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Does anyone have anything to say about the OBBB being passed? I was genuinely surprised to see that no one was posting about it at all in this thread.
I'm broadly against the bill but don't have much of an opinion of the specific provisions. I understand that it's meant to neuter the political power of my ingroup and neargroup and it seems like it's going to be effective at that, so I know I'm going to dislike it regardless of whether it has any actual non-partisan merit. I guess if I had to single out few things in particular, I'm selfishly in favor of renewing the R&D tax writeoffs, but also singularly terrified of the massive increase to the ICE budget... It definitely looks like trump is making a military force loyal to him personally because he doesn't trust the loyalty of the existing forces. There are... historical parallels. I'm (among other things) brazilian, and I can't help but remember the first republic's antipathy towards and neglect of the navy due to their royalist tendencies.
Seems mostly fine. It's hard to tell what, if anything, might be actually objectionable. Most of the articles I've seen criticizing it are of the "outrageously stupid and blatant fearmongering propaganda" type, that actively doesn't want you to understand anything at all except Blue Team Good Red Team Bad.
For example, the increase to the deficit seems to be mostly the extension of the 2017 tax cuts? The ones where, after they passed them, tax revenues went up? I feel like I need to see a homework essay about the Laffer Curve and the limits and gameabillity of CBO scoring before anyone complaining about this deserves to be taken seriously.
Same with the Medicaid thing. When this was first being proposed months ago, progressives crashed out about it, and the actual numbers were "lower rate of increase" rather than anything a mentally healthy person would call a "cut". And again, all of the articles look like unhinged fearmongering from wordcels who don't understand calculus, and aren't even trying to understand what is even actually happening.
17 million people losing Medicaid... do you mean illegal immigrants? 14 states openly give Medicaid to illegal immigrants. And that's not counting however many more are getting it on fake SSNs. Some people might lose access due to the 20 hour per week work requirement for healthy people, but let me give you an example.
My employees at MegaCorp are generally hired for full time positions. The starting pay is... not great. Hourly wages, works out to around 75% of the median salary in the state. If you're working full time.
One of my employees has been slowly getting her hours cut back. She's continually late. Frequently calls out. Zero interest in learning the position better, or working towards a promotion. At this point she's working 15-25 hours per week. Her finances baffle me, because I know she had two kids and lives in an apartment by herself. Not only does the math somehow work out, but she takes 2+ vacations a year, one usually international.
But she gets a ton of government benefits. Section 8 housing. Medicaid. Tons of other stuff. My own boss, a woman who varies oddly between pragmatic and bleeding heart, has pulled me aside to express concern about changes to the Section 8 rules. The two of them actually live in the same apartment complex, and my boss pays ~5x as much for a 1BR as the employee does for a 2BR. But her concern was that "they" were going to tighten the rules so that the employee (a perfectly healthy 30yo woman) would have to work more (possibly getting a second job), or pay more, to qualify, because it was absurd that a person like that was barely bothering themselves to show up for part time hours at a single job.
And yet that employee, who is probably subsidized by the state to the tune of something like $50k per year, would still pass the threshold to keep receiving Medicaid.
Also, I'm stoked about the ICE stuff. Democrats are mad about it because if mass deportations happen (or we just stop counting illegals for apportionment in the census), they are going to lose 20-40 House seats and electoral votes, and be relegated to minor league status until they thoroughly reform their extremist ideology.
I really wish that we could give support that prevented recipients from accumulating any sort of status goods while receiving said support. I'd be fine with giving away a relatively generous amount of benefits so long as the condition of accepting them was that they essentially had to drop out of any related status competitions as a condition of receiving that support.
I think disability actually does work that way, but suffers from benefit cliffs that disincentivize some people from doing the work that they're able to do.
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