Donald Trump the Megathread part II - mod warnings in OP, Updated 18/03/25

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123494324#Comment_123494324

Florida does have sales tax, what it doesn't have is income tax. Instead as you mention they have property tax, it's still lower than most states.

Based on a bill of $16k that would be a $2 million dollar property (assuming you're talking about property tax)

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123494372#Comment_123494372

It was well below that value but there were annual development charges separate to taxes.

arctictree

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123494308#Comment_123494308

UCD has a whole veterinary class full of foreign, mostly US students. They are paying full fees, which are still much cheaper than the US.

10000maniacs

Trump claimed he came up with a new word today. "Equalize"

kneemos

Apparently he's complaining that his free jumbo is too big.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/28/trump-qatar-plane-gift-boeing

eire4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123493906#Comment_123493906

Your absolutely correct there about median income. Almost 60% of Americans cannot even afford an emergency expense of $1,000.

Most Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency expense, report finds - CBS News

aloyisious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123494799#Comment_123494799

His appetite bigger than his eye. Something tells me the Qataris will not take it back, they're rid of something that cost them money.

aloyisious

On the headline stealers, Musk has said that the big beautiful bill will hurt the economy, a million workers will lose their jobs and the deficit will grow. He's apparently going to spend more time on his motor industry job and less on DOGE, and spend less money on politics. What Trump will respond with is anyone's guess. He cant fire Musk as he's only a volunteer adviser to the Admin and South Africans are flavour of the month.

Edit: It seems a reporter with mojo asked Trump what he thinks about being labelled TACO by Wall St analysts and that he always chickens out on the tariffs. His response was to talk about how the other countries he was tariffing [incl China] asked him to reduce the tariffs. He ended up criticizing the reporter for his question "But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question! To me that's the nastiest question."

RickBlaine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123494208#Comment_123494208

I can accept that as an excuse for Trump's win in 2016 but not for 2024 after everything he has done. In 2024, the American public knew exactly who and what he is and they still chose to vote for a sexual assaulting insurrectionist felon as their president.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495136#Comment_123495136

The problem is that all the negative actions of Trump were so heavily reported that the American public became generally numb to it, plus MAGA just reacted with their trademark mixture of equivocation and combativeness.

Looking back, the re-election of Trump seemed inevitable.

extra gravy

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/28/trump-erupts-taco-trade-nickname-tariffs/83903123007/

"President Donald Trump is no fan of an emerging nickname on Wall Street mocking his on-again, off-again approach to tariffs.

Trump lashed out at a reporter on May 28 who asked for his response to financial analysts embracing a new term called "TACO trade." The acronym stands for "Trump always chickens out" ‒ a jab at the president's propensity to impose or threaten steep tariffs on imports, only to later back off."

TACO trading... brilliant 😂

Leroy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495210#Comment_123495210

Because the voters didn't care. It goes back to the point that Trump isn't some strange anomaly, he really represents the majority in the US.

Frank Bullitt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495223#Comment_123495223

Love how his detailed response, covers him backtracking on the negotiations, making the whole point.

And again, calling it a nasty question, it is no wonder America is the laughing stock of the world right now.

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123494262#Comment_123494262

They vary from place to place. The State and County is going to get its pound of flesh somehow, but the method varies, and the practical effect varies even more which means that discussions on the “national median” (or even national average) are pretty useless. You may as well try to generalize Europe by taking figures from Greece and Liechtenstein and assuming the results are representative. Ten miles up the road from me in the next county (same State) property taxes are 40% cheaper than where I live now.

Case study.

I own two houses, both purchased for about the same price. One in California, one in Texas. (Texas one is near thrice the size, though). The California house is taxed at about 1.2% and cannot increase by more than 1.3% a year courtesy of Prop 13 which has its good points and bad. The Texas house is taxed at about 2.3% of value, which can go up by up to 10% a year (though I’m happy to say it hasn’t). Obviously that means that I pay substantially more property taxes in Texas than I do in California.

However, Texas doesn’t have income tax. California has pretty high income tax. When we moved to Texas, I was the single earner, and after doing some napkin maths, the property plus income tax in California was just shy combined of the property tax alone in Texas. However, after my wife started working again (kid got older), the same calculation resulted in the overall household tax bill in Texas being far less than that we would have faced in California, since California would have added the income tax from the wife to my own income tax and the property tax. It’s also worth observing that a Texan who rents pays neither state income tax nor property tax.

There are a slew of other variables as well. I pay in Texas about 10% of the cost of my vehicle registration in California. ($50 vs $500). Sales tax in my part of Texas is about 8%, in my part of California, about 10%. Petrol is 50% cheaper in Texas. Etc., but these additional things made a massive difference in practice.

