Did you stop learning French history when you hit 1789? The French Revolution didn’t really work out so great in the long run. Napoleon took over within a few years.
You said “violence was the answer” for the French, and I was assuming you were referring to the French Revolution. It was definitely not the answer for them. Pointing out violence committed by Napoleon doesn’t really help you
You’re incorrectly framing my statement about the French as only pertaining to the Revolution in scope of removing poor leadership. I was talking about violence in general, hence “…it may not be the best answer.”
And I don’t see how Napoleon sets himself up as an emperor without violence. It was certainly his answer, until he fucked himself in Russia, anyway.
People don’t like you to know this but the revolutionary war was very violent. What did the revolutionaries want anyway? Representation. Hmm. I wonder if there is a place that has an underclass that has increasingly less representation in government.
Maybe we can gamify that a little. Every time a worker-bee completes a task, the machine delivers a slap and a photo to the worker. We can collect them like sortie markers on WWII bombers. Boss gets feedback on how productive his employees are, and employees get to compete for points.
I (a non-US) watched Hillary in a documentary about her saying Bernie has never worked (in corporat/professional settings) all his life. If that’s true, I don’t think it matters to him.
It’s a joke. They are saying Bernie will never be a paid off tool of the corporations. Which he would never want to be anyway. And that’s why he lost the nomination.
The misunderstanding was what started the fight (he thought she was haggling for prices, not that she was trying to verify the price of things to make sure she bought the right weed for her friend), not the transphobic attack.
I still don’t see how that misunderstanding leads to such a violent attack.
If you (mistakenly) think someone is trying to haggle with you, the correct response is “ma’am we don’t haggle here, the price is the price, pay or get out”
At what point does “she tried to haggle with me!” become an excuse for “so I bashed her face in”
If everyday people have the choice of sitting and starving or doing something about it, I doubt many would go quietly into the night.
Israel will create the next generation of extremists if they do not kill every single person in Gaza. We’ve seen this in every modern Middle East conflict in the past 40 or so years.
Israel is colonining with supperior force and mostly quite or support world order.
Palestinians are fucked. And have been for decades.
They deff should be fighting for it but this is a futile exercise.
Either way, the world until recently game Israel blank check but public opinion is changing on these human rights violations by an allegededly modern state.
Gen Z in the US does seem to be all that interested in continue US support. So Israel got about 20 years to either kill them off or having to deal with palestiains under different political conditions which won't b as favorable.
agreed. the current generation of political leaders (boomer generation) is pro Israel. no one else really cares that much, other than to garner votes from special interest groups.
No, decades of extremist indoctrination that is Gazan education system make extremist. Disinformation is what makes extremists. And it’s all being supported by the whole world. Noone in Gaza needs to work, they have EU+US+Qatar welfare system, they have literal nazi shit in their textbooks, they have their stupid religious excuses too, what do you think a young man raised in that filth would do with his free time except slitting throats and launching rockets?
True, just look at Japan and Germany. They took so much devastation, yet they can rise above others because they don’t have the same mentality as these people.
What the actual fuck are you talking about. The Japanese literally used suicide attacks and were so brainwashed they believed suicide was preferable to enemy capture. The Germans literally committed the multiple genocides. They were rehabilitated over time but it took time and effort. Both committed horrific atrocities, yet through international effort, are largely reformed.
With extensive economic aid and overall support from the western allies. Also while being in control of their borders and recognized as sovereign nations.
You are not comparing apples with oranges here, but cars with trees or something.
The palestinians receives fundings/donations not only from the west, but also from the majority of muslim countries. Every ramadhan, the number of donation increases significantly. So where do you think all those money gone to?
Japan and Germany both received massive amounts of financial support and investment to basically shape them into allies. If Germany/Japan had just been beaten the shit of and left to fend for themselves under financial and social sanction then we would have already had WW3. What a ridiculous comparison that you need to stop using for this racist tirade of yours.
I’m not being racist, it’s just that most of you fail to see the reality of the situation here. Germany and Japan know when to admit defeat. Do you really think they got the assistance straight away after the war? No, they sort themselves out first, and rebuilt their society. The fundings came much later. Germany even had to pay for the cost of the war for years. Over the course of 80 years, you think how many fundings palestine had received from muslim countries AND the west? The funding which were used to buy weapons to attack their neighbour and further radicalized their own children. Don’t forget that it was the palestine who rejected the two-state solution and the muslim countries who jointly attacked israel first. Even now some muslim country still rejects israel’s right to exist.
I was an avid supporter of palestine for decades, blindly supporting them just because we had the same religion. But now, I’m also thinking from the perspective of the israeli here. If my surrounding neighbours keep threatening my existence, will I just sit around and let them plot my demise? If they just focus on improving themselves, I wouldn’t mind with whatever they’re doing with their lives.
May I remind you that Germany not knowing when to admit defeat is what caused WW2? The entire reason Germany and Japan were propped up economically was because the Americans basically shut down the French and British diplomats for causing the fuckup with their treaties after WW1.
That’s the point. You have to know when to admit that you were already defeated, so you can focus on your own nation. As an investor myself, why should I invest in a fucked up country?
Even killing every person in Gaza will just bread more extremists. Gazans are not the only Palestinians and they are not the only ones affected by Israeli oppression.
