The Next President is...

[jazzdude]

Speaking of government involvement, anyone else see the proposal hidden in the Build Back Better bill that mandates banks provide the total inflow and outflow data of all accounts with over $600 in transactions?
That’s probably one of the most blatant invasions of financial privacy the government has ever attempted. Even the awful “Patriot Act” caps mandated reporting at $5,000 for suspicious transactions. Nearly every American would be subject to this, yet the administration will still tell you with a straight face that it’s to catch rich people who are cheating on their taxes…  
 
As an example, I could potentially draw the attention of the IRS simply because my fiancé and I do not have joint accounts, so she pays her portion of rent to me and then I pay the full amount to the landlord. As such, my bank account would show $18,000 in cash inflow that is not reflected on any W2. As far as I can tell under this proposed new system, that could get me noticed by the IRS even though I have done nothing wrong. Pretty sure that meets the definition of 1984 style Big Brother. 
 
Edit: Perhaps a better example is selling a car. I sell my several year old used car as a private party to another private individual for $17,500 that is wired to my account. I am under no obligation to pay tax on this money. However, IRS AI algorithm flags me because my tax filing claims I made $100k in taxable income, yet my checking account shows $117,500 went into my account in one year. Mr IRS then wants me to prove I actually don’t owe taxes on that money. Provable? Yes, but it’s basically akin to “show me your papers”.  
 
Here is an article discussing it, however plenty of others out there as well. 
https://fee.org/articles/treasury-department-seeks-to-track-financial-transactions-of-personal-bank-accounts-over-600/

Agree with just about everything you said, except for car tax. Fairly certain you owe tax on the car sales as a capital gain, unless you sold it for a loss.

The $600 transaction monitoring is ridiculous. But it's cheaper to go after the poor/middle class since they probably don't have access to a good lawyer to defend themselves. (But it's there a net gain for the government? Are the funds recovered by IRS enough to offset the cost of the monitoring/legal costs to pursue small violations?)

Don't forget that carrying large sums of cash is also considered suspicious, and what constitutes a "large sum" is whatever the police (or TSA if flying) feels like that day. And that threshold seems to go down if you're not a white male who's dressed well, because then it's "possible drug money" and at risk for being seized

[HeloDude]

1 hour ago, jazzdude said:

And that threshold seems to go down if you're not a white male who's dressed well, because then it's "possible drug money" and at risk for being seized

 

So this why Hunter Biden is getting away with all of his crimes…now I get it!

[pawnman]

2 hours ago, jazzdude said:

 

 

Agree with just about everything you said, except for car tax. Fairly certain you owe tax on the car sales as a capital gain, unless you sold it for a loss.

The $600 transaction monitoring is ridiculous. But it's cheaper to go after the poor/middle class since they probably don't have access to a good lawyer to defend themselves. (But it's there a net gain for the government? Are the funds recovered by IRS enough to offset the cost of the monitoring/legal costs to pursue small violations?)

Don't forget that carrying large sums of cash is also considered suspicious, and what constitutes a "large sum" is whatever the police (or TSA if flying) feels like that day. And that threshold seems to go down if you're not a white male who's dressed well, because then it's "possible drug money" and at risk for being seized

 

I guess in this market anything is possible...but it's pretty rare to sell a car and make a profit over what you paid for it. Cars are depreciating assets. 

Unless you're putting up a rare sports car at auction or something...

Edited October 13, 2021 by pawnman

[ClearedHot]

A second part of this legislation, Biden also plans to DOUBLE the size of the IRS and hire 87,000 new employees.  Before you say great, catch all the cheats, remember every agent comes with a mandate to bring in funds.  I am all for catching the cheats to raise revenue but with the IRS it rarely turns out that way.

[HeloDude]

9 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

A second part of this legislation, Biden also plans to DOUBLE the size of the IRS and hire 87,000 new employees.  Before you say great, catch all the cheats, remember every agent comes with a mandate to bring in funds.  I am all for catching the cheats to raise revenue but with the IRS it rarely turns out that way.

If the Feds really wanted to cut the cheating then they would adopt the Fair Tax, but they won’t.  The Feds are about picking winners and losers…and they suck at that as well.

[GreenArc]

1 hour ago, pawnman said:

I guess in this market anything is possible...but it's pretty rare to sell a car and make a profit over what you paid for it. Cars are depreciating assets. 

Unless you're putting up a rare sports car at auction or something...

Raising this more as a fun-fact to your point that shocked me, too:

Sold a used 2017 Dodge Challenger in May than had been in a wreck that required rebuilding the front-left side of the vehicle for $25,000 to CarMax. It was leased (Dave Ramsey taught me after afterwards to never do that again! 🤣 ) for a hair under that price.

