Our customer service (CS) department has a HQ in a red state, they manage all the Customer Service nationwide. They report to my boss and have these “huddle” meetings where the CS managers (of which there are at least 30+ people) share ideas. Other department leads/managers can join. I used to sit in as a engineer manager, so I can under understand problems from customers. But now I sit in to eat popcorn.
The CS leads are definitely conservatives. And These huddles are full of really stupid takes.
One of the takes was where someone recommended training resources and another mockingly said, “Read a book? What do you think this is, a school?”
They’re referring to the “halo effect” of Apple accepting the claim of antisemitism.
Truthful or not, Apple is sort of an “influencer” when it comes to ethics, with one of the few openly gay CEOs in big tech and a history of doing, or at least claiming to do, the right thing when any negative labor practices are revealed.
I think there is a sense that if Apple is willing to walk away, it’s a signal to other companies that the problem is real.
I think there is a sense that if Apple is willing to walk away, it’s a signal to other companies that the problem is real.
I agree that Apple may be the canary in the coal mine but I propose a motive beyond ethics.
It may be that Apple has seen a reduction in traffic from ads on Twitter recently and this latest move by Musk, coupled with everything else, gave them leverage to get out of any contracted ad buys. They pull ineffective ads, help their brand and ethics image, and save money doing it.
The cynic in me says whatever the motivation the largest driver is financial.
I agree, and I may have muddled that in my response. I was more proposing an alternative to Apple’s “influencer” in ethics status being a driver for their departure, or for other companies.
Positing that ethics may be a factor but ultimately that Apple’s motivation is financial and other businesses understand that. They’ll see it as the tide turning to where Twitter advertising is going to start hurting brands this the halo effect.
The cynic in me says whatever the motivation the largest driver is financial.
Always is. “Ethics” is just a guide to survival as a society- corporate ethics is really just a guide to survival, too. Which is why so many corporations seem unethical to people… their guide to survival is “lie cheat and steal”… where people see that as problematic.
Just 8 years ago Apple and Google settled a lawsuit where they kept pay for engineers down by having an illegal non-poaching agreement where they agreed to not recruit each others talent.
I agree. But that seems to be the perception. I mean, it’s easy to imagine Apple taking a stand against antisemitism, but a little more difficult to imagine Samsung or Motorola taking such a stand.
But as to whether their actual on-the-ground ethical standards are any better than the competition, I rather doubt it.
It was a huge part of his story when Apple was dodging taxes, mostly because they used PR to kind of hide behind him just coming out as a cudgel to say any criticism or questions about Apple tax dodging were driven by homophobia.
It’s sickening when rich people use minority status to hand wave away legitimate criticism that has nothing to do with their minority status.
Guy was running the richest company in the US and had a large team of private security at his behest but he was “brave” for coming out as gay. There was so much PR pushing that the time it was gross.
Nah the no-name poverty-stricken kid growing up in a tiny town in the South who risks having the living shit kicked out of him daily for being gay is the kind of person who is brave for coming out. Not a top paid corporate board member who is basically untouchable.
I’m not saying Tim Cook has never faced discrimination, but as the CEO of Apple? His position of power absolutely insulates him from the worst abuses most in the LGBT community face.
Why would they pull an app that millions of their customers enjoy and may well have purchased their devices for, just because the owner said something they don’t like?
You are talking like Apple isn’t still pumping elons garbage through their devices for a 30% cut.
While Apple takes a 30% cut of app sales, as far as I know, they don’t make money from people using the free app. I don’t know that Twitter offers any in-app purchases that would be processed through Apple’s payment system.
Doesn’t matter to me, they think I live in a third world communist hell hole so they won’t move where I live anyway. Never thought I would say this but… thank you Fox News!
“Finally, during my conversation with (the student) regarding the dance party, the subject of religious beliefs was broached by (the student) and myself,” St. Pierre wrote. “While that conversation was meant with the best intentions, I do understand it is not my responsibility to determine what students’ or others’ religious beliefs may be – that should be the responsibility of the individual.”
The student and her mother said St. Pierre brought up religion, not her. The mother and daughter have also said the deadline for her scholarship application was on Oct. 3, and questioned whether St. Pierre could have reinstated his scholarship endorsement sooner, The Advocate reported.
In a statement Monday, district officials said St. Pierre had requested to take leave for the remainder of the school year.