Israel should negotiate with Hamas NOW and stop the siege on Gaza fully.
Well since Hamas has already executed civilians, and Israel has both the military advantage and support of world leaders, they are not exactly negotiating from a position of strength.
Ah sorry I mixed up the threads. In another one, I was asking people what they would do if they were Hamas to reach a joint state solution. My bad.
You know what would not even remotely lead to such a solution? Kidnapping and murdering civilians.
I agree. Hamas are dumb as fuck.
Just so we’re clear, everyone loses here. But Israel is not going to negotiate with terrorists, nor should they.
And Israel won’t care about civilian lives either. Not wanting to negotiate with terrorists doesn’t mean all those kids in Gaza had to die. This is not what “not negotiating with terrorists” looks like. What it looks like is wanting to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
In your example above, Israel takes all while Palestinians just get “prisoners” back (prisoners that are not really being tried for anything, a literal war crime, so for all intents and purposes they are not detained under any reasonable law and they don’t have the most basic of rights)… and Palestine gets nothing.
Seems to me like maybe Israel should negotiate with terrorists if it means less dead civilians. But Israel doesn’t care about that. And this is why we are here today.
In your example above, Israel takes all while Palestinians just get “prisoners” back (prisoners that are not really being tried for anything, a literal war crime, so for all intents and purposes they are not detained under any reasonable law and they don’t have the most basic of rights)… and Palestine gets nothing.
Palestine also get the benefit of not having their cities ravaged while Israel troops hunt down enemy combatants. They get to keep some semblance of an autonomous nation. They also minimize civilian casualties in their end, if they actually cared about that.
Seems to me like maybe Israel should negotiate with terrorists if it means less dead civilians. But Israel doesn’t care about that. And this is why we are here today.
It’s very hard to make the argument that Israel should care about less dead civilians when the other side specifically targets civilians. I’m not sure why you keep expecting Israel to negotiate with restraint when they have no incentive to negotiate at all.
What will happen if Israel does not come to the table? Hamas will kill innocent people? And if Israel negotiates and comes to peace with Hamas, the killing will stop? History shows otherwise.
And since that killing innocent part already happens, there’s nothing left to bargain for is there?
I also take issue with the fact that bringing accountability to Hamas for what happened is considered one sided negotiations for Israel. How is justice for a terrorist act considered a total victory?
Palestine also get the benefit of not having their cities ravaged while Israel troops hunt down enemy combatants.
This should never be a “benefit” nor is it a “benefit” to any other group of people.
They get to keep some semblance of an autonomous nation.
Yeah just a “fake” self determination, never a real fulfilling one.
hey also minimize civilian casualties in their end, if they actually cared about that.
If they actually cared about that? What is that supposed to mean? Sounds to me like you are making shitty generalizations about Palestinians.
I’m not sure why you keep expecting Israel to negotiate with restraint when they have no incentive to negotiate at all. I don’t expect them to. I have no hope at all that the current Israeli government will stop committing war crimes.
This should never be a “benefit” nor is it a “benefit” to any other group of people.
Then don’t harbor terrorists. It obviously wasn’t a “benefit” to the Israelis who were murdered now was it?
If they actually cared about that? What is that supposed to mean? Sounds to me like you are making shitty generalizations about Palestinians.
If Hamas cared about civilian casualties, they would never have kidnapped and executed civilians. If they cared about civilian casualties, they would negotiate their surrender.
If you’re trying to spotlight Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and hoping to garner sympathy, you’re not going to have much success when the current world event topic is “Palestinians (Hamas) murdered and taken hostage innocent Israeli civilians.”
You’re right in your last statement. The world has already ignored Palestinian suffering and the result now is an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Nope, no one would sanction Israel or do anything and here we are today.
If you want the world to support you, don’t commit acts of terror on civilians.
Are you talking about Palestinians or about Hamas? Because Hamas coming “acts of terror” is not justified, and neither is Israel’s acts of terror which it commits daily and without anyone giving a fuck.
The problem is pro-Palestinian side trying to claim that illegal detention and collateral damage from war is equal to terrorist operations that intentionally targeted massacres of civilians.
That doesn’t work for anyone with a sense of nuance and common sense.
How do you negotiate with someone that just kidnapped and executed or planning to execute hundreds of civilians?
You don’t. There’s no negotiating with terrorists, it’s too late. There is no good solution. The best Israel can do right now is make every effort to target Hamas, minimize civilian casualties and try to rescue as many people as they can.
If they go nuts and start trying to exterminate in Gaza they’ll just fuel the next terrorist standoffs and keep this going for several more decades.
I imagine if Germany or Japan had the same mentality, they wouldn’t be where they are now. A good leader would focus on the future of their own people, not bringing them into destruction.
There is the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and normally that’s their purview, but they’re probably a bit more lax and industry-friendly, so more likely to let that stuff slide. California is a bit more progressive and health-conscious, and they’re a big enough market that when they say they’re gonna ban something, it essentially becomes banned for everybody else. Businesses won’t develop CA and non-CA products, they’ll just rework whatever it is to conform with CA’s demands.
The FDA did step in I believe when states starting talking about introducing different labeling standards and having different requirements for what needed to be called out, because it would’ve turned into a nightmare if you had to manage 50 different sets of labeling requirements.
