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Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

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Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#481

Post by aianus »

woofcat wrote: post #430
aianus wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HK raises practically all of its revenue from land and (until China started screwing it up) it was one of the richest, most developed places on Earth.

Okay and? My point is that to collect property tax it's easier for the Government and Income tax is harder for the Government. It requires more reporting... It has nothing to do with the value extracted.

My point is you don't need income tax at all to maintain a developed society as demonstrated in HK, Washington State, etc.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#482

Post by aianus »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #352
aianus wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HK raises practically all of its revenue from land and (until China started screwing it up) it was one of the richest, most developed places on Earth.

>HK raises practically all of its revenue from land I don't know what you mean. Hong Kong is a trading port, and any wealth it "creates" is done by refining imported materials. This option is only available someplace lots of trade naturally occurs, like Hong Kong's river basin.

I mean the government raises its tax revenue almost exclusively by leasing land and taxing real estate transactions instead of taxing income like we do in the West.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#483

Post by jjeaff »

anigbrowl wrote: post #234
jjeaff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hindsight, it's obvious that an interview like that should have been aired. But it makes total sense not to air something so inflammatory back then with corroborating evidence. It would have sounded pretty outlandish. A girl says she was made a sex slave by a guy named Epstein that didn't really have a public profile and she was forced to sleep with the prince of Wales. As a journalist, you need impeccible source…

Sadly it is not that outlandish. The Duke of York (not Prince of Wales) was famous int eh 1980s for his louche lifestyle and there has been a veritable string of scandals revealing numerous highly respected public figures in the UK to have sordid lives of criminal abuse away from the public gaze over the last 20 years. Of course it would be a tricky story for any journalist, editor, or publisher to handle, not least…

That's not as outlandish as it could be, correct? That is unusual, but would you say outlandish? Perhaps irregular, but not 'outlandish'...

I also couldn't help myself. If you haven't been following the impeachment hearings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sezBhcnSxI0

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#484

Post by jjeaff »

darrenf wrote: post #24
jjeaff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hindsight, it's obvious that an interview like that should have been aired. But it makes total sense not to air something so inflammatory back then with corroborating evidence. It would have sounded pretty outlandish. A girl says she was made a sex slave by a guy named Epstein that didn't really have a public profile and she was forced to sleep with the prince of Wales. As a journalist, you need impeccible source…

> prince of Wales Andrew is the Duke of York, not Prince of Wales - that's Charles.

I stand corrected. Don't even know the difference. I think every time I hear 'prince' for English royalty, I just automatically think "Prince of Wales.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#485

Post by thephyber »

appleshore wrote: post #199
bouncycastle wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> place to store anonymously your illicit cash What if I just want a place to anonymously store my legally gained cash? Unfortunately, it seems the normal people lost their privacy nowadays at the expense of the criminals and the "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" argument has taken a stronghold in the financial sector.

I live next to a bank who paid an $8.9 billion fine for money laundering. Another bank, Italy’s largest, laundered money for 10-years for Iran, Cuba and Libya in the United States. They paid a $1.3 billion fine, pled to conspiracy and received deferred prosecution. One of the executives in that bank is the older brother to a star witness in the Presidential impeachment inquiry. Yet no one really cares about crimes co…

> Yet no one really cares about crimes committed by corporations.

Lots of people do. They just don't happen to have the evidence to put those corporations in jail. The presumption of innocence is a valuable principle, but it cuts both ways. It defends you as much as it does corporations (who have A TON more resources to prevent/ mitigate a prosecution).

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#486

Post by windexh8er »

milesskorpen wrote: post #257
windexh8er wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article South Dakota is a great choice. It's a fantastic read on the history of how these states to harbor cash came to be. This part of the article sums it up in a very compelling manner: "Here is an example from one academic paper on South Dakotan trusts: after 200 years, $1m placed in trust and growing tax-free at an annual rate of 6% will have become $136bn. After 300 years, it will have grown to…

That example is a bit ridiculous. Yes, compounding is powerful. But there’s also inflation, and a single passively invested $1mm is never going to own the entire economy (if nothing else, returns would be distorted by scale). That said ... this is the premise of some entertaining science fiction.

