Again: do it. The sooner we can cast off the yoke of the Middle East’s hold on our power generation via oil, the better. Things like this can only accellerate the process: good. Keep it up and accellerate even more.
Just a tip, in political circles acceleration is generally a term to avoid. It’s a loosely defined, dogshit ideology. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
True, but I’m only talking about specifically cutting ties with the M…E (gradually) and transitioning to a green energy model ASAP, not about the wider political implications.
I mean, it kinda depends on what you think will make things better… Accelerationist ideology is mostly only effective for fascist. Fascism gains power by blaming current problems on the ineffectiveness of parliamentary governments, promising to provide stability with the use of a strong leader.
The left on the other hand relies on ideas like mutual cooperation and mutual aid, things that require more political and structural organization to bear fruit.
In post industrialized nations, it’s hard to imagine why things would have to regress in order to eventually progress from the current status quo.
Well first, I think it depends on your perspective. The French revolution and the 1rst Republic were overthrown by Napoleon. While Napoleon was one of the more liberal dictators, he was still an agent of some pretty terrible imperialism.
Secondly, there’s a reason why I specified post industrial societies. The most successful leftist governments had the advantage of being able to industrialize their nations. Being able to increase the power of a centralized government while simultaneously improving the quality of life of its citizens is one of the more powerful carrots in the revolutionary arsenal.
Not necessarily, just that post industrialized nations tend to swing harder right when people begin to lose faith in the democratic process.
I think part of that is due to the lack of strong mutual aid groups and worker organizations that industrialization creates as a byproduct.
If we look at revolutionary movements in the 20th century for the most part the industrialized nations were the ones who were overtaken by fascism, while unindustrialized countries like Russia and China transitioned to socialism.
It was one of the wildcards that early socialist didn’t really forsee, which is why everyone was so surprised that the first revolution to succeed was in Russia instead of Germany.
And this is the reason why the democratic party does not respond to the interests of the working class. The words of a super rich person have more influence than thousands or millions of people saying the same thing in surveys. This time those voices are aligned, but if next time they are not, the voice of the super rich will be the one they hear instead of yours.
With all these calls for him to drop out, there would need to be a viable replacement that could ensure a win with a four month campaign. I’m concerned that it’s just as risky to change the horse this close to the race.
It’s not a bad idea. His “scandal” won’t mean shit next to Trump’s. I’d still like to see some polls of his potential before we start calling for Biden to step down.
You ignore that scandals only matter to Democrats. Like Trump said, he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. Meanwhile, Al Franken does something in poor taste and gets cancelled.
I think a person who should be in the running for president needs to have some name-recognition but also be non-polarizing which unfortunately is hard to find in combination. There are some names floating around like moving the candidacy to Kamala Harris, but… I feel like a lot of people don’t like her. Which shouldn’t matter but I think a lot of people base their voting on “would I enjoy sitting down at a dinner table with this person and could I speak candidly” and don’t look into the actual political standpoints of that person, so likeability more than anything.
I’m not American, but I still feel a slightly vested interest in the outcomes of the elections because the outcome of the US election will shape global politics and even more than that in the next coming years, especially if Trump and his fascist cronies take control. But my point being is that I don’t know every single name in American politics, but I would say your average American voter probably knows as much as me, and the names that people know about are usually the polarizing ones that wouldn’t have a chance of winning. The Democrats are sorely lacking a strong candidate with a name that can rival Joe Biden in name-recognition without being polarizing.
Joe Biden is too old, but he has good people around him so I could see him doing 4 more years while doing MORE to find a good replacement for him would be the best thing for the US.
There have been several polls of Kamala vs. Trump. She barely surpasses Biden in some when the poll brings “fitness” into question, and polls worse than Biden in experience. That’s the real problem.
You right. I think it’s reactionary nonsense to be calling for him to pull out of the race without a stronger candidate on the bench.
There is no dropping out, and there’s no replacement. All political donations have been to the Biden campaign, it is illegal to transfer those funds to a new candidate. The only person who could run for president in his place is Kamala, since she is the other person on the ticket.
It’s extremely clear no one talking has any clue how any of this shit works.
Political parties that pay more attention to their voters than to the rich? Yes, many. Parties that fulfill that and are electorally successful? None or almost
The hell are you on? I’m just saying that rich people making absurd demands is a really shit citation for politicians listening to rich people’s demands. You haven’t caught Biden or the DNC red handed, you’ve got a picture of the cookie jar devoid of hands and still full of cookies.
Would it matter? He’s the “shoot a guy on fifth avenue” person. Who’s going to be able to prosecute a SCOTUS justice who can appeal to SCOTUS and not recuse himself?
Really dont need to prosecute first, gotta get him off the bench as step one. Dems could try to impeach, but as we see nothing gets done in the Senate either. Well shit…
There’s that boxes of liberty saying. Soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box. Use in that order. It’s one of those sayings that’s popular among diverse people I think.
This was a standard disclosure. Feeling ‘the heat’ has nothing to do with it. Jackson got 1.2k in flowers from Opera. Appointed officials shouldn’t be able to accept any form of donations above a very minor amount like $20.
Recently, Mr. Lawrence said, customers have been snapping up used Teslas for a little over $20,000, after applying a $4,000 federal tax credit.
Oh, so you mean used electric cars.
Carmakers including Tesla, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the owner of Jeep, have announced plans for electric vehicles that would sell new for as little as $25,000.
Oh, so you mean not yet, but maybe affordable soon.
New cars have always been expensive and out of reach for most, which is why the average new car buyer is well into their 50s.
I don’t see how people can logically make an argument about the necessity of switching to EVs for the environment while also demanding that everyone gets a brand new car. Scrapping a bunch of perfectly good cars to build new ones is not going to help out our climate issue.
I’m not seeing “cash for clunkers” types of arguments here - I’ve always seen EV adoption as more about market share of new cars rather than share of the entire fleet.
Of course the former leads to the latter, eventually.
KIt’s too early for a “cash for clunkers” type of thing. That will be more effective when EVs are the typical new car and we want to retire older used gasoline cars a little faster. I do hope to see it soon,but to it this soon
If it’s even possible. I’ve personally swapped the main battery pack on a Gen 1 Prius. Not easy, but more tedious than technical. Lifting the assembled unit was a hell of a chore but a coulple strapping dudes managed it. Reconditioned cells are available in a lot of places. I’ve had a Nissan Leaf and would get another one, but even finding a battery, let alone any info on swapping it was pretty much impossible.
but even finding a battery, let alone any info on swapping it was pretty much impossible.
