IT: 🏅 U.S. boycotts Beijing Winter Olympics, and... How do you feel about the state of the job market?

Sharon S: Another exceptional summary. Many of us knew of the unbalanced tax code generally but the specifics you have provided quantify the underpinnings of our country’s continually growing wealth gap and how much our politicians have promoted the means by which it continues to grow. Just another part of our defunct notion that all Capitalism is good; our system of Crony-Capitalism is NOT. (Crony Capitalism: Where the the wealthiest people and corporations get a better return on their investment by buying political influence than they get from innovating and producing better products and services). … … … Just think of the innovations that get cast aside because there are not enough funds available to innovators to bring ideas to fruition or to take the risks needed for breakthrough technologies- due to the increasing wealth gap in our country. … … … Just think of the people who cannot take the time to think the great thoughts that can make the world a better place because they are living pay-check to pay-check and struggling to keep their families housed and fed - due to the increasing the wealth gap in our country. … … … Just think of the lost potential of our country because people are going hungry or cannot afford the time to get the education or perspective needed to see the ‘bigger-picture’ that transcends locality based biases - due to the increasing wealth gap in our country. … … … Your posting clearly documents how and why the wealth gap keeps growing in our country and provides a strong basis for a roadmap for how to fix this atrocity.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is siding in a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief with the state of Maine in its refusal to use taxpayer money to fund religious education. A year ago, the case of Carson v. Makin was decided in favor of Maine by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling has been appealed and now heads to the Supreme Court. FFRF is making its voice heard in a realm that is central to our nation’s secular constitutional set-up: public education. The attempts of Maine Christians “to secure government funding to subsidize religious education are a direct assault on the right to religious liberty they claim to support,” the brief states in its summary. “The constitutional prohibition on states taxing citizens for the benefit of religion, directly or indirectly, guarantees religious liberty for all.” FFRF’s brief makes two compelling arguments. First, the Founders adopted the First Amendment to ensure that taxpayers are not compelled to subsidize a religion that is not their own. “The compulsory support of a religion that is not one’s own is anathema to American principles,” the brief states. “Religious liberty cannot exist when the government can force citizens to donate to a sect that promises them, for example, eternal damnation and torture for exercising that freedom of religion.” And, second, the “no aid” principle avoids government entanglement with religious education and the government oversight that must necessarily be coupled with state funding. “When public money flows to private schools, however indirect the route, regulation is necessary and sensible because the unregulated flow of funds to unaccountable organizations guarantees abuse,” says the brief. “Not surprisingly, the country’s longest-lived private voucher program is bloated with such abuse. In Milwaukee over a 10-year period, more than $139 million in taxpayer funds went to voucher schools that were kicked out of the program for failing to meet basic requirements.” In its decision on Oct. 29, 2020, the 1st Circuit concluded that the “nonsectarian” requirement in the state’s tuition assistance program did not exclude religious schools based on their religious status, but rather protected the state’s interest in only supporting education that was itself nonreligious. Thus, schools are excluded from Maine’s program not based upon what they are or what they believe, but solely based on what they propose to do with the state’s money. If the Supreme Court reverses the circuit court’s ruling, FFRF writes, “Minority religious and nonreligious citizens would be immediately coerced into subsidizing religious education with which they fundamentally disagree.” “This court should not undo the Maine Legislature’s decision not to subsidize sectarian education,” concludes FFRF’s brief before the Supreme Court. “Neither the parents seeking public money, nor the religious schools, have a right to taxpayer funds, directly or indirectly. The state’s decision is the only path consistent with fundamental principles of religious liberty.” FFRF Constitutional Attorney Sam Grover wrote the amicus brief, with FFRF Senior Counsel Patrick Elliott the counsel of record. The Center for Inquiry, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to promoting and defending science, reason, humanist values, and freedom of inquiry, has joined in the brief. The Freedom From Religion Foundation — a national educational nonprofit organization based in Madison, Wis. — is the largest association of freethinkers in the United States, representing more than 35,000 atheists, agnostics and other nonreligious Americans. It has 21 local and regional chapters across the country, including a Maine chapter. FFRF’s two primary purposes are to educate the public about nontheism and to defend the constitutional principle of separation between state and church.

