The Blockbuster Video energy plan

Kevin always twists reality to fit his obvious lies. Still sucking on Obama's/Obiden's tits...

Yes, home mortage interest, charitable, and medical were deductable for 2018.  Don't know about 2019, perhaps worse?  What hit us hard was inability to deduct husband's business expenses.  And taxes on my RMD, and taxes on redeemed bonds...goes on and on.  Work all your life, put money away in savings, investments, etc.  Isn't that what we are supposed to do?  Then...oops...thank you for saving and investing.  Now, send in any of it that is left.   Heck, I should have spent it instead.  OK, rant over.  Thanks.

Bingo - they simplified the tax structure for individuals so we largely just pay a bracket with only the one deduction.   The net result largely leaves most people little changed from what they paid before.

Contrarily, The corporate sector had their bracket massively lowered....and they got to keep all of the deductions they used before.

And that should tell you alot about the ethics behind simpler-fairer tax con that was sold to America as a benefit to individuals.

I misstated it when I say you "cannot" take those deductions--what is actually the case is that the extent to which you can take those deductions has been massively restricted, and given the increase in the standard deduction, there is a huge disincentive to do so anyway. You have to have itemized deductions larger in toto than the standard deduction to itemize (otherwise, you're just increasing your tax bill for no good reason).

I got hammered in the same way. I couldn't deduct my business expenses, even though I filed a Schedule C. The result was a 200% increase in my tax bill. The tax "reform" is a smoke-and-mirrors scam that absolutely crushes anyone who would normally have chosen to file a Schedule A.

And PJ is correct--the average Joe benefited slightly, while rich folks and corporations benefited massively. And the tiny tax breaks for Joe Schmo will be gradually phased out, starting this year, while the corporate tax cuts are permanent.

You'll see the real backlash when people's Medicare benefits are cut and their SS checks are reduced. That won't happen until after the 2020 election, though--as Trump's team calculated. They can then blame the cuts on the Democrats.

Not without losing your standard deduction, you can't. You can do that if you want to deliberately increase your taxes.

Stalker continues to think there is somebody named "Obiden." Idiot!

And he sucks on something else of Trump's.

PJ, hiring one to dig a hole and another to fill in that hole creates two jobs.............yet it does not create value.  It is also, not sustainable.  Similarly, replacing cheap energy with with expensive energy does not create value.

That couldn't be more incorrect. First of all, replacing fossil fuel energy with renewable energy is replacing expensive energy with cheap energy. A lot of people, Boilerman included, apparently, don't even know that the cost of a kilowatt of solar or wind energy dropped below that of a fossil-fuel-generated kilowatt two years ago.

And of course sustainable energy production creates value. Wind and sunshine don't have economic value unless and until they are harnessed to do work in some fashion. Renewable energy sources do exactly that.

Also, it's fossil fuel energy that is not "sustainable," as the supply is finite and is already beginning to run out. In contrast, the sun will always be shining and the wind will always blow (unless Republicans figure out some way to stop that from happening).

Finally, the cost of fossil fuel generation always includes the generation of pollutants. That has never been included in societal calculations, but it should be. That cost is real and substantial. Renewable energy generates no pollutants.

So we should get Tucky Buckford out of the coal mine and put him to work manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines. Everybody, Tucky included, would be better off. Trump's dog whistles to his coal-country "base" are the exact opposite of what a responsible leader should be promoting.

That was a worthy point to make 10 years ago (presuming you weren't interested in investing in the future) but whats the Republican excuse today for purposefully chasing more expensive energy?   

"but whats the Republican excuse today for purposefully chasing more expensive energy?"

The answer is land.

Lets use the NY met area as an example.

NYC with a population of 8 million uses 11,000 megawatts of electricity per day.  The met area population is 20 million.  So one can assume that daily requirement is 25,000 megawatts.  The amount of land required to generate solar doesn't exist. Combine that with the fact the NYC has only 100 sunny days per year & another 100 is considered partly sunny.  So 40% of the time there is no sun.

Then there is wind.  A wall of windmills along the coast won't do the job & as mentioned above there is no land for solar, so there is no land for windmills.