The second generation(2018 on) had a defect in their battery packs that caused a lot of them to need full replacements right after Nissan announced they weren’t making Leafs anymore, so any extra batteries that might exist were used in Warranty repairs for that
The idea that replacing an EV battery costs as much as the car itself is total rubbish. Sure, batteries aren’t cheap, but they’re not going to bankrupt you. Modern EV batteries last a long time, often more than a decade, and are covered by solid warranties. Plus, battery prices are dropping fast as technology gets better. Scaremongering about battery costs is just plain wrong and stops people from going green, which is the last thing we need
I mean, you eventually need to replace the motor in an ICE car, but most people won’t… they’ll buy another vehicle instead. Most EVs lose a minimal amount of range over time… around 10% over 200k miles. Battery replacements are expensive, but not much more than replacing an engine on an ICE vehicle, unless you do all the labor yourself, and no one should be kidding themselves into believing they will actually replace a battery before they’d replace the vehicle… much like a car whose engine shits the bed. And the amount of savings you have in fuel and maintenance offsets the difference significantly, especially if you get to the 200k mark without trading up for a newer vehicle. Not to mention that there are Teslas on the road with over a million miles on them. You may not be as lucky, but 500k without replacing batteries is not uncommon.
I’ve driven a used Tesla for the last 4 years and have 110k miles on it. It’s still humming like the day it came off the line. It’s quieter, faster, has more torque and power, and I get more compliments on it than I ever did on the ford trucks, vw coupes, or Buick sedans I ever drove. I’ve only replaced tires, windshield wipers, wiper fluid, and the 12v battery and haven’t had any maintenance issues. I drive a lot, all over the country, and save around $2k a year in fuel costs compared to when I drove a Buick. I travel all around the country and have few problems finding charging stations (mostly when way off the grid… like Great Basin national park off-the-grid… but still found a charger) and have never been stranded or ran out of mileage on a given drive. A few pigtails and I can charge at any RV park or campground nationwide.
There is far too much misinformation about EVs and concerns with range or charging infrastructure or whatever the oil companies want you to be afraid of, and the savings in fuel costs outweigh any inconveniences I’ve experienced 10 times over.
Take the leap and you’ll never look back. I’ll never buy another ICE vehicle again. It feels like throwing money away.
I get that Elon is a bipolar asshole at times, but the mission to provide the infrastructure for a more sustainable future is what we need and the user experience is far better than reported.
I’ve wanted to get an EV for years now. Just don’t have the infrastructure in my area yet and out of my price range. But I didn’t consider buying used. It’s great to hear that I shouldn’t concern myself with replacing the battery.
If you have any way to charge at home, it’s a huge money saver and convenience. You’ll only get about 3 miles per hour off a normal 120v wall outlet, so maybe 20-30 miles over night. If you commute more than around 200 miles a week, you’ll have to have supplementary charging once a week or so.
If you can install a 240v charger, you’ll get between 25-35 miles per hour of charge, so you’ll easily get a full charge over night. It’s usually around $500 for the equipment and $500ish for the install, depending on the area, but it makes up for it over time. Imagine never having to factor time in to stop for gas on the way to work in the morning.
If you don’t have access to a wall plug and can’t install your own 240v charger, it may not be the right decision for you. If it is manageable for you, it’ll be a huge convenience and a big money saver.
Bought mine for around 40k 4 years ago and have saved around 8k in fuel costs… but I drive a lot.
Infrastructure needs depend on how the car is used. I have a basic level 1 charger (120v/15a household outlet) and so far have used public chargers zero times. There has only been one time where I didn’t have enough charge for back to back trips to the next major city over, and had to rely on our second (ICE) car. Could have been avoided with a better charger. I have been hitting ~700 miles per month. One thing to keep in mind is that you just need enough charge to get to your destination and back. Going to the gas station is a big hassle so you are used to always filling up from empty. With the EV, my house is my refill station, so I just connect the cord every time I park. Even after a long trip where the car is near empty, charging slowly for 2 hours is enough for a quick errand. I’ll admit that I would have some charging anxiety if I only had the EV with no backup, but practically speaking it just doesn’t become an issue. Just keep enough charge to make it to the nearest hospital, and get a level 2 charger (240v/>=32amp) for almost 4x the charging rate.
And for the Europeans in the audience, we have 240V and 15A in a normal wall socket for twice the charging speed of our American friends but half the speed of their level 2.
While it was an easier choice for me due to good infrastructure, I haven’t needed it. The key is charging at home, if you can do that.
I installed a level 2 charger at home - electrician cost was similar to adding an electric stove circuit. I have the car configured to charge to 80% by default to maximize battery health, and plug-in when I get down to 50%. My typical “overnight” charging takes 2 hours. If going on a trip, I just override to 100% the night before and wake up to a full charge. Maybe I haven’ gone on many road trips yet, but I only used one public charger so far, and it was over 100 miles away
I rented a Chevy Bolt once and it came with a charging cable that would plug into a regular 110V outlet. I never tried it, but online it says that chafing method is about 7.5 hours. The Bolt’s battery was 250 miles, so only useful around town if there’s zero infrastructure in the area. But within those parameters, still useful if you can charge at home.
And if you buy a used car you will eventually need to replace a ton of parts. Honestly, unless the used EV that you buy is a Leaf, many EV batteries will last 200k miles and still have 85-90% of their range left.
Regardless of where you fall on EVs or new car pricing, the Aveo was hot garbage and there’s a reason why they only cost $10k. This is the same reason why you don’t see any of them on the road anymore.
True, but at the time you could get a Toyota Echo or a Honda Fit or a Ford Fiesta or even a Nissan Versa which are all small cars that no longer exist.
Those were priced higher and comparable to the compacts like the Corolla, Civic, and Sentra.
I think there just wasn’t enough demand since people would rather pay a little more to get a little more car than they need for those rare times when a lot of cargo space was needed. Additionally, tiny CUVs like the RAV4 have increased in popularity quite a bit and still get great fuel economy, further reducing demand for the sub-compacts. These cars were also marketed toward young people like college students who have a harder time affording a new car these days and would rather buy a good used one for much cheaper.
You’re not wrong about any of that, much to my dismay. I was just pointing out that those cars did exist and car companies can make them. The market and regulatory conditions just don’t make it profitable.
If most of the people buying cars are in their 60s they’re going to want economic cars with high seats because their knees and backs can’t take getting into something lower. (I can say that because my knees and back already hurt, but I’m too stubborn to stop driving my compact manual car.)
There were a lot of good ones on the road that were sub $14 that still exist and are good for 200,000+ miles. I just pointed out one of the absolute cheapest.
Why don’t we stop subsidizing fossil fuel companies to the tune of $1Trillion Anually, and instead put all of that money towards subsidizing purchases and further R&D of electric vehicles? Oil and Gas corporations could enjoy the competition of the free market, and we the people could get access to new EVs for under $10k out of pocket - it would be a win-win!
We need to push new EVs, because there are not enough used ones. What do you think a used car starts as? Be happy every time someone buys a new EV, because there’s another used one in 3+ years.
I got a new EV, because I needed a vehicle, and my pattern is to buy new and drive into the ground
You’re not wrong, but in fairness the headline says EVs are becoming affordable, not that they are affordable.
he’s right; brand new ev’s go for about $10k outside the unites states; they’re already affordable but big tariffs are being employed to discourage buying them.
curiously, even the 100% american tariff still makes these ev’s more affordable than anything in that article and i’m wondering what’s going to happen once they start building them in mexico (ie nafta).
they’re selling out so fast that australia hasn’t gotten many yet.
interestingly australia might be the only western country to get them since they have a free trade agreement with china while the united states and europe are putting extremely hefty tariffs on them to protect their own respective automotive industries.