“Walker High School Principal Jason St. Pierre has requested to take leave for the remainder of the 2023-2024 school year,” said Livingston Parish Public Schools Superintendent Joe Murphy. “The district office is awaiting his paperwork to process his request.”
Fuck this guy for bringing his religion into school administration, and infringing this student's 1A rights with it. Hopefully his leave will become a resignation.
My gut tells me that there's some behind-the-scenes going on that we're not aware of. I find it highly unlikely that someone who so brazenly punishes a public school student on religious grounds would reverse course so completely without some more sensible person in a position of authority doing a "U fukn wot m8?"
Somebody grabbed that guy by the collar and told him exactly what he was going to do next: take the blame, apologize, and gtfo.
Probably, still, it’s far more common that religious louts force their beliefs than not-religious people- and it’s starting to get to the point where their beliefs are in fact dangerous.
Speaking as a "not-religious-people," when I force my beliefs on people, it's things like "We call people what they want to be called," and "We don't criticize people for things they didn't choose."
This is the second time in this post’s comments that I’ve seen the idea that the pushing of religious beliefs into politics, into non-religious people, etc, is “starting” to become a problem.
No.
It is a problem.
It is dangerous.
It’s the reason for the repeal of Roe v Wade, leaving to such atrocities as a 10 year old child being forced to go out of her home state to abort her rapist’s baby.
It’s the reason Republicans spent so many decades stacking the Supreme Court in the first place, to get outcomes like the above. Remember Mitch McConnell not letting President Obama appoint a replacement for Scalia? That had nothing to do with the people’s will and everything to do with conservative, religious beliefs.
It’s the reason so many states are passing anti-LGBTQ laws, particularly anti-trans laws, putting queer people of all kinds at risk of violence, depression, and suicide.
It’s the reason so many states are banning books and the teaching of accurate history. Suppression of knowledge carries with it a danger all its own.
He brought up religion; he had pre-printed some scriptures to back up his argument that she was displeasing to God and morally corrupt. Also told her she was going to suffer in her afterlife.
She may have responded to him, but he 100% brought religion into the conversation. By phrasing it the way he did, he was trying to slough off responsibility.
Apparently other students have come forward to say this is NOT the first time he’s used his religious beliefs to discipline.
A public firing with a legal opinion from the district lawyer outlining all the laws he broke and a public recommendation for other districts not to hire him because of his illegal behavior would do nicely
Lmao. My friend showed me a TikTok of some dingbat Christian Lady talking about how hard it is to be a Christian since they’re being persecuted so much. Like bitch, it has literally never been easier to be a white Christian in the US with how we’re barreling down to good ol’ theocracy land
"US District Judge Hector Gonzalez ruled that Wendy’s and McDonald’s food images “are no different than other companies’ use of visually appealing images to foster positive associations with their products.”
Not really, that’s a minor part of the opinion. The more important part is they tell you how much food you’re going to get of what kind and then they give you that food. I don’t think anyone would be able to win a case on “my burger didn’t look like the burger in the ad” because every burger looks a little different. Lots of things that are the same don’t look the same and let’s not suddenly pretend we get McDonalds for the appearance. They’d win false advertising if, say, a quarter pounder was only 2 oz.
yeah this lawsuit is stupid and anyone who thinks McDonald’s would lose is also stupid
have we forgotten what advertising is? its idealized, its artificial, its eye-catching. thats the point. like the suit says everyone does it, thats just good marketing.
frankly i think it makes commericals a bit more tolerable if theyre at least aesthetically pleasing. but marketers marketing in a system that requires advertising for anyone to be relevant cannot be infringed on for just two companies doing the marketing the exact same. blame capitalism for ads not the companies.
(unless we’re taking excessive ads on websites or whatever then blame the sites they’re just greedy)
how bout this. we ban ALL film. cameras are no longer allowed and any sort of media should be burned as its all idealized and any picture of anything wont look like a picture of something else therefore all media should be banned due to false advertising.
wait that doesnt make any sense. youre not gonna take a shitty video of yourself and post it online youre gonna take a bunch of attempts so it looks better than you actually are. that’s marketing its no different that a company is doing it. therefore if you want to be angry at a company “false advertising” then be mad at every picture in existence too.
try to at least be consistent with your cynicism. dont judge others based on their actions if youre gonna judge yourself only based on your circumstance.
