The idea that a the billionaires could easily pay this is just wrong. You could take the wealth of all US billionaires and it fund government for less then a year.
They should pay more, but for fairness, it won’t fix the budget. For that the middle class needs to pay more. They pay less then they have in modern history, and less then other places.
If you was honest about wondering how to pay for things, you would be strongly against this bill. Because it raises the deficit.
Take outsourching of industrial manufacturing to overseas labor zones. Historically, industrial economies (eg late 19th century Germany) were reluctant to do this because they knew they'd lose control of their technologies and profit streams (thus German companies resisted British demands that they build their chemical factories in Britain to serve the British market). The American neoliberals, in contrast, thought they could control the overseas sweatshops through a combination of economic free trade deals backed up by covert regime change and overt military interventions, with the result being concentration of wealth domestically combined with an economic shift towards financialization - wealth management in other words. These policies were bipartisan and the result - gross wealth inequality leading to societal tensions - should have been obvious to all - except to the academic economists and their aggregate econometric models.
The wealth inequality problem isn't going to be solved by Democrat-supported handouts to the poor from Congress - the first step will be to accept the fundamental flaws in hyper-financialized investment capitalism, which merely extracts wealth from the middle class and funnels it upwards, versus a mixed system of industrial capitalism and socialism, which encourages middle-class prosperity along with industrial and technological development.
A simple example is illustrative: if we have the Fed print $1M for each US citizen, then at 5% return on investment, everyone gets a universal basic income of $50K/yr and nobody ever has to work again... except for the slaves on the overseas plantations?
For one thing the general interest is limited to those that actually pay attention to the cause & effect of economic conditions, and that may not even be the mainstream majority of Facebook readers and TV watchers. I do agree the more mainstream items, controversial or not, were kind of the antithesis of the intended HN readership.
Then rapidly over a period of months the economic landscape has changed in ways never seen for decades, last time it was anything like this was way before the internet or any tech startup scene of any kind.
Very suddenly what could very well be a majority of HN readers[0] may be finding that bullshit in Washington which they have always known was going on, and never thought would have risen to the level of threat that their own ambition and technology could not overcome, has now escalated to the point where for many, things which were completely within reach or coming close are now in doubt through no fault of their own. Whether that's education, career opportunities, or merely continued survival in the tech or financial world, even if they had been "all in" for years or just getting the foot in the door. The "general consensus" is that people can not expect to do as well going forward as they would have if stability could have been maintained, and that surely extends to HN, but it is not a general audience here.
The trick is to keep it from becoming a general audience while still allowing the kind of articles from non-tech sources, especially those having financial implications, that draw worthwhile comments of the kind that can't be found anywhere else.
Because things that didn't used to matter, now relate to technology startup and growth possibilities like never before.
Just because of bozos in Washington which have plainly reached a critical mass of lower intellect that was never endured before, not even decades ago. Regardless if they are all as cruel as Krugman makes them out to be or not. Some very successful and wealthy capitalists are even having that deer-in-the-headlights look themselves.
People on the left & right are all in for a toss-up, due to more unpredictability than ever in solid-state history.
Plenty will land on their feet and come out just fine, plenty will not.
And who else but HN readers would value the commentary of other HN readers over that of the commentary on general interest sites, even over the full articles when a potential entrepreneur is looking for insight into how that might effect their prospects which seemed so much more dependent on personal effort and technology. Like not that long ago, and virtually overnight there are surely some ventures where all the ambition and technology in the world won't help you now, compared to doom that can be handed down from above with the stroke of a pen.
[0] Especially ones who would really like to start new companies, or seek accelerator funding for little companies when they desire to build commitment for growth.
Edit: not my downvote BTW, corrective upvote actually
Absolutely grotesque
adamc•8mo ago
(I don't know if the courts would rule that constitutional. But the attempt is there.)
jack_h•8mo ago
sjsdaiuasgdia•8mo ago
> SEC. 70302. RESTRICTION OF FUNDS.
> No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.
jack_h•8mo ago
lokar•8mo ago
UncleEntity•8mo ago
The current administration seems hellbent on destroying ideas which go all the way back to the Magna Carta...
sjsdaiuasgdia•8mo ago
mikeyouse•8mo ago
https://www.justsecurity.org/113529/terrible-idea-contempt-c...
> The provision in the proposed budget reconciliation bill states: “No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.”
> By its very terms this provision is meant to limit the power of federal courts to use their contempt power. It does so by relying on a relatively rarely used provision of the Rules that govern civil cases in federal court. Rule 65(c) says that judges may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order “only if the movant gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.”
...
> But the provision in the House bill would make the court orders in these cases completely unenforceable. Indeed, the bill is stunning in its scope. It would apply to all temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and even permanent injunctions ever issued. By its terms, it applies to court orders “issued prior to, on, or subsequent” to its adoption.
BoiledCabbage•8mo ago
It's why I view contemporary libertarians as a farce. They were all up in arms, screaming at about having to wear a mask to keep others alive, but here we have people building an administrative state placing itself itself to be fully above the law able to impose any rule or action desired without consequence -- and not peep.
Maybe I'm just not understanding the distinction (and am open to being corrected) but the level of hypocrisy is just incredible to me.
marcosdumay•8mo ago
Disenfranchised and marginalized since the 80s.