New Tax Bill (Page 6)

I think you hit the nail on the head.  Even if the tax bill is glorious and does more than every Republican predicted it will be way too early to tell by November of 2018 so it's about messaging.  If the Democrats can message that it's bad better than the Republicans can message that it's good they can campaign on it successfully.

They have already shifted their message this week from giving big breaks to the rich at the expense of the poor to something more like 80% of the benefit of the tax cuts are going to the rich.  It's not bad messaging for the class warfare line of attacks, but I honestly think 1980 called and wants it's class warfare fear mongering back. 

As for the grandkids argument on the tax bill I get what you're saying but we're all paying the interest today so it's not like the interest is deferred 20 years.  Is it better to keep the economy depressed for them so they can't get jobs when they grow up and get out of college or is it better to stimulate economic growth and make America stronger financially for future generations?
I know you don't believe the money will hit the economy, but I don't see how it cannot.  I am a business owner and 100% of any extra profit above my normal personal spending goes into my company to hire people and purchase equipment.  If I have more, I spend more.  The vast majority of businesses I know want to grow but their growth is limited by the amount of profit they make every year.  I don't have to have people come to my door to buy my products in order to grow, I go out and get them by hiring more people.

Even retail stores invest money into more advertising or marketing activities to drive demand for their location to drive more demand and sales.  People don't just finally wander around with more money and accidentally fall into the door.

It's hard to get the exact numbers because "it's complicated", but from what I've read the total tax cuts on their own are scored at $5.5T over 10 years.  My understanding is that through growth and spending cuts they're anticipating $1.5T in new debt over 10 years when all the dust settles.
$5.5T works out to $550B per year being left in the hands of private taxpayers and businesses.  That number works out to 2.96% of our GDP that wasn't there before and now magically appears in the economy through businesses and consumers.
It is completely different than dumping money through QE because that money only went to banks and it could only be used to loan money, but nobody could loan money due to harsh new regulations.  So, they just dumped it into the market.  In the case of a direct tax cut there's no restrictions on the spending, it goes everywhere.

The economy will grow, and it will grow at a very fast rate.  I believe it will be apparent enough by the 2018 elections to make it very difficult for the DNC to campaign against it.  They will try, but it will be tough.

Whelp, Comcast apparently didn't get the memo that they weren't supposed to use the money to invest in themselves or pay employees more.  #GreedyFail

AT&T too.  These guys totally need to learn how to be greedy better:

OK, Seriously... WTF is wrong with these companies... They're totally screwing up the narrative...

Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bancorp unveil minimum wage hikes after tax bill passage

OK, I'll stop...  There are seriously dozens and dozens of these popping up today.   This tax cut is YUGE!!!

With the removal of the mandate penalty I suspect that most healthy people will just drop insurance like they were pre-ACA.  These people didn't want to buy insurance anyways so I doubt they'll be angry.  I suspect they'll be grateful.

I think we can probably all agree on that.

A year ago, I was unemployed and looked at the "Affordable" insurance options.  

It was the better part of $8000 for a policy with a $7500 deductible (individual coverage)...compared to a "penalty" of $695 (or 2.5% of income)...since my income was more than a bit less than $320,000, the individual mandate didn't force me into $8000 worth of insurance premiums.  I suspect that is the case for most people.  

It was random number I made up for argument's sake. I'm covered through my employer and have no idea what the market rates are. Only point I was trying to make it that by law insurance companies are still required to cover pre-existing conditions, and now healthy people are allowed to bail on owning coverage. So the few insurance companies that don't end up quitting the market will have to either jack their rates up or spread their losses on to their non-Obamacare policy holders. 

The CBO predicted that Obamacare premiums would raise 10%/year, every year if the mandate was repealed. I did some googling and found a chart on CNN Money (link) for what premiums cost by state. Assuming these numbers are somewhat accurate, go back to Tony's chart of with Sophie & Chad. Family of 4, gonna save $2,224/year in taxes, making too much to qualify for any Obamacare assistance. If they live in Louisiana or any of the more expensive states, by the second year they'll be paying more in increased premiums than they're saving in taxes. By the third year, they're paying more in premiums regardless of what state they live in. And by year 2025 (if there is still a market in 2025), their premiums will have almost doubled just in time for the individual tax cuts to expire. 

Healthy people that don't want insurance will drop it, which will jack up the rates and force healthy people who do want insurance to drop it, which will further jack up the rates and force unhealthy people who need insurance to drop it. Then all of them will be clogging up the ER for all their healthcare needs. Only one of those three groups will be grateful. 

Republicans may be getting what they want by repealing the individual mandate. But what we're getting is a far cry from what Candidate Trump campaigned on. "We're going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can't pay for it, you don't get it. That's not going to happen with us." 

"We're going to have great plans.  They're going to be much less expensive and they're going to be much better because the Obama plan is unaffordable and it's a disaster."

"Everybody's got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, 'No, no, the lower 25 percent that can't afford private'...I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not. The government's gonna pay for it." 

Premiums have been shooting up at a much faster rate than before the ACA and far faster than the ACA predicted.  The designers of the ACA didn't take into account people having a brain between their ears and making decisions that benefited themselves rather than the collective.  With or without the tax cut premiums were going to continue soaring this year so it's easy to say the increased tax savings are being destroyed by healthcare, but they went from negative this year to breaking even which is still a net increase.

My thoughts on killing the individual mandate are that it's a poison pill for the ACA.  Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to kill the ACA and put in something better and it didn't work.  The ACA was already dying a slow death so the removal of the mandate simply speeds up its demise.  You're absolutely correct that premiums will continue to increase at an accelerated rate and this quite likely will be the last year that any companies even offer plans on the open market. 

It will then force everyone to come to the table next year and come up with a grown up solution.  I know I'm dreaming for that to happen, but I believe that's why it was removed.

Here's the Whitehouse posting information about the tax law.  One thing I found surprising was that 80% of the people paying the penalty were making under $50k per year.  So basically the very people who the ACA was most trying to help and get into the system are still out of the system.  So maybe getting rid of the mandate isn't as "poison" as I thought because they're not there anyways.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/tax-cuts-making-america-great/

He'll double down by helping ram through some goofy gun control measure......something he can point to and say that the Dems couldn't get done even when they had the presidency had both houses at a liberal majority....and he'll be right no matter how the media tries to spin it.

180.00 per month net..........it pays the insurance for the 2 vehicles my twins drive.  Thanks Obama!!! 

Pelosi sounds like a crack addict.