Another post to the bucket. The abomination that is our tax code. The extremely wealthy use a system of deductions for loosely defined “depreciation” and income considered non-taxable to pay considerably less in tax than you or I. Income inequality is, globally, a very real fact. The argument goes that excusing corporations and the wealthy from taxation means they will re-invest in creating new companies, innovation, and jobs. The problem with that is it’s not true according to data compiled and used in research carried out by both domestic and foreign researchers. Pro Publica obtained tax records and has mined them to look at how much the very wealthy pay in taxes relative to the average American and how they reduce their tax obligation. Here’s an excerpt from their latest 2 reports along with hyperlinks if you’re interested in just how skewed our tax code is and why. “ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits. ProPublica The Secret IRS Files This is an ongoing investigation. Sign up to be notified when the next story publishes. Email address: Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year…. Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300…. America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell. To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period. We’re going to call this their true tax rate. The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%. It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period…. No one among the 25 wealthiest avoided as much tax as Buffett, the grandfatherly centibillionaire. That’s perhaps surprising, given his public stance as an advocate of higher taxes for the rich. According to Forbes, his riches rose $24.3 billion between 2014 and 2018. Over those years, the data shows, Buffett reported paying $23.7 million in taxes. That works out to a true tax rate of 0.1%, or less than 10 cents for every $100 he added to his wealth…. Real life Stephen Ross, who founded Related Companies, a global firm best known for developing the Time Warner Center and Hudson Yards in Manhattan, was a massive winner between 2008 and 2017. He became the second-wealthiest real estate titan in America, almost doubling his net worth over those years, according to Forbes Magazine’s annual list, by adding $3 billion to his fortune. His assets included a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park and the Miami Dolphins football team. Then there’s the other Stephen Ross, the big loser. That’s the one depicted on his tax returns. Though the developer brought in some $1.5 billion in income from 2008 to 2017, he reported even more — nearly $2 billion — in losses. And because he reported negative income, he didn’t pay a nickel in federal income taxes over those 10 years…. He is among a subset of the ultrarich who take advantage of owning businesses that generate enormous tax deductions that then flow through to their personal tax returns. Many of them are in commercial real estate or oil and gas, industries that have been granted unusual advantages in the American tax code, which allow the ultrawealthy to take tax losses even on profitable enterprises. Manhattan apartment towers that are soaring in value can be turned into sinkholes for tax purposes. A massively profitable natural gas pipeline company can churn out Texas-sized write-offs for its billionaire owner….. Despite his growing fortune, Ross often owed no federal income tax. In the 22 years from 1996 to 2017, he paid no federal income taxes 12 times. His largest tax bill came in 2006, when he owed $12.6 million after reporting just over $100 million in income. In the years since, Ross has used a combination of business losses, tax credits and other deductions to sidestep such bills. In 2016, for example, Ross reported $306 million in income, including $219 million in capital gains, $51 million in interest income and $5 million in wages from his role at Related Companies. But he was able to offset that income entirely with losses, including by claiming $271 million in losses through his business activities that year and by tapping his reserve of losses from prior years. Take Silicon Valley real estate mogul Jay Paul, who hauled in $354 million between 2007 and 2018. According to Forbes, he vaulted into the ranks of the multibillionaires in those years. Yet Paul paid taxes in only one of those years, thanks to losses of over $700 million. Then there’s Texas wildcatter Trevor Rees-Jones, who built Chief Oil & Gas into a major natural gas producer over the past two decades. The multibillionaire reported a total of $1.4 billion in income from 2013 to 2018, but offset that with even greater losses. He paid no federal income taxes in four of those six years…. The techniques used by these billionaires to generate losses are generally legal…. The commercial real estate and fossil fuel breaks have enabled some of the wealthiest Americans to escape federal income taxes for long stretches of time. Sometimes they amass such large losses that they cannot use all of them in a given year. When that happens, they fill up reservoirs of deductions that they then draw down bit by bit to wipe away taxes in future years…. As long as there have been income taxes, there have been schemes to manufacture illusory losses that reduce taxes, and there have likewise been counterefforts by Congress and the IRS to rein them in. But ProPublica’s findings show these measures to prevent deduction abuses “aren’t doing what they are supposed to do,” said Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University Law School. “The system isn’t working right.” For decades, One Columbus Place, a 51-story apartment complex in midtown Manhattan, has looked like an excellent investment. Located a block off the southwest corner of Central Park, it’s adjacent to the Columbus Circle mall for shopping at Coach or Swarovski or for dining at the Michelin three-star restaurant Per Se. Its 729 rental units have churned out millions of dollars in rental income every year for its owners, among them Stephen Ross. Mortgage records show its value has skyrocketed, jumping from $250 million in the early 2000s to almost $550 million in 2016. Yet, for more than a decade, this prime piece of New York real estate was a surefire money-loser for tax purposes. Since Ross acquired a share in the property in 2007, he has recorded $32 million in tax losses from his stake in a partnership that owns it, his tax records show. Tax losses from properties owned through a host of such partnerships are central to Ross’ ability, and that of other real estate moguls, to continue to grow their wealth while reporting negative income year after year to the IRS. [This] comes in large part from provisions in the code that amplify developers’ ability to exploit write-offs from what’s known as depreciation, or the presumed decline in the value of assets over time. Some of these rules apply only to the real estate business, letting developers take outsize deductions today to reduce their taxable income while