Anthony Bourdain on not having debt • Hacker News Board

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#141

Post by someguydave » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:19 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #132

vacri wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that people would spend as much on charity as they do on taxes is one of the most clearly bunkum libertarian fantasies out there. Private charities come nowhere near modern government levels of welfare, and never have (that's why we have modern levels of welfare).

I think the idea is that the amount of money being spent by the government to try to solve society's woes is absurdly high and kept artificially high by turning charity into entitlements.

And the "charity" government gives out also crowds out private charity.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#142

Post by thebooktocome » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:20 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #133

callmeal wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they are[1]. And if you want to consider things like roads, railways and other infrastructure -- think about how almost every private institution that built that infrastructure went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the taxpayers. A lot of the "government is inefficient" talk comes from people who want all regulation to go away for their own benefit. A little searching will also show you a long list of pr…

Nobody ever argues that roads, railroads, and highways are an unfair tax burden. It's such a ridiculous straw man. The beef that most Libertarians have with government spending is with entitlement programs.

Sandy Rios, of American Family Radio, has indeed argued in the past that the Interstate Highway System was and is a waste of taxpayer dollars.

So no, it's not a straw man. Some conservatives really do believe this.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#143

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:20 PM UTC

patrickaljord wrote: post #103

coderjames wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about this recently when I filed my taxes. Maybe if they provided some kind of itemized receipt? "You paid $x in taxes. This was distributed as $y to infrastructure, $z to education, $w to defense" etc.

Your tax dollar don't pay for $y, $z or $w. You pay for the national debt mostly at this point. The government overspends and gets its money either from debt or from over printing. Even if top 10 of fortune 500 paid 100% taxes, it would still not cover spending. Just saying.

Interest on the national debt is a small portion of the US budget:

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

Even if you just look at discretionary spending, debt payments are not a large portion of spending.

New borrowing is also larger than the interest payments.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#144

Post by theOnliest » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:20 PM UTC

coderjames wrote: post #102

taurath wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government needs better PR frankly, instead of allowing itself to be a punching bag all day. Nobody can even imagine how many things the government and your tax dollars provide.

I was thinking about this recently when I filed my taxes. Maybe if they provided some kind of itemized receipt? "You paid $x in taxes. This was distributed as $y to infrastructure, $z to education, $w to defense" etc.

My local taxes (county) do this. Whenever you pay property (house, car) taxes, it tells you $x goes to the county schools, $y to roads, and so on. (Usually including something like $0.67 to the county library!) It's really nice...sure, paying tax on my car every year isn't great, but I'm happy to give $150 (or whatever it is) to the public schools.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#145

Post by someguydave » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:23 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #93

shostack wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there's the flip side of using credit cards to get a 1%+ discount on things and paying it off in full. If you have the cash and discipline, debt can be used for very low risk benefit.

And CC companies bank on the fact that if even a small percentage of people aren't able to pay it off in full they'll get their "rewards" back in full within a single period of interest.

no they make 1-5% of every swipe

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#146

Post by freeflight » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:23 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #21

vinhboy wrote: post #17

> Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind. How refreshing. I agree with him. Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school.

Not sure if you're living in the US, but I do and I have the exact opposite viewpoint. The amount of waste, corruption and poor planning by the gov't makes me feel like I'm throwing money away. I'd rather give it a charity since then I'd know a majority of it had an impact. I think if the gov't was a bit more efficient and could be shown to be good stewards of money I'd probably hate paying taxes a lot less.

>I'd rather give it a charity since then I'd know a majority of it had an impact.

A few years ago, I wish I still had the link, I read an article detailing exactly that topic and the gist of it pretty much boiled down to: What the US lacks in "welfare state" it makes up trough donations to charities by private citizens, one of the major differences between Europe and the US.

As nice as that might sound, it's also an incentive for the government to keep on cutting spending on social welfare as it assumes the private donations to charities are gonna make up for the difference.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#147

Post by freeflight » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:27 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #137

edanm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right but I'm not sure what you prevented is any kind of proof that charity couldn't provide those needs. It's just that in most cases, governments effectively have a monopoly on providing these kinds of services, making charity either redundant, or legally unable to provide said services.

One big advantage that charities have and that helps them be much more efficient is that they can pick and choose who they help. If a group or problem is too hard or too expensive or not 'sexy' enough to deal with efficiently they can just ignore them. Governments can't do that.

How is that an "advantage"? It's basically leaving those behind that would need help the most, while it might be an advantage from an "efficiency point of view", it's not really an advantage in the bigger context of how to have a healthy and able population.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#148

Post by popularrecluse » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:30 PM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #124

> I didn’t put anything aside, ever. Money came in, money went out. I was always a paycheck behind, at least. I usually owed my chef my paycheck: again, cocaine. Like I said, until I was 44, I never even had a savings account. Anyone who has ever spent any of their money on class 'A' drugs is not in any position to dispense any type of wise financial advice.

But wisdom usually comes from experience.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#149

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:31 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #137

edanm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right but I'm not sure what you prevented is any kind of proof that charity couldn't provide those needs. It's just that in most cases, governments effectively have a monopoly on providing these kinds of services, making charity either redundant, or legally unable to provide said services.

One big advantage that charities have and that helps them be much more efficient is that they can pick and choose who they help. If a group or problem is too hard or too expensive or not 'sexy' enough to deal with efficiently they can just ignore them. Governments can't do that.

Governments can't do that.

Governments do that all the time. Look at the shitty schools we in USA force poor black kids to attend. It's easy to be confused by all the demonization and expectation-lowering we get from the media, if one pays attention to that shit. The end result is the same: if we changed public education at all, we might possibly inconvenience some suburbanites, therefore it's most efficient to just screw minorities and the poor as we have for decades.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#150

Post by dagw » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 1:31 PM UTC

freeflight wrote: post #147

dagw wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big advantage that charities have and that helps them be much more efficient is that they can pick and choose who they help. If a group or problem is too hard or too expensive or not 'sexy' enough to deal with efficiently they can just ignore them. Governments can't do that.

How is that an "advantage"? It's basically leaving those behind that would need help the most, while it might be an advantage from an "efficiency point of view", it's not really an advantage in the bigger context of how to have a healthy and able population.

That's exactly what I meant. It's a lot easier to be a charity because you can ignore all the hard problems. That's why they look so much better than governments when you look at things like efficiency metrics.