31–40 of 284 posts
I know, I know, "bounties" are a fraught concept. Some people find "snitching" odious. But this is a tantalizing use case. All the author of this piece got out of their legwork was another article, but it also yielded some money for the federal government: > Two days after I emailed Finwall in April inquiring about the Xie Foundation’s purchase of the house, the foundation filed records with the California attorney g…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US people have been brainwashed to think reasonable taxation is 'socialism' - something they need to have a religious objection to even if they don't know what it is.
There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “ the rich are not paying their fair share ”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough…
A better analogy of today’s would be so: - Your rich friend and his 19 employees order 20 steaks
- Somehow and out of sight the rich friend takes 19 of the steaks, takes 9/10th of each steak for himself, and then replaces them with 19 derived kiddie meals containing 1/10th the steak.
- Your rich friend then points out that he and his employees only should pay for 2.9 steaks.
- The bill and cost remains the same (100 steaks), so the remaining 80 people foot the bill for 97.1 steaks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US people have been brainwashed to think reasonable taxation is 'socialism' - something they need to have a religious objection to even if they don't know what it is.
There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “ the rich are not paying their fair share ”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough…
I make around $600,000. My effective federal tax rate is in the low-mid 20s. I'd have to make way way way more money for my effective federal + state rates to approach 50%.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “ the rich are not paying their fair share ”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough…
> Is it reasonable for society, through taxes, to take more than half of what you earn? So long as you have more than enough to live on, absolutely. If you make a billion dollars, then the govt taking 501 million is the absolute minimum that should be expected. Better they take 999 million and leave you the million dollars, as you don't need more than that to survive. Further, the only reason you made a billion was f…
What we obviously don't want is people who find a way to dump risk on everyone else so that they cannot fail. Not paying a living wage is a way to do that for example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(I wrote this comment as a _reaction_ to yours -- it turned out not to be a _response_ to it, so I apologise if I seem to put words in your mouth.) I have this idea rummaging about that I have never quite seen articulated in these discussions. The earnings of "rich friends" are often seen as a singular, isolated achievement, and fairness is then discussed as relative to that: "they earned it, so is it fair to take X%…
It doesn’t become weaker unless you can cogently express a limiting principle to your argument: - Why isn’t it fair to take 99% of the highest earners’ income? - Why isn’t it fair to take 50% of the median earner’s income? They, too, drive on roads and send their children to school.
Looking for fairness to me is a fools errand. It’s not even a real thing, nor is it something any 2 people will universally agree on.
Instead we should only look to what a taxation regime accomplishes.
I know, I know, "bounties" are a fraught concept. Some people find "snitching" odious. But this is a tantalizing use case. All the author of this piece got out of their legwork was another article, but it also yielded some money for the federal government: > Two days after I emailed Finwall in April inquiring about the Xie Foundation’s purchase of the house, the foundation filed records with the California attorney g…
A fraud whistleblower got a 200 million dollar bounty this year from the SEC
> The Commission is authorized by Congress to provide monetary awards to eligible individuals who come forward with high-quality original information that leads to a Commission enforcement action in which over $1,000,000 in sanctions is ordered. The range for awards is between 10% and 30% of the money collected.
Submitting a tip appears to be pretty simple, too. If you want anonymity you'll need to go through a lawyer, but other than that, it's just a web form [2]?
[1] https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower
[2] https://tcr.sec.gov/TcrExternalWeb/faces/pages/intake.jspx
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “ the rich are not paying their fair share ”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough…
> There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. I disagree. There are models of economics that can project taxation rates that will have better outcomes for society. It's far from being primarily subjective.
Yours is the best in my opinion but it’s still subjective.
As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...
It should be noted we still “tax” them, as in the laws in place put income tax down, but they grow wealth by paying people full time to legally skirt taxation via schemes like this. However considering the current state of bloat governments are in, I’m not sure that extra money would actually mean anything. Except more to funnel into the military industrial complex and other black book projects.
This would mean the poorest get to increase their take home pay, without increasing wages.
What a sham!
Private foundations are really a massive scam on the public purse so whenever you hear about the Gates Foundation and the like, remember it's just a tax dodge, nothing more. The way the rules work, a private foundation has to spend 5% of its capital on its intended purpose. Thing is, that 5% can include "administration" costs like paying salaries and benefits for the family. They really need to raise this to 10%, min…
It spent about 10% of its endowment for charity last year.