Biden Confronts The Economic Crisis

[Chef Jim]

Just now, daz28 said:

Well, it is more likely someone who IS being investigated is going to prison than him just claiming they would be.  

 

Also, I hope I'm right, too.  I've been holding on to some stuff forever, and this might be a good time to cash it out.  It would be just my luck that I(of modest means) get caught in the wide net cast for the big fish. 

 

From what I've heard this cap gains tax will only affect those making $1m a year.  We shall see. 

1 minute ago, daz28 said:

 

Biden mentioned raising capital gains taxes(ie stocks).  I wasn't babbling. 

 

You're babbling about WS "figuring in" the cap gains tax. 

[daz28]

6 minutes ago, Chef Jim said:

 

From what I've heard this cap gains tax will only affect those making $1m a year.  We shall see. 

 

You're babbling about WS "figuring in" the cap gains tax. 

He said "wait and see" until it's passed. I reminded him that Wall Street isn't reactionary.  I don't know if you can change capital gains taxes by your revenue.  Pretty sure it's flat rate.

Edited April 26, 2021 by daz28

[Chef Jim]

2 minutes ago, daz28 said:

He said "wait and see" until it's passed. I reminded him that Wall Street isn't reactionary.  I don't know if you can change capital gains taxes by your revenue.  Pretty sure it's flat rate.

 

Current capital gains taxes are based on income.  Single filers under $40k and married filers under $80 pay 0% in long term gains. Thanks to George Bush's tax cuts for the "wealthy"  

[daz28]

6 minutes ago, Chef Jim said:

 

Current capital gains taxes are based on income.  Single filers under $40k and married filers under $80 pay 0% in long term gains. Thanks to George Bush's tax cuts for the "wealthy"  

That's great news then.  I know little to nothing about taxes.  I have had to pay taxes on dividends, but I won't have to pay on securitites gains if my annual income is less than 40k? Is that what you're saying?  Is the capital gains added to my income to create my bracket?  If so it's pretty hard to avoid the 15% bracket then.  

Edited April 26, 2021 by daz28

[Chef Jim]

Just now, daz28 said:

That's great news then.  I know little to nothing about taxes.  I have had to pay taxes on dividends, but I won't have to pay on securitites gains if my annual income is less than 40k? Is that what you're saying?

 

Yes, as long as you've held the security for 366 days.  Qualified dividends are taxed the same.  Ordinary dividends are taxed as inccome.

 

I'm not just a good cook.   

[Doc Brown]

7 hours ago, Chef Jim said:

 

Current capital gains taxes are based on income.  Single filers under $40k and married filers under $80 pay 0% in long term gains. Thanks to George Bush's tax cuts for the "wealthy"  

Yeah but the 25% that would be impacted by Biden's proposed capital gains tax has the most control of the direction of the stock market.  Going from 20% to almost 40% is crazy and they'll dump stock before the new rate goes into effect.  My guess is there's no way that hike would pass with just one Joe Manchin no vote away from sinking it.  They'll pry compromise between 25 and 30%. 

[ComradeKayAdams]

We really shouldn’t be determining Biden’s “wins” and “losses” right now based on fluctuations in the stock market and in commodity prices. The economy is still emerging from the pandemic craziness, and the financial health of the consumer base is not yet fully understood. Give it time to stabilize and reach some semblance of a “normal era” equilibrium. Much of the stock market growth has probably come artificially from the super low interest rates: excess bank borrowing from the Federal Reserve plus company stock buybacks to some extent.

 

We’ll know more about our economy’s standing once most of the population is vaccinated and once businesses and schools can fully open…so no earlier than August/September, I suppose. The looming rent, student loan, and medical bill crises will surely be a drag on market consumption, but to what extent? I don’t think Trump nor Biden did NEARLY enough to buttress the consumer base, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Great Recession #2 begin by early next year. We can quibble over Biden’s modest tax hike proposals on capital gains taxes (I would differentiate between taxes on long-term gains and speculation taxes) and marginal tax rates at the highest income brackets, but keep in mind that the professional and managerial classes made out very well during the pandemic while the working class fared oppositely. This is what economists are calling the “Kay-shaped economic recovery,” presumably named after famed Buffalo Bills message board economist, ComradeKayAdams. So…now’s your time to shine, supply-siders! It’s time to start creating those jobs, Mr. Highest Income Bracketer, despite the huge uncertainty in the American consumer’s ability to purchase your goods and services.

 

On 4/25/2021 at 11:23 AM, Tiberius said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-debt-is-at-a-record-high-but-the-risk-calculus-is-changing-11618565580 

The U.S. said show me the money, and the world did.

