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Trump allegedly indicted in a Georgia 2020 subversion probe

Xzi

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It’s a good thing we’ve got all of those new IRS agents for the job, ones that are now armed and busy shooting themselves during routine exercises. I personally wouldn’t task them with recovering an Uber Eats from McDonalds and delivering it to a customer, but that’s just me.
A good thing indeed. If the IRS was used exclusively to recover ill-gotten assets from the ultra-wealthy, the returns would be enough to fund European-style vacations, parental leave, universal healthcare, and more. Americans that have never traveled outside the US have no idea just how badly they're being ripped off.
 

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You said:

Are we *really* at the crime statistics stage of the conversation? Okay, you prompted this.

As you were the one that mentioned crime statistics and I repeatedly pointed out that the statistics are irrelevant & you keep dragging it back to that, then why would you be asking that specific question?

Either you're lying, or you have dementia.
I just explained to you how you prompted it. You made an emotional appeal along the lines of “poor black kids getting shot by whites for being in the wrong neighbourhood”, which we both know happens extremely rarely and is always faced with widespread public outcry. I countered that by providing actual numbers from the F.B.I. and showing you that the problem is much bigger in black communities (as compared to the same problem in white communities), so much so that the excess deaths surpass *all* homicides committed on black victims by white perpetrators put together, regardless of circumstances. The only appropriate response to someone trying to tug at people’s heartstrings with a distorted view of reality is empirical data. What you purport to be a problem doesn’t happen a lot - there is a bigger problem, and you should address it *first* because it’s *bigger*, so the impact of fixing it will also be larger. That saves more lives.
A good thing indeed. If the IRS was used exclusively to recover ill-gotten assets from the ultra-wealthy, the returns would be enough to fund European-style vacations, parental leave, universal healthcare, and more. Americans that have never traveled outside the US have no idea just how badly they're being ripped off.
I hate to break this to you, but it will be weaponised against regular people. Corporations can be dealt with from a desk, these are door-knockers.
One where privileges would have to be changed, to give others the opportunities that others get.
Other people having more money than you do does not entail you’re entitled to a slice of that money via a convoluted redistribution pipeline. Not that it matters, since the wealthy already pay the overwhelming majority of taxes anyway, so kind of a moot point there.
 
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Xzi

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I hate to break this to you, but it will be weaponised against regular people. Corporations can be dealt with from a desk, these are door-knockers.
This is presuming that corporations and billionaires are honest and forthcoming with the tax man. I for one am not that naive. It takes far more resources and manpower to thoroughly audit the wealthy and powerful, obviously, but the return per dollar spent is exponentially greater. The government knows where the real money is, you can't squeeze blood from a turnip just as you can't squeeze a spare billion dollars from a homeless person. I don't have confidence that Biden will go as far as he needs to in this regard, but beginning the process of expansion is nonetheless appreciated in case we get a more progressive president to properly utilize the IRS in the future.
 
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This is presuming that corporations and billionaires are honest and forthcoming with the tax man. I for one am not that naive. It takes far more resources and manpower to thoroughly audit the wealthy and powerful, obviously, but the return per dollar spent is exponentially greater. The government knows where the real money is, you can't squeeze blood from a turnip just as you can't squeeze a spare billion dollars from a homeless person. I don't have confidence that Biden will go as far as he needs to in this regard, but beginning the process of expansion is nonetheless appreciated in case we get a more progressive president to properly utilize the IRS in the future.
Right, so when they do start knocking on people’s doors and don’t put fire to the feet of these corporations you speak of (or don’t do it to a level you’d find satisfactory), do I get to say “I told you so” or will you fight me then too? I just need to know how to name this item in my reminders.
 

Xzi

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Right, so when they do start knocking on people’s doors and don’t put fire to the feet of these corporations you speak of (or don’t do it to a level you’d find satisfactory), do I get to say “I told you so” or will you fight me then too? I just need to know how to name this item in my reminders.
There's nothing that could possibly change in regards to collecting taxes from the working class, the IRS already has more than enough resources to do that effectively. The only goal in trying to keep it small is to prevent it from going after people with the resources to push back.

It equates to Trump's narrative that law enforcement are, "coming for you next." I'm not personally concerned that racketeering or insurrection charges are coming my way, so it's a weak appeal to paranoia.
 
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There's nothing that could possibly change in regards to collecting taxes from the working class, the IRS already has more than enough resources to do that effectively. The only goal in trying to keep it small is to prevent it from going after people with the resources to push back.

It equates to Trump's narrative that law enforcement are, "coming for you next." I'm not personally concerned that racketeering or insurrection charges are coming my way, so it's a weak appeal to paranoia.
This is a very long response with a lot of qualifiers to a yes or no question. I will choose to interpret it as “I know they will, but the people I hate will also be affected (to whatever infinitesimally small degree), so I’m okay with it”, which is fine.
 

Xzi

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This is a very long response with a lot of qualifiers to a yes or no question. I will choose to interpret it as “I know they will, but the people I hate will also be affected (to whatever infinitesimally small degree), so I’m okay with it”, which is fine.
It's a couple sentences, I'm sure you understood the message. The rich steal from the nation because they know they can get away with it. The poor pay their taxes because they know they can't.
 
