851–860 of 875 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Level one sounds suspiciously close to actually paying taxes and let the social net built on it work its magic. Now come on, downvote me to hell.
Similar effect, perhaps, but different cause. Taxes aren't voluntary. You don't choose how much you owe. Not all taxes go towards improving people's lives- in the US, many safety nets only kick in once you are impoverished, and can disincentivise work. As an example, the recent coronavirus add-on payments to unemployment often meant people at the lowest levels of opportunity would make more by staying home than if th…
Considering how low the Coronavirus add-on payments are, doesn't your point really mean that those at the bottom of the scale, where minimum rates have barely budged in the US - are vastly underpaid on a normal basis?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth. Is there something virtuous about hoarding wealth?
IMO: There's something virtuous about living beneath your means and ensuring that you can be self-sufficient in your retirement. There's something virtuous about living beneath your means and ensuring that, at a minimum, you are not a burden to your family, but that ideally you provide them support rather than siphoning support from them. In order to do that, it's almost a given that you will die with money left over…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only thing enforcing private property is the threat of violence if you violate someone else's property. This enforcement can come via a socialized system like government and this is preferable. But you are delusional to think the truly rich need to rely on government. Without 'society' you get survival of the richest and most violent instead of just wealth inequality
Wouldn't the rich not be rich anymore without a government giving their money value?
> “ Where did $8 billion go? Feeney gave $3.7 billion to education, including nearly $1 billion to his alma mater, Cornell, which he attended on the G.I. Bill. More than $870 million went to human rights and social change, like $62 million in grants to abolish the death penalty in the U.S. and $76 million for grassroots campaigns supporting the passage of Obamacare. He gave more than $700 million in gifts to health r…
Yeah how dare this guy give away money to things he thinks is good, and not to these other things that I think are good. This is immediately the reason why these donations are anonymous! Guy gives away nearly all his money, and people are still not happy about it.
It’s a luxury to blow $1 billion in donations to Cornell. That’s not humanitarian anything. That’s not charity. At best that’s gross negligence, at worst narcissistically relegating hundreds of thousands of people to preventable deaths.
We’re not talking about wasting a few thousand dollars on selfish consumption. This is egregiously wasting the better part of $8 billion. It’s gobsmacking, the scale of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar effect, perhaps, but different cause. Taxes aren't voluntary. You don't choose how much you owe. Not all taxes go towards improving people's lives- in the US, many safety nets only kick in once you are impoverished, and can disincentivise work. As an example, the recent coronavirus add-on payments to unemployment often meant people at the lowest levels of opportunity would make more by staying home than if th…
"often meant people at the lowest levels of opportunity would make more by staying home than if they got a job" Considering how low the Coronavirus add-on payments are, doesn't your point really mean that those at the bottom of the scale, where minimum rates have barely budged in the US - are vastly underpaid on a normal basis?
In fact, the NYT broke this down on a state-by-state basis: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/econ...
Aside from whether or not the minimum wage should be increased, it does seem to demonstrate easily enough that the stimulus is a perverse incentive.
Bringing this back to the original point I was replying to, it utterly fails the definition of the top level of charity by encouraging people to become dependent on the largess of others.
That's not to say it is therefore a bad thing, but it certainly isn't a reason to call paying taxes the highest level of charity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do you know that they will become poor if not for your action? Here's a simple example. A mine closes down. You can start giving the ex-miners money on an ongoing basis to let them keep paying their bills, maybe. Or you could fund training for them to learn a new career. How do you know they will become poor if you don't fund the training? You don't. Maybe they would have managed to change careers anyway. But c…
Giving money to people is the best way to help them. It turns out that most people are generally entrepreneurial and will spend the money on what they think is the most important need for them at the moment. Maybe the person doesn't need training; maybe they already have a skill, and what they really need is some capital to buy equipment or materials to pursue that activity. This idea is behind a the success of the E…
But also, this is about the fact that if you provide help when a person just starts needing it, it might not take much to get them back to financial stability. If you instead wait until they have been out of the workforce for a while, lost their house, and maybe ended up with a substance-abuse problem as a coping mechanism, a much larger investment will be needed to get back to "normal". And that's not even counting the suffering involved in the interim in the second option.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, because Elon is obviously where he is now because of family money... jesus christ. Ever heard of Zip2 and Paypal? Your resentment and jealousy based communist thinking is pretty ugly.
Now you've added personal insults to your class mockery. Please, this sort of casual disregard of other people is not appropriate on HN. Your initial claim was that he had no money apart from company stock, and lives entirely on debt. This is factually incorrect, as I pointed out: his family money predates all of his companies. Attached to your factually-incorrect claim was a casual denigration of a group of people w…
Your statement was extremely loaded, suggesting Elon's family somehow is part of his success. While our past is certainly part of us always, it is very loaded and complex. As is well known Elon's father was very abusive, committed crimes, and has just married his stepdaughter. Ask any psychologist and I think that is more a hindrance than an advantage in terms of family background.
I stand by the fact that anything implying Elon is successful because of his family money is a hugely far-left opinion, if not communist, and has its roots in your resentment for Elon's success.
I humbly encourage everyone to make giving a larger part of your life. Consider giving at least 10% of your income to cost-effective charities -- because cost-effective charities can do thousands of times more good than merely regular charities. So your $1,000 donation can do as much good as $1 million, if given well. Join others: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
Agree whole-heartedly that everyone should give more. If you find a way to give automatically (ideally from your paycheck, not your credit card) you never even feel it. It's important to recognize that some causes are not as cost-effective as others, but are still worthy. I'll use my own donations as an example: 1. Against Malaria Foundation - widely recognized as one of the charities that can do the most for a dolla…
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/should-you-only...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree whole-heartedly that everyone should give more. If you find a way to give automatically (ideally from your paycheck, not your credit card) you never even feel it. It's important to recognize that some causes are not as cost-effective as others, but are still worthy. I'll use my own donations as an example: 1. Against Malaria Foundation - widely recognized as one of the charities that can do the most for a dolla…
I mean, props for donating, and I believe that you want both outcomes, but for the sake of completeness the revealed-preferences meaning of your giving patterns is that the marginal badness of a SF youth being homeless is equivalent to 16 africans dying. Like, I'm not saying that to denigrate your choices, it's just an inherent fact of donation splitting. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/should-you-only..…
> Bad Reason #6: I care about multiple issues! I want to end disease so I give to an anti-disease charity, I want to end crime so I give to an anti-crime charity, and I want to end poverty so I give to an anti-poverty charity.
> Yes, we have many different values. But at any given time, one of these will be the most pressing; one of them will be easiest to make headway on. And that's the one we should concentrate on. By focusing all our resources on one cause, we have the greatest chance of accomplishing our cause.
It's not bad logic, but I don't personally buy into it. It may be easy when dividing up a pile of cash, but it's harder when you take it down to a personal level. Imagine if someone on the street says "Can you spare a dollar, I am hungry?", could you look them in the eye and say "No, I gave your dollar to end malaria in Africa. It's more effective". I certainly can't do that! And having met so many of the clients at Larkin Street and knowing how deserving they are of a better life, I can't do it to them either.
Furthermore it's a pretty slippery slope to say that every dollar I spend reveals my marginal preferences when compared to every other dollar I spend. I don't think every person who buys a new laptop for $2500 is saying they'd rather have a faster web browser than save a life from malaria. We don't expect everyone to operate that way. Spending money is a hybrid between emotion and rationality, and I think that's ok.