Readit NewsNot really helping in the big picture, here, guys.
Your pearl clutching about government waste seemed weird to me until I read your links. Manhattan Institute? You're citing positions from right-wing think tanks after Project 2025?
Unless you need guidance for how to kidnap gardeners or stop women from voting, anything coming these organizations is dangerously ridiculous.
What an excellent demonstration of shutting off factual information to support your own biases.
- You know nothing about the CA housing market vs income and income tax, or my personal situation, but you simply assume I'm lying.
- You're intentionally sticking your head in the sand because you think the paper is from a "right wing think tank" - regardless of the fact that an extremely well-respected fiscally liberal podcast, Freakonomics, supported the findings.
- You're somehow asserting that because I find the findings in an economic paper compelling, I must support the erosion of civil liberties, in an attempt to reduce my argument to the absurd and insult my character.
It shocks me that people can engage in discussions so simplistically and maliciously. HN has deteriorated so much because of comments like yours. Please just refrain from participating entirely if you're going to yell into the void and then not engage in good faith. Reddit is that way.
Relative to the topic of this thread, providing access to LLMs at a loss would not be at the top of my list of ways to right moral wrongs either. But more broadly, taxing the rich costs nothing, unless one believes that Reagan economic theory is backed by actual empirical evidence. Some actions in civic life are done for symbolic reasons. People doff their hats and apply their right hand to their precordium for symbolic reasons. We can progressively tax all to symbolize something about economic fairness and opposition to the winner-take-all ethos.
It does though.
1. As one of "the rich" that progressives target continuously, I still can't afford a house in CA. I'm moving to Washington and CA will lose many median Californians' worth of income.
2. Nearly every EU country that attempted wealth taxes (another form of "taxing the rich") recalled them due to capital flight that offset the tax income.
3. California has passed the peak of its Laffer curve, where higher taxes don't provide higher returns due to capital flight. https://www.ipi.org/ipi_issues/detail/californias-laffer-cur...
4. I personally don't feel the value in working harder or smarter to earn more, because the marginal returns are so low due to taxes. Discouraging innovation is not good for the country.
> We can progressively tax all to symbolize something about economic fairness
Despite the common memes the US has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. https://manhattan.institute/article/correcting-the-top-10-ta...
Anyways, "taxing the rich" simply doesn't get us there:
1. You could liquidate every billionaire, including all their assets, and you wouldn't fund the government for 9 months.
2. The rest of us that progressives consider "rich" are W-2s that already pay a fuckton in taxes. If you look at the sources above, this is explained clearly.
3. Contrary to the meme, the biggest objective gap in tax income is not on the rich but on our middle class, which does not pay its fair share wrt our EU counterparts (explaining the gap necessary to fund the desired social services, which taxing the rich would not cover due to its comparatively small size). 40% of Americans pay no federal income tax! https://freakonomics.com/podcast/ten-myths-about-the-u-s-tax...
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Finally, at the core of your assumption is the idea that more taxes help. As someone that has worked in both government-funded labs and government contracting, I can promise you they don't. The sheer wastage is mind boggling, honestly sickening. It makes the our tech mega corps look tiny. I used to have a progressive view on taxation until I saw the infinite money black hole that was government spending.
Anyone that phrases a referendum like that ought to be sentenced to hard labor themselves for attempting to subvert democracy.
Given that there are two payment processors that have about 90% global market share (excluding China) and your bank chooses the payment processor for the most part, yes we should regulate them and force them to process payment for any legal business.
They have the ability to effectively determine what we can spend our money on when we can’t get cash to the vendor in person, and almost every alternative processor has to deal with them and is also subject to their rules.
The only way around this is via informal networks. Cryptocurrency isn’t an option for many as it’s very hard to obtain, due to the duopoly coercing banks and governments to keep people on their systems.
I don’t live in the US, and where I live has a local electronic non-credit card payment system which has been around since the 80s. It’s less popular now because only the card networks support contactless payments instead of swipe/chip and pin. All the systems support contactless use, but banks won’t enable it because it has no interchange fees.
There is actually a bipartisan bill proposing precisely that: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/987
Because other companies have ethics and follow the rules and best practices. They register their clinical trials with the NIH and they stop and ask questions if half the monkeys they test on end up dead.