Philanthropists are a bigger threat to the rich than pitchfork cannibals ever will be.
What Gates just emphasizes that the likes of Bezos can increase the pay to their employees by an order of magnitude and only delay his transition to trillionaire by about two years. It emphasizes that banks that went insolvent in the financial crisis wouldn't have done so if they'd just foregone year end executive bonuses. That when Richard Branson went to the multiple governments for money to fix safety problems in his business he spent more money in investment real estate that year than he needed to fix the problem.
It even emphasizes that the rich manage to get richer from welfare and stimulus money given to the poor and working class than from corporate hand outs.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
I 100% guarantee you that this won't be the lesson learned here.
Ford demonstrated this a century ago, and was largely ignored. A century before that, Robert Owen did the same in his mills. Both were successful beyond belief in their day, neither really changed things in business in a lasting sense beyond reinforcing that the model works, and being largely ignored by most of capitalism.
It’s amazing how fast Bill Gates has become the new George Soros. All because he got into philanthropy. A lot of people have a huge problem with anyone doing good in the world.
Bill Gates has recently said that he has "known about and been working on the pandemic for years" on television, which has predictable results among people who think Bill Gates is worthy of his myth. Gates has a history of self-aggrandizement in this regard and is a very hateable dude.
Bill Gates didn’t know about the pandemic. Don’t be ridiculous. This is the thread for talking about conspiracies, not believing them.
What he did know is that the world is vulnerable to pandemics. Which is true.
I guess no-one likes a clever-clogs guy. Which is why millions of Americans like Trump so much because he doesn’t threaten their egos by being smarter than them.
Honestly, people were sounding the warning bells about how bad a pandemic in the modern world would be.
When Sars, Swine flu and Bird flu all kinda fizzled out after a lot of media chatter I think people developed an unearned sense of safety.
On time I was working retail and the fire alarms went off. We had no idea why. Orders came over the walkie talkie to treat it seriously and get everyone out. People were asking if they could check out.
It's like the boy who cried wolf, except the boy did actually see a wolf, the villagers just didnt believe him.
People will resist accepting reality even while it's smacking them in the face, especially in retail environments.
When I worked at Circuit City we had a gas leak one day. I'm out front to hand out 'sorry about the inconvenience coupons', talking to a fire fighter next to a giant firetruck. The store is dark, an alarm is audible and there's flashing emergency lights on the truck and on the exterior of the building.
Guy drives by, parks, gets out of his car. Walks up, ignores mygreeting and proffered coupon and is surprised the door won't open.
Tells me to let him in. I continue to explain there's a gas leak and apologize and offer a coupon. He turns back and bangs on the door, peers inside, swears and leaves.
Like he ignored all of his own senses to blunder forward regardless of reality and unleashes his frustration on the people offering information and help.
Terry Pratchett's depiction of how DEATH isn't so much as unseen by people but their perception just edits him out of their minds is sigh an apt anaology for how people operate in reality.
Fireman told him he's a fucking idiot so that was cool at least.
It’s amazing how fast Bill Gates has become the new George Soros. All because he got into philanthropy. A lot of people have a huge problem with anyone doing good in the world.
His charities have a lot of issues with their goals beyond the normal issues I have with every rich person who runs charities. Charities run by rich people allow them to fund things they care about, but managed so that public interest in the issue is focused in the way that they determine it. And it also generates good publicity for them, all while serving as a way to write-off taxes.
Do you know how Bill Gates and literally anyone else rich could do more good than have their charity? It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes, so that we could properly fund public education, end homelessness, end hunger, provide a UBI to people, etc., etc.
People will resist accepting reality even while it's smacking them in the face, especially in retail environments.
When I worked at Circuit City we had a gas leak one day. I'm out front to hand out 'sorry about the inconvenience coupons', talking to a fire fighter next to a giant firetruck. The store is dark, an alarm is audible and there's flashing emergency lights on the truck and on the exterior of the building.
Guy drives by, parks, gets out of his car. Walks up, ignores mygreeting and proffered coupon and is surprised the door won't open.
Tells me to let him in. I continue to explain there's a gas leak and apologize and offer a coupon. He turns back and bangs on the door, peers inside, swears and leaves.
Like he ignored all of his own senses to blunder forward regardless of reality and unleashes his frustration on the people offering information and help.