delaying their tax bill for decades — and potentially forever. Depreciation itself is a widely accepted concept. In most businesses, the depreciation write-offs come from assets, like machinery, that reliably lose their value over time; eventually, a machine becomes outmoded or breaks down. When it comes to real estate, a common justification for depreciation relies on the idea that space in older buildings will tend to command lower rents than space in newer ones…So, if a building initially cost investors $100 million, the tax code allows them, over a period of years, to deduct that $100 million. But rather than losing value, real estate properties often rise in value over time, much like One Columbus Place has done for Ross and his business partners. These depreciation write-offs, along with deductions for interest and other expenses, have helped many of the nation’s wealthiest real estate developers largely avoid income taxes in recent years, even as their empires have grown more valuable….. For most investors, losses are limited by how much money they stand to lose if the enterprise goes belly up, or how much money they have “at risk.” But not real estate investors. They can deduct the depreciation of a property from their taxable income even if the money they used to buy the place was borrowed from a bank and the property is the only asset on the line for the loan. If they buy a building worth $50 million, putting $10 million down and borrowing the rest, they can still deduct $50 million from their personal taxes over time, even though they’ve put much less of their own money into the project. Savings related to depreciation and similar write-offs are supposed to be temporary; when you sell the assets, you owe taxes not only on your profits from the sale, but on whatever depreciation you’ve taken on the property as well. In tax lingo, this is known as “depreciation recapture.” But two big gifts in the tax code, working together, can allow real estate moguls to push off those taxes forever. First, commercial real estate investors can avoid paying taxes on their gains by rolling sale proceeds into similar investments within six months. This provision of the tax code, called the “like-kind exchange,” goes back to the years following the end of World War I and used to apply to other kinds of property owners. Now it’s available only to real estate investors, a provision that’s expected to cost the U.S. Treasury $40 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. Real estate moguls can “swap till they drop,” as the industry saying has it. Then, there are even more tax benefits that can be used when they do meet their demise — at least to benefit their heirs. For starters, all the gains in the value of the moguls’ properties are wiped out for tax purposes (a process known by the wonky phrase “step-up in basis”). The tax slate is similarly wiped clean when it comes to the depreciation write-offs that were taken on the properties. The heirs don’t have to pay depreciation recapture taxes. Real estate heirs then get another quirky benefit: They can depreciate the same buildings all over again as if they’d just bought them, using the piggy bank of write-offs to shield their own income from taxes. One special gift from U.S. taxpayers to oil drillers is called depletion. The idea is grounded in common sense: As oil (or gas or coal) is taken out of the ground, there’s less left to collect later. That bit-by-bit depletion — analogous to depreciation — becomes a tax write-off. Each year, oil investors get to deduct a set percentage of the revenue from the property. But investors can keep on deducting that set amount indefinitely, even after they’ve recouped their investment, a benefit that had its critics almost from the beginning. The idea was “based on no sound economic principle,” groused the Joint Committee on Taxation in 1926. Yet only in the 1970s was the depletion provision meaningfully curtailed, and then mainly for the largest oil producers. Congress left it in place for independent operators like wildcatters, long venerated as a cross between plucky entrepreneurs and cowboys. Kelcy Warren of the pipeline giant Energy Transfer, shows how the industry’s tax breaks, when blended with others that are more broadly available, can turn a wildly profitable company into a tax write-off for its owner, even as he reaps billions of dollars in income. Warren, who co-founded Energy Transfer in the 1990s, is worth about $3.5 billion, according to Forbes….. Kelcy Warren of the pipeline giant Energy Transfer, shows how the industry’s tax breaks, when blended with others that are more broadly available, can turn a wildly profitable company into a tax write-off for its owner, even as he reaps billions of dollars in income. Warren, who co-founded Energy Transfer in the 1990s, is worth about $3.5 billion, according to Forbes. From 2010 to 2018, Warren was entitled to receive more than $1.5 billion in cash distributions, according to ProPublica’s analysis of company filings. During that time, Warren also disclosed an additional $500 million in income from other sources on his tax returns. But in six of the nine years, he told the IRS he’d lost more money than he’d made. In four of them, he paid nothing…. Warren was able to wipe out his income tax liabilities because Energy Transfer provided him with huge deductions, not only from depletion and other tax breaks specific to oil and gas, but also from the way his company is allowed to account for depreciation. After Energy Transfer builds a new pipeline, its value becomes an asset, one that will degrade over time, and thus produces depreciation deductions. All of that is standard. What’s unusual is that the tax code has long allowed Energy Transfer and its peers to treat the pipeline as if it lost more than half its value immediately. This “bonus depreciation” can wipe out billions in profits; indeed, in 2018, Energy Transfer reported $3.4 billion in profits in its annual public filing while simultaneously delivering big tax losses to its partners. Lawmakers from both parties have supported bonus depreciation on the theory that the tax break, which is available across many industries, boosts spending on new equipment and juices the economy. But Trump and Republicans took the idea to its extreme in 2017 with two key changes that benefited aggressive companies like Energy Transfer in particular. Under the new tax law, the “bonus” rose from 50% to 100%. In other words, for tax purposes, a shiny new pipeline becomes worthless upon completion. Second, the new law contained an even greater perk: It extended to the purchase of used equipment. This means that when a big company like Energy Transfer buys the assets of a smaller one, the value of all the smaller company’s equipment can be written off immediately.” https://www.propublica.org/article/when-youre-a-billionaire-your-hobbies-can-slash-your-tax-bill https://www.propublica.org/article/these-real-estate-and-oil-tycoons-used-paper-losses-to-avoid-paying-taxes-for-years

