Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 378 posts

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#351

Post by trollbridge »

UncleMeat wrote: post #321
trollbridge wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 28% included payroll taxes, sales tax, property tax and so forth. If you don’t include those, it’s closer to 60%. Someone with 3 kids earning $26k gets about $10,000 in cash back per year (wiping out $2k in payroll taxes) and $12k of food stamps. Assuming they spend 100% of their cash on either taxable items with 8% sales tax or rent with comparable property tax, that’s still net minus -$5,280. If we include food…

Somebody with three kids earning 26k is in extreme poverty. If them being a net receiver of government funds is considered a bad thing.... Christ.

Did anyone say it’s a bad thing? About 15-18% earn at that threshold of under.

With the assistance, though, the amount of net is about the same as someone earning $80k-$100k but gets no assistance at all.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#352

Post by nickelcitymario »

It's an interesting idea only if you've never studied how democracy came to be.

The best definition of democracy that I've ever heard is that democracy is war by other means.

When you take away someone's right to vote, or make their vote less important than someone else's, you take away the only non-violent means they have to affect change.

Democracy is an agreement to put aside our weapons and resolve conflict peacefully. Take that away and you end up with violent revolution.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#353

Post by kennywinker »

chriscrisby wrote: post #324
kennywinker wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By percentage of income, or by dollar value? By dollar value, that seems possible. By % of income? Does not seem possible.

Top 50% of taxpayers paid about 97% of all federal individual income taxes. Therefore bottom 50% pay nothing or next to nothing.

So you’re counting by dollar amount.

Because find me a person who thinks 25% of their income is “next to nothing”

Meanwhile, a tax avoiding billionaire will double their net worth and take out an asset-backed loan of 100mil to live off and then pay ~0% of that in taxes.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#354

Post by senordevnyc »

vrganj wrote: post #343
senordevnyc wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How many people in that position are there even? Global reach tech oligarchs? Maybe like 10? That'd make four 40% and that was just a small sampling. And you know as well as I do the others sound the same. I'm sure you can find Alex Karp, Mark Zuckerberg etc saying similarly despicable things. At this point it takes actively closing one's eyes to the reality in front of us. There doesn't need to be a secret meeting w…

There are 3500 billionaires in the world, and 30k centimillionaires.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#355

Post by vrganj »

senordevnyc wrote: post #354
vrganj wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people in that position are there even? Global reach tech oligarchs? Maybe like 10? That'd make four 40% and that was just a small sampling. And you know as well as I do the others sound the same. I'm sure you can find Alex Karp, Mark Zuckerberg etc saying similarly despicable things. At this point it takes actively closing one's eyes to the reality in front of us. There doesn't need to be a secret meeting w…

There are 3500 billionaires in the world, and 30k centimillionaires.

And how many of them are leaders of the US tech industry with global tech empires? C'mon man, stop moving the goalposts.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#356

Post by marcosdumay »

Redoubts wrote: post #305
marcosdumay wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read your link, you will discover it's not focused at Mussolini's fascism at all, but still talks about the merge of the government and corporations... Because it's a very important feature of that regime. Maybe try it next time.

> the merge of the government and corporations This is not plutarchy, the direction of control is going the other way.

The other way being corporate managers joining the party to gain market power?

"Corruption, but the other way around" doesn't exist.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#357

Post by slowin »

Ancapistani wrote: post #329
slowin wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is itself a 4chan meme. They also view neo-liberals as "the left", while most leftists definitely do not. Worrying about "woke", "no place for a young man", trans anything... none of these are actual problems, just 4chan/ultra-right boogeymen.

Voting statistics by sex show that it is a problem.

How so? First of all there aren't many leftists you can actually vote for. Second, nothing is stopping men or women from voting for leftists, and indeed both do in the rare instances they're on a ballot.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#358

Post by Timon3 »

senordevnyc wrote: post #341
vrganj wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah ignore the Oracle CEO saying everyone will be on their best behavior because AI surveillance will keep people in check [0]. Or Thiel saying that "democracy and freedom are no longer compatible". I wonder who's freedom to do what he's talking about? Surely he's concerned about the little man? [1] Or Elon Musk cutting USAID and causing all sorts of death and destruction around the world [2] while enriching himself…

[flagged]

You know very well that this is not the totality of available evidence. Why do you expect others to waste their time compiling a list you'll keep jokingly dismissing?

If you're serious you could give a specific threshold others could meet, but as-is this kind of trolling is not what this place is meant for.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#359

Post by danielmeskin »

kennywinker wrote: post #147
Shalomboy wrote: post #58

We should really make a better shopify already; these guys aren't worth the salt they stand upon.

Honestly, shopify’s near-monopoly has confused me for at least a decade. Their platform is bad, and has always been bad - at least from the perspective of managing a store - yet no real challenger has been able to take their crown.

The issue, I suspect, is payment processing and KYC. To operate at their scale requires not only the cooperation of various PCI partners (who are not obligated to cooperate) it also involves massive liability. A better question to ask is for whom would the investment of building a new Shopify be worth it. I suspect the answer is “not anyone who is using Shopify”.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#360

Post by taybin »

0xy wrote: post #180
taybin wrote: post #28

The thing about this that's so distasteful is that it removes the basis of enfranchisement from being the inherent worth of a human life and moves it more to "what have you done for me lately". It's pretty gross.

There's numerous examples of commune societies evicting people who refuse to contribute. The distasteful thing is people refusing to contribute to society, especially for long periods of time. I know many people who have various mental and physical disabilities (some severe) who insist on working. Some able-bodied people can't even match some with severe disabilities. It's sick.

Yes, that is also gross.
Post reply on HN