Skip Navigation
InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)WI
Windex007 @lemmy.world
Posts 4
Comments 1.2K
Is it really possible to tax the rich?
  • This is a bad system for several reasons:

    -It requires an arbitrary use-agnostic choice of value. Why 10 million? Why not 5? Why not 50?

    -it requires an arbitrary time scale. Why 5 years? Why not 3? why not 10? Why not limit once in a lifetime?

    We're defining a system here with numbers out of thin air with no context around anything. These are fundamentally badly designed systems. No amount of fiddling with the parameters will make up for the fact that it's fundamentally flawed.

    Also, beyond that, you would be amazed how many scenarios exist for people and businesses to secure large loans that this would impact. The goal is to actually tax the super rich who are dodging taxes, not kneecap legitimate useage. You'd hurt hundreds of thousands legitimate borrowers and just shove Bezos and Musk into using alternative mechanisms to leverage their security holdings.

    I know you think I don't understand your proposal. I challenge you to consider that I do, and still think you can reconsider the root cause of the issue and come up with alternative ideas. You're stuck on the loan aspect. That's a symptom, not the cause.

  • Is it really possible to tax the rich?
  • The problem isn't that i "don't understand the gap". The problem is that this isn't what I'm asking.

    How do you define for the purposes of this hypothetical law which loans would be taxed as income?

    Telling me how rich Bezos is is completely tangential.

    I've been trying to use the Socratic method to prime the pump that

    -The root of the problem isn't the loans themselves, it's that they can "realize value" from shares (using them to secure a loan) without selling them.

    But that doesn't seem to have gotten anywhere because of how excited people are to hear any question to be somehow a doubting of how rich these guys are?

    If that is the case, and you step back, can you consider an alternative strategy besides just some messy spaghetti definition of "income loans" vs other loans?

  • Is it really possible to tax the rich?
  • My mortgage was many times my yearly income.

    So then you just have frequency, which is easily gamed by getting fewer larger loans. Maybe one every three to five years? At that point it really is just a mortgage with stock as collateral rather than a house.

    Like, you're not wrong in your intuition that the system is problematic. Mine (and others) point is that the devil is in the details, and they're not trivial.

  • A homelabber/sysadmin midlife crisis
  • Power costs is a poor tax in the same way skipping the dentist and getting a root canal later is.

    Also in the process of power efficiency-izing my lab. It just wasn't a feasible option before, I didn't have the means. I just paid interest via electricity.

  • US intelligence official charged after Israel’s plan to attack Iran leaked
  • I get your point, but intelligence agreements break down if countries start letting their personnel leak information.

    Canada has access to sensitive US intelligence. What do you think would happen if someone in CSIS leaked it?

    Like, Israel bad, it was probably ethically correct to leak it, but I think your line of reasoning isn't fantastic from an actual argument perspective. It was a tweet sized, easily consumable expression of disagreement, and I can appreciate that art for what it is.

  • Tesla recalls Cybertrucks for faulty inverter, the 6th recall this year
  • I don't really care what they look like. If any truck actually could meet the promises these made, I'd buy the shit out of them:

    -All electric

    -Sophisticated sensor suite to improve operational safety

    -Working performance comparable to F150

    -low maintenance

    -Can be used as home power backup

    -not a Deathtrap

    -not a Killing machine

    It hits the electric points, but that's it. It's a bad truck. It doesn't fulfill any of the "smart" promises. Death trap killing machines in constant recall that can't handle rain... Let alone do work.

    The aesthetic doesn't even make my list of complaints. It's like the whole industry has been trying to make trucks as shitty as possible for like 30 years. Give me a '94 ranger electric conversion kit and it's game fucking over cyber truck.

  • Trump thinks Putin is his friend. The Russians just issued a humiliating statement to the contrary.
  • He's already conditioned his base with fake pictures and videos of tons of stuff. He's already convinced them to reject a reality they can see and hear and touch.

    Putin could release that tape, DNA, and have the Pope and Joe Rogan personally attest to it's authenticity and it wouldn't matter.

    Trump would say "deepfake" , fake news, radical left fabrication. His base would believe him. We've been living in a post-truth world for longer than most of us are willing to admit.

    There is no kompromat that could shake his base.

  • Minimal Voting Data of 2020 and 2024 US presidential election.
  • Although I've been pointing at these numbers as well, it's worth noting that the effects of the electoral college is still important.

    Dem votes were up in PA and GA from 2020. Maybe other swing states as well, haven't looked. Trump's just went up more.

    Either way, I think all of the brilliant minds who decided to withhold their votes for Kamala for whatever reason maybe weren't being very pragmatic given the reality of the binary outcome set.

  • CTrain Success

    I know that the CTrain reminders to not forget your newspapers when leaving the train have been overwhelmingly successful because I haven't seen a newspaper on the train even one time in the last 10 years.

    1

    something something prime temporal directive

    0

    Has his time finally come?

    9

    it is too late for us now

    2