Terry Pratchett's depiction of how DEATH isn't so much as unseen by people but their perception just edits him out of their minds is sigh an apt anaology for how people operate in reality.
Fireman told him he's a fucking idiot so that was cool at least.
People mocking the "Prometheus school of running away from things" trope have clearly never interacted with human beings.
People will resist accepting reality even while it's smacking them in the face, especially in retail environments.
When I worked at Circuit City we had a gas leak one day. I'm out front to hand out 'sorry about the inconvenience coupons', talking to a fire fighter next to a giant firetruck. The store is dark, an alarm is audible and there's flashing emergency lights on the truck and on the exterior of the building.
Guy drives by, parks, gets out of his car. Walks up, ignores mygreeting and proffered coupon and is surprised the door won't open.
Tells me to let him in. I continue to explain there's a gas leak and apologize and offer a coupon. He turns back and bangs on the door, peers inside, swears and leaves.
Like he ignored all of his own senses to blunder forward regardless of reality and unleashes his frustration on the people offering information and help.
Terry Pratchett's depiction of how DEATH isn't so much as unseen by people but their perception just edits him out of their minds is sigh an apt anaology for how people operate in reality.
Fireman told him he's a fucking idiot so that was cool at least.
The Costco I work at caught fire one day. We're evacuating the building and I tell this lady about the fire and she has to leave. She goes, "Can I check out first?" No, lady the fucking building is on fire, get the fuck out. People are basically oblivious and live their lives on rails.
It’s amazing how fast Bill Gates has become the new George Soros. All because he got into philanthropy. A lot of people have a huge problem with anyone doing good in the world.
His charities have a lot of issues with their goals beyond the normal issues I have with every rich person who runs charities. Charities run by rich people allow them to fund things they care about, but managed so that public interest in the issue is focused in the way that they determine it. And it also generates good publicity for them, all while serving as a way to write-off taxes.
Do you know how Bill Gates and literally anyone else rich could do more good than have their charity? It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes, so that we could properly fund public education, end homelessness, end hunger, provide a UBI to people, etc., etc.
Completely agree. However most of them don’t even do what Gates does. They just hoard it, and leave it to be frittered away over time by their grandchildren.
Do you know how Bill Gates and literally anyone else rich could do more good than have their charity? It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes, so that we could properly fund public education, end homelessness, end hunger, provide a UBI to people, etc., etc.
While I appreciate this sentiment, and I'd be happy to pay more in taxes (I'm fortunate enough to be relatively affluent), if I ever have $BILLGATES I'd rather set up my own charitable fund than distribute that money via taxes.
Why? Because it'll be a cold day in hell before I let the likes of Ted Cruz and Matt Gaetz decide how that money is spent. I'd rather it went towards the causes you note rather than being pissed away in tax breaks for multinationals, military bullshit, and paying the wages/healthcare for a bunch of fuckwits in congress.
I'd rather move that money directly, without any additional layers of bureaucracy.
People will resist accepting reality even while it's smacking them in the face, especially in retail environments.
When I worked at Circuit City we had a gas leak one day. I'm out front to hand out 'sorry about the inconvenience coupons', talking to a fire fighter next to a giant firetruck. The store is dark, an alarm is audible and there's flashing emergency lights on the truck and on the exterior of the building.
Guy drives by, parks, gets out of his car. Walks up, ignores mygreeting and proffered coupon and is surprised the door won't open.
Tells me to let him in. I continue to explain there's a gas leak and apologize and offer a coupon. He turns back and bangs on the door, peers inside, swears and leaves.
Like he ignored all of his own senses to blunder forward regardless of reality and unleashes his frustration on the people offering information and help.
Terry Pratchett's depiction of how DEATH isn't so much as unseen by people but their perception just edits him out of their minds is sigh an apt anaology for how people operate in reality.
Fireman told him he's a fucking idiot so that was cool at least.
The Costco I work at caught fire one day. We're evacuating the building and I tell this lady about the fire and she has to leave. She goes, "Can I check out first?" No, lady the fucking building is on fire, get the fuck out. People are basically oblivious and live their lives on rails.
One of my cousins worked in the rail division of the state rail divisions and part of the job his team did was evaluating rail crossings for safety. As part of that they had to do a review every time there was an accident to make sure the gates and signaling worked properly, there was adequate signage and signaling for the crossing, etc.