The FDA was created to enforce standards of sanitation and prevent false advertising in medicine (e.g. snake oil). The whole, “banning toxic additives” came later after science started understanding physiological dependence and addictive substances (e.g. actual coke in Coca-Cola).
Really, the FDA is an evolution of a lot of preceding government bodies and there’s a lot of history involved that they don’t cover in school 🤷
There is, but banning these substances is a political process not a scientific one. It’s definitely true that this should be done by experts and not politicians.
The thing is that it’s impossible to set up an experiment to show that something is safe. All you can do is collect more evidence that something is not dangerous. This leads to GRAS.
There’s also the additional fact that the dosage makes the poison. There is no substance for which a single molecule can harm you meaningfully.
Roundup is about as toxic as tablesalt. Caffeine is vastly more toxic than that. And Tylenol, well, that simply wouldn’t be approved if it were invented today. The ratio between the therapeutic dose and the lethal dose is too small.
Then there’s tradition and utility.
Plenty of herbal supplements and even foods are quite dangerous but are sold because they always were and they are “natural”.
We can all agree that certain substances don’t belong in food - either because they are useless or there’s strong evidence they’re harmful.
It’s the useful ones for which there is some evidence that they may cause issues when given in extreme doses, but a vast number of substances exhibit that behavior. Caffeine and Tylenol, for example. You do not think of these as poisons, but they are. Caffeine is so dangerous that you have to go through a lot of trouble to get it in its pure form.
The fact is that those supstances are certainly more dangerous than the substances in the article, but people are not clamoring to ban them.
And all this complexity is before people’s individual interests are involved.
This is why when you compare, say, us and eu food regulations you find substances that are on one list and not the other. One is not a superset of the other.
Anyway, these substances are not “toxic” in really any correct usage of the term, and it’s probably very unlikely that a ban will make anyone healthier or happier, despite what you may read about when you Google these substances. Even if you go to the scientific level.
Scientists can have their own agenda. They’re still people. Or they can just be bad scientists. Or they can just be churning out papers as fast as possible to increase their prestige.
It used to be that the top paper that came up (it may still be up in the list) when you search glyphosate and bees was a bad paper. It did correctly conclude that glyphosate killed the bees when they put it in the honey, but they had to put so much in there in order to see any effect at all that the concentration was high enough to actually kill aquatic weeds. Next it wasn’t properly controlled. Do you know what else will kill bees if put it in their honey? Water. And most definitely caffeine. I assure you a very small amount of caffeine in honey will kill a nest.
It’s just a political thing with good optics because who can argue with banning a “toxic” substance.
Awesome! Glad to have this added to the conversation.
I actually had this thought and was thinking about adding something like this earlier today.
You’re technically correct, in a sense. There still needs to be lots of these to cause problems. If there aren’t lots, there’s no problem.
It would be the same for any self replicating thing. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and prions, but they replicate. I will grant you a single large parasite could do this, but at that point, we’re talking about tigers and such as a technicality as well.
Potentially one of these things could cause problems by reproducing. I think it’s just unlikely. I don’t know how we could demonstrate that though. I imagine a single virus or bacterium can lead to disease. I just suspect the probability is low.
Like you, my first thought was prions, but they have to actually come into contact with the protein to catalyze its misfolding. That’d be rare in the protein soup, I suppose.
It would be the same for any self replicating thing. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and prions, but they replicate. I will grant you a single large parasite could do this, but at that point, we’re talking about tigers and such as a technicality as well.
None of the things you’ve listed here are single molecules except for the prion. A single cell, even for simple organisms, is made up of millions of proteins. Viruses come close, but are still made up of the nucleus and the capsid.
All proteins are not singular molecules, but the ones that are… are. Proteins are actually classified partly by if they are a single molecule or several (quartenary structure). Polymers, as long as the chain of bonds isn’t broken, are giant molecules by definition.
I get what you mean here, that a single molecule doesn’t cause harm and quantity matters, and I agree. It would just be technically correct to say non-polymer molecules.
Roundup is about as toxic as tablesalt. Caffeine is vastly more toxic than that. And Tylenol, well, that simply wouldn’t be approved if it were invented today. The ratio between the therapeutic dose and the lethal dose is too small.
The explanation by the PhD basically explains how your argument is absolutely flawed.
Scientists can have their own agenda. They’re still people. Or they can just be bad scientists. Or they can just be churning out papers as fast as possible to increase their prestige.
It’s interesting to me, that if you had said this exact phrase in relation to climate change research, or any other politically divisive science, you would have been down voted to oblivion, but when talking about this, you got up voted. What you’ve written here is true regardless of the subject matter, but when it comes to agendas, it’s even more true in politically divisive science.
Any state health agency would fall under the executive branch of government. The power of creating laws is under the legislative branch (like the Senate). Executive agencies have the authority to enforce laws and under Chevron Deference the authority to interpret laws where vague, but not form new laws.
For example, if a bill was passed saying cars can’t be louder than 110 dBs an executive agency could decide the proper way of measuring volume, if not prescribed by law.
I believe the executive branch can suggest new laws, but they would still have to pass through the state’s legislative branch. The suggested law may still need to be formally introduced by a member of the legislative branch, though.
I’d think the Legislative would set up a health agency empowered to ban “toxic food additives”, and let the agency determine which ones are toxic. Otherwise, the Legislative branch has to ban every individual thing.