Not only that, most of those cars coming available are from Hertz — they’re rental cars. But not just any rental cars… most are from Hertz’s Uber fleet.
So these are EVs with over 100,000 miles on them, worn out back seats and blistered rear armrests that have been driven by employees using a fleet lease vehicle. And migrating the cars’ software ownership to an unlocked non-fleet private owner state has proven to be… difficult.
Uswd cars have gotten crazy expensive relative to new in the past few years. If the difference between new and used is only like $1k new can make sense.
I actually am a responsible gun owner. I keep my guns locked up when I’m not going to the range, and I store the ammo separately. When I clean my guns, I always check the chamber to verify it is empty. I have been shooting guns since I was about 8, and I’ve never had a negligent discharge and never will with how anal I am about gun safety.
The only reason I don’t carry is that I don’t have the money for it right now, and I don’t feel I am a good enough shot. I am only confident at 20 to 25 feet.
Well that’s good, but even if we are generous and say half the ~80 million gun owners in the US, are as responsible with their weapons as you are; that leaves a fuckton of gun wielders who are not responsible.
I am not outright anti-gun, but it makes no sense to me it took two tests and several weeks of waiting, to get a driver’s license; and if I want to do e.g. more than basic electrical or plumbing changes in my home, I should get a permit and there will be an inspection. Yet I could waltz into a store, buy guns like I was a personal army, and at worst I would have to wait a couple days to pick them up. As far as I know, there are 0 requirements or inspections for if you have a gun safe; let alone any form of test or licensing of if you are just barely competent and safe weilding them.
I completely agree with you on everything you said. I would say that out of every gun owner I have ever met, I would say less than 10% of them have the emotional temperament to own a gun, let alone the ability or the knowledge to keep it safely locked up.
There should 100% be tests, and you should need to have a license to even own a gun, and almost no one needs to own one. It truly is absolutely ridiculous how easy it is to buy one in the usa. I don’t understand why anyone is against gun control other than them owning stock in gun companies ir the nra ir not giving a shit about other people.
And can I just say I don’t get why people are so quick to downvote my other comment for what seems like no reason at all.
Because every gun owner thinks they’re a responsible gun owner. Everyone is until they do something stupid and to act like you aren’t capable of making a mistake is naive. The problem is your mistake has deadly consequences. You can make the same argument for cars except driving isn’t a hobby in the US its a need. Like you said no one needs to own a gun.
I said almost no one needs one. There are still people who do need firearms. I’m not in that category anymore.
I fully recognize I can and do make dumb mistakes in my life, which is why I am so anal about gun safety. I make a show of me checking the chamber or cylinder. I make it known to anyone in the house that I am removing a gun from its case and unlocking it. I ask others to double-check the guns for me to ensure they are unloaded, and even then, they are never pointed in the direction of someone. Lack of respect for the dangers of firearms leads to negligence and negligence kills.
There’s definitely self-selection happening. A paranoid individual is more likely to feel the need to buy a gun. A person who wants control over others is more likely to feel that same need. A person with malicious or suicidal intent is more likely to feel that same need.
Meanwhile, it’s entirely a coin-toss on whether a sane, responsible individual actually feels like they can/should own a firearm. I think as we get into worse civil unrest, we will inevitably see more individuals feel that they have no choice but to arm themselves, but for the time being it’s going to the less savory folks rushing to buy.
That’s not true. It’s still illegal even though they get away with it. You’re thinking of bribery lobbying.
According to the STOCK Act of 2012, they could be brought up on charges for a trade performed after gaining knowledge of a pending change in legislation that would affect the value of a stock, prior to the legislation being publicly enacted. The SEC just hasn’t charged them.
What they do is not legal, they just live above the law.
That doesn’t change the law. It’s simply evidence that Congress lives above it. Seven Democrat Senators cosponsored a bill in September to ban the practice entirely. It died at introduction.
You have a philosophy around what laws are and what they mean that is incongruent with reality.
What is the word we use when people have believes that don’t match up with the previous or future state of things?
Laws on paper are only one aspect of what a law is. How those laws are interpreted and how they are enforced matter far, far more. Law is what is applied and enforced. If something is a ‘law’ but is not enforced, then its not really law.
And its fine that you have a different philosophy around what the law means. I just don’t find it particularly useful because it doesn’t predict the past, present, or future states of the world.
While I’m flattered that you’d take the time to make a meme for me, it probably would’ve taken you far less time to research insider trading law as it applies to members of Congress.
You make it easy considering you are making my points for me. If you are trying to make a point about hubris by just being more arrogant, what exactly is the argument you are making?
And on that, you haven’t outlined anything that’s worth even discussing. I made the argument that laws are only as meaningful as they’ve are applied. Its likely you don’t even recognize the assumptions of your argument being an extension of legal positivism, theoretically described by legal philosophers like Austin and Hart. But the problem with Austin and Hart? Their philosophy (legal positivism) doesn’t predict the past, the future, or even the present. Legal positivism isn’t how the world works. To quote Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.”
This is called legal realism for those in the cheap seats, and its an effort to understand the law as its applied: which is to say, to understand the law as it actually works.
Whats on the books is irrelevant. What matters is what happens. It doesn’t matter if there is a law preventing anything if it doesn’t get applied.
Edit response to your edit response: Please, keep showing me that you don’t understand what you are talking while you make my points for me.
Just to clarify. Insider trading is illegal but it is not illegal for politicians in Congress to use the information they obtain from their jobs (such as through classified meetings) to engage in stock market trades.
It’s not a failure of the law. It’s a failure of the SEC for not enforcing it.
MYTH: Members of Congress are exempt from insider trading laws.
FACT: Both a Congressional Research Service Report and House Administration Committee memo indicates that Members of Congress are subject to the same insider trading rules as the general public.
It’s a catch-22. To get elected, you need to learn to manipulate within the system. Once elected, you know how to leverage the system, so why would you change it?
The best chance we’ll have for systemic change will come when boomers die off. That shouldn’t discourage efforts today, but impart some hope for the future.
I want to believe that the most change will happens when boomers are gone, but I don’t trust that the new era of politicians won’t get caught up in the game.
It wasn’t put to a vote after being read aloud on two separate introductions. It was then forwarded to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where it went to die.
I’d be fine if they were allowed to invest in things like mutual funds so that they could take advantage of the market without being able to do insider trading of a specific stock.
Fun fact: Everyone with hundreds of millions+ in holdings either trades with insider information or pays others to do it, because our metrics and enforcement for insider trading are a gallows joke.
Well, as it is what her husband did for a living his entire very successful life, but sure the Lady you don't like is wrong for him doing his job well.
As she didn't join Politics until '87, guess they invented communicating to with their past selves, lmao. If you've got any proof, kindly advise the FBI. Where as you've none, head on back to peddle that shit to fux nooz.
Christ, am I supposed to memory hole that Pelosi’s husband making a shit ton of money off stocks THREE YEARS AGO is what led to a round of antitrust bills getting introduced? Is there literally any criticism of these rich fucks you can hear without immediately shrieking about conservatives?
