Fairly unlikely. Quite a few people in the US(60%) are in favour of a wealth tax.

For better or for worse, the narrative in the US is slowly shifting to class differences rather than the usual culture war dog whistle issues. No matter how much the ultra wealthy wring their hands and try to explain their plight, the people are less and less inclined to be sympathetic when they are seeing the full effects of the K shaped recovery we've been in since the GFC.

It's difficult to relitigate this, but I put it to you that Trump #1 lost because COVID happened while he was President, and Biden lost because the post-COVID money fountain transitory inflation was particularly bad right at the end of his presidency, and a significant number of voters simply didn't notice that the Democrat candidate had changed (you can still see this even from punditry!)

Low info voters are very, very bad at dealing with causation. Either for events in the past or events in the future. They tend to follow an algorithm more like "has my life improved recently? Then incumbent, else challenger". Much of the rest is differential turnout. Especially when all the constituencies have been gerrymandered six ways from Sunday.

I guess we'll see in a couple of days. The voter verdict on Trump #2 does not look positive, and this is going to reflect on every candidate with an R by their name.

Kamala Harris lost because of the shady primary the democrats won. The public didn't like it. The USA assumed Donald Trump #2 would be similar to Donald Trump #1(Trump mostly golfing).

At least, that's my understanding.

That's why you need the Polish solution: https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/10/30/chaos-at-polands-cons...

(Judge unconstitutionally refuses to accept appointment of other judges, situation escalates into a proper physical "lock the doors vs storm the building" conflict.)

> because they are an impartial body dedicated to the abstract intellectual pursuit of discovering the true intent behind 250-year-old sacred documents.

I assume the /s was implied?

> If you think voters’ minds are so feeble that they can be swayed by propaganda, then the problem is the voters, not the propaganda. Anyone so easily manipulated can’t be trusted to decide who is in power.

Propaganda works even without free votes, this is why dictatorships still bother with it.

Unfortunately this is a non-trivial problem; I don't know if Hacker News has a size limit on comments, but whole books can be (and have been) written on this topic and its implications for democracies, more for the implications for dictatorships, and yet more for the implications for free trade and capitalism.

I note that in the UK political parties just .. aren't allowed to run TV ads at all, but have a set of broadcast slots allocated for free to them. This certainly makes it a lot quieter. While there are serious problems with UK libel law, it also restricts ability to run the levels of overt "Jim eats puppies" libel that is seen in US elections.

Total UK spend in 2024 was about £70m or about £1 per citizen. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

> It is incoherent to endorse restrictions on free speech while also supporting universal suffrage.

Even in the US free speech does not allow you to simply sell fraudulent goods and services. There has to be some sort of defense in the system against lying, or the entire process just turns into competing to write the worst fantasy about your opponent.

The SC could have made a way more limited finding about movies without unleashing the superPAC hell we find ourselves in. Why did a case about a limited run movie enable people to run ads during football games?

> If you think voters’ minds are so feeble that they can be swayed by propaganda

Buddy, advertising works, there is a reason why coca-cola does it.

What you’re missing is that, yes, human minds are actually feeble in some ways. And you’re not even immune either!

Firstly, consider how freaking adaptable humans are. Even though you would hate moving somewhere with really poor living conditions, you would get used to some degree of it within several months or years. People have health problems they… just kinda get used to and ignore (which causes them problems down the road).

My point: it’s part of being human to adapt to your environment.

So here’s the problem: if you have enough money, you can influence other people’s environments. Specifically, their information environments. If your information environment is extremely negative and stressful, you’ll tend to feel more negative and stressed too.

And not to mention, have you heard about how the human brain is so susceptible to addiction when technology manipulates dopamine response? So social media companies are also manipulating your attention by spending money.

This isn’t some personal failing in you or me or anyone else. This is billionaires and tech giants manipulating very normal aspects of humanity to make more money and control politics.

Like, you’re seriously telling me there’s nothing wrong with billionaires buying up and merging nearly all of the media companies and newspapers in America? It’s just our feeble brains that are the problem?

Give me a break. The problem is that because of technology, anyone with enough money can very easily manipulate and influence the information we consume and the media we’re attentive to.

That gives a small number of people frankly too much power in a society. And your argument is that whoever “figures out” this hack of… having a lot of money… should have the right to control elections, because humans can’t be trusted.

I personally find that argument incoherent.

The real question is: why exactly should a society put up with a power dynamic that gives 99% of people less power and worse lives?

Voters' minds are made deliberately feeble. Check the kind of thing taught in private religious schools paid for by public money in the US in strongly red areas, and you'll see a significant chunk of what that is. Creationism and millenarist biblical literalism are thoroughly enforced at all curricular levels and across all disciplines.

> Had Citizens United gone the other way, do you really think the Trump administration’s FEC would fairly decide which movies are allowed to be shown in the months before elections?

Had Citizens United gone the other way, do you think Trump would have won?

If you are taxed as a (lower than 100%) percentage of your donation, there's still a calculus that could make any amount worthwhile if leading to a lower percentage tax/higher percentage gain on your entire principal.

Even better, tax progressively. 0% under $100, 200% above $1000.

I think the key thing is to make the tax payment a fraction of the donor's excessive wealth, rather than a multiple of the payment.

Musk dumping $360M into a political race is trivial to him. Making it cost three times as much to make the donation isn't a huge factor.

Making contributions have an impact on the donors total wealth will democratize these massive campaign spends.

What other countries do is cap the max an individual can donate at like $1500 or something. Works fine.

I don't know why this wouldn't be reasonable for the USA.

That would make it more expensive but still worth it for a billionaire who really cares about their favorite getting elected.

All of that money should go to lower funded candidates so spending above the limit becomes self defeating. Republican mega donors might end up supporting a small communist party more than their own.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good my friend. Closing a loophole that's done so much damage to the country is a good thing, even if there's another loophole waiting to be found.

The dynamic is that corpos are chartered/registered by states, both domestic (operating in the state its chartered in) and foreign (operating in a different state than where its chartered).

Federal regulation would make a mess of the idea due to preemption, eliminating the state regulatory option and leaving us with just the federal options of a Constitutional amendment or impeaching/replacing the Supreme Court and repudiating their openly corrupt precedent (decree).

That's how all changes to the law work... First you change it, then you enforce it.

And far better checks on whether or not a SC member has been bought. There is so much evidence of this and yet everybody just sits around as if they couldn't possibly do anything about it. A politicized Supreme Court is worse than nothing because it concentrates insane power in the hand a few un-elected people.

The authors of the First Amendment were not ignorant of the “volume” afforded by expensive printing presses.

> These laws don't work as well these days with the importance of social media

Indeed, as the UK is finding out at the moment, the existing rules are insufficient and it's turning out that a rule is only a rule if it is enforced anyway.