Bailout / Stimulus Discussion (Hints Missed & Shartz Fired)

I mean the workers on cruise ships are almost slaves paid next to nothing. It is a disgusting industry for lots of reasons though.

You could have left out the second half of that statement

Easy enough to confirm with SEC filings. Carnival’s most recent annual filing reports the following:

image

So in the past 3 years, Carnival has generated roughly $20 billion in revenue per year, $3 billion of pre-tax income per year, and paid less than $100 million per year in taxes. That’s an effective tax rate of ~2%, and that represents the total of all US federal, state, and local taxes, plus taxes imposed by foreign jurisdictions.

In their footnotes, they make this point very clearly:

U.S. Income Tax

We are primarily foreign corporations engaged in the business of operating cruise ships in international transportation. We also own and operate, among other businesses, the U.S. hotel and transportation business of Holland America Princess Alaska Tours through U.S. corporations.

Our North American cruise ship businesses and certain ship-owning subsidiaries are engaged in a trade or business within the U.S. Depending on its itinerary, any particular ship may generate income from sources within the U.S. We believe that our U.S. source income and the income of our ship-owning subsidiaries, to the extent derived from, or incidental to, the international operation of a ship or ships, is currently exempt from U.S. federal income and branch profit taxes.

But sure, let’s give them a bailout.

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One of their biggest fuckups was letting the other side demonize the programs they directed towards helping poor people. Helping poor people (only) is not popular. Giving everyone a baseline income that means they won’t end up living in a cardboard box if things go wrong is not.

Seems like people ITT are against means testing when it’s front-loaded but okay with it when it’s back-loaded. That is, y’all are against a system where I get $1,000 and Bill Gates gets $0 but people are fine with it if we both get $1,000 but then Bill Gates gets taxed $1,000. This seems odd to me since the end result is the same.

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It’s about ease of implementation and more importantly ease of explanation. Give peeps cash! You need 3 words or fewer if you want people to understand anything.

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It isn’t. I get to use the money until tax time. Also its a universal payout which is easy to understand and collecting it back is income tax which is opaque. The universality removes any stigma and removes a wedge they would use to divide us. Also the up front means texting is mors expensive than doing it on the back end.

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front-loaded means testing is stupid because a lot of people’s situations are going to be different this year than what is reflected on their 2019/2018 tax returns. A lot of people that wouldn’t look like they would need it if you only look at their previous tax returns are needing help right now

Making the rich pay more in taxes is not means testing.

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Sure it is. It’s a tax break but you have to be poor to qualify with it. You’re just playing with semantics if you say that’s not a means-tested benefit.

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It’s not about substance dude it’s about marketing. Giving (only) poor people money is awful marketing.

Yea it’s quite clear that most of Congress thinks the labor market still looks like it did in the 70s and 80s. Making sure everyone with power in our government was over 65 was a bad idea.

I have additional insight on the foreign flagged ships, known in the trade as "flags of convenience ". The ships are for the most part exempt from US safety, immigration, tax and labor law, which is also true for most ocean going cargo ships. Only ships operating entirely between US ports are required to have US crews and follow US laws.

They rarely hire Americans because they cost more, except shoreside staff. To the point that ships from Hawaii would make 4 day round trips to a not very interesting atoll solely because it was the closest foreign soil rather than hire Americans.

One US flagged ship from Hawaii and a few 300 passenger riverboats have recently cropped up.

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The house should pass a $3 trillion UBI and tell the senate to fuck off on everything else until the President starts acting like an adult.

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When the fuck are they going to pass anything at all? I get passing a decent bill takes time but this is ridiculous. At least announce your main points wtf.

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Thread

https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1242169745257967619?s=19

They got something today. MSN

Seems to be an unnecessary laundry list rather than something more focused.

10K “bailout” for student loans, DIAGF Tom

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Hey look, in the name of self-preservation they are actually doing something smart. They should 100% refuse to budge on the voting stuff.

Tom Cotton is a nazi fyi. The dems are being outflanked on the left by this man.

https://www.alternet.org/2015/03/10-horrifying-facts-about-gop-senator-tom-cotton/