It’s worth noting that even if “your guy” Republican hasn’t actually voted for or said anything bad, they are complicit in allowing their colleagues to do so.
I.e., it’s not just McConnell, but him and 49 other senators that allow him to lead.
I don’t know that this approach really works for politicians, there isn’t really anything they can legally do about their colleagues voting habits. They were voted in by their constituents to vote in their interests, it isn’t their place to force the voting habits of a different politician that was voted in by different constituents to represent them. That’s undemocratic.
I think I’d be very hard pressed to find a conservative that votes in my interests regardless though.
But-but can’t you think about the implications for their political careers??? Poor Bois would have to abandon a life of ease and good food to start actually working in the society they helped create. Imagine the HORROR!!
if “your guy” Republican hasn’t actually voted for or said anything bad, they are complicit in allowing their colleagues to do so
Sure, but the original topic was about allowing colleagues to vote they way they do, which isn’t (and frankly shouldn’t be) in their power to change. Switching parties or going independent doesn’t change the voting habits of other conservatives.
You recognize all conservatives to be authoritarian pieces of shit, you dunk on them at any chance you get both IRL and on line and you go on with your life.
The age thing I’m less interested in, but competency tests and health checks probably more so. Think they’d do the same thing but more precisely (some people shit out in their 70s, some people stay sharp until they’re 100)
Some people shouldn’t be eligible in their 30s. I don’t know how we decide it though is the issue, and I don’t trust that some conservative won’t gain power and say “anyone who thinks corporations shouldn’t be regulated is mentally ill” won’t gain power.
This is probably an unpopular view, but when you look at actual actions in Congress, I’ve barely seen Bernie do anything effective, but I have seen The Squad work fairly effectively to (1) push the agenda in a positive direction (sometimes, usually maybe, they fail, but they do have successes) and (2) hold the right to account (AOC’s questions during the Michael Cohen was a masterclass in using power effectively rather than grandstanding, which is what her colleagues were doing for the most part)
Bernie is obviously in the other place and doesn’t have the same opportunities, but where he has similar opportunities he rarely seems to use them. He’s a good orator, but he doesn’t have to be in Congress to do that. Losing Bernie would be a shame, but losing The Squad would be a disaster.
Look, I’m one of the first to say Americans are dangerously obsessed with firearms, but this wasn’t a firearms issue - it was straight up murder. This wasn’t an attempt to teach with any sort of responsibility or following any safety at all. If anyone tried to teach my kids firearm safety by sticking the barrel in their chest they would be decked.
First rule - every firearm is loaded. Every. Fucking. Firearm. Is. Loaded.
This is like saying its a car issue because I tried to teach a 4 year old road safety by speeding at them and slamming on the brakes. Its not the car thats the issue.
Didn’t miss first one - literally my first sentence.
Firearms have multiple purposes - pretty sure the main one right now is to display your own insecurities. Admittedly most of their uses are killing things or the threat of killing things, but sport, target shooting, providing and home defense are all uses. I could argue vehicles are used to show off and as a status symbol more than anything else otherwise we would all be in small efficient cars, people movers and public transport.
Given the psychological effect of owning a gun, or having access to one has on a person, I honestly feel like we’re in the same mental health territory as any behavioral antagonist, like leaving an addictive substance around an addict. You take a gun and put everything it means in a person’s hands - the power, the mythology, the kind of baggage it comes with in this country - and it’s gonna have some kind of effect.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve witnessed, and am aware of many cases where drivers of certain kinds of cars - big, fast, whatever - do stupid, reckless, dangerous, even murderous things because of the feeling of power and control their vehicle gives them. It’s the psychology of the damn things that makes people crazy.
We have a phrase for it, oddly enough: “it’s like leaving a loaded gun on the table”
That… is a car issue in the rest of the world, considering some idiot who thinks it’s okay to do that has access to, and probably the privilege of operating such a machine.
But we wouldn’t be banning cars, looking at stricter licenses, or improved regulation. We don’t review after ever drunk driver kills someone because its not the car, or the access to cars that is the problem.
Yeah, except the US isn’t really doing any of those things. You can still own guns here in the Netherlands, you just have to be a member of a sporting organisation and be licensed and stuff. We don’t have school shootings here.
Exactly. It was murder and its pissing me off the news is making it about firearm safety gone wrong. And the poor kids sound like they were abused in this foster care setting… This girl was shot point blank in the chest. Hope there is some justice.This poor child.