Legislators create committees, and they frequently don’t have many people who care about the issue. Committees are usually… Bipartisan. And not often about effectiveness but about prestige, and lobbying.
Those agencies are toothless. Even under Biden, they’re rebuilding those agencies and just crossing their fingers that they aren’t torn apart again in 2024 or 2028.
Basically if you earn a certain amount or have a high enough net worth, you must pay a tax on all of your assets as if you were selling everything you owned. You are charged this amount even if you are not selling anything.
This is the only wealth tax in America as far as I understand it.
I’ve lost count of how many rich overseas workers have made 5+ replies to my comments in less than 10 minutes screaching about how they shouldn’t pay taxes
And every single one claims to be right on the line for having to pay it… yet want it thrown out for billionaires as well…
Apparently I can’t turn off replies to comment like on reddit, so I’m just blocking every “temporary poor billionaire” who wants to spend energy online arguing billionaires should pay taxes because it would mean they do too
If you are a U.S. citizen or a resident alien of the United States and you live abroad, you are taxed on your worldwide income. However, you may qualify to exclude your foreign earnings from income up to an amount that is adjusted annually for inflation ($107,600 for 2020, $108,700 for 2021, $112,000 for 2022, and $120,000 for 2023). In addition, you can exclude or deduct certain foreign housing amounts.
Those parts are never mentioned when people complain about this stuff. Because the only ones paying it are the wealthy ones, and they always bitch about taxes.
They pay, because at any moment they can come back as a citizen. If the wealthy do t want to pay for that option, then they can renounce citizenship and pay a one time tax to remove their wealth.
They pay, because at any moment they can come back as a citizen.
But that’s true of pretty much every other country in the world as well. So it still doesn’t explain why the US is the only one that charges tax on foreign-earned income.
So it still doesn’t explain why the US is the only one that charges tax on foreign-earned income.
On the wealthy…
You keep omitting that point, and it’s starting to get old.
But the reason is idealistic.
America was supposed to be the land of immigrants where anyone can immigrate, work hard, and earn wealth.
That system doesn’t work if once you amass your wealth, you fuck off somewhere else and take it all with you. The reasoning is you were able to amass that wealth through America’s social ladder.
If the wealthy (the only ones that pay foreign income tax or exit taxes) don’t want to pay that, they know that being honest will never result in change.
If how I’m saying it doesn’t make sense, use the IRS website I’ve provided numerous times.
You keep calling these people “wealthy” but the income levels you shared don’t even come close to matching that. Also lol at the idea of America being an idealistic place so that’s why people should pay this tax. My fucking ass. America is and always has been rigged for rich people, which should immediately tell you why this law still exists.
How about we actually tax real wealthy people, like millionaires loaning money to themselves, instead of forcing the middle class to pick up the slack yet again?
If how I’m saying it doesn’t make sense, use the IRS website I’ve provided numerous times.
You cannot expect people to use the irs.gov website. That’s not open to the public. It’s exclusive. Try going there over tor - you will get a 403. Indeed it’s shitty that access to legal information is restricted. It should be open to all.
Because you’re American and should pay taxes no matter if you’re in Antarctica or not. If you’re in a different country and not participating in America’s system, then why are you claiming to still be an American citizen? The answer is to renounce at that point. The right winger “taxes against rich are bad” are starting to come out in this thread lol.
Because you’re American and should pay taxes no matter if you’re in Antarctica or not.
Why is America the only country that has this perspective (Eritrea excepted)? Is literally every single other country besides an African dictatorship simply delusional, and only America and Eritrea found the divine wisdom that all global income should be taxed?
That’s not a reason on why we shouldn’t have a wealth tax… You’re just blindly insulting America without reason, which this site is already a xenophobic circlejerk.
I'm aware there's no real way to say anything here without sounding like a pretentious snob, but those income limits aren't exactly spectacularly high.
I work in tech in NYC and my income is around those limits. My boyfriend is from Switzerland and there's a non-trivial chance that we'll wind up there long-term. If I was from literally any other country in the world beyond Eritrea, I would file Swiss taxes and that would be that. Instead, I'll have a direct financial incentive to give up my native citizenship because I'm from one of two countries that makes a claim to any income earned anywhere in the world, even if I don't step foot in the country that year. This is particularly rough in Switzerland because average salaries there are quite high, and thus so are costs of living, and so surpassing those limits isn't a particularly uncommon thing. (Edit: About one in four Swiss residents make more than $120,000 annually).
I know this won't garner any sympathy at all, but a bad policy only affecting the relatively wealthy doesn't change the fact that it's a bad policy. It could even backfire from a financial perspective, since having renounced American citizenship, I'd be less inclined to spend time in the US and contribute to taxes while visiting, and I'd never move back long-term, cutting off a chance of the government getting full income taxes from me ever again, whereas a change of circumstances might have otherwise prompted me to eventually return to the US.
Please do explain then how literally every single other country in the world with a strong safety net and welfare system has managed to fund it without having to tax expats.
If you want all the benefits and none of the costs of being American…
Because again, in literally every single country except one African dictatorship, they interpret "the benefits" as things that you enjoy while actually being in the country, and therefore something you pay for while residing there. The ability to be a citizen of your native country is an assumed right everywhere else.
