hiding of passive income, then they are effectively hiding the wealth itself.

the obligation to track and report individual wealth in a standard way

I just don’t think that’s possible. The US can’t force reporting requirements on “art” in Switzerland or Botswana. And wealth is difficult to measure anyway – if the wealth is invested in art in a safe in Switzerland, how do you even value it? How can you possibly know what the next person is willing to spend for that art?

Instead, wait for the owner to sell it, and THEN tax the sale. It’s very hard to measure and capture “wealth”; it’s relatively easy to capture transactions.

I think we need to mentally compartmentalize Elon Musk, the rich dingbat, from the output of his companies.

Tesla single-handedly brought the electric car to the American market in a sustainable way, where every US and Japanese car maker was in a pause state waiting for somebody else to take the first move (although, credit to Nissan for the Leaf, but I think that by itself the Leaf wasn’t going to open the floodgates).

For all the goofiness around SpaceX, I think they’ve proven that they are the right model for developing orbital boost systems. Other major players are trying to be more like SpaceX.

Should the US have effectively subsidized these efforts? Yeah, we should have. Arguably Tesla and SpaceX were the only serious players in these markets with the chutzpah to be successful, after a lot of false starts by others (incl. bigger companies in the same markets).

It’s a shame that they enabled and enriched a giant dingbat, but in the end, Tesla and SpaceX have done things that nobody else could.

So by all means, tax him. And point out how Tesla and SpaceX depended on gov’t subsidies and tax rebates. But let’s also keep focus on the fact that electric car success and a more competitive space program are good things that were, and are, worth taxpayer involvement.

Also, to go back to the subject of the article. We don’t really need a wealth tax. We don’t need a corporate tax (which is just the political cowards tax).

We need to stop giving capital gains a free ride. Tax income when it is realized, consistently. Investment income should the same tax – or just very slightly less – as wage income. 15% tax on investment returns is laughably low.

Rich in what?

Money.

Know Your Meme has reasonably complete coverage.

“OK class, tonight read the chapter on enshittification.”

I wish I was the kind of person that could feel surprised, disappointed, or offended by that. But I’m not.

Currently, PopOS although I’m not really that enthusiastic about it.

What? Why would you choose that over Baptist Church of Missouri SynodOS, you heretic?

It will be interesting to see if it passes Constitutional muster. The Constitution only requires that “the people” choose the legislator. Previous attempts to regulate voting like this required amendments (e.g. elimination of the poll tax).

The relevant:

“I better win or you’re gonna have problems like we’ve never had. We may have no country left,” Trump said at his weekend swing-state rally. “This may be our last election. You want to know the truth? People have said that. This could be our last election.”

Eh. The article goes on to quote pundits who claim he’s threatening voters – that if he doesn’t win, he’s gonna do something to end democracy.

Seems kind of overblown to me. First, Trump would have to do something (laugh) and second, this is normal posturing. If you elect the other person, it’s doom and gloom, if you elect me it’s 4 more years of good times. These folks would have watched LBJ’s Daisy and concluded that LBJ was planning to nuke the country if he didn’t win.

People trying to make sense of Trump’s incomprehensible blather are always gonna come out looking silly.