I fully agree irresponsible people are getting access, but this goes beyond firearms and training. There is irresponsible ownership and use, and then there is putting a firearm in the chest of a child, right after removing a loaded mag and pulling the trigger. Using my car analogy - there is irresponsible not wearing a seat belt, and then there is putting a kid on the roof and going off roading. First one - training, laziness, responsibility and access issue, second one is straight up murder.
Yeah typically I'm not on board with the "guns don't kill people" argument but in this particular case, the adult in charge was already (allegedly, potentially) criminally abusive. If not a gun, it would have been 'teaching her to chop vegetables with a knife,' or 'teaching her to hold her breath underwater,' or so on.
As stated in my top comment - I fully agree America is dangerously obsessed with firearms, and first look at the article was “same old story”. But Jesus, the straight up actions they took means this isn’t a firearm problem. If you want to get change, attack the negligence, manufacturers and law makers for the actions they take - but this wasn’t on them.
I understand what you’re saying but this person obviously has a history of abuse. You escalate up to shooting a kid, you don’t start there. In the same morning she’d shoe-slapped the kids (4 and 7) for not waking her (!?!) and eating food! Not having laws (or not enforcing them) prohibiting abusive people from owning firearms is a firearms issue. Obviously the “teaching” excuse is bullshit, it was murder, but not having a gun in the house could have at least forced her to use a less-certain method.
I fully agree with history of abuse and escalated considerably. It doesn’t mean its a firearm issue as the escalation would have happened with whatever is on hand.
I discussed the second part (access and less certain method) with another commenter - this is a full on America culture obsession and issue. The only way to make any change is for those who are responsible to push for restrictions, licenses, and honesty some common sense around America laws - and then force the law makers to enact it. Firearm ownership should never be a right - its a responsibility and a privilege. Damn, you have two hands, why do you need dozens of firearms?
You understand this is simply another example of “people who should never have access to guns because they’re too immature/angry/stupid” which is all anybody is asking.
There are a lot of crazy rednecks out there who are not safe with guns, we need a way to stop them specifically from having them.
And this enraged the gun lobby because many of them know that sometimes, they’re that moron.
Unfortunately, no matter how responsible you may be the rules apply to all. The only way to make meaningful changes is for the responsible gun owners to limit their own access via licences, vetting, restrictions and quality registration systems and to push government to apply it to everyone. It is a culture problem, and needs those on the right side of the rules to bring everyone’s standards up.
Then we agree, the problem is so many pro-gun types have a sociopathic mindset and try to work from there: society is potentially their enemy, so I need to be armed for when it decides to come for me.
Without taking a stance myself - I doubt anyone disagrees with the principle, but rather on the implementation. How do we know who's responsible enough; can we write a law that accounts for:
• A 50-year-old woman who committed robbery in a moment of desperation as a 16-year-old and has since shown remorse, attended therapy, and held a stable job,
• A 40-year-old businessman who's never been convicted of anything, seemed okay when he saw a therapist once last year, but privately he gets into vicious screaming matches with his wife and has really inappropriate temper tantrums when he's drunk, and
• A 21-year-old college graduate who seems smart and stable enough, but their social media page is full of harsh criticisms of the government, projections of what would happen if various officials were theoretically assassinated, and more than a few references to "hoping for another civil war"?
While balancing that with the idea that the government isn't supposed to protect something as a "right" while also preemptively taking that right away from people they think might be dangerous, if they can't point to highly credible evidence. (Otherwise, it becomes possible to arrest people for 'thought crimes.')
Idk the solution personally. Seems impossible to balance unless gun access legally becomes a privilege to qualify for, rather than a right to be restricted from. But that would put the power into states' hands, and then states would have the power to decide that no one can have guns except the police.
I’ve never owned a gun and still agree with them. There are certainly people who shouldn’t have guns but the vast majority haven’t yet had an incident to get them taken away by any hypothetical law.
You can’t prevent every gun death. It’s certainly worth preventing the ones we can, but this particular story has no indications that these ladies had previously given cause for taking them away. They were at least seen by the state as responsible enough to foster children.
So to come to this particular story to advocate taking guns away from folks under circumstances that wouldn’t have changed the outcome feels more like grandstanding than conversation.
Idk the solution personally. Seems impossible to balance.