The only benefit I'd be enjoying is the right to return to my home country if I ever needed to. You don't have to pay for that in practically any other country. And so, yes, I would have to seriously think about renouncing my citizenship since I'd be paying for essentially nothing. I think that's rather unfortunate.
Clearly you don't have any interest in talking, and that's fine, but I do feel obligated to point out that you curiously did not answer this question:
Please do explain then how literally every single other country in the world with a strong safety net and welfare system has managed to fund it without having to tax expats.
Please do explain then how literally every single other country in the world with a strong safety net and welfare system has managed to fund it without having to tax expats.
I known you don't care about facts here, but for anyone else reading this, the top 10% of American tax payers contribute 74% of all income tax. The US has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. Stronger social nets in other countries depend on significantly higher taxes on the middle class. That of course does not mean that the extremely wealthy aren't dodging a lot of taxes, but a decently experienced tech worker or pretty much any doctor is in a very very different tax situation than Jeff Bezos etc.
By the way, again not that you care, but your average worker that earns $120,000 is not making massive international real-estate deals. In the context of Switzerland, for instance, one in four Swiss people make enough to be over the US foreign tax threshold.
the top 10% of American tax payers contribute 74% of all income tax.
Because they earn the most income…
That’s what happens with percentage based taxes and rampant wealth income disparity…
The bottom of the top 10% are making 3x an average American.
And it only gets more ridiculous as you get up to the 1% which is why the top ten number is high…
Why are you so opinionated about something you don’t know about?
Quick edit:
That’s right, you’re the rich overseas worker who doesn’t want to.pay taxes
It’s not that you can’t understand why the wealthy should pay taxes. You just don’t want pay taxes. I’ll just block you so I don’t fuck up and respond again
I'll just note for any readers that you still are either unable to or refuse to articulate what makes America so unique that it's essentially the only country that taxes foreign income.
The people this law targets aren’t the ones committing tax avoidance. And the US social safety net isn’t fucked because of a lack money, it’s fucked because it doesn’t even exist in the law.
The exit tax doesn’t do shit to address that. It doesn’t pay for anyone’s healthcare or magically make the poverty cliff go away. It’s a tax on upper income workers. Meanwhile actual rich people get their money through capital gains or loans and don’t pay this shit at all.
Oh but I forgot that since I own a small house in a middle class rural neighborhood and drive a Subaru that I’m “rich” so my opinion doesn’t mean shit apparently.
It really depends on where one lives. In and around high COL areas, that’s about the level of not needing roommates to rent an apartment and potentially being able to have rent in the 30% range. You know, like boomer-era recommendations for middle-class finances.
It depends on where you are. If you live in Moscow or Geneva, that cut-off is still $120k USD worth of your local currency. That threshhold neglects the COL of where you are and also neglects the forex rate.
I pay no tax to the US, but I bitch about it. I’ve lived abroad since I was 3y.o and realized when I turned 18 that I have to declare to the IRS every year. Let me tell you, it is an absolute pain in the ass when you have to do it yourself, without a US bank account or phone number. Takes me a full working day to declare 0 tax to the IRS when they already know that I owe zero tax because they force any bank I have accounts at to report to them. Half the banks in Sweden simply refuse to have me as a customer because of this, in addition to certain types of income technically being subject to double taxation because of US law.
I can’t even get rid of my US citizenship without paying an absurd exit tax
It’s not just about money. It’s a labor burden and a privacy intrusion. And even if iceblade02 could renounce for free, they then must carry the renounciation cert for the rest of their life and show it to every bank they deal with and hope that no data entry errors trigger data oversharing anyway.
They must renounce to get their human rights back. Because without renouncing, they lose their human right to non-discriminatory treatment on the basis of national origin (article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
But back to money, that annual tax filing accidental Americans must file costs them $300+/year -- accountants do not work for free. It’s effectively a tax on the poor.
$120k is “wealthy” now? 120k isn’t even enough to buy a fucking house in most cities in the US. Actual wealthy people aren’t affected by this law because they don’t have regular income.
I’ve seen this on Reddit before: Six figures means you’re rich, because that was true in the 80s, right? Obviously people don’t have a clue that 40 years of inflation has made that middle class.
Also: income is not wealth, and the willful lack of understanding on that point blows my mind. A person who is wealthy can live an upper middle class lifestyle or better without ever having to work again. A person who has respectable income may have minimal wealth, or even mountains of debt (student loans, mortgage, etc). A person who makes 100k could be a few months unemployment away from losing their house or lease, while a person with “wealth” may not have to work at all.
People don’t become filthy rich working full time for six figures. The wealthy (~$20-50m net worth and up IMO) are people who made their money with something other than labor - through investments and things that the government doesn’t really classify as normal income.
Edit: It’s like the saying goes: nobody makes a billion dollars. They take a billion dollars. If you tax the wealthy on income, you collect very little tax, because it’s not classified as income. Meanwhile you’re going to tax an engineer or physician who probably have hefty student loans and work their asses off full time, at the highest marginal rates because we don’t or can’t tax wealth.
Edit2: we’ve got minimum wage internet trolls who think an employee software engineer is basically a cigar chomping capitalist because they make over the median wage. The middle class has shrunk and maybe you’re not in it. Get a clue, dumbasses.