Federal debt—incurred when the government sells Treasury bonds, bills, notes and other securities to help cover its costs—recently hit an all-time high, thanks in part to foreign investors who are happy to park their cash in the U.S.

The securities are attractive because of their safety and stability. The government has never failed to pay back its lenders the full value of the securities when they mature after a fixed period: 20 or 30 years for Treasury bonds; two to 10 years for notes; and as long as 52 weeks for bills.

The transactions provide the government with infusions of cash and—as long as the dollar remains the global reserve currency—offer individuals and institutions a safe way to sock away their wealth.

“One thing economists and people in general have miscalculated is the massive global appetite for the U.S. dollar and U.S. dollar-denominated debt,” said David Andolfatto, a senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “This demand has exploded in the last 30 years.”

 

Yup. The high foreign confidence in our country’s currency (and our sterling reputation for paying back lenders) is EXACTLY why we should be (and should have been) leaning heavily into Modern Monetary Theory this year as we continue navigating our economy out of the pandemic.

 

18 hours ago, Chef Jim said:

 

Sure. What's wrong with working in a meat processing plant?  

 

Meat processing plants are ethical nightmares. In addition to the substandard pay and the terrible health/safety conditions for the workers, you have that whole concept of murdering farm animals for a living that leads to alarming rates of PTSD diagnoses among meat industry employees. Most human beings just aren’t wired for this kind of behavior, which explains why our society decided to create laws to protect our pets from abuse. Farm animals are no different from dogs and cats. This is a reality that workers at meat processing plants very quickly discover and that employers in the meat industry do everything they can to conceal from the public.

[Chef Jim]

9 hours ago, Doc Brown said:

Yeah but the 25% that would be impacted by Biden's proposed capital gains tax has the most control of the direction of the stock market.  Going from 20% to almost 40% is crazy and they'll dump stock before the new rate goes into effect.  My guess is there's no way that hike would pass with just one Joe Manchin no vote away from sinking it.  They'll pry compromise between 25 and 30%. 

 

And going from 15% to zero for lower income brackets is, in my mind, what propped up the market after the tech bubble burst.  Older folks in lower tax brackets likely looked at equities for income seeing the gains were possibly tax free whereas bond income was taxed as income.  No one ever brings that up.  

 

And you damn well bet higher income people will dump stocks and pay the lower gains rate now.  However the drop in the market would be short lived as they would likely buy the stocks back after 30 days (to avoid wash sales).  They need the equities for growth.  

6 hours ago, ComradeKayAdams said:

Meat processing plants are ethical nightmares. In addition to the substandard pay and the terrible health/safety conditions for the workers, you have that whole concept of murdering farm animals for a living that leads to alarming rates of PTSD diagnoses among meat industry employees. Most human beings just aren’t wired for this kind of behavior, which explains why our society decided to create laws to protect our pets from abuse. Farm animals are no different from dogs and cats. This is a reality that workers at meat processing plants very quickly discover and that employers in the meat industry do everything they can to conceal from the public.

 

Killing the animal is only part of the process.  Hunters kill, dress, break down animals all the time.  Clancy the cow is not the same as fluffy the cat.  

 

I would love to process meat. Butchering was one of my favorite activities when I worked in kitchens.  

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

19 hours ago, Chef Jim said:

 

Current capital gains taxes are based on income.  Single filers under $40k and married filers under $80 pay 0% in long term gains. Thanks to George Bush's tax cuts for the "wealthy"  

Obama signed to extend it too...

[Chef Jim]

1 minute ago, Over 29 years of fanhood said:

Obama signed to extend it too...

 

Yay!  

[B-Man]

[BillStime]

2 minutes ago, B-Man said:

If only Trump took COVID seriously...

[ComradeKayAdams]

On 4/27/2021 at 1:26 PM, Chef Jim said:

Killing the animal is only part of the process.  Hunters kill, dress, break down animals all the time.  Clancy the cow is not the same as fluffy the cat.  

 

I would love to process meat. Butchering was one of my favorite activities when I worked in kitchens.  

 

I don’t want to derail the Biden Economy thread, so I’ll make this my last post on meat processing plants. If others want to continue this conversation, please start an Animal Rights thread and I will definitely show up to contribute.

 

To say that Clancy the Cow is in a different class of animal rights from Fluffy the Cat is to show your American cultural bias. In India, cows are sacred. In certain Far East cultures, cats are food. Both animals are sentient beings. In my opinion, taking the life of a sentient being against their will should only be acceptable under four circumstances: instinct (so the rest of the animal kingdom is off the hook!), self-defense, caloric survival (so not just because they taste good), or the safety of the greater society (example: population control of deer to reduce car accidents…even though that is technically an issue of habitat encroachment and man’s elimination of deer’s natural megafauna predators…).