He said you would be amazed how many people die from gate-jumping - ie the gate comes down, signals work appropriately, but the car actually evades the physical gate by going in the other lane or off the road, tries to ‘beat’ the train across the crossing, and gets run over by the train.
It’s amazing how fast Bill Gates has become the new George Soros. All because he got into philanthropy. A lot of people have a huge problem with anyone doing good in the world.
His charities have a lot of issues with their goals beyond the normal issues I have with every rich person who runs charities. Charities run by rich people allow them to fund things they care about, but managed so that public interest in the issue is focused in the way that they determine it. And it also generates good publicity for them, all while serving as a way to write-off taxes.
Do you know how Bill Gates and literally anyone else rich could do more good than have their charity? It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes, so that we could properly fund public education, end homelessness, end hunger, provide a UBI to people, etc., etc.
And after causing a mini crash by liquidating 100 billion and the government spends it's one-time extra 0.25% of the usual federal budget on none of those things, what happens next year? It's not like the us is defecit-adverse, it could just shift spending if this was a thing it wanted to do
The 1% have about 25 trillion in wealth - but how are you going to extract that? It's all in stocks and bonds and real estate and loans and the government accepts none of those for payment
Since they hold the lion's share of the wealth already there's nobody other then foreigners to really sell them to at market price either. So you either end up with foreign ownership of everything or (more likely) the government takes the assets directly, but then it has to turn shares into something it can spend to fund all of these things anyway
Now if you only take from the billionaires then thats small enough it can be absorbed, but a one-time injection of 3 trillion (assuming no market crash from the selling frenzy) isn't going to solve your problems when that's just 3 years of your deficit
The point of taxes on billionaires isn't to wipe them out in one go but to put the brakes on their wealth acquisition year-by-year so it doesn't get ridiculous.
Simply stripping wealth isn't the solution, but it sure is satisfying to talk about.
The solution is something closer to Eisenhower-era tax structure, where corporations and wealthy are very heavily taxed, but with robust credits for material investment in their primary business (not just buying entire cities of real estate or burying money in funds), payroll, and the like. The system may have had comical top-bracket tax rates, but it's what allowed the modern mega-rich to come into existence. Today's system of intentionally killing profitable businesses and riding the golden parachute to the next vulture carcass couldn't have existed under it, but also wouldn't have a food source if that system hadn't heavily incentivized high payroll spending and wide expansion.
It's also why boomers have such a twisted concept of every following generation - working at a grocery store under that system literally meant owning a modest house, a spouse that didn't work, and a couple of kids before the kids-and-no-money effect locked in. Whereas now, working at a grocery store means a second job, a spouse working full time, a shithole apartment, and a vasectomy after the first kid because holy shit diapers cost WHAT NOW?
The point of taxes on billionaires isn't to wipe them out in one go but to put the brakes on their wealth acquisition year-by-year so it doesn't get ridiculous.
Not when the post I quoted has "It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes"
Simply stripping wealth isn't the solution, but it sure is satisfying to talk about.
The solution is something closer to Eisenhower-era tax structure, where corporations and wealthy are very heavily taxed, but with robust credits for material investment in their primary business (not just buying entire cities of real estate or burying money in funds), payroll, and the like. The system may have had comical top-bracket tax rates, but it's what allowed the modern mega-rich to come into existence. Today's system of intentionally killing profitable businesses and riding the golden parachute to the next vulture carcass couldn't have existed under it, but also wouldn't have a food source if that system hadn't heavily incentivized high payroll spending and wide expansion.
It's also why boomers have such a twisted concept of every following generation - working at a grocery store under that system literally meant owning a modest house, a spouse that didn't work, and a couple of kids before the kids-and-no-money effect locked in. Whereas now, working at a grocery store means a second job, a spouse working full time, a shithole apartment, and a vasectomy after the first kid because holy shit diapers cost WHAT NOW?
I had an argument with my mother not three weeks ago where she was up in arms over the idea of taxing the wealthy and upping minimum wage, and her entire stance was based around the fact that somebody at full-time minimum wage wasn't starving or homeless... in the 70s. Because that was the last time she worked a paying job, before being a full-time stay-at-home mother. Oh, and that most of the homeless population is mentally ill (obviously she has no stats for this, it's just the same right-wing the GOP has spouted for decades), so increasing minimum wage won't help them anyway.