I certainly agree based on my previous statement that income is not wealth, but I was trying to make two points and mixed the messages.
One is that amounts of money that were once considered an unbelievable amount for income or wealth - say $100k and $1m - have now been eroded by inflation to fairly modest money. In the 70s or 80s, having a million meant never working again. Earning 100k a year when a house cost $50k was huge money, and might lead to wealth quickly, if one bought several houses with it.
Another point I’d like to sneak in is that there’s almost no modern equivalent to that kind of employed income. On paper, inflation puts it at 400k - so maybe today’s equivalent of a surgeon - but the 50k house now costs $500k-1m. Notional inflation being 4x, while the critically important things have gone up 10-20x means that something harder to quantify is broken, and upward mobility isn’t working the way we expect. The same opportunities don’t exist. We are less likely to turn income into wealth over time than at points in the past, and so the tendency of people to erroneously think high income = wealth may have a reasonable basis in history that has never been less true today.
Edit: and it’s not just houses, it’s the stock market. The advent of the internet and e-commerce resulting in tech stock growth 1995-today is a phenomenon not likely to be replicated in any other area. We may be running out of growth to be had. The ability to get 10-20x your money over 30-40 years of investments is probably gone, and with it the prospect of comfortable retirement for even relatively high earners.
120K lands you at 86th percentile [1]. So… relatively, you are sorta well off.
Sure, you can’t buy a house with that income in a big city. But that merely shows how fucked up the real estate bubble is. Just think, the top 86th percentile earning person is no where near enough to even buy a home. Houses are about 1m in my neighborhood. So you need to earn about 250k/yr to realistically afford a home. That lands you at 97th percentile. So just top 3% of the people can actually afford a home on a single person’s salary. That’s how fucked we are.
The median income for a non-family household (i.e. single) is 45k, and family household is 95k (possibly dual income) according to 2023 census [2]. So, you’re doing relatively quite well in comparison.
Who is “wealthy” is a subjective term. So a median person might see someone making 120k as wealthy. But the person earning 120k might see themselves as poor since they can’t even own a home. Historically, the single income middle class could afford homes.
You seem unaware of the population of accidental Americans. When a Dutch couple gives birth on US soil before returning to Europe, that child automatically a birthright citizen of the US. They can grow up having never set foot in the US (apart from birth), and for the rest of their life they have a legal obligation to file US tax and declare to the US all their Dutch income & bank accounts even if they are below that $120,000 line. They also get targeted for discrimination along with all other Americans by banks who don’t accept Americans (even if they are also Dutch). They have to pay a US accountant upwards of $300/year for the rest of their life just to file that zero.
It’s also worth noting that an income of $120k goes much further in the US than it does in Europe (where they might be living).
So obviously a lot of accidental Americans have become motivated to renounce. But if they already own a home, you can see the problem. I would not say owning a home makes someone “rich”. They still need to work to eat and to maintain the home.
This is the absolute least important problem with American taxes, there’s a thousand other things we’re trying to fix.
Stop pretending like the bottom of “the top 10% wealthiest Americans” need help. We’ve got fucking children starving and not even getting a free school lunch. Excuse us for not having sympathy for everyone making between 120k and 120 million a year.
I’m just blocking all of you at this point, so do t expect another reply
My issue isn’t so much with the tax itself as it is selectively enforced. If those assets remained in the US and the person never renounced, they would never be taxed. Or at least not taxed at the same rate.
So it’s important enough to make sure rich people don’t run away but, as long as you don’t try to run, you don’t owe us anything… So the rich in America can continue getting richer…
Also, the income threshold is pretty average for any senior level software engineer. You don’t need to be astoundingly rich to be on the hook.
They’re still paying it even if they don’t set foot in America
I’m sorry, everytime you reply you say a new wrong thing I have to type alot to explain. I thought there was a few things you didn’t know, but I’m not going to take the time to explain how American taxes work from ground up.
Also, the income threshold is pretty average for any senior level software engineer. You don’t need to be astoundingly rich to be on the hook.
Over $100,000/year is wealthy in America. The median income is 3/4 of that…
For example, two people each own identical houses. One lives in the US and one lives outside. Both decide to keep it until they die. They both owe property taxes. If the person living outside of the US renounces their citizenship, they owe an exit tax even though they did not sell the property. The value of the house didn’t change. It’s location, owner, property tax obligation… Nothing changed.
There is nothing wrong with this. It should just be applied equally. If there is going to be a wealth tax, I want it applied to wealthy Americans even if they don’t renounce their citizenship.
That tax is irrelevant. That just muddies the waters to bring up property tax because every real estate property is subject to local property tax. It’s a wash. When you buy a house, you implicitly agree to property tax wherever that house is located.
It’s like the Inheritance tax. It’s basically meaningless to the poor, but it sounds bad so the GOP uses it to scare their base. However the targets of the tax are primarily the handful of rich capitalist bastards who have a harder time bribing lobbying their way out of it.
The exit tax starts at $120k. That’s “I can rent but not buy an apartment in San Francisco” class, not the “rich capitalist bastard lobbying Congress” class. And of course it’s also an income tax so it does jack shit to tax actual wealthy people.
Actual rich people already worked around the tax issue by putting their assets in stocks and loans. They aren’t paying this tax at all in the first place. They don’t need to lobby anyone.
