Kara, how broke is Donald Trump? Have you seen his taxes? Is it all smoke and mirrors and repackaged steaks? The people need to know.
A tax return is the product* of a dialectic between two forces: what the taxpayer wants it to say and what the relevant tax authorities demand that it say. Nothing more and nothing less.
That tax returns are now being held up as some meaningful measure of personal wealth or income due to our nascent Eternal President of the Republic refusing to share them with the public is either the product of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are unable to participate in the tax return dialectic** and accordingly think things about tax returns that aren't true, or our political class--ever concerned with perpetuating an image of legitimacy for our system to ensure its continued existence--throwing a temper tantrum that someone would dare say that the emperor has no clothes when asked for his sartorial opinion. I can't decide. If you want to know his true wealth, subpoena his estate planners (who no doubt will exert privilege). If you want to know his true annual income, well, there's no shortcut to that one I'm afraid.
Construction is (in my experience) an industry where debt is extremely necessary for a litany of reasons that would not interest this thread so absent evidence to contrary the "hurr hurr debt billionaire" accusation comes off as something people who don't look at financial statements 340 days a year*** would say. (hmu when you work in a field where retention is a common practice and you don't require revolving credit.) Adding to that, we literally just had a Republican presidential candidate whose professional background involved leveraged buyouts so who the fuck are you even trying to kid here.
*synthesis
**Living in some state of hand to mouth, most Americans cannot afford to defer income or delay receipt of it so as to launder it from income taxed one way to income that's taxed another way because legal inequality is OK if you have noble utilitarian aims predicted on specious economic arguments.
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