James Medlock

@jdcmedlock.bsky.social

74500 Followers 1711 Following

More good things for everyone. Public sector appreciator. Tax and welfare policy knower. Hyperinflation doubter.

1. The $70B figure isn't what the bottom half actually pays. That's gross pre-credit income tax liability. The IRS SOI tables explicitly exclude refundable EITC and refundable CTC from "tax share" numbers — and the Tax Foundation, working from the same SOI data, flags this directly: excluding refundables "overstates the tax burden of the bottom half." Net of refundables, the bottom half's federal income tax position is roughly zero or negative on average. BLS Consumer Expenditure data has the bottom quintile at –$518 in 2023. There's much less to "zero out" than the graphic implies. 2. "76M households" is wrong — those are returns, not households, and per NTU, 49M+ returns in 2023 reported zero income tax liability already. The "bottom half" is mostly people who already pay zero or net-negative federal income tax. The infographic is selling a tax cut for people who in many cases don't pay the tax. 3. The $24B compliance cost for the bottom half is unsourced and almost certainly wildly overstated. Total individual compliance burden across ALL 153M filers is ≈$144B per NTU/IRS Taxpayer Burden Model. The IRS's own model shows compliance burden rises sharply with income — Schedule C, Schedule D, K-1s, AMT, itemizers. The bottom half files the simplest returns (W-2 only, standard deduction, often Free File / Direct File eligible). Claiming they bear 17% of the total individual compliance cost while owing 3.3% of the tax is backwards from how the burden actually distributes. 4. Eliminating bottom-half income tax liability doesn't eliminate filing. Bottom-half filers overwhelmingly file to claim refundable EITC, refundable CTC, ACA premium tax credit reconciliation, state income tax, and to document income for SNAP/Medicaid/SSI/student aid. The 600M hours don't go away unless you also kill those programs, which the post isn't proposing. 5. The "$52–55B recovered" line is the load-bearing fiction. This says 74–78% of the tax cut comes back through sales/payroll/corporate/st…
Screenshot of a tweet from Emad Mostaque (@EMostaque), reposted by Jeff Bezos. Tweet text reads: "A basic analysis shows that zeroing out federal taxes for the bottom half the USA would help millions, have minimal impact on tax receipts & add over $100 billion to the economy. It's easy to check this yourself with @grok & similar, great of @JeffBezos to highlight." The tweet includes an infographic titled "A Small Tax With a Huge Drag" with the subtitle "The bottom-half federal income tax raises little, costs heavily, and much of the revenue returns through growth." Top stats row: 76M households (AGI under $54k); $70B collected (3.3% of all income tax); $24B compliance friction burned in time, money and complexity; 600M hours lost to paperwork. Three panels below: Panel 1 — "The Problem: A bad trade" lists $70B collected from the bottom half, $24B burned in compliance friction, 600M hours of life lost to paperwork. Panel 2 — "The Mechanism: The money doesn't disappear — it keeps the economy moving" shows a flow chart: Households keep more → Spend locally on essentials → Businesses see higher sales → More jobs & higher wages → Tax revenue returns. Below the flow: "$52–55B recovered across the economy through sales, payroll, corporate, state & local taxes." Panel 3 — "The Outcome: The trade improves" lists $100–130B GDP gain from higher velocity spending, $1,200 per household per year average increase in take-home income, 600M hours returned back to families, work, and communities. Bottom equation: $70B collected − $24B compliance friction + $52–55B recovered = ~$15–18B net public cost (≈0.3% of total US public revenue). Footer text reads: "The question is not whether $70B matters. It's whether this is the worst way to collect it." And: "Cut waste. Return time. Grow the economy. Let working households keep more."
Comic panel of Donald Duck and a wide-eyed young Mickey Mouse. Donald's speech bubble: "Democrats should do a huge middle class tax cut to address affordability." Mickey's speech bubble: "Fool that you are, for you treat taxation as a burden rather than the means by which our burdens are eased. Behold a civilization rich in private wealth yet starved of public provision, where every man owns what his grandfathers could not imagine and yet trembles at the thought of how he will weather an illness or loss of livelihood. Will you fight for an affirmative vision of broad contribution and universal benefit? Or will you perish like a dog?"
