No One Goes There Anymore

There’s nothing selective about my data. I gave the top line numbers—Biden’s proposal to eliminate the preferential capital gains rate on people with more than $1 million a year in income would raise only $50 billion annually. Cook’s bonus is just an illustration of why that number is so low—even very wealthy people make most of their money through ordinary income. Capital gains amounts to just 5% of all income.

Most economists agree that capital gains should be taxed lower than ordinary income, which is why most developed countries including social democracies have preferential capital gains rates.

And again, why do you care about the taxation of the super wealthy so much? Even if we taxed capital gains at the level of Denmark (9 points more than California) would raise less than $70 billion a year. Even Warren’s completely bonkers wealth tax (which would have had a top rate four times higher than Sweden did before it got rid of the wealth tax) would have raised only 10% of what Warren was proposing in new spending. Why spend so much time talking about a potential source of revenue that would do so little to actually increase the government’s ability to provide social services—even if we taxed the wealthy far in excess of European countries?

It’s as massive effort in deception. People don’t want to put their money where their mouths are. They want Medicare for All—but only if someone else pays for it. If proponents of these social were forthright in asserting that wealth taxes or whatever would only pay for 10%, and European-style taxes on the middle class would be required to pick up the rest of the tab, support for these proposals would evaporate: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/millennials-soc...

> When tax rates are not explicit, millennials say they’d prefer larger government offering more services (54 percent) to smaller government offering fewer services (43 percent). However when larger government offering more services is described as requiring high taxes, support flips and 57 percent of millennials opt for smaller government with fewer services and low taxes, while 41 percent prefer large government.

For what it’s worth, I’m pro paying higher taxes. I’d be happy to pay what people in Germany pay at my tax bracket. But only if middle class taxes also go up. Otherwise, there is no point—we won’t be able to tackle the big ticket items like universal healthcare without the trillions in revenue we could raise through a 10% VAT, a 10% payroll tax, etc.

Real Talk:

no one is trying to kill you for profit. They just don't care about you because you're can't make money for them. It's still bad, but different.

You meet a lot of skeptics because no matter how honest or correct you are, without access to a large test population and a way to precisely measure your dozens of tiny ideas that add up to a healthier overall life, it's impossible for an outside observer to distinguish you from quacks like Gwyneth Paltrow.

Also, being upfront about your suffering makes people uncomfortable and avoidant. Not your fault, but that's life.

You have a lot of disappointment with HN, largely because you see all these rich people who like talking to you but won't invest in you.

My advice: take a lesson from them. Put on a fake happy face, rewrite your narrative so that your pain is in your past, copy the obnoxious marketing techniques that smell foul but work.

You're in a "line" where everyone thinks you are bullshitting. If you can't beat it, join it. Run your effort the same way the dishonest snake oil salesmen do, and use your own conscience to tell you you are doing good. Make a little money selling whatever to health fad chasers, and put that money to good use as you see fit. Answer to no one but your conscience, but behaving in the way "polite society" demands, not because they are right, but because that's how you'll get paid attention and money.

If I had cancer in the US a $65k bill really isn’t bad. Consider in the US taxes are typically In Germany (if I recall) it’s closer to 50% taxes so $50k a year.

Presumably you can expect cancer once or less, but effectively you only need ~4 years of income to make up for that $65k bill in the US. Not bad at all. Obviously that differs based on income, but you can a see how (for many people in the US) the system works great

Total income-related taxes+health insurance in California are IIRC similar or higher than Germany. Also in either case the taxes on $100k/year are way less than 50%.

EDIT from what I can tell from very quick googling total taxes on $100k in California would be ~29% (not including health insurance) where as in Germany they would be ~34% (on $100k = ~€92k, including health insurance).

So I guess whatever's better in that example depends on if you think German health insurance is worth 5% of your income. Your $500/m amount to 6% of income so similar to Germany either way.

Keep in mind this is for single & childless, and Germany has outrageously generous tax breaks for having children as well as being married when one spouse earns a lot less than the other.

Overall I agree, but I am pointing out how numbers are framed is really important. For example this puts Defense spending at 1T and heathcare at 1.7T, while leaving out several categories of both. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2020USbn_...

I am not saying any specific number is correct, but that 1T figure excludes military pensions and heath care excludes related research spending. Neither includes any debt payments from past spending or projections of future obligations. In the end it is actually possible to construct a number for each where federal defense spending is greater than federal healthcare spending, but again I don’t agree with such categorizations.

PS: This gets back to the oldest trick in “cutting“ spending, define a portion as something else. Similarly, define a category of taxes as “income taxes“ so you can exclude payroll taxes when talking about them.