Well, you are shit holing that he made a shit ton of money before her first Campaign. So perhaps instead of doubling down upon your unsubstantiated right wing bull shit propaganda, actually check what happened. But you won't Instead you'll go on pretending you didn't know that folks with a shit ton of money go on to make more shit tons of money so you can maintain your delusional belief in fux newbs' distraction.
A: which is why him having a ton of money he made more with isn't a relevant condemnation of the woman.
B: his having a shit ton of money already helps a hell of a lot more so fuck off with your unsubstantiated claim.
C: at no point did I remotely suggest she did so fuck off with your attempt to imagine things to argue about since you've not a leg to stand upon.
Pathetic watching ancient, feeble rich people about to return to the dust from whence they came still frantically positioning to boost their ego scores.
It’s as if they believe their preferred invisible sky mommy/daddy will accept a bribe of earthly currency.
Congressional Representatives and Senators are shielded from most insider trading laws. She could literately buy in, flip the SEC the bird, and go on her merry way.
I’d counter that basing your livelihood on an app that harvests your and your viewers data for an adversarial government known to use this kind of data in psyops isn’t a sound business idea.
In fact, I’d say this bill actually protects American users who have been using the app.
If TikTok can’t prove that they use our data responsibly, and refuse to do so to the point of just leaving the market, we are all better off. Another company will fill that void and content creators have endless options to move to.
I don’t think “but people need to make money while our data is harvested and provided to a government that uses it against us” is a great argument.
It’s cute how you think that the only government that’s using our own data against us is china. Might want to step back and look at our own government, then apply your same line of thinking to all big tech companies in existence right now.
That will never happen, at least not in this way. Because it wasn’t anything to do with their data collection, or their company structure. Congress is happy to allow domestic data collection and want Americans addicted to American apps so that they get a cut.
You’re extremely dull if youre suggesting I don’t know data is abused left and right all over the place. But if TikTok is so bad it’s can’t even fit within our abusive system, it deserves to transfer or exit.
And you aren’t even reading what I wrote. In no post did I defend tiktok… I merely stated that what it is doing is also being done by american based companies and they should be addressed as well.
Because this isn’t accountability? It won’t start any change with domestic companies, because it doesn’t apply to them. This isn’t the start of anything. If you think they’re going to use this as the starting point for actual privacy legislation, you’re very ignorant of how congress works.
Data collection will still happen domestically, and another Cambridge Analytica will happen, so long as domestic data brokers are legal.
Where did I say I had a problem with this? So much knee jerking in here. I am stating that lawmakers should apply these same laws to our own social media. The same lawmakers who will most likely profit off this decision.
They passed the bill because someone is getting a cut. It isn’t to protect the public. If they wanted to protect the public we would have universal healthcare and a ban on guns.
I disagree. I listened when it was presented to Congress. I read a good amount of the data justifying the required transfer. If you don’t think this bill protects the public, there really is no reasoning with you.
Someone will get a cut specifically because TikTok chooses not to prove where their data flows. They had a choice, and chose to exit the market.
But sure, you can frame it like we forced them to leave the market, which isn’t the case. They could have verified their data flow and remained if they were not abusing it.
What does the issue we are talking about (TikTok’s data harvesting) have to do with healthcare? Unless that’s where you get your magic crystal healing tips lmao
You said it was to protect the public. This is involved in protecting the public. You claim Congress did this to protect the public so I am asking you when your friends are going to really protect the public.
You can just admit that some Congress people got a cut to do this and it has nothing to do with protecting us against the big bad Asians. While we are on the topic I think it’s fucked up that the government, and it’s internet lackeys, want me to hate the Chinese.
You can just admit that protecting the public comes in many forms and one law won’t fix unrelated areas.
But you won’t, because you have a hate boner for our shitty oligarchy. You can also pretend like TikTok didn’t have a chance to prove they don’t misuse our data, but chose to exit the market rather than reveal where our data goes. The “cut” you bemoan, if it’s even true, would only occur due to TikTok’s choice.
But sure, they only passed a law after giving the company a chance to comply so they could get a pay cut. Genius.
I watched it live, so I don’t know how complete or edited this recording of the hearing is. Talk to you in 5.5 hours after you watch the thing you requested.
Can you at least try and clarify what in the hearings convinced you so much? I’ve seen some of these hearings. Some of them are complete BS political threater.
I mean, what would you have liked to see that would’ve proved the data is treated exactly the same as every other American company that harvests our data?
It’s never been to protect the public. If that were the case, the law wouldn’t apply to just TikTok and foreign companies. They would’ve passed something to protect us from our own domestic data brokers too, but they didn’t.
It’s almost like an action can protect people and enrich elites at the same time. Explain how the American public isn’t better of keeping their personal data away from the CCP. Interested to see how you think this doesn’t protect the public at all from an adversarial foreign government.
Their personal data won’t be kept away from the CCP. People that use TikTok will use VPNs to do so if needed (TikTok also would no longer have to listen to the US government, probably intensifying the data collection), and otherwise the CCP can just purchase (or steal) the data from US data brokers, because those are still very much legal. Did we forget about Cambridge Analytica, where an adversarial foreign government used our own domestic companies against us?
I bet less than 2% of users use VPNs. They won’t have much content, if any, from domestic creators. They’ll only be interacting with the other 2% of American users along with foriegn content.
I don’t think people with enough brain cells to use VPN will are China’s target demographic, and I don’t think VPN users will constitute a fraction of activity you are suggesting they will.
I really like how you point out the danger of the Cambridge Analytica incident, but then bemoan trying to keep data harvesting away from a foreign adversary.
Domestic data policy drastically needs an overhaul, but we have to start somewhere. Also, Cambridge Analytica had a fucking shitstain president/administration running interference because they benefited directly from it. Glad we have accountability this time around.
TikTok users or in general? Either way, it’s higher than that, and will only increase with bills like this (and the many state-issued porn bans).
I don’t think people with enough brain cells to use VPN
VPNs aren’t hard to use, by design. Do you really think people need in-depth tutorials on how to press a button in an app? Also, there’s already people demonstrating VPN use on TikTok, for if the ban actually happens.
I really like how you point out the danger of the Cambridge Analytica incident, but then bemoan trying to keep data harvesting away from a foreign adversary.
You have very black and white thinking. I’m bemoaning it because it doesn’t actually protect US citizens. It doesn’t stop China from harvesting our data, and it doesn’t stop domestic companies either. But good try, trying to belittle the massive data breaches that have happened without TikTok’s help.
Domestic data policy drastically needs an overhaul, but we have to start somewhere.
Once again, this isn’t the start of that. Congress is more than happy to allow domestic companies to harvest our data, because half of the time they’re getting a cut. This will not open any doors for future privacy bills. The only possibility with this is that congress crafts another targeted bill to get rid of another company for whatever reason.
Also, Cambridge Analytica had a fucking shitstain president/administration running interference because they benefited directly from it.
Interesting that you’d bring that up, seeing as congress just set this precedent for banning companies right before that shitstain has a real chance of getting into office. Do you really want the Trump administration to pass a bill like this for another company?