The way it all worked out, our disposable income in Texas on just my one income actually worked out as better than had we stayed in California on two incomes (and my income didn’t change with the move). The decision (wife was heavily pregnant) basically came down to the fact that in order to allow us to stay in California, she needed to go to work as soon as maternity leave was over, and then we’d have to hand over most of her pay check to someone else to raise our kid. By moving to Texas, my one income was sufficient to float the family for a couple of years while the wife stayed home.

Even just comparing disposable income between states only goes so far, as the cost of things equally varies. You get more for your disposable dollar in Missouri than you do in Hawaii.

Larbre34

Absolute ****ing LOL

Happy constitutional crisis America. Y'all deserve it.

AbusesToilets

About damn time. Let's get it over with before he's put too many of his lackeys in positions of power.

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495274#Comment_123495274

Toys will get thrown.

everlast75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495223#Comment_123495223

And that reporter is...

CNBC DC correspondent Megan Cassella.

Like SV Dáte, a proper journalist, who also stood up to trump, asking him if he was tired of lying to the American public.

spacecoyote

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495227#Comment_123495227

In essence, yeah, the MAGAs were always going to MAGA.

The rest pretty much voted with their pockets...I had more money when Trump was last president than I do when Biden is president.

They'll forgive an awful lot if they think it means more cash in the bank.

It's the Homer Simpson Garbage Man episode playing out in reality

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495274#Comment_123495274

Oh.. the talking heads will be apoplectic today.

Lots lot of talk of "Activist" judges and ranting about impeachment etc. and claiming that the Judges are trying to block his policies

Once again fundamentally misunderstanding what the Judges are saying.

They aren't saying "you can't do that" they are mostly and clearly saying "You can do it in that way"

He can apply all the tariffs he likes, but under the Constitution he needs to get Congressional approval.

But Trump doesn't want to do that because, he knows he won't get it.

Field east

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495322#Comment_123495322

it’s naive to comment on , for example, income and comparing it between presidencies. It reminds me that when FG got into power it ‘ spent’ most of it ‘cleaning up’ the economy and bringing back into health. The voters did not like it - as their income probably dropped- and put FF back into power. IMO, this happened on a number of occasions. Probably would not happen now

Peregrinus

The MAGA fulminations have started already.

And, as might be expected, they're fundamentally dishonest. A White House spokesman has said that . .

It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency

But the court makes this exact point itself:

The court does not pass upon the wisdom or likely effectiveness of the president’s use of tariffs as leverage. That use is impermissible not because it is unwise or ineffective, but because [federal law] does not allow it.

In other words, the courts don't decide how the government should properly deal with what it sees as a national emergency, but they do decide what the government can legally do. That is literally their core job.

golfball37

If the media in America did its job we wouldn’t have Trump 2. Telling us there was nothing wrong with Joe Bidens mind for years before they had to fess up after the debate gave Trump the extra votes needed.
Those votes would have gone to a respectable Democrat candidate who was selected at least 12 months previously

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495136#Comment_123495136

Oh, I'm not defending them at all. If they thought that voting for a career parasite who's bled every business he's ever had and every person he's ever known dry would fix things for them, they deserve what they get.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495413#Comment_123495413

This still requires the US public to be absolutely fine with electing a convicted felon and rapist. I agree that Biden dropped out too late. Harris and even Biden frankly remain light years ahead of the option that was Donald Trump. In terms of the chaos he's creating to date, Harris called it during the election.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495413#Comment_123495413

Or if they weren't relentlessly promoting Trump for decades, making him out to be kind of bombastic figure of fun instead of the evil man he is.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495413#Comment_123495413

Not really — people who were concerned about voting for a candidate whose mental faculties were in obvious decline wouldn't vote for Trump anyway, would they?

It may have been late in the day, but the Democrats did eventually persuade Biden to stand down and make way for another candidate. The Republicans, by constrast, bulled ahead and nominated Trump. And the fact that Trump won tells you that mental capacity was not a dealbreaker for a majority of the voters.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123493936#Comment_123493936

So you break down the US into states but are happy to compare to Europe as one big lump knowing full well the disparity between countries in Europe.

golfball37

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495451#Comment_123495451

It’s more that they were lying because they were afraid of enabling Trump- which ironically they did.
The ultimate selling point of Trump was to make ordinary people believe establishment lies to you and considers you stupid. Telling us there was nothing wrong with Joe for a long time prior to the debate was a mistake. A big one

Widdensushi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123495501#Comment_123495501

Surely it's pot/kettle, there's no way trump gets through the term without some questions/scandal about his mental state/health, but yes a younger candidate sooner was what was needed