1. Been excited about @JoeNBC's sustained convo today about @KBAndersen's new book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America which explains how the Republican Party radicalized OVER ECONOMICS over the past 30 years. It was launched w the radical tax cuts in Reagan's presidency, but

1. Ok, I'm liking @RepSeanMaloney

"I sure as hell didn't win 5 Xs as a gay guy in a Trump district"

Much more imp he just correctly pointed out that even liberal MSNBC gives the GOP a major assist by constantly talking about Defund the Police, socialism, & intraparty fighting

2. and @JoeNBC is right, in my "modernized moderates" plan, you have to have these candidates go on offense. Its CRAZY that @SpanbergerVA07 is defending her record as a moderate when she's running against an ideologue in Nick Freitas.

If you ask the wrong questions & ask them

3. the wrong way, the evidence & data will screw you. Such as it did in 2020 because there is no reality in which Dem congressional/senate candidates were well-served by pulling out all their registration and in-person voter contact while the GOP was doing it. It was a bold

4. decision that someone, looking at the weak or inconsistent findings of research on effects of GOTV and esp the diff between in-person and "remote" forms and decided "you know, there is likely no diff from in-person and remote & in fact, remote you can contact WAY more people."

5. And the fact is, maybe this is right. Maybe the Ds total bomb on the congressional map has nothing to do with the decision to suspend the field programs of the House & Senate campaigns. Maybe. I'll be interested in the analysis when the voter file is updated I'll be looking at

1. The ideal outcome @JRubinBlogger & @AliVelshi IS that the MAGA faction turns on the "establishment" part of the party & they tear each other apart. This is why only 20 M.O.Cs are acknowledging Biden- they are TERRIFIED of this. But I should make something clear & this is

2. something that @rickwtyler and this panel doesn't seem to be sending a vibe off that it gets and that is that absent some type of intraparty Civil War 2, the Republican Party is not a party in decline, heading into a sunset, its a party primed to go into the 2022 cycle & take

3. the Speaker gavel from @SpeakerPelosi! I mean, jeez guys- all of the stuff just talked about in terms of its abandonment of sanity, of the rule of law, of its dereliction of duty to the Constitution while it performs gross fealty to a swamp creature, all of that was true 1

4. month ago and what happened?? They gained 11+ House seats and potentially will hold the senate majority even though Ds had 6 pathways to it. 6! No, as craptastic as it is, despite the fact that it stood ready to execute a coup it spent months preparing for w Trump, the GOP is

5. STRONG right now. Its voters- and NOT just the nuts you see at the MAGA rallies, I'm talking about mild-mannered regular folks you run into at the bank and work with at Progressive Insurance- those folks are STOKED on the Trump Admin (albeit the Right Wing media over the past

1. I am thankful that at 12pm 1/20 the powers of the prez will be removed from the most dangerous person who has ever held them. I am thankful for the many wonderful fellow Americans from across the spectrum that joined me to help get him out & save America from authoritarianism

2. I am thankful for each & every person that had to make a hard decision, stay silent & normalize this man & his party's actions- which mirror so closely actions taken by other leaders & parties as they moved to consolidate power at the expense of democracy (as documented so

3. clearly by @anneapplebaum's book Twilight of Democracy) bc their lock on power is threatened. Those of us that took a holistic look at events in the U.S., the scope of the Right's propaganda network, and the lengths to which GOP influencers (electeds & media) were willing to

4. go to manipulate public opinion and knew without a shadow of a doubt that we were facing a five alarm fire. Trump, as dumb & self-sabotaging as he is, does one thing perfectly well- manipulate public opinion. Trump fully understands that public opinion flows from the top-down,

5. and that when you control the information diet of a group of people, as the Right is controlled, that manipulation level reaches profound levels. By the time Trump came down the golden escalator in May of 2015- the Republican electorate was primed for someone like him to come

1. We've got @dananessel, killin' like usual on messaging w @HallieJackson on @MSNBC stating, objectively (accurately) that if SCOTUS were to grant the relief sought by TX & these other states & invalidate the votes of millions of Americans due to COMPLETELY FABRICATED claims of

2. of fraud, it would be the end of democracy in America. PERIOD. It would serve, functionally, as the moment of SC's succession, Dec 20, 1860 & also as a function of anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and TREASONOUS behavior post a presidential election they simply didn't want to

3. accept and spend 4 years living under. So instead, they "invalidated" it by refusing to continue to be part of the U.S. Here, if the Court was to play along (and to be crystal clear, the ONLY constitutional, pro-America position here is a full and unequivocal rejection of this

4. suit and frankly, a "supreme" legal tongue lashing at the ideologues that now control the modern Republican Party and by controlling it, have now forced the United States of America into its first constitutional crisis since the fields of her were strewn with bodies and blood

5. as she ripped herself apart to rid herself of her original sin of slavery, and in that process lost 620,000 Americans which at that time was 2% of the country's population. That Trump & his good squad fabricated a story of trucks in the night sneaking in 100Ks worth of ballots

** MMT is the new supply-side economics
Forty years ago, some economists started from an uncontroversial (but important) result: a lower tax rate raises the tax base, so revenues won't fall as much. But then they ran with it, predicting tax rate cuts could raise revenues.