Couldn't believe it, as a previous offer from CarMax was only for $18,000 in February. IDK what happened between February and May, but they jumped the price by $7.5k. Recently looked into selling my wife's SUV but not quite getting the same level of offers from CarMax 3-4 months later. So IDK if there was a huge spike in demand/panic in May, or if maybe something specific to sports cars is in demand, or it was a mistake, but you best believe when they handed me the paper with $25k on it I immediately said "YES. WHERE DO I SIGN!".

[Sua Sponte]

32 minutes ago, GreenArc said:

Raising this more as a fun-fact to your point that shocked me, too:

Sold a used 2017 Dodge Challenger in May than had been in a wreck that required rebuilding the front-left side of the vehicle for $25,000 to CarMax. It was leased (Dave Ramsey taught me after afterwards to never do that again! 🤣 ) for a hair under that price.

Couldn't believe it, as a previous offer from CarMax was only for $18,000 in February. IDK what happened between February and May, but they jumped the price by $7.5k. Recently looked into selling my wife's SUV but not quite getting the same level of offers from CarMax 3-4 months later. So IDK if there was a huge spike in demand/panic in May, or if maybe something specific to sports cars is in demand, or it was a mistake, but you best believe when they handed me the paper with $25k on it I immediately said "YES. WHERE DO I SIGN!".

What happened is a fucked supply chain with microchips that run everything from phones, cars, to airplanes being in short supply due to the pandemic. The lack of microchips is affecting new vehicles inventory making them in short supply and raising their prices. People are freaking out due to the low inventory and now they’re having bidding wars between each other for used vehicles, thus driving up the prices for them as well.

[guineapigfury]

3 hours ago, Sua Sponte said:

What happened is a fucked supply chain with microchips that run everything from phones, cars, to airplanes being in short supply due to the pandemic. The lack of microchips is affecting new vehicles inventory making them in short supply and raising their prices. People are freaking out due to the low inventory and now they’re having bidding wars between each other for used vehicles, thus driving up the prices for them as well.

Anecodotally, I have friends who have difficulty finding rental cars for TDYs.  That might be an indicator that cars/parts are in short supply.

[M2]

37 minutes ago, guineapigfury said:

Anecodotally, I have friends who have difficulty finding rental cars for TDYs.  That might be an indicator that cars/parts are in short supply.

Yep, we had the same issue when going TDY to Alaska in August.  Not only were cars tough to find, they were also quite expensive!

[pawnman]

2 hours ago, guineapigfury said:

Anecodotally, I have friends who have difficulty finding rental cars for TDYs.  That might be an indicator that cars/parts are in short supply.

I've heard of people renting UHaul trucks because it was cheaper than getting a regular rental car. 

[kaputt]

14 hours ago, SurelySerious said:

 

 

 

Yeah, went generally unnoticed because it was during the Del Rio debacle among other things, but it will allow monitoring of nearly every financial transaction of almost every American. Sounds like one big warrant.

 

 

Oh wow, yeah didn’t catch your post. 
 

This has to be a violation of the 4th Amendment, yeah? 

[RASH]

Yep, we had the same issue when going TDY to Alaska in August.  Not only were cars tough to find, they were also quite expensive!

Vacationed with the family in NW Montana last month, and paid $1700 for a GMC Yukon for 10 days. I had reserved it 8 months earlier. Dude in line in front of me at National Car Rental walks up and asks what they have available (no reservation) for two weeks. They offer him a minivan at $5600, and he paid it. Nothing else available…


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[Guest]

ITT: “moderates” who are realizing just what they and their deceased neighbors voted for.

[ClearedHot]

10 hours ago, Sua Sponte said:

What happened is a fucked supply chain with microchips that run everything from phones, cars, to airplanes being in short supply due to the pandemic. The lack of microchips is affecting new vehicles inventory making them in short supply and raising their prices. People are freaking out due to the low inventory and now they’re having bidding wars between each other for used vehicles, thus driving up the prices for them as well.

The pandemic was NOT the sole cause of the microchip shortage.  I actually made some good cash tracking the chip market per-pandemic.  Poor planning, poor return on automotive chips (they use a different size), trade sanctions (thank Trump), and limited investment in production all combined to cause a perfect storm.  Intel TSMC and Samsung are all building new factories but they take up to two years to reach full production.  Intel alone is spending $20 BILLION to build two plants in Arizona.  At least one positive outcome it production is moving back to America.