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Xzi

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Xzi

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Used to think Trump is bad for America, not so sure anymore. All these at this time is dirty politics period.
You're not so sure any more now that he's been indicted on nearly a hundred severe criminal charges? Yes, he's obviously bad for America, as he wants to end democracy. The US will not abide by dictators or kings, we'd sooner fall into anarchy.
 

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It's a couple sentences, I'm sure you understood the message. The rich steal from the nation because they know they can get away with it. The poor pay their taxes because they know they can't.
I understood perfectly, I just rephrased it to save both of us some time. Corporations have billions of dollars and an army of lawyers, small business and private individuals do not. Expansion of the IRS will primarily affect the little guys, and you know this very well - that’s all I’m pointing out.
 

Xzi

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Corporations have billions of dollars and an army of lawyers, small business and private individuals do not.
Precisely, which is why a letter is all it takes to collect from the latter. The IRS is totally incapable of collecting from the former without more resources and manpower, let alone going after them for past tax evasion.
 

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The wealthy are the only one who can pay however little they want to pay, the rest have no choice but to bear the full burden.
That’s not how tax burden works. The top 1% of filers account for 22% of all income tax revenue. The top 50% of filers account for 97.7% of all income tax revenue. If the bottom 50% of filers paid nothing at all, the government wouldn’t even notice the missing 2.3%. It is my opinion that the rate for the bottom 50% of the income scale should be 0 - they should keep all of their money because they don’t have enough for a meaningful contribution anyway and any dollar saved by them is more impactful than if they did have the means. In fact, I would argue that it would change their circumstances over time in a measurable way.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/
 

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You're not so sure any more now that he's been indicted on nearly a hundred severe criminal charges? Yes, he's obviously bad for America, as he wants to end democracy. The US will not abide by dictators or kings, we'd sooner fall into anarchy.
With Biden you have to change your pronoun to get the job you want.

Soon you have to pretend that you are WOKE to avoid persecution. Inquisition 2 is coming

Democracy has been gone for some time already.
 
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Precisely, which is why a letter is all it takes to collect from the latter. The IRS is totally incapable of collecting from the former without more resources and manpower, let alone going after them for past tax evasion.
IRS raids primarily affect small businesses. This has always been the case, Google “IRS raid” and check the first page of results, stretching from the 90’s until now. You won’t see billionaires on that list.
 

Xzi

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With Biden you have to change your pronoun to get the job you want.
Give me a break dude, Biden is as centrist/establishment Democrat as they come. Society progresses at its own rate regardless of who is president, anyway.

IRS raids primarily affect small businesses. This has always been the case, Google “IRS raid” and check the first page of results, stretching from the 90’s until now. You won’t see billionaires on that list.
It's a hard sell trying to convince me the IRS is raiding businesses with a couple hundred bucks in back taxes due. If by "small businesses" you mean "fronts for money laundering," then sure.
 
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It's a hard sell trying to convince me the IRS is raiding businesses with a couple hundred bucks in back taxes due. If by "small businesses" you mean "fronts for money laundering," then sure.
IRS raids primarily affect small businesses. They pull up like SWAT teams, confiscate documents, seize accounts and leave. They don’t pull up to Apple HQ with guns and tactical gear, they do it to regular people. Always have. They deal with corporations politely, over phone and e-mail. Here’s one (of many) examples I see when I do the most basic of Google searches. That’s how a raid looks like.

https://www.wptv.com/news/region-martin-county/stuart/stuart-business-searched-by-irs-agents

It’s how they used to do it in the past and it’s how they’ll keep doing it now, because the small guy is defenseless whereas the big fish can stop them with an endless roll of red tape. By the time an audit actually comes along, the coast is clear, unless someone *really* slips up.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/instit...iness-owner-despite-promise-to-end-raids/amp/

Civil forfeiture is a bitch, ain’t it?
Others were not so fortunate. According to a recent IJ report, between 2005 and 2012, the IRS seized over $242 million from 2,500 cases for alleged structuring violations. In a third of these cases, only making transactions under $10,000 prompted a seizure—the government did not accuse the owner of any other wrongdoing. Among all structuring forfeitures, the median taken was under $28,000. That’s far removed from cracking down on the nation’s Bernie Madoffs and Saul Goodmans.
Don’t expect seizures in the billions from a handful of entities - that simply doesn’t happen. The preferred method has always been death by a thousand cuts - you need *a lot* of agents to seize millions when you’re doing it a couple grand at a time. Those people can’t defend themselves, so they’re easy pickings. Have fun waiting for your money to be returned in 10-15 years’ time, or quite possibly never returned at all.

This applies to the police too, by the way.
In the United States, civil forfeiture (also called civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture) is a process in which law enforcement officers take assets from people who are suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing.

(…) Critics argue that innocent owners can become entangled in the process to the extent that their 4th Amendment and 5th Amendment rights are violated, in situations where they are presumed guilty instead of being presumed innocent. It has been ruled unconstitutional by a judge in South Carolina. Further, critics argue that the incentives lead to corruption and law enforcement misbehavior. (…) A 2020 study found that the median cash forfeiture in 21 states which track such data was $1,300.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States
Really making sure those billionaires pay their fair share. We’ll see how Biden’s “new IRS” fares. Prognosis is not good, but hey.
 
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