President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

It's why they are considered a threat, and that's all that really matters.

Take nukes out of the equation, and the nation is only given a passing thought --- and only because they piss off SK. There's NK's kind of evil all over that we ignore all the time.

We ain't talking about war with NK so we can feed their people.

 

Britain and Soviet Union/Russia are no longer big enough players to be included. The "four" should probably be the US, China, India (and maybe the EU, led by Germany, considering Angela Merkel is leader of the free world).

 

NK wants nukes to force SK into a merging of the 2 countries into 1 controlled by the NK leadership.
Russia wants a sphere of influence to exact resources form those countries and create markets for its goods for monetary gain. It will exclude by protectionism goods from Western and Asian nations.

In the end democracy in international affairs is a form of capitalism. And America is essentially still a capitalist nation, relative to the rest of the world. Open markets and free flowing information about goods creates the best form of supply and demand, which sets production and price levels. It is basic macro economic multinational theory.
The current Chinese model works because theChinese people are primarily interested in economic prosperity and will sacrifice our concepts of liberty to attain economic freedom. Once they've reached the point where they are not worried about access to food and medicine, they too will turn towards a more democratic system,with a more universal franchise and elections that are real choices.

Other countries may be acting in their self interest and therefore not evil, if its looked at in a short term view. But when you are hungry, cold, wet and sick thinking past tomorrow is a luxury for most of the planet. I was proud we were better than that.

 

Only 3 problems with that:

1. Russia has 8,000+ nukes.
2. It's big enough to dominate every ounce of the news cycle for the past several months, big enough to scare the bejeebus out of our idiots in Washington.
3. Its president, for better or worse, is the most powerful person in Europe and one of the most powerful in the world.

So if it's no longer a big enough player to matter . . . leave it the fuck alone.

 

Russia hasn't had an empire since the wall fell. Cranberry's right.

 

You know who agrees with him about that's? Kneeling NFL players.

 

LOL

Billionaire Robert Mercer did Trump a huge favor. Will he get a payback?

His hedge fund owes $7 billion in back taxes.

 

Nah, Russia is a little piss-ass annoyance. Not a world leader in any respect.

 

Aren't consumption taxes a form of double taxation, too? For example, I am forced to pay income tax on each dollar I earn. On top it, I have to pay a gasoline tax on each of those already-taxed dollars that I spend on fuel. I understand that most consumption taxes are state-level, but apparently there is a push in Washington to raise the gas tax to pay for more infrastructure. I understand that, to somebody who believes that taxation by its very nature is over reach, consumption taxes should be abolished as well as capital gains taxes. But if the necessary political choice is one or the other, why is double taxation in the form of the capital gains tax more of an evil than double taxation in the form of the sales tax?

 

I'm just kind of thinking this through out loud, but tell me where I'm mistaken.

Say Company A hires Person B and pays them entirely in company stock, 100 shares per year.

Person B sells his 100 shares of company stock on the secondary market to Person C for $100,000.

How is that money taxed if not for a capital gains tax? I understand the double taxation argument with regard to dividends, but wouldn't the whole system break down if it allowed people to avoid taxation simply by choosing to be paid in some store of value other than money?