 

The killing component may be just one part of meat processing, but I’m pretty sure (not 100% but confident enough) that is the part which is giving the employees PTSD at alarming rates. The vast majority of hunting is performed from great distances, so it is much less personal than, say, slitting open an animal’s throat while looking directly into their eyes. I’m not condoning hunting when I say that hunters typically have great respect for Mother Nature and for the animals they kill. They aim for swift kills and find all forms of extended animal suffering abhorrent. They enjoy the difficulty component in spotting and stalking their game. These reasons are why many hunters become outspoken critics against factory farming once they discover what really goes into the meat production process, from the farm animals’ births up to their deaths.

 

As a chef, I think you know the customer responses you’d get if you served meat in its raw form without any cooking or added seasonings. Why is that? If humans are a true omnivorous species, everyone should have no major beef (pardon the pun) with eating meat raw and unseasoned. And everyone should be able to regularly kill their prey without getting PTSD. Cancer and heart disease risks shouldn’t skyrocket, either, from consuming meat and dairy (though to be fair, that could also be from the specific ways we process these foods). From a scientific evidence standpoint, the evolutionary story of ***** sapiens as these natural big game hunters is actually quite controversial. A much more palatable (pardon the pun) thesis is that humans are herbivorous primates who developed limited capabilities as opportunistic hunters during times of evolutionary bottlenecks (famines and such). This isn’t exactly settled science, but hey…it’s thought-provoking and does help further my pro-vegan message!

[Tiberius]

3 hours ago, ComradeKayAdams said:

 

I don’t want to derail the Biden Economy thread, so I’ll make this my last post on meat processing plants. If others want to continue this conversation, please start an Animal Rights thread and I will definitely show up to contribute.

 

To say that Clancy the Cow is in a different class of animal rights from Fluffy the Cat is to show your American cultural bias. In India, cows are sacred. In certain Far East cultures, cats are food. Both animals are sentient beings. In my opinion, taking the life of a sentient being against their will should only be acceptable under four circumstances: instinct (so the rest of the animal kingdom is off the hook!), self-defense, caloric survival (so not just because they taste good), or the safety of the greater society (example: population control of deer to reduce car accidents…even though that is technically an issue of habitat encroachment and man’s elimination of deer’s natural megafauna predators…).

 

The killing component may be just one part of meat processing, but I’m pretty sure (not 100% but confident enough) that is the part which is giving the employees PTSD at alarming rates. The vast majority of hunting is performed from great distances, so it is much less personal than, say, slitting open an animal’s throat while looking directly into their eyes. I’m not condoning hunting when I say that hunters typically have great respect for Mother Nature and for the animals they kill. They aim for swift kills and find all forms of extended animal suffering abhorrent. They enjoy the difficulty component in spotting and stalking their game. These reasons are why many hunters become outspoken critics against factory farming once they discover what really goes into the meat production process, from the farm animals’ births up to their deaths.

 

As a chef, I think you know the customer responses you’d get if you served meat in its raw form without any cooking or added seasonings. Why is that? If humans are a true omnivorous species, everyone should have no major beef (pardon the pun) with eating meat raw and unseasoned. And everyone should be able to regularly kill their prey without getting PTSD. Cancer and heart disease risks shouldn’t skyrocket, either, from consuming meat and dairy (though to be fair, that could also be from the specific ways we process these foods). From a scientific evidence standpoint, the evolutionary story of ***** sapiens as these natural big game hunters is actually quite controversial. A much more palatable (pardon the pun) thesis is that humans are herbivorous primates who developed limited capabilities as opportunistic hunters during times of evolutionary bottlenecks (famines and such). This isn’t exactly settled science, but hey…it’s thought-provoking and does help further my pro-vegan message!

If people had to kill the animals themselves a lot more people would be vegetarians 

[RochesterRob]

3 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

If people had to kill the animals themselves a lot more people would be vegetarians 

  If people had to grow their own vegetables a lot more would be gatherers or hunters.  

[Tiberius]

Quote

 

The U.S. economic recovery picked up speed in early 2021, with the economy growing 1.6 percent in the first three months of the year amid a coronavirus vaccination campaign and massive stimulus spending from the federal government.

