California Gov. Gavin Newsom is floating a federal tax boycott

Companies, no. But the state employs a lot of people.

Good. Keep poking until he has a heart attack. If he recovers, rinse and repeat until we get it right.

I thought you were going to talk about the physical improbability of cumming buckets.

I've been thinking about this, and I'm afraid I agree. I'm not sure how you could enforce this. Paying federal tax seems like a personal choice and the consequences would be felt by individuals (tax evasion charges, unless trump manages to get it treated as a terrorist act). I'd be interested to see if the state was actually offering to shield CA citizens from being arrested by federal agents or subpoenaed by federal courts.

Also, for the most part the Fed already has our money, right? The majority of that federal tax is withheld from paychecks and goes directly to the Fed...

That's not really the case, though. This rise of fascism has been building for decades now. It's been a slow, steady, drip drip drip. Perhaps not so noticeable except from the outside - Americans are embedded in a pervasive atmosphere of propaganda. The Republicans have been getting more and more authoritarian over the years, more and more extreme, and the Democrats have been letting them. It's been more than four years since the last violent coup attempt, after all, and those were the same people behind this play.

It's not progressing fast. You just haven't noticed its progress until now, when it's nearly done.

Um aren't they doing this now?

Or how about a timeline where we didn't immediately give up on Restoration Reconstruction after the Civil War

EDIT: derp.

i want the timeline where harris won lol

Doesn’t help my employer moved me here then reneged on my proposed salary

Look up "promissory estoppel."

Then CA negotiates trade deals with Asia and quits doing business with US altogether.

The only reason some states aren't considered third-world is because of the federal system, a fact they so often forget.

You know what is wild?

The US is the largest economy on the world, and if you remove California from it at #4 the US moves to....
#1 still. Several states make up the top 25 list of GDPs and the total combined is absurd.

The US is just massive in scale. It's fully running the global empire still even if it's waning. I do think losing California would be a massive hit for lots of reasons but just wild to think about.

Fourth largest, Texas is eighth.

US balkanization is exactly the chaos preceding the emergence of the next superpower.

Breaks down when you start seeing all the blueberries in the ketchup and you realize that's where huge portions of the population actually live.

So much of that red state territory is vacant real estate. A big chunk more is functionally disenfranchised (Indian reservations, migrant labor communities, large prison populations).

This illustrates regions of political control. But it is in no way reflective of homogeneous popular opinion.

No they're too big, instantly doubling the population wouldn't go well. At most a Euro style partnership if a few more western states broke off.

California is unlikely to give up their nukes.

Go to HR. Ask for a W-4, change withholding to $0.

Nice try Steve miller. Go jump up your butt.

Idk, the author of "Civil Disobedience" did it. It's a valid resistance method, or just a way to keep yourself morally consistent. Every kind of resistance has a good chance of bringing harm to yourself.

I personally didn't file one year; kinda just kept putting it off because I knew I wouldn't be able to pay my taxes (was a 1099 worker, and suffered some major financial blows that year); nothing ever happened, but it definitely was a risk. I probably won't do that as an "act of resistance" next year, but will probably try extending as long as possible.

DOGE already scrapped the IRS

Calexit is becoming less and less of a meme every day.

But if it's not Putin's fault,

1. US people would have to face the reality that there's stupid people among them
2. and there'd be no "external threat" to distract from internal problems!

I think the bigger impact here is how it brings the tax imbalance into the conversation. Look at how effective that argument has been at fuelling Albertan separatism. It's especially effective on Conservatives, who are absolutely suckers for anything that suggests they're getting a bad deal. "We pay too much for too little" is something that he could easily get most of California to rally around.

By pushing this line, Newsom is driving a wedge between California and the US. I couldn't possibly say whether he's actually trying to fuel separatism, or simply gesturing at it as a threat, but that's the implied danger here.

The federal government will just levy more taxes upon the remaining states. At least 10 thousand good dubloons and various gold statues and concubines per year

Good. Even my state provides more, than we get. Fuck em! Let them have their Jesus Land. That will make America great, no red states.

There’s also a lot more rules about everything and y’all pay more taxes than us. Nowhere is perfect. Source : helped a friend open a business in Vancouver during the pandemic and eventually got shut down by the city for ‘permits’ despite having used the business to raise over $200k CAD for charity

EDIT: also, there aren’t any school shootings, even though there are plenty of trump supporters

Sounds much like a blue state. You don't have the right to own a gun in MA for example. You have a right to submit an application for your local police chief to deny or approve based on how much they like you.