‘No Way to Prevent This’, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens’
Solutions already exists in all other countries in the world. It is an incredibly myopic attitude to think you have to somehow invent a completely new concept in order to have gun regulations in your country.
In the context of the States, I don’t see how any new legislative intervention can deal with the 400 million existing guns in the nation. No country in the history of humanity has had to deal with that. My question is, can it even be dealt with?
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s misplaced cynicism. But, seems to me, the vast existing supply of firearms leads to a permanent condition where, a person who wants to do something bad with a gun, will find access one way or another. I genuinely have no idea how that situation gets fixed. “Do what Japan does” - which I’ve heard sincerely spoken aloud - is naive and would not be effective there.
I don’t live in the States, so it’s not my place to navigate the moral issues or make judgements. I just don’t understand how new gun control measures patterned on other countries in very different situations of supply could be effective, and properly target shitbags like the murderer in the OP article, in advance of a killing.
While balancing that with the idea that the government isn’t supposed to protect something as a “right” while also preemptively taking that right away from people they think *might* be dangerous, if they can’t point to highly credible evidence. (Otherwise, it becomes possible to arrest people for ‘thought crimes.’)
Amendments mean that it’s possible to amend the Constitution.
Solution: Amend the Constitution and don’t make it a right to own weapons
I think the point they are trying to make is that in this situation, the perpetrator would have said she tripped and stabbed her with a knife if she didn't have access to a gun. It's not a gun issue, this person just genuinely wanted to murder a child that got on her nerves.
But it most likely wouldn’t, or at least that would have been a more unlikely story. Guns make killing trivially easy, a knife is at least a little harder.
Getting a gun, pressing it against the chest of a 4 year old and pulling the trigger
Versus
Getting a knife, pressing it against the chest of a 4 year old and pushing it deeper
What's the added difficulty here? Yes, in general you are correct but in this scenario it really wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference. A 4 year old's capacity for self defence against an adult is basically zero, this one's chances of getting to safety was basically zero. Even if you removed both guns and knives from the equation, they would have just used something else.
That's the thing, in this particular scenario, the way they did it, a gun wasn't any easier or quicker at all. If anything it was the worse option because of noise and damage from bullet ricochet.
There are many other scenarios where your assertions are perfectly valid but right here, for this scenario...it doesn't apply, and you're missing the point in trying to make it apply.
It’s not about it being an easier or quicker death, it’s about it being easier and quicker for the perpetrator. It’s much easier to pull a trigger than to stab someone. She had the same opportunity for both, but the gun was easier.
There’s also a good chance she thought she could play it off as an accident. Obviously that won’t be the case with all the witness statements, but it would have been much harder to claim a fatal knife wound was an accident, and also less likely that an accidental knife wound would be fatal.
It's not about it being an easier or quicker death, it’s about it being easier and quicker for the perpetrator.
But that's exactly what I'm talking about.
It’s much easier to pull a trigger than to stab someone. She had the same opportunity for both, but the gun was easier.
So in this particular scenario, the gun is actually not the easier option. Any particular advantage offered by the firearm is completely offset by the scenario, like the fact that there was only one target who was under their complete control.
There’s also a good chance she thought she could play it off as an accident. Obviously that won’t be the case with all the witness statements, but it would have been much harder to claim a fatal knife wound was an accident, and also less likely that an accidental knife wound would be fatal.
I mean, she didn't do a particularly good job playing off the gun as an accident either. If she were using the knife, she could say she was working in the kitchen, the kids were playing under her, she tripped, fell forward and plunged the knife into the kids neck. It'd be more believable than the gun safety story, as it relies a lot less on the adult being a completely clueless moron.
and also less likely that an accidental knife wound would be fatal.
True, depending on how the genuine accident happens. Unless you're stabbing someone 37 times in the chest, it is still perfectly possible to do a cover-up though.
And you know this how? Guns make it really easy to murder people. You’re claiming that if she didn’t have a gun she would have slit the childs throat instead? What data are you basing this on?
...the fact that this was blatantly fucking murder? Use your common sense.
In what world is pressing the barrel of a gun against the chest of a 4 year old, never mind pulling the fucking trigger, supposed to be about teaching gun safety? How is that anything other than premeditated murder?
Given the history of abuse in that household, I don't buy the idiocy angle. The other child watching knew what was happening and turned away so as to not watch it, for god's sake.