I’m stating than less than 2% of American TikTok users will use VPN to bypass TikTok leaving the market.
You’re crazy if you think VPN usage is high among the general public on a regular basis. And that number’s intersection with using a VPN to specifically work around this will be extremely low.
I absolutely stand by holding TikTok responsible, and any other company responsible. This, coupled with the FTC poised to bring back Net Nuetrality, is a great step in the right direction. I look forward to this energy setting up more data protection, foreign and domestic.
I’m stating than less than 2% of American TikTok users will use VPN to bypass TikTok leaving the market.
Now you can predict the future with such certain statistics? First of all, more TikTok users than that already use VPNs. So you’re already incorrect.
You’re crazy if you think VPN usage is high among the general public on a regular basis. And that number’s intersection with using a VPN to specifically work around this will be extremely low.
VPN usage wasn’t all that high, before porn bans happened. Once those started, US searches for VPNs drastically spiked. Once again, it will happen with TikTok. They’re literally already discussing this on the platform, I’m not sure how else to tell you this.
and any other company responsible.
You sure don’t seem like it. It seems like you’ve got your blinders on to exactly who those other companies are. This bill will not lead to positive domestic privacy changes, because it is focused on “foreign adversaries”. It won’t open the door, because the whole reason this was able to pass in the first place is because the republicans have a huge hate boner for TikTok exclusively. Kind of like yourself.
This, coupled with the FTC poised to bring back Net Nuetrality, is a great step in the right direction.
While I was happy to hear about that earlier, this doesn’t really apply to this conversation.
I look forward to this energy setting up more data protection, foreign and domestic.
Congress doesn’t care about protecting our data domestically. You’ll turn to dust by the time they actually give a shit about that.
We could also feed the poor, house the homeless, heal the sick etc. we could ask why any law regarding healthcare, housing, nutrition doesn’t fix the issue, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
The FTC is putting in work this administration, and are poised to bring back Net Neutrality (obligatory Fuck Ajit Pai). This is a huge step towards protecting all Americans, so I think you’re confusing this issue (adversarial governments harvesting our data) with the larger issue of domestic policy (which will be much harder to tackle).
According to you, there should be only one law that protects people and protects them fully. If the law is specific to a sector, it’s bad because saving people’s data doesn’t give them healthcare. And if it doesn’t protect people in other sectors (foreign vs domestic) then it can’t possibly be a good move.
It’s an all-or-nothing mentality that is extremely idealistic to the point of ignoring incremental progress, and will make it so that no law is ever good or enough.
Stopping the bleeding of data harvesting to China is good. If you want other change alongside it, hold your elected officials to it.
There’s really no point in continuing a discussion with such an idealistic purist, as no law can be good enough.
Lmao “BFFS.” You love making me into whatever you want to rail against.
Congress didn’t ban an app. They requested data on where their information flows, and the “stupid dancing app” opted to leave the market instead of comply.
You don’t even know what the fuck you’re going on about haha
That’s not how due process and liberal democracy works. The government has to prove you’re doing it. Setting any precedent that you have to prove you’re not doing something (an impossible task) is incredibly dangerous.
Yay, more YouTube and Instagram. What we always wanted. Can’t wait to have maybe one day Meta and Alphabet will combine so we can only have one service!
Nobody is gonna use a VPN to get their TikTok fix. They’ll use Facebook Reels or YouTube shorts, since most content creators cross-post their stuff there anyway.
Which is the actual intent of attacking a single point of the problem instead of the actual problem of the abuse of end users by all the corpo's social media and other apps., free or otherwise is no longer important.
People on TikTok are already discussing using VPNs, so it will happen if not sold.
And either way, it’s almost like congress doesn’t care about addictive social media, seeing as it’s fine if domestic companies create addictive algorithms. They’ll even let foreign governments manipulate the populous via domestic companies, so long as they get a cut of the cash.
Passing a law to give the executive branch overreaching censorship authority over the internet while simultaneously campaigning that the other option in the next election wants to use the power of that office to overthrow democracy. This is the “good ending”.
It’s almost like TikTok was given a chance to prove our data doesn’t flow to the Chinese government, and TikTok decided to exit the market than prove where their data flows.
But sure, let’s just pretend we randomly forced them out with an executive overreach lmao
Banning TikTok, a foreign controlled company, does not infringe on the 1st amendment. Freedom of speech isn’t impaired because of some dipshit social media app that actively fucks everyone except the Chinese government over.
Either way, TikTok is not the only avenue for the Chinese government to use to fuck us. They’ll just find another way, one that isn’t so visible and easily regulated. This doesn’t really solve much; it’s just going to piss people off by taking away their choice and push breaches of personal privacy into the shadows where the US has no jurisdiction.
It always has, at least from US government. Have you not read the constitution?
Oh, so we can agree that the US Government “asking” Twitter and other media outlets to interfere with the coverage of certain stories is also a 1A violation? Excellent!
Does your posting history bear out that that’s why you’re here, though? 🤷♂️ I’m not asking for you to justify it to me, it’s just silly to pretend you’re not participating in something you say should be banned.
My posting history bears out extensive shitposting and calling things as they’re seen. I don’t take any issue with Lemmy/Fediverse due to how they’re decentralized and orchestrated. I’m against predatory algorithms and user manipulation. I believe that the Fediverse itself will be a good thing until it becomes the villain, much like how our utopian social experiments usually go.
Is Lemmy using a predatory algorithm designed to enrich itself at the expense of the well being of its users and utilize its platform to influence US policy against its own interests? If that answer was yes, then absolutely. With Lemmy being of service to its users without making us its cattle, I’ll advocate for it as opposed to against it.
Does congress care about data collection and predatory algorithms, though? If so, why did they just waste their time crafting a targeted bill rather than actually making those practices illegal?
If congress suddenly decided that they didn’t like a company for whatever reason, they’ll craft another targeted bill like this one. Trump could win this year, do you really want this precedent set right before that?
Luckily, Lemmy is much more difficult due to it’s decentralized nature. However, since congress is clearly more than willing to craft targeted bills, it’s not out of the question.
Dude, the bill has nothing to do with anything you said. You’re criticizing capitalism and the lack of regulations on social media corporations.
My understanding is this bill is about forcing the sale of a company owned by a “foreign adversary” which is vague as shit just like the patriot act, which took (some of) the public 20+ years to realize was probably not a good idea.
Is Lemmy using a predatory algorithm designed to enrich itself at the expense of the well being of its users and utilize its platform to influence US policy against its own interests?
Is Lemmy using a predatory algorithm designed to enrich itself at the expense of the well being of its users and utilize its platform to influence US policy against its own interests?
Straight up yes, I’m gonna explain this hot take right now so buckle up.
Lemmy operates on the same basic set of principles that Reddit does. Upvotes send a post up, downvotes send a post down, moderation abilities and succession is controlled by the select few who create a popular channel, and also administrators. Pretty easy, pretty simple so far.