It’s fucking ridiculous how some of you try to frame this income level. Doctors and lawyers are not the wealthy capitalists phoning up Congress and getting what they want from them. It’s actually fucking crazy that you’re acting like they do. People raising a family at that income level will never retire just like any other worker, but now they’re rich capitalist bastards?
Totally agree. Income isn’t wealth and people are clinging onto 1970s implications of “millionaire” when in 2023 having a million net worth doesn’t even allow you to retire and might just mean you own a house and have little other savings. Similarly “six figures” income meant a lot 30-40 years ago, but inflation eroded that to middle class in the 21st century.
Why does the headline focus on the “incest”? It was child porn. I don’t think it’s even illegal to possess incest porn if it’s consenting adults. This guy was into kiddie porn.
The article itself heavily focuses on the child porn, too. It only mentions the word incest 3 time, once at the top (the opening lines are typically a reiteration of the headline), and then twice in the same paragraph later on, but it mentions child porn numerous times. The writer clearly understood what the most significant thing was.
I think this is one of those cases where the writer submitted the article but the editor, for whatever dumb reason, altered the title. That’s not unusual nowadays, editors will change titles for SEO and engagement purposes all the time, and I’ll bet they’re using LLM’s to assist now. It’s just that usually there’s an obvious reason. Take an article one of your journalists wrote, give it a clickbait headline, hit submit. This is odd because it does the exact opposite.
I think the other comment has the right idea: there’s a good change search and social media algorithms are hiding or dropping the rankings of titles that explicitly mention CSAM.
There has definitely been a trend in the media of downplaying CP and CSAM recently. I thought others were crazy when they said it, but after paying attention a bit, yeah, it’s happening. My theory is that it is because of algorithms filtering stuff like that out.
Not to my knowledge but it was still an idea worth posing given the polices history against the homeless population nation wide and would be an easy answer as to why there’s not been any breaks in the case.
Although I didn’t pose what I said as fact, I can’t help what people will assume of groups they’re already familiar with.
It looks like you used a catchphrase to grab worthless internet popularity points. We have no evidence, and it very well could have been the cops, or a junkie, or Santa. You’re on a public forum, it’s not stone throwing to point out nonsense.
They made a quip that referenced a popular anti-establishment song which criticizes police for acts of hate towards minorities.
This person, who was defending minorities, was shot and killed in their home, in the city whose police dept. dropped an actual bomb on minorities less than 40 years ago.
Police have also been known to enter people’s houses and perform execution-style killings like this in the US.
You have taken a handful of unrelated things and applied them to an entirely unrelated story. With this formula, you could conclude anything you wished to conclude and get people to believe you because people don’t give a shit about facts any more.
I would advise people, all people in general, to read some words about the thing they think they know something about, before they go about committing on such things and spreading misleading and false statements.
I mean yeah it is a bit conspiratorial. Doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. They’re not making accusations, they’re just floating the idea without attempting to present it as a serious accusation. I think that’s generally how that comment was perceived, except for you.
The comments on a post about the killing of someone who defended two groups historically oppressed by police (homeless ppl and queer ppl) in a city whose police force is particularly known for such hate… yeah, there’s gonna be some people being conspiratorial.
Doesn’t mean it’s an illogical suggestion to make, or one that can’t be discussed.
Also:
I would advise people, all people in general, to read some words about the thing they think they know something about, before they go about committing on such things and spreading misleading and false statements.
Enough with the bloviating. Reaaally thought you were crushin with that bit, huh? Yikes.
You literally just can’t accept someone making a quip about police violence, that’s all that’s happening here. Nobodies “spreading misleading blahblah”, okay? Ur just being dense.
Holy shit. You people are so incredibly out of touch with reality. It scares me.
Just because a story has some words that you associate with other entirely unrelated events does not mean you can reject the facts of the story to make your narrative fit. I genuinely do not understand this drive that people have to change reality to make them feel better.
Fuck - you think that because the city bombed a house forty years ago that police are raiding the homes of journalists and murdering them?? If that sounds like reality to you - PLEASE get off the internet.
I just wish people would stop with this bullshit. This world is crumbling because of the false narratives being floated to the top of internet chatter. Meanwhile, the everyday real stories happening to real people are being diluted and downplayed. People ARE dying. Police ARE murdering people. The evidence and reporting IS out there but it’s being ignored.
In the time people have spent commenting in this chat, you could have read the news and obtained something more than a headline about this event. Unless of course you don’t believe journalists and prefer your own narrative. I just wish people would fucking use the internet to read about things more than having to comment on headlines without knowing anything at all.
How fucking difficult is it to care enough to comment on a headline but not take three minutes to read the story? Why the fuck do people care about internet karma so much that conspiracies and jokes are more highly ranked than getting the facts straight about the murder of an innocent person?
I can not fucking believe you’re still going to “the police murdered him” after reading this article. You are choosing to reject the reality presented to you to fit a narrative that has nothing at all to do with this case. You’re horrible.
I would like you to explain how you typed those words in relation to this story.
This case involves what the police had indicated was likely a domestic dispute, in the victim’s home, possibly involving drugs.
You’re talking about uh, the police murdering the homeless? Seriously. How could you possibly make that connection?
