Our online world is filled with memes these days, isn’t it? My Facebook feed is always overflowing with people using everyone from Boromir to Willy Wonka to give me their political points of view. The memes are sometimes funny and sometimes ridiculous. Usually, in all honesty, I just scroll right past them without reading them. I saw one today though that caught my attention. It said,
“If you’re applauding Trump’s gaming of the system, I never want to hear your thoughts about who’s taking advantage of welfare again. Ever.”
I saw that and thought, wow, that’s really interesting. There’s always been a general feeling, mostly on the right, of disdain for people on public assistance and especially for those people “gaming the system”. I get it. I happen to think that providing public assistance for those in need is one of the better things we’ve ever done in the USA. No one likes the idea of kids going hungry. There will always be a certain percentage of people who try to take advantage and collect benefits they should not be entitled to. I think most of us would agree that those people are acting, cough, deplorably.
When it’s done on a larger scale, like Trump “allegedly” not paying taxes or when rich people hide money in the Cayman Islands or wherever to avoid paying taxes, why is that any more acceptable? Morally, it seems to me that it’s much worse when rich people do it because they’re not living week to week and paycheck to paycheck.
Anyway, it’s not the biggest point ever but the hypocrisy is interesting to me.
I’m looking forward to watching more of Alec Baldwin as Drumpf between now and election day. He was very funny. Also, and now I feel like Larry King with the non-sequiturs, is anyone watching Luke Cage, Powerman on Netflix? Sweet Christmas, it’s awesome!
thoughtsfromBlo 
So.. let’s say.. purely hypothetical.. that Hillary had used the same tax provision.
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Using loss to offset taxes is common and legal. Of course, it’s reported that her tax break was $3000, so yeah, that’s exactly the same thing.
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Umm she’s carrying 700k in loss carry forward. So.. just so I know.. what is the exact value that makes you a bad person?
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If he truly had paid zero taxes for 18 years, I’d say that qualifies. If that’s not the case, all he has to do is release his tax returns to prove it. You know, like presidential candidates do.
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Well.. I agree that he should release his return. But.. to make the equivalence that anyone who has been screwed by AMT or has money in a loss carry forward loses their right to comment is .. deplorable?
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Maybe we’re talking past each other. Seems to me that you’re the one making that equivalence.
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The meme you reference absolutely makes that equivalence. I got into it earlier today with another friend on the same meme. He (and I) both had some very weird tax liability. The tax system is epically broken.
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The meme drew an equivalence between gaming the welfare system and the tax system. Seems reasonable to me. You’re drawing an equivalence between Hillary claming a loss for a $3000 tax benefit and Trump “allegedly” not paying taxes at all for 18 years. We have different ideas of what equivalence means. And that’s okay 🙂
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She has claimed 700k… But she can only get that back 3k at a time. Unless she has some windfall for maybe investing in fledgling pork based hedge fund to buy us out
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Their effective tax rate last year was 42%. We know this because they released their tax returns. You can never invest in too many pork products.
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A friend just posted that Trump represented 2 percent of all net operating losses in 95. A much better point for liberals.
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That’s an incredible number if true. I thought HRC had a funny line today. “what kind of genius loses 1 billion dollars in one year”?
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They were in the right.. trump was in the right.. that doesn’t maker either right.
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I obviously disagree with the equivalence you are drawing . Paying zero, nada, none, zippo in taxes, when you are that rich, is immoral and unpatriotic. It’s a matter of scale. Again, “allegedly”. If he releases his returns and that is not the case, I’m happy to admit I’m wrong.
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On a side note, how may are going to get the Sweet Christmas reference??
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