And this is in full knowledge that three of her five kids have five-digit college debt which, because of how hugely salaries have been depressed for the last 20-30 years, means all three of them will be paying off loans for a long time before they can save money for a house which is also hugely overpriced because of the insane market Boomers created. At the same time, my parents love to whine about how "poor" they were when my father was in the military, yet were able to buy a whole fucking new house within a year or two of him entering the private sector at a "low-paying" company. And the house wasn't just new, they had it built.
I tried to inform her how much earnings versus cost has changed, but she just doesn't want to hear it because it might mean the ideals of her generation are totally fucked up in practice and that you literally can't just "work harder" to be successful if the system is rigged to fuck you endlessly.
The point of taxes on billionaires isn't to wipe them out in one go but to put the brakes on their wealth acquisition year-by-year so it doesn't get ridiculous.
Not when the post I quoted has "It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes"
The top tax bracket during the Eisenhower administration was 91%.
The point of taxes on billionaires isn't to wipe them out in one go but to put the brakes on their wealth acquisition year-by-year so it doesn't get ridiculous.
Not when the post I quoted has "It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes"
The top tax bracket during the Eisenhower administration was 91%.
The point of taxes on billionaires isn't to wipe them out in one go but to put the brakes on their wealth acquisition year-by-year so it doesn't get ridiculous.
Not when the post I quoted has "It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes"
The top tax bracket during the Eisenhower administration was 91%.
That was income tax, not wealth tax.
How we define income is part of the problem with our tax system.
The cost of kids is childcare not diapers. That can easily be as much as rent, especially for two kids under 5.
It's easily more than rent for a single child, if all the parents are planning to work 9-5, in the UK at least. Typical cost is around £800-1000 a month per child.
The cost of kids is childcare not diapers. That can easily be as much as rent, especially for two kids under 5.
It's easily more than rent for a single child, if all the parents are planning to work 9-5, in the UK at least. Typical cost is around £800-1000 a month per child.
Yeah, we were paying $750 / month for M-W-F full day care for our daughter when she was 2-5, and shes in 5th grade now. I have to assume it's only gone up. It matched up almost perfectly with the P&I on our mortgage.
$1200 / month for full time care was pretty typical then if it's an actual licensed place and not some under the table babysitter. Plus extra for early / late or infant care.
The discount for multiple kids is also usually marginal at best. So glad when our kid went to kindergarten.
I dunno how it works in the United States of America but in NZ moving up a tax bracket doesn't mean you make less money. So a 90% tax on people making more than a billion dollars would only impact any money they made past a billion. So if they made 1.1 billion in a year then they'd only get the 90% tax on the .1 billion.
People have a weird idea that once you go up a bracket all of your income is taxed at the higher rate. Which leads to people not wanting promotions on the weird idea that if they were paid more they'd earn less because of the higher tax. But it's just not true.
I dunno how it works in the United States of America but in NZ moving up a tax bracket doesn't mean you make less money. So a 90% tax on people making more than a billion dollars would only impact any money they made past a billion. So if they made 1.1 billion in a year then they'd only get the 90% tax on the .1 billion.
People have a weird idea that once you go up a bracket all of your income is taxed at the higher rate. Which leads to people not wanting promotions on the weird idea that if they were paid more they'd earn less because of the higher tax. But it's just not true.
Oh, the 90% tax bracket would begin a hell of a lot lower than a billion dollars. I would compromise putting it at after something like $100 million, though I'm sure that number sounds incredibly low to some people here, that for some reason will tell me it's horrible we should take so much money from someone who is already earning more money in a year than everyone in their family will earn in their entire lifetime.
I dunno how it works in the United States of America but in NZ moving up a tax bracket doesn't mean you make less money. So a 90% tax on people making more than a billion dollars would only impact any money they made past a billion. So if they made 1.1 billion in a year then they'd only get the 90% tax on the .1 billion.
People have a weird idea that once you go up a bracket all of your income is taxed at the higher rate. Which leads to people not wanting promotions on the weird idea that if they were paid more they'd earn less because of the higher tax. But it's just not true.
Yes, that's how tax brackets in the US work too.