As Americans have begun to emerge from isolation and started spending again, construction surged and businesses invested in expectation of future growth. It appears likely that all coronavirus-era economic losses will be recovered by the middle of this year, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

Some of fastest economic growth in more than four decades occurred from January to March, behind only the initial 7.5 surge last year, when businesses first reopened afterpandemic-related shutdowns.

The quarter’s growth would be 6.4 percent at an annual rate, but annual rates can be misleading amid an unprecedented crisis, because they imply that a quarter’s trend will continue for an entire year. The Washington Post is focusing on quarterly rates until the economy recovers.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/29/first-quarter-gdp-growth/

 

Go Joe!!! Obviously the country has confidence in his leadership and the economy shows it. 

[Chef Jim]

3 hours ago, ComradeKayAdams said:

 

I don’t want to derail the Biden Economy thread, so I’ll make this my last post on meat processing plants. If others want to continue this conversation, please start an Animal Rights thread and I will definitely show up to contribute.

 

To say that Clancy the Cow is in a different class of animal rights from Fluffy the Cat is to show your American cultural bias. In India, cows are sacred. In certain Far East cultures, cats are food. Both animals are sentient beings. In my opinion, taking the life of a sentient being against their will should only be acceptable under four circumstances: instinct (so the rest of the animal kingdom is off the hook!), self-defense, caloric survival (so not just because they taste good), or the safety of the greater society (example: population control of deer to reduce car accidents…even though that is technically an issue of habitat encroachment and man’s elimination of deer’s natural megafauna predators…).

 

The killing component may be just one part of meat processing, but I’m pretty sure (not 100% but confident enough) that is the part which is giving the employees PTSD at alarming rates. The vast majority of hunting is performed from great distances, so it is much less personal than, say, slitting open an animal’s throat while looking directly into their eyes. I’m not condoning hunting when I say that hunters typically have great respect for Mother Nature and for the animals they kill. They aim for swift kills and find all forms of extended animal suffering abhorrent. They enjoy the difficulty component in spotting and stalking their game. These reasons are why many hunters become outspoken critics against factory farming once they discover what really goes into the meat production process, from the farm animals’ births up to their deaths.

 

As a chef, I think you know the customer responses you’d get if you served meat in its raw form without any cooking or added seasonings. Why is that? If humans are a true omnivorous species, everyone should have no major beef (pardon the pun) with eating meat raw and unseasoned. And everyone should be able to regularly kill their prey without getting PTSD. Cancer and heart disease risks shouldn’t skyrocket, either, from consuming meat and dairy (though to be fair, that could also be from the specific ways we process these foods). From a scientific evidence standpoint, the evolutionary story of ***** sapiens as these natural big game hunters is actually quite controversial. A much more palatable (pardon the pun) thesis is that humans are herbivorous primates who developed limited capabilities as opportunistic hunters during times of evolutionary bottlenecks (famines and such). This isn’t exactly settled science, but hey…it’s thought-provoking and does help further my pro-vegan message!

 

So you're pushing a Vegan lifestyle all the while saying killing animals for caloric survival is ok?  Am I confused or are you?

 

I suggest you learn the history of meat consumption and take a few cooking classes.  Then you'll understand why animal parts are seasoned and cooked before consuming.  

15 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

If people had to kill the animals themselves a lot more people would be vegetarians 

 

If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.  Point?  

[Tiberius]

45 minutes ago, RochesterRob said:

  If people had to grow their own vegetables a lot more would be gatherers or hunters.  

If people had to make their own clothes, more people would be naked 

[Tiberius]

-----

 

🕺<----Sleepy joe? 

The stock market is set to close out President Biden’s first 100 days in office on Thursday with its best start to a presidential term since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The S&P 500 has risen 10% since Mr. Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration. The index is on course for its strongest performance since the start of Mr. Roosevelt’s first term in 1933, when it surged 80% after a spectacular crash in the Great Depression, according to a Dow Jones Market Data analysis. By comparison, the S&P 500 rose 5.3% in the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s term in early 2017 and on average has gained 3.2% over that period in presidential terms since Herbert Hoover’s in 1929.

Investors say it is no surprise that bountiful government spending, increasing Covid-19 vaccinations, growing faith in the economic reopening and continued support from the Federal Reserve have powered the latest leg up in the stock market.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/stocks-are-off-to-best-start-to-a-presidential-term-since-great-depression-11619688780

[RochesterRob]

6 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

If people had to make their own clothes, more people would be naked 

  True.  It might help dampen egos that could sorely use some kind of deflation.  The point was it takes a lot of effort to grow vegetables if mechanization and chemicals are taken out of the process.  I doubt many would be down for daily weeding including getting down on one's knees and hands for many weeks consecutive to do so.