There was clearly an intent to maim or kill, perhaps to intimidate the other child. If it wasn't a gun in use, it would either be another weapon or a bare-fisted beat down.
You have no way of knowing that. Removing the gun from the equation would certainly have removed the gun death from it though.
Yes I do. Starting with the fact that the story about teaching gun safety is obviously bullshit and there was a history of abuse in the household. You don't have to know shit about guns to know that pressing the gun barrel against a child and pulling the trigger is an attempt at premeditated murder.
So, now we've established that it's premeditated murder, if a gun wasn't in the equation, another weapon would be. The next most obvious choice would be a knife.
It is actually quite sad and a little bit scary how eager you are to concoct fictitious scenarios in order to remove the gun issue from this story.
It's more scary how eager you are to not use your brain before opening your mouth. There are indeed plenty of scenarios where removing guns would indeed limit or prevent damage. This wasn't one of them because of the circumstances surrounding it.
That’s not what this was. This wasn’t a lack of training, this wasn’t irresponsible behavior, this goes way beyond neglect or ignorance. This was murder, full on. Not an accident.
Nah, neglect is simply not giving a shit. Pressing a gun barrel into a 4 year old and pulling the trigger while you called another kid over to watch isn't anything other than premeditated murder.
It's an intent issue far more than it is a firearms issue. It wouldn't have been any harder to use a knife in this scenario. Any advantage offered by a firearm is completely offset by the circumstances surrounding it, and offers disadvantages and complications that the knife does not.
I agree with your points, but I also think that if firearms were more regulated, this woman may not have even gotten a gun in the first place. We don’t know her history, but if she did something like this, I wouldn’t be shocked if she didn’t have the cleanest of records.
And it’s so easy to get around that too. Just say “the Police killed a woman…” That is an absolute fact. Not saying murder which is a crime that they haven’t yet been found guilty of.
Ads for brands including Adobe, Gilead Sciences, the University of Maryland’s football team, New York University Langone Hospital and NCTA-The Internet and Television Association were run alongside tweets from the account that had garnered hundreds of thousands of views, CNN observed.
Spokespeople for NCTA and pharmaceutical company Gilead said that they immediately paused their ad spending on X after CNN flagged their ads on the pro-Nazi account.
It’s also mad that this is also the case for adults. When you turn 18, you shouldn’t suddenly lose basic rights (like access to food and shelter), but that’s exactly what most capitalists want to happen (and so that’s how it works).
Goods with inelastic demand shouldn’t be driven by the profit motive. Food, healthcare, housing, etc. We can let luxury goods stay within the private sector for now since people don’t need them to survive, and come back to that conversation at a later date.
This I have always hated the “FREE STUFF!” talking point and how the mainstream bought it.
I’m not talking about demanding some middle class guy be forced to buy me an Xbox, but rather I’m asking multiple billionaires start paying just a little more in taxes (instead of ya know… constant rebates for “cReAtInG JoBs”) so that little Timmy doesn’t die of untreated pediatric cancer.
Kansas state patrol needs to step in and take over this situation, hopefully ending with the prosecution of the police chief for abuse of power and manslaughter. If they don’t act soon, the FBI needs to investigate both organizations.
Yes. But sometimes the shitbirds make enough shit that the shit starts to run uphill, and the staties get involved so some politicians don’t have to deal with even more shit.
Not just the police chief. They need immediate investigation into magistrate who authorized this raid basically signed their name to a raid that blatantly violates constitutional rights and ignores over 100 years of legal precedence
As awesome as it is, it’s still a meta search engine so you’d have to remember to exclude Google. Otherwise hosting your own search engine is mega cool!
So this is absolutely a scummy move by google, no doubt, but google employees are some of the highest paid people in the world at this point. Boycott them if you want, but don’t feel like you have to right this injustice done to their employees, because they’ve still got it really good.
Edit: Just so this doesn’t come across as a crabs in a bucket type scenario, I am in this field and I am fortunate enough to make similar money, not as much, but equivalent in my country’s market. We are not the people that need fighting for, we’re the ones that should be fighting for others to have similar opportunities.
No I just mean the this is yet another item in a LOOOOOOOONG line of things where Google has gone the pure shit route.