[pbar]

On 10/12/2021 at 9:13 AM, bfargin said:

It is many times, the bottom of the academic barrel who become teachers (I know there are exceptions). I'm constantly amazed at the unmotivated and/or substandard students who fail out of one of our business majors here at school who then goes over to the College of Education and gets a teaching degree. If pay is raised we might get better talent headed towards teaching K-12 as well.

Teaching AFJROTC at a high school and it's been an interesting experience.  I find it odd that despite the mountains of research into the psychology of how people learn best and the professionalization of the teaching profession (at least in an academic sense), we get much worse results than before all that started.  

I think part of it is that our culture doesn't value education and learning as much as it should.  For example, in a Korean high school (my wife is Korean and I was an exchange officer at the ROKAF ACSC), the kid in the school with the best math grades is as popular for that as the star football player is in an American high school.  I see a lot of parents of my students who don't seem to give a rat's ass about how their child is doing.  And other teachers are surprised when I show up to talk to them about my daughter (easy because she is at the HS where I work) and even more shocked when I take their side and get on her about her grades. 

On the other hand, I'm not impressed with some of the teachers I work with (and my HS is in the top 10% in the state).  They seem to wrap things up in a lot of educational jargon and fluff.  

COVID didn't help either.  The 9th graders I have act like 7th graders because they spent almost 2 years out of school and their level of attention and discipline is significantly lower than my 10th graders.  

I can see why the turnover is so high in the teaching profession.  I definitely have days when I wonder WTF was I thinking taking this job because of the behavior of the students.  And ~95% of my students took it as an elective and want to be in the class.  I can't imagine teaching math or English or something. 

PBAR

[Darth]

12 hours ago, pbar said:

COVID didn't help either.  The 9th graders I have act like 7th graders because they spent almost 2 years out of school and their level of attention and discipline is significantly lower than my 10th graders.  

My spouse is a HS assistant principal with over 3200 students in her school and says the kids this year while they are behaving well in class, they are like feral cats when they are out in groups (lunch, after school sports, etc.)  It is the worst she has seen in 26 years working in education.  In the first two  months of this year, she has been called the C and B words multiple times.  And their parents are no better.  If I had ever spoken to a teacher/adult the way kids talk to her, my dad would have hit me in the head with a shovel, buried me in the back yard and told everyone I had run away.  You could not pay me enough to deal with the things she has to put up with day to day. I'll be glad when she retires. 

Edited October 14, 2021 by Darth
spelling ;)

[HeloDude]

This is one of the repercussions when you make a service (education in this case) a “right”, paid for by the theft of taxpayers.

[disgruntledemployee]

19 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

The pandemic was NOT the sole cause of the microchip shortage.  I actually made some good cash tracking the chip market per-pandemic.  Poor planning, poor return on automotive chips (they use a different size), trade sanctions (thank Trump), and limited investment in production all combined to cause a perfect storm.  Intel TSMC and Samsung are all building new factories but they take up to two years to reach full production.  Intel alone is spending $20 BILLION to build two plants in Arizona.  At least one positive outcome it production is moving back to America.

If only there was a huge facility being built in the US that had different initial plans (LCDs) that could be redirected towards chip production.

I introduce you the the Foxconn factory in SE Wisconsin, which isn't doing much yet. Initially slated to build LCDs, the infrastructure buildouts should enabled it to build pretty much anything high tech.  In the USA.

[FUSEPLUG]

6 hours ago, Darth said:

In the first two  months of this year, she has been called the C and B words multiple times. 

Kids these days. Throwing the “Brandon” word around at school administrators.  Despicable. 

[kaputt]

Afghanistan, border disaster, inflation, massive supply chain issues, gas and oil at their highest in many years, IRS planning to spy on every American's bank account, underwhelming job numbers, and a new Presidential tradition of turning your back and walking away in silence every single time you speak.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, FUSEPLUG said:

Kids these days. Throwing the “Brandon” word around at school administrators.  Despicable. 

Let’s go Brandon!!!!

[Darth]

17 hours ago, FUSEPLUG said:

Kids these days. Throwing the “Brandon” word around at school administrators.  Despicable. 

It's not Brandon.  And its not funny....

[HossHarris]

2 minutes ago, Darth said:

It's not Brandon.  And its not funny....

 

[Darth]

4 minutes ago, HossHarris said:

 

Having a 16 year old call my wife a "MOTHER F$$$ING BITCH" because she told him to pull up his pants or take off his hat is not funny.  It is not a subject I lighten up on at all.

Edited October 15, 2021 by Darth

[FUSEPLUG]

16 minutes ago, Darth said:

It's not Brandon.  And its not funny....

I wasn't trying to mock what your wife has to deal with at work.  I apologize if it came off that way.

I was mocking the President.