Of course tax law is overly complicated, so there might be corner cases with thresholds of certain tax breaks or subsidies in certain situations cause a jump, but most things won't.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
I dunno how it works in the United States of America but in NZ moving up a tax bracket doesn't mean you make less money. So a 90% tax on people making more than a billion dollars would only impact any money they made past a billion. So if they made 1.1 billion in a year then they'd only get the 90% tax on the .1 billion.
People have a weird idea that once you go up a bracket all of your income is taxed at the higher rate. Which leads to people not wanting promotions on the weird idea that if they were paid more they'd earn less because of the higher tax. But it's just not true.
We have a progressive tax rate in the US. Not progressive enough but it's there. The thing is people often talk about their effective tax rate rather than talking about how their taxes are actually calculated.
If I make $50k a year and the person next to me makes $500k a year we both pay the same tax rate on that first $50k but the other person will look at it as "I paid a higher tax rate than you did!"
Which is accurate overall when looking purely at "what percentage of total income went to taxes" but neatly glosses over "You made $450k more than I did, asshole."
The thing is, our schools don't really teach our kids how income taxes work, so I'd say a majority of the country think it works how it doesn't work (e.g. tax rate is applied to the whole income rather than just the income within the bracket) and react based on that instead of reality.
The thing is, our schools don't really teach our kids how income taxes work, so I'd say a majority of the country think it works how it doesn't work (e.g. tax rate is applied to the whole income rather than just the income within the bracket) and react based on that instead of reality.
Mine did!
I mean it was like a page in our government class but it was there. Though I doubt most people read it because our teacher thought "Government Class" meant memorizing SCOTUS decisions.
The thing is, our schools don't really teach our kids how income taxes work, so I'd say a majority of the country think it works how it doesn't work (e.g. tax rate is applied to the whole income rather than just the income within the bracket) and react based on that instead of reality.
I had an argument with my own father just a few years ago where he insisted to me that he was smart to decline a raise at his work because the raise would have put him in a higher tax bracket, which would result in him actually having less take-home pay. He refused to believe me that that is not how tax brackets work.
That's in a lot of books and used to be on all the talk radio advice shows around tax time - don't take a raise if it puts you just over, donate enough to drop you below the last threshold, etc.
Not by ignorance, poor understanding of tax brackets has lots of political benefits to any party running on tax break code words that really mean more taxes for everyone except billionaires who pay little to zero or even negative.
The thing is, our schools don't really teach our kids how income taxes work, so I'd say a majority of the country think it works how it doesn't work (e.g. tax rate is applied to the whole income rather than just the income within the bracket) and react based on that instead of reality.
I had an argument with my own father just a few years ago where he insisted to me that he was smart to decline a raise at his work because the raise would have put him in a higher tax bracket, which would result in him actually having less take-home pay. He refused to believe me that that is not how tax brackets work.
I was out for lunch with the owner of the company where I work, and he believed the same thing, because when he moved provinces and got a raise his taxes went up.
I didnt want to press the issue and call him an idiot to his face that different provinces have different tax structures.
The point of taxes on billionaires isn't to wipe them out in one go but to put the brakes on their wealth acquisition year-by-year so it doesn't get ridiculous.
Not when the post I quoted has "It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes"
The top tax bracket during the Eisenhower administration was 91%.
That was income tax, not wealth tax.
How we define income is part of the problem with our tax system.
This is true, but still doesn’t mean that wealth and income are the same thing.
The point of taxes on billionaires isn't to wipe them out in one go but to put the brakes on their wealth acquisition year-by-year so it doesn't get ridiculous.
Not when the post I quoted has "It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes"
The top tax bracket during the Eisenhower administration was 91%.
That was income tax, not wealth tax.
How we define income is part of the problem with our tax system.
This is true, but still doesn’t mean that wealth and income are the same thing.
Sure, but also, no one should have a billion dollars.
Bill Gates didn’t know about the pandemic. Don’t be ridiculous. This is the thread for talking about conspiracies, not believing them.
What he did know is that the world is vulnerable to pandemics. Which is true.
I guess no-one likes a clever-clogs guy. Which is why millions of Americans like Trump so much because he doesn’t threaten their egos by being smarter than them.
Bill Gates said a careless, stupid thing that will kill people and you're insulting me for relaying that bit of bad news.
Bill Gates didn’t know about the pandemic. Don’t be ridiculous. This is the thread for talking about conspiracies, not believing them.
What he did know is that the world is vulnerable to pandemics. Which is true.