In the last couple years, Google serves me more ads as search results than actual relevant results. The enshitification of the internet is real and I finally see it. I’ve have enough. Between Reddit, twitter, Google, SEO, Facebook and friends, Amazon becoming wish.con, etc everything is just going to shit. Maybe it makes me some old boomer dreaming of the glory days, but I’ve had enough. I refuse to be a product and I refuse to put any money towards these shitmaster overlords if there’s any way I can help it.
Your edit doesn’t do it for me. You guys managed to get remote work, and now it’s being taken away. Do you think the pay scale has anything to do with what’s going on here?
Google still has fully remote employees, they’re asking non remote employees back into the office a few days a week. Last I heard you can still apply to transfer to fully remote.
Maybe once they tackle this they can figure out a way to just send me a fucking bill every year instead of forcing me to do their work to then send them money.
They’ve actually been trying to do this for years. There were actually a couple years of tests out in California I think. However, there are two big lobbies that always put a halt to it, tax preparation services (H&R Block, Intuit, etc.) and groups that want taxes to be a pain in the ass so we’ll all bitch about them.
Check out this episode of Planet Money if you want to learn more:
TLDR: Our government is for sale and two corporations apparently give instructions to the entire IRS and tax system because they pay a “subscription fee” to our politicians.
Protip: just fill out the paperwork! It walks you through it and takes no more time than making a pathfinder character. Tbh the whole act of doing it reminds me of making a ttrpg character: you get a template sheet and a booklet that walks you through it.
I should be able to just stuff what I think is the right amount of gold coins in an envelope and label it “to IRS” and they can figure out if I need another coin or two.
And then I get one thing wrong and get a bill years later that I can’t fight with interest payments or they cut out the middleman and just email my employer and demand they take it out of my pay.
if the free ones would automatically populate for free I would totally use them just to not do the data input. But since they are all bs and don't actually do it for free I do the free fillable forms. Real pro tip is use a spreadsheet to add things up for wierd forms that don't do stuff for you. I put my 1099's in a spreadsheet and copied and pasted from it and it just made the whole thing easier to look over and verify. will do the same anytime I have multiples of the same form and then also for things like ira nonfillable pdf.
I’ve been using the Cash App one and it’s totally free. It was formerly Credit Karma’s before TurboTax bought them and they were forced to divest the free tax program. I usually will run the same numbers through TurboTax and the results end up being the same.
I don’t think sending you a bill would work for most people, since they don’t know how much you owe until you tell them whether you’re married, have dependent kids, have a mortgage, etc. These are things they need to verify every year, so you will always need to send them something every year.
That said, they could certainly make the process simpler.
The government already knows all that information about you. You give your family information to your employer which passes it on to the government. Your mortgage company (and any other financial institution for that matter) sends the government information about your loans/accounts. That’s how they know you filled out your taxes correctly to begin with.
You give your family information to your employer so they can estimate your taxes. But you’re not required to keep them up to date.
So for instance if you tell your employer that you’re single and then get married, you are not required to update your employer. Same is true of having a child, etc. Hence the need for an official annual update, which goes directly to the IRS.
I think they already do in a sense; that’s the standard deduction. If you want to maximize your returns you might be better off itemizing though, and that option is what makes everything complicated (I suspect they’d have a hard time sending you a bill for everything you itemize… I don’t know that they really know everything you could itemize; I think that really only comes up when it’s suspicious/you get audited).
i.e., if they did that, you’d basically get fewer options, and maybe less money back(?)
Even when you take the standard deduction, only had one job in one state for the tax year, and have no investments or other income (ie. the only way your taxes could be simpler is if you don’t have any income and someone else pays all your bills), it’s still complicated to file taxes manually. Many other developed countries will automatically calculate the most common scenarios for most taxpayers, and only people with unusual situations have to do any manual calculations (or pay a tax preparer).
87% of people take the standard deduction. Just give people a bill (or I dunno, take out the correct amount to begin with) and allow people to contest or do an itemized deduction if they disagree.
Several countries have already figured this out, ot isn’t rocket surgery. The government has a pretty good idea what you owe, and send you a bill. If you want to take another route, you’re free to submit your own taxes, but the vast majority don’t need to do anything like that. There’s no reason we couldn’t use the same system, if it assumes standard deduction that would cover the vast majority of people. Anyone who wants to itemize would be free to, it just wouldn’t be automatic, so essentially, nothing would change for them. Well, almost nothing, the difference is if they take too long they have a safety net standard deduction already filed and done I guess.
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