This is off-topic but it needs to be said that bastard Mark Meadows needs to be locked up he’s nothing but a two bit Nazi. Anti-American anti-democratic total jerk.

Job market will self correct as always. Find real life immediate issues to whine about. Unemployment is lowest it’s been since the 60’s If you’re really that concerned, fight for mandatory military/public service for 2 years post high school. Problem solved While I’m here-why did Bannon get a 7 month stay before being tried for contempt of congress? WTF is that Bullshit ? Are you filing contempt of congress against McCarthy? Do it today This is beyond ridiculous.

Boycott we should.

Omicron is just more fear porn that the general public will eat up. How many times has the flu mutated?

The job market is fine! If people want to work, there are plenty to be had! What’s totally sad is the inflation we are experiencing, the shortage of goods, gas and heating fuel out of this world. The powers that be are making the POOREST CHOICES and are squashing the middle class! They don’t have to want for ANYTHING thanks to the American people! Maybe they should walk a week in our shoes!!!

I agree with the boycott and I would like to see other western countries do the same boycott China and put China on the terrorist watchlist. Along with Russia and Iran

I think a full boycott of Olympic Games in China by the US and our Allies is warranted as an expression disdain for China’s actions against Hong Kong and now Taiwan.

We need to get manufacturing back in the US. Let’s start now.

The Biden administration has been holding talks with MSM so that they will change their reporting on the economy. So that explains all the “Inflation is good for you” articles that are out there now. Nothing has changed or gotten better. Just the MSM following the party line. We don’t have news in this nation. We have propaganda.

Biden can't / will not do anything to upset China as it could make China to release Information on Hunter and his father dealing with the Chinese government.. Biden's Handlers can't have that happening

Job market is better but that’s not saying much!!! It’s a systemic problem that can only be solved by a coordinated effort from government and those with means!!! Government is part of the solution as it is working for the people!!!! Others outside of the government need to step up!!!