I guess no-one likes a clever-clogs guy. Which is why millions of Americans like Trump so much because he doesn’t threaten their egos by being smarter than them.
Bill Gates said a careless, stupid thing that will kill people and you're insulting me for relaying that bit of bad news.
Even a billion dollars can’t stop a person from fumbling their words occasionally. Everyone does it sometimes. It wouldn’t be anything if Gates didn’t have a lot of conspiracy theories getting built up about him.
The cost of kids is childcare not diapers. That can easily be as much as rent, especially for two kids under 5.
It's easily more than rent for a single child, if all the parents are planning to work 9-5, in the UK at least. Typical cost is around £800-1000 a month per child.
Yeah, we were paying $750 / month for M-W-F full day care for our daughter when she was 2-5, and shes in 5th grade now. I have to assume it's only gone up. It matched up almost perfectly with the P&I on our mortgage.
$1200 / month for full time care was pretty typical then if it's an actual licensed place and not some under the table babysitter. Plus extra for early / late or infant care.
The discount for multiple kids is also usually marginal at best. So glad when our kid went to kindergarten.
Here in Norway guaranteed maximum price for full-time care 5 days a week is $355 per month for first child, $250 for second, $180 for third and up (converted prices into USD). After that is free schooling and free university.
For comparison, a 2-bedroom apt where I live (3rd largest city) is about $1500/month.
Someone just fucking admit they're doing this goddamn marketing stunt so we can minimize the insane anti-immigrant, anti-government conspiracy theories that are going to pop up about this
My bet is that people will think these things are the source of coronavirus, like the genophage in ME3
Eddy on
"and the morning stars I have seen
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Someone just fucking admit they're doing this goddamn marketing stunt so we can minimize the insane anti-immigrant, anti-government conspiracy theories that are going to pop up about this
My bet is that people will think these things are the source of coronavirus, like the genophage in ME3
Honestly? That would be less dumb than the theory that 5G is the source of the coronavirus.
Total fucking idiots don't need a random hunk of metal in the desert to be total fucking idiots.
Posts
What Gates just emphasizes that the likes of Bezos can increase the pay to their employees by an order of magnitude and only delay his transition to trillionaire by about two years. It emphasizes that banks that went insolvent in the financial crisis wouldn't have done so if they'd just foregone year end executive bonuses. That when Richard Branson went to the multiple governments for money to fix safety problems in his business he spent more money in investment real estate that year than he needed to fix the problem.
It even emphasizes that the rich manage to get richer from welfare and stimulus money given to the poor and working class than from corporate hand outs.
Ford demonstrated this a century ago, and was largely ignored. A century before that, Robert Owen did the same in his mills. Both were successful beyond belief in their day, neither really changed things in business in a lasting sense beyond reinforcing that the model works, and being largely ignored by most of capitalism.
Bill Gates has recently said that he has "known about and been working on the pandemic for years" on television, which has predictable results among people who think Bill Gates is worthy of his myth. Gates has a history of self-aggrandizement in this regard and is a very hateable dude.
What he did know is that the world is vulnerable to pandemics. Which is true.
I guess no-one likes a clever-clogs guy. Which is why millions of Americans like Trump so much because he doesn’t threaten their egos by being smarter than them.
When Sars, Swine flu and Bird flu all kinda fizzled out after a lot of media chatter I think people developed an unearned sense of safety.
On time I was working retail and the fire alarms went off. We had no idea why. Orders came over the walkie talkie to treat it seriously and get everyone out. People were asking if they could check out.
It's like the boy who cried wolf, except the boy did actually see a wolf, the villagers just didnt believe him.
When I worked at Circuit City we had a gas leak one day. I'm out front to hand out 'sorry about the inconvenience coupons', talking to a fire fighter next to a giant firetruck. The store is dark, an alarm is audible and there's flashing emergency lights on the truck and on the exterior of the building.
Guy drives by, parks, gets out of his car. Walks up, ignores mygreeting and proffered coupon and is surprised the door won't open.
Tells me to let him in. I continue to explain there's a gas leak and apologize and offer a coupon. He turns back and bangs on the door, peers inside, swears and leaves.
Like he ignored all of his own senses to blunder forward regardless of reality and unleashes his frustration on the people offering information and help.