1/13

The 80s supply-siders went to the limit and came up with a motto: lower taxes will lower deficits as a norm, not an exception. Many economists shouted this was backwards. It was an implausible limit case. Textbooks called them "charlatans and cranks" or "silly".
2/13

In 80s debates, supply-siders would often fall back to "you don't understand me", repeating "Laffer curve!" endlessly, or stating vacuous accounting identities about how the government collect taxes. Their extreme prediction was repeatedly proven wrong by theory and data.
3/13

But they had popular hero figures (Laffer, Moore), and an eager political audience that would use any argument to cut taxes. Eventually, they inspired new good research, and helped in swinging the pendulum of policy debates to include some valid supply considerations.
4/13

Yet, supply-side economic ideas also contributed to a massive rise in US public debt in the last 40 years. Right-wing governments became as prone to have large public deficits as left-wing governments, in the pursuit of cuts in taxes.
5/13

A product which provides a fixed income which is better than FD & an upside like equity.

Should you invest in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)?
A Thread 🧵👇

1/ REITs are a vehicle to invest in income-producing real estate properties managed by professionals.

2/ In India, we have REITs primarily focused on commercial real estate properties having 7-9% rental yields.

In listed REITs, Most of the completed properties are pre-leased to big companies.

Why no residential? As yields of 1-3% make them unattractive to investors.

3/ How do you get the benefit of such yield?

REITs have to distribute at least 90% of their taxable income to their shareholders.

Both listed REITs trade at 6-7% dividend yield (which is also tax-free)

4/ Moreover, 80% of their total value must come from completed & income-generating properties + it must avoid speculative land acquisitions.

What about debt then? There's a restriction there too.
Not more than 49% of the total equity.

Key Highlights from the Union Budget 2021, as presented by the Hon’ble Finance Minister.

Direct Taxes -
• Vivad Se Viswas Scheme Last Date of filing extended to 28th February 2021.
• Citizens of age 75 years and above who have only Pension and Interest income – Need not file👇

Income Tax Returns
• Re-opening of Assessment to reduced to 3 years from 6 years. Only where evidence of concealment of income of Rs. 50 lakhs or more – re-opening can be made up to 10 years & only with the approval of Pr.CCIT.
👇

• Reducing Litigation for small taxpayers – Constitution of Faceless Dispute Resolution Panel for people with Total Income up to Rs.50 lakh and disputed income of Rs.10 lakh
• Income Tax Appellate Tribunal to become Faceless – Only electronic communication will be done
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• Relaxation to NRIs – Rules to remove hardship of Double Taxation
• Tax Audit Limit to be increased to Rs.10 crores from Rs.5 crores for those having less than 5% cash transactions
• Dividend Tax- Dividend will be exempt from TDS. Advance tax liability on dividend income
👇

will arise only after the declaration or payment of the dividend. For Foreign Investors – a lower treaty rate benefit will be given.
• Affordable Housing – Additional Interest deduction (Sec 80EEA) of Rs.1.5 lakhs to be extended for loans taken till 31st March 2022.
👇

1/16

It is a little frustrating to see the response many analysts had to the GDP growth data Chinese released today. These numbers aren’t especially good, and they certainly shouldn’t have been surprising. Back in April and May, when most

2/16

were projecting negative or barely positive GDP growth for China in 2020 (the OECD, for example, expected China’s GDP to contract by 3.7%), I insisted that GDP growth for 2020 would be positive, and probably between 2% and 3%.

Today, it was reported as 2.3%. How did...

3/16

I know? Because I knew that while most of the healthy sources of Chinese growth would contract (except for exports, which would expand given Beijing’s intense supply-side response to the impact of Covid-19), Beijing was going to respond to a significant...

4/16

worsening of the healthy parts of its economy by unleashing enough of the unhealthy, non-productive growth it has long tried to constrain – basically real estate and infrastructure investment – in order to achieve as much economic activity as it...

5/16

needed for domestic political ends.

And that’s exactly what happened. While GDP grew by 6.5% in the fourth quarter, even with substantial tailwinds its retail sales measure – a proxy for consumption – was only up 4.6%, and it was down 3.9% overall in 2020.