James Medlock

No, lower income folks don’t really pay much federal income tax, so this is the wrong thing to target. The group that gets the biggest tax cut under this proposal is people making $500k

If you get into a “who can cut taxes more” battle with the GOP, you’re going to lose because they are far more shameless and antagonistic to the idea of living in a functioning society.

Don’t concede to their framing that taxes are nothing but a problem to be solved.

Democrats should try to solve actual problems in society rather than jumping on the Grover Norquest-lite slop train

For the same $6 trillion cost, you could crush child poverty with a child allowance and free childcare, fix unemployment insurance, do paid family, sick & medical leave, massively boost ACA subsidies, and eliminate child uninsurance with Medicare for Kids.

How it started / How it's going

honestly kinda wild how this administration willingly created another global supply chain crisis after coming to power because the previous administration was cruicified for presiding over supply crises

So much online conservatism these days is just "I miss being a kid"

Immigration Theory of Everything colliding with reality.

It is far more important to address the burdens at the bottom of the income distribution and this takes revenue that could otherwise do that.

If the 60-80th percentile are struggling, things are even worse below that. We don't have to be constrained by who pays income tax, we can just give everyone money.

The federal income tax is already quite progressive. This will only fuel conservative talking points about how x% of people don't pay it (which conveniently ignores all the payroll taxes, state & local taxes, etc that everyone pays).

This is a bad plan, it would give nothing to the bottom 40% while giving the most to people in the 60-80th percentiles of the income distribution.

Nope

Estimating the Cost and Impacts of the SSI Restoration Act Stephen Nuñez and Jack Landry find that the SSI Restoration Act would cut poverty among SSI households by nearly 60 percent while updating and strengthening the program.

Instead of doing bad things I’d simply do good things rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

Hey that’s about the cost of the SSI Restoration Act, which would cut recipient poverty by 60%, eliminate marriage penalties, and modernize draconian asset limits.

Estimating the Cost and Impacts of the SSI Restoration Act Stephen Nuñez and Jack Landry find that the SSI Restoration Act would cut poverty among SSI households by nearly 60 percent while updating and strengthening the program.

SSI supports 7.4M low-income seniors & people with disabilities but outdated rules and low benefits leave millions in poverty.

Our new paper from @socio-steve.bsky.social and @jacklandry.bsky.social models what would happen if Congress modernized SSI. The results are striking. 🧵👇

Full report:

I get why so much of the Trump admin messaging is done through extremely online memes - when they open their mouths and try to speak in complete sentences they usually make things worse.

Strange times for someone whose engagement with politics began with protesting the Iraq war, but you know what, big tent!

The concept of "the linear progression of time" has defeated so many over the last few years

Hell yeah

I'm far from an anti-interventionist, but whatever real challenges there are to making policy in our own country, we should have an additional measure of humility when it comes to shaping other countries (especially when the policy is implemented via bombing).

It's funny to me when people who love to go on about second order effects of economic policies and the challenges of central planning without local knowledge suddenly drop all of that when it comes to foreign policy.

Echoing this, I know too many people who nobly and heroically cooked their brains watching Israel blow apart children for a few years and now they are functionally insane and blackpilled. Do not watch the footage of war crimes. You don't need to.

There are two types of Trump II appointees. Guys you haven't heard of because they're 23 year old groypers, and guys you vaguely remember from some scandal revealing poor moral character.

"...taking a great financial burden off the people that I love." To be specific, billionaires.

Based and Shoup-pilled

ah, the discourse...

Three Ways Terminal AI Has Changed How I Work (And Whether It's Coming for My Job) How terminal AI compresses setup, robustness checks, and iteration without replacing judgment, and whether Olivia Rodrigo caused the inflation wave.

If you're not burned out on thoughtful, well-reasoned posts that look at the pros and cons of using AI (LLMs) as a tool, this from @mtkonczal.bsky.social is a good one.

If you get bogged down in the middle, do still read the concluding paragraphs.

newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/three-ways...

Emergency pod time