Ocasio-Cortez isn’t convinced. She’s not sure that these are the kinds of proposals Democrats should start building an agenda around. “When you actually look at the totality of what’s being put forward, we are seeing a total gutting of a resource base,” Ocasio-Cortez told NOTUS. “If people want to choose between whether they want guaranteed health care or a 5% tax rebate, people are going to want guaranteed health care.” “It’s not to say that I object to any and all like tax cuts or tax rebates, right? We can help people who are struggling, but I don’t think that the biggest impact in how you help someone and how we help people make ends meet is through that avenue,” she said.
Tax law scholar Lawrence Zelenak observes, “April 15 can and should be as important a civic holiday as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Together, the two days celebrate the fulfillment of the two great responsibilities of citizenship.” The filing of the income tax return offers an opportunity to mark this achievement. Riffing on Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s famous quip, “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization,” Zelenak calls for greater recognition of how filing an income tax return constitutes a “Purchase-of-Civilization Ceremony.”
Full text of Nancy Mace's post: Boating is not a luxury in South Carolina. It’s a way of life. Our state is home to more than 350,000 registered recreational boats and a marine industry supporting over 27,000 jobs and generating a $6.5 billion economic impact. Our No Tax on Boat Loan Interest Act extends the above-the-line loan interest deduction for cars to boats, allowing American families to deduct up to $10,000 annually in boat loan interest on American-made boats. More affordable boats mean more families recreating on the water, more marine manufacturing jobs in South Carolina, and more investment in an industry already generating billions in economic impact. South Carolina STRONG.
Map showing the following data: Children's uninsured rate by state, 2024 (ACS, under 19): Alabama 4.3%, Alaska 8.8%, Arizona 9.3%, Arkansas 7.7%, California 3.1%, Colorado 6.0%, Connecticut 2.6%, Delaware 5.8%, Florida 8.5%, Georgia 7.9%, Hawaii 2.9%, Idaho 8.1%, Illinois 3.6%, Indiana 6.1%, Iowa 3.8%, Kansas 7.0%, Kentucky 5.0%, Louisiana 4.1%, Maine 4.5%, Maryland 4.6%, Massachusetts 2.1%, Michigan 3.5%, Minnesota 3.7%, Mississippi 5.8%, Missouri 6.6%, Montana 7.7%, Nebraska 5.3%, Nevada 8.0%, New Hampshire 2.3%, New Jersey 4.7%, New Mexico 6.1%, New York 2.7%, North Carolina 5.5%, North Dakota 6.7%, Ohio 5.6%, Oklahoma 8.5%, Oregon 2.7%, Pennsylvania 5.4%, Rhode Island 3.7%, South Carolina 5.9%, South Dakota 8.0%, Tennessee 6.5%, Texas 13.6%, Utah 6.6%, Vermont 2.6%, Virginia 5.2%, Washington 3.9%, West Virginia 2.8%, Wisconsin 4.2%, Wyoming 9.0%. National average: 6.0%.
Tweet from Mary Talley Bowden MD comparing US physician density (3.0–3.7 per 1,000) to Pakistan (2.0) and India (0.7), asking 'Do we really have a physician shortage?'
Pre-ACA, the health insurance system didn't do a bad job; private health insurance did a very good job at something most people think is deeply unfair. Once you remove what is normally the main social benefit of private insurance --pricing risk to make things die-- you are left with health insurance companies with only three other functions: spreading risk, negotiating with providers, and customer service. The problem is, the industry is terrible at two of these. Private health insurance companies openly admit they can't effectively spread risk on their own since some individuals have very high cost health care problems, and these individuals can no longer be priced out. The private health insurance lobby (AHIP) has actively been calling for the government to recreate a government reinsurance program -- government insurance for the insurers that spreads the risk for them. The private health insurance lobby also admits they are terrible at negotiating with hospital and drug makers. For most procedures, they have negotiated rates much higher than what the government did for Medicare. We now have a weird health insurance system where the private insurance companies can't do their main job because we consider it immoral, they are asking the government to step in to perform their second most important function for them, and they admit they are really bad at their third most important job.
Here's one way to think about it: your zoning, permitting, and planning regime is the size of the container you hold out to collect rainwater. In an unpermissive zoning and permitting regime, you hold a tablespoon. Even when it pours, you can still only collect a tablespoon of investment. The right kinds of zoning and permitting reforms are an upgrade to a gallon jug that can collect plenty of water. But if there's only a drizzle, it's going to take a long time to fill your jug. This is where creating an investment environment comes in: with so many cities and states upgrading to gallon jugs, it's time to make it rain the way Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Reagan did.
Delicious bread