I don’t know what you mean by “breaks in this case” when this was posted only 24 hours after the incident. Within 36 hours, the police had identified a suspect.
I’m the fuckhead and the guy blaming the cops for murder when there’s ample evidence pointing to a domestic drug related dispute and absolutely zero indication of any police involvement is totally fine?
Meanwhile, no one wanted to talk about the cop getting all charges dismissed for murdering Eddie Irizarry. They just wanted to talk about the kids stealing shit from the Apple Store.
This is the problem. No one cares about facts. Just their feelings. Even when they have absolutely no clue what it is they’re talking about.
Lying is cool now as long as it fits your narrative, right? Can’t allow people to live in the real world anymore because then you might find yourself misaligned with your political ideology.
He shut up about the staff but targeted the judge and the State Prosecutor, so its a game of wack a mole but the natural progression would lead to him being totally gagged or remained which might be his ultimate goal so he can play the ultimate victim card with this brain dead supporters and hope the stink is big enough to break the rule of law? lmao Its gonna be wild, like he himself pointed out.
October 2024 - Former President Trump’s legal team has filed lawsuits against several federal prison employees over complaints that a recent cheeseburger happy meal was tainted, quoting the now incarcerated president, “it taste like boo-boo”.
Sources have confirmed that outside meals are not permitted, including that of McDonald’s restaurants. Further that any alleged cheeseburger was likely smuggled in through something called a prison wallet.
Trump will never pay this fine anyway. Look at Alex Jones: has a billion dollars he has to pay to families but still hasn’t paid a cent and spends 90k a month (on McDonalds burgers by the looks of it)
Trump is different as he has a lot tied up in real estate. He can’t exactly make Trump Tower vanish in the middle of the night. And if Trump tries to transfer all his properties to another company now, it’ll be obvious that it’s trying to get past any judgements and will be reversed.
Why is it whenever a govt shutdown almost anything bad in government occurs it’s because of Republicans?
I didn’t used to think like this and I didn’t used to be so one sided in my political thinking, but events from 2016 on have turned me into a 100% Democrat voter. I always was for presidential elections but I used to consider more nuance in local elections and actually read the positions before voting. Now I don’t even bother. Democrats are not without sin but I’m always going to vote for the party that at least pays lip service to social improvement instead of greed being the core value of the party.
Ranked choice voting and more than 2 parties would be the best situation but until we get that I’m straight down the ballot with the lesser of two evils.
I’m the exact same way. The first election I voted in was Bush v Gore. Then and for nearly two decades later, I would look closely at each candidate no matter the party, and vote for the best candidate. I tended to vote for the Democrat more often, but was never a straight down ballot voter, especially for state and local elections.
At this point though, the ® next to someone’s name on the ballot is so toxic that I won’t even consider them. They’ve all drunken the MAGA Koolaid and are doing everything they can to destroy our government and rip up the Constitution in the name of Trump. Maaaaaaaaaybe if I saw someone with balls to standup and say “hey, I’m a Republican but all this Trump worship has gone too far” then I would consider them. But that’s not the case here. Everyone running on the Republican ticket in my area has Trump’s balls in and around their mouth, so I will vote straight (D) for the next several years.
Republicans are always the cause of it and yet they all shout afterwards that it’s the democrat’s fault. At this point, I’d be surprised if any republican politician ever told the truth once.
There's a quote from P.J. O'Rourke that illustrates the point well:
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
A central tenant of the Democratic Party is that government can be a force for good and should be run well. Republicans try to tear the government down, especially at the federal level. The party as a whole doesn't care nearly as much about good governance principles, though there are of course exceptions.
It’s because of the Two Santa’s Problem. Republicans figured out in the 1970’s they couldn’t get elected competing with Democrats who want to expand social programs. They then adopted the strategy of saying the government doesn’t work, defunding it so that the self fulfilling prophecy comes true and they can be a Santa by giving tax cuts for the programs they defund.
defunding it so that the self fulfilling prophecy comes true and they can be a Santa by giving tax cuts for the programs they defund.
This is giving them slightly too much credit. They don’t even shrink the government and pass the savings back to the American people. They continually grow the government, just like Democrats, however they have no mechanism to fund it because they also always support tax cuts. That’s why the deficit and the debt tend to grow even larger under their governance. That’s the two santas: government freebies and tax cuts both. Billions for defense contractors while we’re also giving Mr Private Jet a tax write-off.
Because Republicans campaign on the principal of “government is inept” and do everything they can to make it so. They’re literally trying to destroy it from within to make their claim true.
Their motivation for destroying the government is their corporate funders. A weak government means corporations have more freedom to truly fuck over their customers and workers.
Money is their God and country.
Edit - I forgot to include their extremist faction’s motivation since Trump took the wheel. Foreign funders. Russia and China have Trump, and therefore the MAGA faction, in their pocket.
Not relevant. The relevant version of this would be, if you genuinely believe Jodie Foster to be immortal, can you be charged with attempted murder for shooting at her?
Isn’t it wild how far off Reagan’s republicans are from trump’s? Yesterday there was a post about Reagan vetoing the anti-apartheid bill over concerns with communist language.
I think if Ronnie Raygun came back to life and saw a russian-backed stooge leading a horde of propagandized fascists to dismantle democracy, he’d sh*t himself twice and die again. Which, I would support.
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