Terry Pratchett's depiction of how DEATH isn't so much as unseen by people but their perception just edits him out of their minds is sigh an apt anaology for how people operate in reality.
Fireman told him he's a fucking idiot so that was cool at least.
His charities have a lot of issues with their goals beyond the normal issues I have with every rich person who runs charities. Charities run by rich people allow them to fund things they care about, but managed so that public interest in the issue is focused in the way that they determine it. And it also generates good publicity for them, all while serving as a way to write-off taxes.
Do you know how Bill Gates and literally anyone else rich could do more good than have their charity? It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes, so that we could properly fund public education, end homelessness, end hunger, provide a UBI to people, etc., etc.
People mocking the "Prometheus school of running away from things" trope have clearly never interacted with human beings.
The Costco I work at caught fire one day. We're evacuating the building and I tell this lady about the fire and she has to leave. She goes, "Can I check out first?" No, lady the fucking building is on fire, get the fuck out. People are basically oblivious and live their lives on rails.
Completely agree. However most of them don’t even do what Gates does. They just hoard it, and leave it to be frittered away over time by their grandchildren.
While I appreciate this sentiment, and I'd be happy to pay more in taxes (I'm fortunate enough to be relatively affluent), if I ever have $BILLGATES I'd rather set up my own charitable fund than distribute that money via taxes.
Why? Because it'll be a cold day in hell before I let the likes of Ted Cruz and Matt Gaetz decide how that money is spent. I'd rather it went towards the causes you note rather than being pissed away in tax breaks for multinationals, military bullshit, and paying the wages/healthcare for a bunch of fuckwits in congress.
I'd rather move that money directly, without any additional layers of bureaucracy.
One of my cousins worked in the rail division of the state rail divisions and part of the job his team did was evaluating rail crossings for safety. As part of that they had to do a review every time there was an accident to make sure the gates and signaling worked properly, there was adequate signage and signaling for the crossing, etc.
He said you would be amazed how many people die from gate-jumping - ie the gate comes down, signals work appropriately, but the car actually evades the physical gate by going in the other lane or off the road, tries to ‘beat’ the train across the crossing, and gets run over by the train.
And after causing a mini crash by liquidating 100 billion and the government spends it's one-time extra 0.25% of the usual federal budget on none of those things, what happens next year? It's not like the us is defecit-adverse, it could just shift spending if this was a thing it wanted to do
The 1% have about 25 trillion in wealth - but how are you going to extract that? It's all in stocks and bonds and real estate and loans and the government accepts none of those for payment
Since they hold the lion's share of the wealth already there's nobody other then foreigners to really sell them to at market price either. So you either end up with foreign ownership of everything or (more likely) the government takes the assets directly, but then it has to turn shares into something it can spend to fund all of these things anyway
Now if you only take from the billionaires then thats small enough it can be absorbed, but a one-time injection of 3 trillion (assuming no market crash from the selling frenzy) isn't going to solve your problems when that's just 3 years of your deficit
The solution is something closer to Eisenhower-era tax structure, where corporations and wealthy are very heavily taxed, but with robust credits for material investment in their primary business (not just buying entire cities of real estate or burying money in funds), payroll, and the like. The system may have had comical top-bracket tax rates, but it's what allowed the modern mega-rich to come into existence. Today's system of intentionally killing profitable businesses and riding the golden parachute to the next vulture carcass couldn't have existed under it, but also wouldn't have a food source if that system hadn't heavily incentivized high payroll spending and wide expansion.
It's also why boomers have such a twisted concept of every following generation - working at a grocery store under that system literally meant owning a modest house, a spouse that didn't work, and a couple of kids before the kids-and-no-money effect locked in. Whereas now, working at a grocery store means a second job, a spouse working full time, a shithole apartment, and a vasectomy after the first kid because holy shit diapers cost WHAT NOW?
Not when the post I quoted has "It would be to pay 90%+ of their wealth in taxes"
I had an argument with my mother not three weeks ago where she was up in arms over the idea of taxing the wealthy and upping minimum wage, and her entire stance was based around the fact that somebody at full-time minimum wage wasn't starving or homeless... in the 70s. Because that was the last time she worked a paying job, before being a full-time stay-at-home mother. Oh, and that most of the homeless population is mentally ill (obviously she has no stats for this, it's just the same right-wing the GOP has spouted for decades), so increasing minimum wage won't help them anyway.