Algorithms don’t refer only to implicit incentive structures, but explicit ones, as well. How many posts have you seen on lemmy that are just really stupid propaganda memes? That’s what the platform explicitly incentivizes with it’s system of upvotes and downvotes. Low rent, low effort posts that vibe with a large majority of the audience are what’s going to get more attention and more engagement, and that’s going to push a post up, in a kind of feedback loop that hopefully tries to separate the wheat from the chaff. Really, all it does is separate the low rent dopamine content from everything else. I would say the incentivization of low rent behavior by these explicit mechanisms is somewhat predatory, yes.
As to how lemmy is enriched by this process, lemmy gets more attention. so lemmy gets more power inside of the sphere of internet attention, culture, and propaganda. Lemmy as a whole, obviously, which probably ends up meaning the developers. The whole thing being more open source and federated obviously puts this much more into contention than Reddit, sure, but that doesn’t really eliminate the basic problems that come about at the very conception of this platform, these problems of echo chambers. You can even see that forming now in a bunch of different instances. You can see that bias in hexbear, ml, world being plagued by a bunch of brainlet neolibs. It’s pretty obvious that the system confines everyone to their bubbles.
This is all to basically equivocate any interaction having been had online as being predatory in some way, and as enriching some party. Any mechanism which you use to organize the slew of information coming at you is going to have an inherent set of biases, pros and cons, and is inherently going to prey on some of those biases compared to others. So if we’ve equivocated all social media with basically all form of social interaction online, then the internet itself was probably a mistake.
Tl;dr IRC is a form of social media. Real life is a form of social media.
All the folks quoting what a small part of their audience the US is, never mention what percentage of their gross the US is. CCP won't pay for eyeballs in Azerbaijan.
In the U.S., we have given our third-party Trusted Technology Provider access to the code that drives the content you see - the For You feed - and we are on a path to allowing an unprecedented amount of third-party access to verify our source code and systems, something no other peer company has done.
FWIW the New York jury found that she didn’t prove he forced his penis inside of her. They found he did force his fingers inside of her vagina. In New York state law, that is sexual assault but not rape. It is rape according to federal law, and most colloquial uses of the term “rape.” Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll, that is what was proven in court.
He wasn’t charged with rape in either state or federal court, because the statute of limitations had expired when she went public with her story.
So it’s important to be clear, the jury did not find him innocent of rape. They found he did commit an act that is widely considered rape. It’s inaccurate to say that they found he didn’t rape her. They found that the act that had been proven did not meet the narrow New York state law standard for rape.
Fine, but they also did not find him “not guilty” of rape because he wasn’t charged with rape. He was sued for making defamatory statements, and the jury found that he had forcibly penetrated her with his fingers and then claimed he didn’t.
That is rape. In New York, it would not be enough to convict him of rape, but he wasn’t on trial for rape so the New York State legal definition is irrelevant. He was not found “not guilty” of rape.
The linked article says nothing about this. Do you have a different source? I’m really doubtful that the judge would say something this presumptuous about criminal liability, especially predicting guilt against a real defendant in a trial that has not happened.
Funny that Russia gets all “I feel threatened by NATO” bullshit is the same Russia who just sends death squads to other sovereign countries as they please. Truly a Mafia ran government.
Aww these poor Boomers just made too much money on their homes and now they have to pay some taxes if they want to sell for huge profits. Boo fucking hoo.
I’m sick and fucking tired of moving from rented basement, to rented attic, to basement, to garage… Etc… every 2 goddamn years I have to move. I’m almost 40, never going to be married, and stuck renting absolute overpriced shit. I’m so over it.
Not that I don’t emphasize with your struggle - I just want to point out that there are people stuck in those “starter homes” with 5 or more kids who could really benefit from a 5 bedroom upgrade because they’re at a point in their lives where they can afford it and they need it. The housing crisis we’re living through produces victims up and down the income ladder.
Also this whole problem can be traced back to our absurd zoning laws blanketing most of California and the US. Still the boomers’ fault, but not for decisions they’re making today. Most of them are screwed right along with the rest of us. :(
And with current prices and mortgage rates so high, there is often a negligible cost difference between their current home and a smaller one.
Is this accurate? I’m having a hard time believing it, but if it is true, then they need all cash to buy a smaller home. Downsizing shouldn’t be a money-losing proposition, otherwise there would be 0 interest in doing it.
The argument is that these people will sell their really large house then pay the same amount they earn on a smaller condo. This is going to be very much context dependent and frankly I don’t buy this as a problem for most people.
As you get older, you may no longer find it worth keeping up a larger house. It’s not just repairs, but furnishing and decorating and cleaning and insurance and taxes
Just glossing over implementation. So every car will have to have wireless communications of some sort? Will there be some government system that all California cars will have to be integrated with that tracks where they are at all times so the car can know the correct speed limit? A tracking system that surely would never be abused or turned into a surveillance device.
"I don't think it's at all an overreach, and I don't think most people would view it as an overreach, we have speed limits, I think most people support speed limits because people know that speed kills," Wiener said.
There is already a good amount of wireless in most cars. We’ve had standards since the Bush administration for cars to wirelessly communicate with each other.
Those are fixed speed governors for fleet fuel economy and/or manufacturer choice to prevent operators from turning their engine block into something externally ventilated. Not variable governors that require knowledge of where the car is to adapt to the local speed limit, a significantly more complex challenge, and one with a solution that is inherently insecure, privacy-violating, and almost guaranteed to instantly be abused.
Do you think GPS units are broadcasting their location to know where they are? They just download maps and use the signal to localize themselves. Too many people acting like they know how tech works without understanding the basics of the largely non-networked world that existed before smartphones and spyware apps absorbed every feature.
As someone with an Audi that will adjust your cruise control automatically based on speed limit (or rather what it thinks the speed limit is) I couldn’t be more against this. I had to disable the feature after multiple times where it thought I was on some 15mph ramp rather than the freeway and slammed on the brakes in the middle of traffic going 70mph.
Be careful, or politicians are gonna draft a bill preventing your from applying too much braking force too quickly. Thats about in line with the logic on this bill.
Doesn’t abs make you stop sooner than both slamming on locking braks or manually pumping them? Idk sounds like more of a sudden stop to me, congress gonna ban ABS next
ABS is designed to prevent the wheels from locking up and skidding. This reduces the total braking force applied a bit, because it's quickly pulsing the brakes, but is safer because you still have a bit of steering control.
ABS does the same thing as pumping your brakes, just faster. And you don't need to and probably shouldn't pump the brakes on a car with ABS.
Skidding also reduces braking force though, just from a perspective of car vs road, not break pad vs rotor. Unless im mistaken, and aside from control, anti lock breaks bring the car to a stop quicker, presuming traction break.
You are correct. Anti-lock brakes emulate cadence braking, and are more effective than threshold braking, and far more effective than locking your brakes
ABS/pumping the brakes is implemented because sliding friction is less that static friction. It’s why you can nudge something on a slope to start sliding and it doesn’t stop but would have happily sat there before hand.
Your car wheels experience static friction because while in motion the patch in contact with the road isn’t moving. Or at least they do until you skid.
So ABS brakes/releases to get a new round of static friction.