First it's factual. By qualifying it as "ridiculous" serves what purpose exactly? The point is that $1MM is used as an example and you could swap that amount with $50MM, $100MM to showcase greater gains in exponentially less time. That is the point the article is making overall. No billionaire is going to harbor $1MM in a trust with the intent to have some heir pull it out in 200 years. But the people with those means can leverage the same monetary vehicle to do the same thing in much shorter time frames with higher initial investment.

> That said ... this is the premise of some entertaining science fiction.

Or not. None of it it fictional. Feel free to clarify what you mean, but the only thing fictional is the entirety of your comment.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#487

Post by feanaro »

shakna wrote: post #479
feanaro wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never implied taxing on trust alone , I'm simply arguing against total financial surveillance. Taxing in the mid-20th century did not rely on trust alone and it was a nice mix of trust and manual investigation in suspicious cases. I think such a mix is optimal for a predominant number of human activities and total surveillance should (almost?) never be reached for. You can apply the same style of reasoning to end-t…

> How else do you propose taxation is assured? Blind trust? > Sure, why not? It has worked for many years before. Taxing on trust alone is exactly where this little thread started.

I know, but based on context, I estimated that quip to be somewhat reactionary. The alternative is obviously not to leave out any kind of enforcement. The alternative is to go back to the kind of enforcement that was used and worked fine several decades ago.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#488

Post by harambaebae69 »

ajross wrote: post #458
harambaebae69 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Also, governments are finding new and creative ways to put new taxes on already legal money. In addition to the soft tax of excessive inflation mentioned by the other poster, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have proposed wealth taxes. https://www.businessinsider.com/wealth-tax-definition-explai... You can agree with that or not morally, but it is by definition a tax on already legal (and taxed during income) m…

We already have estate and property taxation, though. It's not like wealth taxes don't exist, they're just levied at specific times or on specific kinds of assets.

True. Typically property taxes are to fund things at a local level though, and not sent back to the federal government for massive programs.

My biggest issue with a wealth tax on the super-wealthy is that it would quickly morph into a wealth tax on everyone above lower-middle class.

Old article but the numbers have scaled proportionately...

"If the IRS grabbed 100 percent of income over $1 million, the take would be just $616 billion. That’s only a third of this year’s deficit. Our national debt would continue to explode." [0]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/danbigman/2012/04/03/john-stoss...

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#489

Post by ajross »

harambaebae69 wrote: post #488
ajross wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have estate and property taxation, though. It's not like wealth taxes don't exist, they're just levied at specific times or on specific kinds of assets.

True. Typically property taxes are to fund things at a local level though, and not sent back to the federal government for massive programs. My biggest issue with a wealth tax on the super-wealthy is that it would quickly morph into a wealth tax on everyone above lower-middle class. Old article but the numbers have scaled proportionately... "If the IRS grabbed 100 percent of income over $1 million, the take would be…

Uh... your point is about a wealth tax but your facts are about income taxation. In fact, there isn't a whole lot of net "income" reported by the very wealthy, because most of what they make is sheltered investments of various forms. Yet , they have a very large chunk of the total assets owned (like 30% of the country is billionaire assets!), completely disproportionate to the fraction they pay in tax.

Addressing that discontinuity is exactly what a wealth tax is about. I'm not completely sold on it myself (they're very hard to administer and a giant moral hazard), but don't allow yourself to be fooled into thinking it's a dumb or discredited idea. There's a real problem, and wealth taxes represent a real, if imperfect, solution.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#490

Post by boomboomsubban »

aianus wrote: post #482
boomboomsubban wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>HK raises practically all of its revenue from land I don't know what you mean. Hong Kong is a trading port, and any wealth it "creates" is done by refining imported materials. This option is only available someplace lots of trade naturally occurs, like Hong Kong's river basin.

I mean the government raises its tax revenue almost exclusively by leasing land and taxing real estate transactions instead of taxing income like we do in the West.

This system isn't very exportable, I can't imagine the nationalization of land being a popular move no matter how low you promised to make income tax.
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