And this is in full knowledge that three of her five kids have five-digit college debt which, because of how hugely salaries have been depressed for the last 20-30 years, means all three of them will be paying off loans for a long time before they can save money for a house which is also hugely overpriced because of the insane market Boomers created. At the same time, my parents love to whine about how "poor" they were when my father was in the military, yet were able to buy a whole fucking new house within a year or two of him entering the private sector at a "low-paying" company. And the house wasn't just new, they had it built.
I tried to inform her how much earnings versus cost has changed, but she just doesn't want to hear it because it might mean the ideals of her generation are totally fucked up in practice and that you literally can't just "work harder" to be successful if the system is rigged to fuck you endlessly.
The top tax bracket during the Eisenhower administration was 91%.
That was income tax, not wealth tax.
How we define income is part of the problem with our tax system.
It's easily more than rent for a single child, if all the parents are planning to work 9-5, in the UK at least. Typical cost is around £800-1000 a month per child.
Yeah, we were paying $750 / month for M-W-F full day care for our daughter when she was 2-5, and shes in 5th grade now. I have to assume it's only gone up. It matched up almost perfectly with the P&I on our mortgage.
$1200 / month for full time care was pretty typical then if it's an actual licensed place and not some under the table babysitter. Plus extra for early / late or infant care.
The discount for multiple kids is also usually marginal at best. So glad when our kid went to kindergarten.
People have a weird idea that once you go up a bracket all of your income is taxed at the higher rate. Which leads to people not wanting promotions on the weird idea that if they were paid more they'd earn less because of the higher tax. But it's just not true.
Oh, the 90% tax bracket would begin a hell of a lot lower than a billion dollars. I would compromise putting it at after something like $100 million, though I'm sure that number sounds incredibly low to some people here, that for some reason will tell me it's horrible we should take so much money from someone who is already earning more money in a year than everyone in their family will earn in their entire lifetime.
Yes, that's how tax brackets in the US work too.
Of course tax law is overly complicated, so there might be corner cases with thresholds of certain tax breaks or subsidies in certain situations cause a jump, but most things won't.
We have a progressive tax rate in the US. Not progressive enough but it's there. The thing is people often talk about their effective tax rate rather than talking about how their taxes are actually calculated.
If I make $50k a year and the person next to me makes $500k a year we both pay the same tax rate on that first $50k but the other person will look at it as "I paid a higher tax rate than you did!"
Which is accurate overall when looking purely at "what percentage of total income went to taxes" but neatly glosses over "You made $450k more than I did, asshole."
Mine did!
I mean it was like a page in our government class but it was there. Though I doubt most people read it because our teacher thought "Government Class" meant memorizing SCOTUS decisions.
I had an argument with my own father just a few years ago where he insisted to me that he was smart to decline a raise at his work because the raise would have put him in a higher tax bracket, which would result in him actually having less take-home pay. He refused to believe me that that is not how tax brackets work.
Not by ignorance, poor understanding of tax brackets has lots of political benefits to any party running on tax break code words that really mean more taxes for everyone except billionaires who pay little to zero or even negative.
I was out for lunch with the owner of the company where I work, and he believed the same thing, because when he moved provinces and got a raise his taxes went up.
I didnt want to press the issue and call him an idiot to his face that different provinces have different tax structures.
MWO: Adamski
This is true, but still doesn’t mean that wealth and income are the same thing.
MWO: Adamski
Sure, but also, no one should have a billion dollars.
Bill Gates said a careless, stupid thing that will kill people and you're insulting me for relaying that bit of bad news.
Even a billion dollars can’t stop a person from fumbling their words occasionally. Everyone does it sometimes. It wouldn’t be anything if Gates didn’t have a lot of conspiracy theories getting built up about him.
Here in Norway guaranteed maximum price for full-time care 5 days a week is $355 per month for first child, $250 for second, $180 for third and up (converted prices into USD). After that is free schooling and free university.
For comparison, a 2-bedroom apt where I live (3rd largest city) is about $1500/month.
Oh, wait, no, some scrappers just stole it. (Click through for the written account).
My bet is that people will think these things are the source of coronavirus, like the genophage in ME3
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Honestly? That would be less dumb than the theory that 5G is the source of the coronavirus.
Total fucking idiots don't need a random hunk of metal in the desert to be total fucking idiots.