Pumping the brakes is probably a phrase that came from before power assisted brakes (when you were manually pressurizing the hydraulics) but still had relevance because it was also ABS.
One way I could think to implement it without any tracking or data connection connection with no data being transmitted from the vehicle would be by placing infrared strobe lights periodically along the road, possibly at the same places we already have speed limit signs. The flashing is invisible to the human eye but could be picked up by cameras on the vehicle, vary the speed or pattern of the strobe to indicate a different speed limit.
Something pretty similar is already used by a lot of emergency vehicles to trigger green lights, just the arrangement is reversed with a strobe on the vehicle and a sensor on the traffic signal.
Of course such a system would potentially be vulnerable to things like power outages (strobe can’t strobe if it doesn’t have power) bad weather (heavy fog, or if the camera and/orr strobe are covered in snow,) and someone could potentially circumvent it by just mounting a strobe light on their car pointed at the camera.
You could probably address the snow/fog issue by locking the car to a lower speed if no strobe is detected, maybe 25 or 35mph, because in those conditions people should generally be driving slower anyway, and then you don’t have the expense of needing to put strobes around lower speed areas. And the power issue could be addressed with the kind of solar panels and/or backup batteries that already power some streetlights and such.
And for those who tamper with the system to circumvent it, we’re never going to stop speeders entirely, but we can increase the fines to make up for lost revenue to keep police departments happy, they make less traffic stops and rake in the same amount of money.
The infrastructure limitation could be resolved by using infrared reflectors along the road instead of lights. Have the car shine infrared light at the reflectors so it's cameras can read the code on them (like an infrared QR code, maybe?)
If we’re going to use technically limitations on the vehicle side, we can simply continue to use optical recognition of speed signs instead of changing putting an IR transmitter on every speed sign. It’s gotten really good in recent years.
I haven’t read the article, so just spitballing here: I have to assume the approach here is to electronically govern the engine to go no faster than the highest speed limit. I don’t know what the limits are in California, but where I live that’d mean the car would be limited to 80mph. If it was electronic, it could be adjusted if then limits were changed.
Otherwise, it’d be insane, and require the crazy infrastructure you describe. And they simply don’t have the money or the wherewithal to build an actual coverage that would allow the limiter to dynamically scale all the time.
Alternatively, I suppose you could imagine a hybrid system—ie an overall limited engine to the max limit, and then some sort of transponder that would throttle the limit down if you were near an important speed limit zone, like a school, which they could manage to deploy a transmitter at… still seems technologically challenging for the state to really pull off consistently though.
Either way, yeah not a fan or including more required tracking tech in vehicles. I don’t think I’d really hate a reasonably limited car—I really can’t justify needing to drive over 80 ever really, even in an emergency, but it would drive me insane to have the car just magically throttling down whenever it thought it was time to. See
I read the article, it definitely doesn’t bother to think about how something like this would be implemented, but certainly seems to be referring to a dynamic Limiting system… good luck.
Every car I’ve hired in the last ten years has the current speed limit displayed on the dashboard. It does not require the car to communicate any information, only to receive it.
That is a different question from how car manufacturers could abuse the requirement to get more data to sell, of course. But there’s nothing in this bill that would require the car to collect any data that isn’t already publicly displayed by the roadside.
What, that up to date speed databases are an impossible problem to solve? Or that you couldn’t possibly get current speed limits from a non-GPS method? These aren’t hard problems.
You’d be amazed how many problems can be solved when the people involved have legal liability. My first GPS unit was out of date from the moment I bought it. It wasn’t because keeping a map up to date was hard, it was because they didn’t care, you’d already bought the GPS and it was better than not having one at all. This isn’t a technological problem.
Your car’s GPS-localized speed map is wrong because no one cares enough to make it right, not because it’s an unsolvable problem. It’s a gimmick to get you to buy the car, and you already bought the car.
Apple and Google also have problems with speed limits being updated, and they actively attempt to keep their maps updated. Even Waze has incorrect data sometimes, and that can be corrected by anyone. So I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you think it is.
Isn’t the idea that the government would provide an official speed limit database that is updated as soon as a new sign is posted? Seems like a lot of extra work to do it any other way.
Edit: the infra is still exploitable either way, I don’t see how this won’t cause issues.
Again, they don’t have any liability or financial need to be right. It’s a free tool that’s better than not using the tool. No one is going to get in trouble if it’s wrong, you’re not going to buy a competing brand if they’re wrong. It’s a neat add-on. I don’t know why people assume that just because they’re a big company they’re especially dedicated or competent at managing minor features of free apps. Apple and Google apps are regularly worse than third party developed apps. They’re not bad because this is a hard problem, they’re bad because they don’t care.
And all this “but sometimes they’re wrong” is for exceedingly rare errors. 99%+ of roads are right, for the simple fact that permanent speed limit changes are rare. Maybe a database doesn’t update for temporary construction speed limits, but in that case we’re no worse than we are right now, where your car is perfectly capable of going as fast as you want if you ignore all the posted signs. The only time a limiter impacts driving is when the speed limit goes up, which almost never happens, and simply means people drive a little slower than the maximum while lodging complaints to the repository.
Sure, the car knows its forward speed from its speedometer.
It doesn’t know the speed limit of the road it’s currently riding on, that’s not as easy to directly measure. Currently the most straightforward way to do this is have it look up its location using GPS, use that data to look up what road the car is driving on, and then look up the speed limit for that section of road. This is far from error prone; GPS isn’t perfect and could, for example, confuse your current position for another road nearby; it might think you’re on a slip road next to the interstate you’re driving on, or think you’re on rather than under an overpass, that sort of thing. The database might be out of date or in error, the data connection to that database might be unreliable…
The California legislative process: First, say something totally reasonable. “People should be able to tell if the products they buy contain poisonous or carcinogenic chemicals, let’s require consumer goods that contain hazardous chemicals to bear a label describing them as such.” Next, do absolutely no research, consult no technicians or engineers, only lawyers and yoga instructors get a say. Once you’ve got all the spelling errors ironed out, have it carved into adamantium so that it’s more permanent than god. Finally, strictly enforce the letter of the law in any way it could be interpreted. Which is why literally every single product that might get sold in California up to and including bottles of mineral water all say THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS CHEMICALS KNOWN IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER on the label, and since literally every manufactured good is labeled as hazardous, consumers have exactly no more information than they used to.
I’m a software engineer with colleagues who work with various localization and short range communication. This is totally technologically feasible. All the “what if it’s not sure” cases just default to the higher limit. It won’t be sufficient for self-driving cars to know how fast to drive, but it will prevent the vast majority of excessive speeding.
The what-ifs are just people either flailing around to not have their speeding curtailed or people who assume half-assed apps from companies that don’t have any reason to care if they’re right are the state of the art. They always come up with absurd reasons why they need to speed or why implementation is impossible whenever any road safety improvement is proposed. It’s a boring and pathological response.
So Uber already does this. Yes, you need to have GPS enabled, but Uber can tell when you’re speeding. Same with insurance companies and their apps. The technology to determine what street you’re on, what the limit is, and how fast you’re going already exists.
