2024 Presidential Election Thread

[Pelado]

Carried your debt for 20 years without bothering to pay it off? Your debt is forgiven, regardless of income.

I understand your concern with the lack of means testing, but I take some issue with your characterization of this line:

plans to cancel up to $20,000 of the amount a borrower’s balance has grown due to unpaid interest on their loans after entering repayment

It looks like the only amounts eligible for forgiveness (at least under this part of the plan) is accrued interest, not debt principal. It does seem pretty crazy to me that they'd be forgiving up to $20k in accrued interest. My guess is that those who would benefit the most would be those who:

• went to very expensive schools, racking up immense amounts of debt and/or
• defaulted on their payments and/or
• were means-tested into lower-than-interest repayments

I am somewhat empathetic to those who unwittingly took out large student loans at lower-tier schools (especially for-profits), who didn't know any better, and don't have much prospect to ever pay it back. But I don't think the solution is near universal debt forgiveness, especially for those who knew what they were doing, or who used the funds primarily for non-educational purposes, or who will not have much difficulty paying it back.

[Moliere]

I saw a graph showing who would get this loan forgiveness. There was a decent swath of people with a household income over $300k that would have their loans forgiven. Good for them….I guess.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Biden makes the sign of the cross at an abortion rally yesterday, infuriating Catholics. Now I suppose this might be chalked up to his senility rather than trashing his own religion, but terrible form either way.

[BigPiney]

Biden makes the sign of the cross at an abortion rally yesterday, infuriating Catholics. Now I suppose this might be chalked up to his senility rather than trashing his own religion, but terrible form either way.

It really is elder abuse at this point to keep trotting him out there.

[USUC]

I feel like Biden would win in a landslide if he swapped out his VP. Things are starting to swing Biden's way but it wouldn't take much for it to swing the other way a bit (economy, foreign policy issue, etc.). Dumping Kamala is such a no brainer. These parties are so terrible right now.

[YOhio]

I keep seeing on Twitter that Biden is proposing a capital gains tax increase to 44.6% but didn't see any sourcing. So I looked it up and it looks like they're proposing to raise capital gains taxes on people with a taxable income of over $1M.

The Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget proposes to increase the top marginal rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent above $400,000 (page 78), and it would apply this top marginal rate to
the long-term capital gains and qualified dividends of taxpayers with taxable income of more than $1 million. An additional proposal would increase the net investment income tax rate by 1.2 percentage points on income above $400,000 (page 76), bringing the net investment income tax rate to 5 percent for this population. Together, the proposals would increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 44.6 percent.

As shown in a Treasury study, preferential tax rates on long-term capital gains disproportionately benefit White taxpayers (Cronin et al., 2023). Even in the middle of the income distribution, 8
percent of White taxpayers benefit from preferential rates compared to 3 percent of Black families and 1 percent of Hispanic families. Among high-income families, differences persist. White families in the top 5 percent of the income distribution average $24,300 of tax savings from preferential rates, compared to only $20,600 of tax savings for Black families and $16,900 for Hispanic families in the top 5 percent.

Because current benefits of the preferential rates on capital gains and dividends skew toward White families, the proposal to reduce those benefits also skews toward White families. As shown in Table 2, Treasury estimates that the proposal would affect 0.4 percent of White families, 0.1 percent of Hispanic families, less than 0.05 percent of Black families, and 0.3 percent of Asian families.

https://home.treasury.gov/system/fil...orm-FY2025.pdf

I don't think it's a good idea to propose to raise taxes in an election year, even if it's on the rich. I think it's a worse idea to justify it because it primarily hurts white people.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I keep seeing on Twitter that Biden is proposing a capital gains tax increase to 44.6% but didn't see any sourcing. So I looked it up and it looks like they're proposing to raise capital gains taxes on people with a taxable income of over $1M.



https://home.treasury.gov/system/fil...orm-FY2025.pdf

I don't think it's a good idea to propose to raise taxes in an election year, even if it's on the rich. I think it's a worse idea to justify it because it primarily hurts white people.

Good grief, that is horrible policy.

[falafel]

Biden makes the sign of the cross at an abortion rally yesterday, infuriating Catholics. Now I suppose this might be chalked up to his senility rather than trashing his own religion, but terrible form either way.

I enjoyed his speech this morning after signing the aid bill.

[YOhio]

Good grief, that is horrible policy.

The entire policy proposal is very strange. Like a professor of critical race theory and a government economist were put in a room and forced to write something together.

[PaloAltoCougar]

I feel like Biden would win in a landslide if he swapped out his VP. Things are starting to swing Biden's way but it wouldn't take much for it to swing the other way a bit (economy, foreign policy issue, etc.). Dumping Kamala is such a no brainer. These parties are so terrible right now.

How great would be my joy if Biden and the Dems followed your advice. I wish there were a cabinet position or some other figurehead slot that Harris could take to save a little face. Who would be reasonable candidates to replace her? Although I can find issues with each, overall I'd be interested in Whitmer, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Polis, Booker, Shapiro, and not Newsom. Who else? I'll be interested to see who Trump's VP would be. Kari Lake or MTG would be hilariously bad choices, but he doesn't have a lot of competent people to consider, since most competent people wouldn't want to be anywhere close to Trump.

[Jeff Lebowski]

It really is elder abuse at this point to keep trotting him out there.

He can still read a teleprompter. Sort of...

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[Non Sequitur]

Biden makes the sign of the cross at an abortion rally yesterday, infuriating Catholics. Now I suppose this might be chalked up to his senility rather than trashing his own religion, but terrible form either way.

It's not bad form, and it's not trashing his religion. You characterizing it as an abortion rally reveals your narrow view. The issue isn't about promoting abortion, it's about promoting the right to choose. Biden's personal views on abortion could be perfectly inline with the views of the Catholic church, but not everyone is a Catholic, and perhaps Biden realizes that personal beliefs can be separate from the idea of people having the right to have differing personal beliefs. Perhaps Biden making the sign of the cross was his way of pointing out that his personal beliefs may differ from many at the rally, but he still respects their right to hold different views. That would be a great gesture.

[All-American]

The issue isn't about promoting abortion, it's about promoting the right to choose.

The right to choose what?

[Moliere]

The right to choose what?

The right to choose reproductive health, duh.

[Jeff Lebowski]

It's not bad form, and it's not trashing his religion. You characterizing it as an abortion rally reveals your narrow view. The issue isn't about promoting abortion, it's about promoting the right to choose. Biden's personal views on abortion could be perfectly inline with the views of the Catholic church, but not everyone is a Catholic, and perhaps Biden realizes that personal beliefs can be separate from the idea of people having the right to have differing personal beliefs. Perhaps Biden making the sign of the cross was his way of pointing out that his personal beliefs may differ from many at the rally, but he still respects their right to hold different views. That would be a great gesture.

Oh man. That is a funny take.

And literally everyone is calling it an abortion rally. He was speaking directly under a banner than read, "Restore Roe".