331–340 of 1001 posts
If just a fraction of that money were put to good use, society would benefit immensely. We could pay to improve public schools for example, or offer a public healthcare option.
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Presumably your own desire to maximize revenue. If you charge a rent that your tenant can't afford, then you get nothing.
If you own all options and the renter needs to have some sort of housing, they'll pay anyway. The end result is that the owner will start collecting a larger percent of the renter's earnings.
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Ok, cabal is a strong word and the election stealing/truth hiding is certainly off the rails in my opinion as well. But here's some perhaps interesting information on top 5 shareholders of largest US banks [1]: JP Morgan Chase: Blackrock 6.4 Vanguard 4.7 State Street 4.5 Blackrock 2.7 Blackrock 2.5 Bank of America: Berkshire 6.9 Blackrock 5.3 Vanguard 4.5 state street 4.3 Fidelity 2.1 Citigroup: Blackrock 6.1 Vanguar…
It’s worth noting those Black Rock holdings are almost certainly through indexed mutual funds and ETFs. If you calculated the ownership across all banks in the US Blackrock would not own nearly so high a percentage.
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Paying taxes on unearned gains is not "driven out of your house". You can keep the house and pay taxes on the gains. > I’m sure your feelings will change as you get older. Yes, this is the problem. Extreme self-interest and entitlement to massive windfalls.
Prop 13 is a limits how much property tax can increase in a year. So hypothetically without prop 13 it would possible that the value of your house jumps 10x and then you're stuck with paying 10x the amount of property tax that year. I don't think we need to remove it completely but some adjustments like applicable only to a primary residence and not investment or commercial properties would probably go a long way.
How can anyone read and conclude that the US is anything other than dying and on life support? Our government is ran by corporations, and it is not going to change. Not to say that we have some cyberpunk future ahead of us - that looks a bit too optimistic at this point. As much as I personally despise communism, it's hard not to admit that the Chinese have a much superior government (not that they're even communist…
Perhaps by looking outside the window? By walking around your town/city? By driving to nearby locations? By talking to people and asking them about their lives rather than their opinion of the lives of other people they've never met? By trusting what you see more than than drivel spouted by tin-foil hat loons?
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Something like prop 13 isn't the only way to avoid that. Some jurisdictions allow you to defer property tax indefinitely in the form of a lien against the house which seems like a reasonable way to do it.
Some of my neighbors are seniors who are on social security. Their houses were bought for about $160k in the 1970s. Which is expensive back then. Now they are worth $2M but they have no intention to move. Where would they live? And how can they afford the $30k/yr property tax? What stops people from selling their homes isn’t prop 13, it’s the ridiculous rise in house prices in the last 15 years. It creates no mobilit…
When they choose to sell, or their estate sells, the property tax is settled first from the proceeds of the sale.
I'm saying this scheme is in place in other locations to address the same problem you describe, and seems to be working better than prop 13 (at solving that).
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I follow this account and others like it because it allows one to be exposed to things like the idea that COVID leaked from a lab a year ago. Skepticism is warranted in all cases, of course, but I think it's extremely healthy to keep in tune with a variety of subcommunities who are in and of themselves skeptics of many mainstream narratives.
Conspiracy proponents act like the lab leak theory being true is some game changer. It's the stupidest thing. Even if it wasn't leaked, China sure did a lot to mess up and exacerbate the early response to the pandemic for the world. Additionally, people have been critical of wet markets in China from early on, one suspected source of where it first spread to humans. I have no problem with investigating if it was a la…
> Conspiracy proponents act like the lab leak theory being true is some game changer. It's the stupidest thing.
On the virus issue specifically, here are three mainstream narratives that have been largely up-ended, and if you were in tune with a variety of viewpoints you would have been exposed to for your own conclusions before they became mainstream:
- "Coronavirus" was an immense threat and it was wise to prepare for it arriving and turning into a pandemic. Government actions to cut it off eg by banning travel was warranted. (Promoted in Jan 2020 in certain circles, discounted by consensus)
- Being a likely airborne pathogen, wearing masks (particularly N95s) was wise. (Promoted from Jan, in March the surgeon general and others claimed there was no reason to wear masks.)
- Given the proximity to the lab the idea this came from the lab was a worthy explanation worth investigating. (Promoted from March by my recollection)
For me, I was wearing a medical-grade mask in stores and stocking up on supplies in January 2020 due to my exposure to this information with a relatively open mind. I don't discount the possibility that, given that I have advanced lung disease, this priming reduced my prior probabilities of catching and even dying from this pandemic. I was mentally a few weeks ahead of the narratives I read in the media throughout this pandemic and made a variety of decisions around risk management that were in conflict with what felt like the average consensus. This doesn't mean I was confident in these theories per se, but when you're forced into making risk adjusted decisions having a diversity of ideas swirling in your head opens the possibility of having a better risk calculus, esp if the goal is to be conservative.
Things went off the rails at the end... > Well, the banks are controlled by and in bed with the same cabal buying everything up. You think this will be corrected by market forces when it is a financial and political pincher movement pushed by the same cabal that stole the 2020 election & hid COVID Truth? You are fucked. https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402449561864577024 IMO, weakens the entire 'thread' and m…
It really was a bad end. Pretty much describes how capitalism's natural end will fuck us over, and then decides to throw in some support for the billionaire landlord president he liked...
where's Capitalism and where's Federal Reserve funded institutions that represent the big deep state aiming at controlling all aspects of your life.
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These are literally two out of the first four paragraphs I read when clicking on that link: >Dearest Friends & Fellow Americans, The eminent trial of our Age is upon us. Those whose courage fails them now, who shrink from the fight, and sit idly while the very foundations of our nation collapse should sit in shame; but those that stand boldly by the Constitution deserve the eternal thanks of all mankind. Malignant ty…
And? Honestly, these are pretty damn tame. I don't understand the point you're trying to make. While I personally disagree with at least one of the statements you quoted and some other ideas held by the author, many of the ideas presented in the posted Twitter thread still stand. Ad hominem attacks are worthless in a discussion of ideas.
Some of the conspiracy theories are part of the twitter thread. It's entirely reasonable to discuss these here, especially if the thread and account get this amount of attention.
>Honestly, these are pretty damn tame.
Comments like this one make me seriously fear for the political system of the United States. If that's "tame" I do not know what isn't.
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If you think that was disturbing, check out the substack linked to the twitter account. Full on nut job.
I clicked it. Looks like he's a Republican and a Christian (and has pretty standard opinions for that intersection) who likes to write long political essays. Are you sure he's a nut job, or could you possibly just be a bigot?
We can no longer afford to play along, pretending that sedition and lies are acceptable because they are just normal "conservative opinion".