Both of those examples are irrelevant to some of us like myself who participates in neither of those. Those are not good excuses to limit anyone’s freedom through legislation.
First, this couple has spent far more money fighting this case in court than it owes in taxes. They are suspiciously well funded.
There is roughly $2.6 trillion dollars in untaxed earnings being held overseas in order to avoid taxation.
US businesses pay taxes on income, but foreign investments used to only be taxed when an asset was sold. This is a massive loophole for international businesses that allowed them to stash earnings indefinitely by moving money from one bank account to another, and only repayriating the money when it would minimize tax liability.
Closing this loophole without a one-time levy would have rewarded corporations engaged in tax avoidance with a $2.6 trillion tax cut.
The Moores did not receive any distributions or payments because they did not want to receive any taxable distributions or payments. That’s the scam, to make it look, on paper, like they aren’t earning anything while their portfolio grows. Meanwhile, they are free to leverage that value in the form of loans.
This is not a fight between the big bad IRS and a mom and pop investor just trying to make ends meet. This is international oligarchs hoarding wealth in tax shelter nations, and if the SCOTUS rules in their favor, it’s going to come out of taxpayer pockets.
That is an excellent writeup, but misses the key argument:
but foreign investments used to only be taxed when an asset was sold
is really just a fancy way of differentiating “realized” income (where an asset was sold for more than you paid to buy it, and you have the profit in hand) vs. Unrealized Income (where an asset is valued at more than what you paid to buy it, but you haven’t sold it yet). It is more of a burden to tax unrealized income, because some unrealized assets aren’t able to be sold easily and applying a tax to those may force those assets to be sold early if the tax is high enough.
So while it creates loopholes where the wealthy can structure their businesses so they take a very low personal income while financing much of their lifestyle from their unrealized assets, there is also an element of fairness in it: imagine the shitshow if you had to pay extra every year if you owned a house outright but the property values kept going up?
The answer is in the plain text of the 16th amendment, though:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Where it gives the Congress power to collect taxes on all incomes, full stop, without regard to whether they are realized or not. Congress does tax unrealized income, after all, such as on estates, they just do it with a large amount of restraint because they know that it’s not always appropriate.
And while normally we can count on this Conservative court to vote in favor of the plain text in the Constitution, I am not so sure on this one. Perhaps the writers of the amendment should have had the forethought to throw a “shall not be infringed” in there, since those are the only words some Conservatives know in the Constitution.
"imagine the shitshow if you had to pay extra every year if you owned a house outright but the property values kept going up"
Like property taxes, then. ;-)
Realistically, I understand the issue. If I had to pay taxes on the increase in price on my house (say from a $300k valuation three years ago to a $500k valuation after the market bubble), I'd be fucked to find 15% of that overnight. Of course, if they allowed that to be offset by the primary residence exemption, it would be a zero cost. Without that, it would still be a non-issue for 95% or more of US taxpayers because most people simply don't own an illiquid asset that increases in capital value (much less an international one), and if you exclude secondary real estate that non-issue number probably increases to more then 99.9%.
My other big question: What about times when the asset doesn’t pay off? Does the US government cut me a check or did I just get taxed on money that never existed in the first place?
YES! And this is the problem with profit based taxes. You should be taxes on what you have (property taxes) and what you receive (gross receipt taxes). The ebb and flow of commerce does vary, but the overall work and wealth is more stable. It also makes taxes harder to dodge as there are no deductions for expenses or other items. My local business tax is this way - I pay a couple percent in fixed assets tax, plus a (I think it's less than a) percent on my gross receipts - take what your paid, multiply it by 0.012, send that amount in. Simple, effective, and relatively consistent. It also, in a very simple way, reflects that government services are not a bonus the town gets when you make a profit but a cost of doing business. My power company charges me whether I make a profit or not, as does my web service, my copier maintenance plan, etc.
So, I paid the government 15% because they thought my underlying asset was worth more than it was actually worth when I actually tried to get the money, then I can only claim and offset $3k per year for the rest of time unless I have a bunch of new capital gains?
I faced this exact scenario. I bought my house in Nov 2019 - right before the giant pandemic price increase. It’s gained $200,000 in value and my property taxes went up by $200/month. Which at my income level is not an absurd burden.
I don’t think we should have owner occupied exemptions on property tax, and I’m happy to pay my share of that tax to keep my city functioning. I DO think we should have burdensome sales/transfer taxes on non-occupying owners.
The property tax was separate, and it happens regardless. The 15% is the long term capital gain rate - if the value of an asset increases (say 300k->500k) I have a 200k gain. I don't pay tax on that 200k until I sell, but if there were an in-process gain tax, I would. So instead of owing taxes on my profit/gain when I sell, I would pay the gain each year (and carry over a loss if the value of the house decreased). Coming up with 30k (200kx15%) would be a tough think to do simply because my neighborhood got popular in the Real Estate market.
Oh sorry, I thought you were talking about current taxes, not a hypothetical future wealth tax. Of course a wealth tax should exempt one primary owner occupied property until sold.
Oh I agree the constitutional question is clear, and I agree that this articular court is compromised and cannot be trusted to objectively uphold the law. I’m worried about the court of public opinion, though. They are making every effort to obfuscate the critical points, and make it sound like this poor couple has to sell their cat to pay for the illegal tax on an investment that didn’t generate income.
imagine the shitshow if you had to pay extra every year if you owned a house outright but the property values kept going up?
You mean property tax? Because almost every state already ups your taxes if your value goes up. In TX they reassess every year. In CA they had to pass a law to STOP doing it (now it only goes up by a flat rate every year if I remember correctly), but that has led to new loopholes to avoid tax.
But I do see your point. For normal people, their main or only asset is their house. They need to live there and aren’t necessarily getting 10% pay raises when their value goes up 20%. If my house were taxed at its current value, I don’t think I could afford to live there since I don’t own it outright.
The big issue is that banks give out very low interest loans based on assets that have unrealized gains. Those loans are used as income by wealthy people but aren’t taxed by the government. They are “taxed” by the banks getting some money in interest, but the government sees none of that and it’s at a much lower rate than capital gains.
Property tax is a different matter entirely, that is an assessment from the local government that is based on the property value, to pay for local services. It has nothing to do with the property as an investment. Local governments don’t have to find themselves through property taxes, but many do.
God we need to simplify the fuck out of taxes, because my first thought was “those are pretty much the same thing” and then my second thought was “no wait, those have a fundamental difference.”
I love legalese. So you’re technically correct. What did you hope to gain by pointing out an error in terminology without qualifying what these assets represent to the owners? That’s like trying to say rich people pay few taxes because their actual listed income is so small, like they have no money, so therefore them paying a pittance in tax relative to the average person is justifiable.
For anyone who doesn’t know, even if these assets aren’t earnings, they can leveraged to do things like get loans. You don’t pay taxes on loans. Loan interest rates are usually far, far less than any tax rate. So you take out a 10 million loan, pay zero tax, and maybe a few percent interest. It’s not income, but you now have 10 mil to spend on whatever you want.
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