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Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

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Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#111
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that was truly eye opening! Thanks for posting it.

That article has some rather strange claims, and there's more than a hint of the traditional anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. No point in starting to refute things point by point, but just to pick a few: At that point the German government thwarted the international banking cartels by issuing its own money. As if the Weimar Republic didn't have its own money, which it printed with lots of zeroes after a non-zero. Wo…

The boycott of "Judea against Germany" is well known or should be, at least.

What was the anti-Semitic part again? Or do you just throw accusations like that for no reason?

Edit: as far as my reading goes this "Hitler went against the bankers" idea has no place in reality.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#112
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property. With the important difference that the price is non-negotiable, and set by the service provider alone. The people highlighted on the website chose to park their property elsewhere, so the government had zero cost in protecting that. The price is not in proportion to the quality of service at all, it's proportional to the income of the citizen…

Taxation for corporations is a very different thing from taxation for individuals. Companies pay for the privilige of doing business on the territory. I don't really think Apple Inc would be fine if they suddenly can't sell in the US, or can't employ US citizens, or can't benefit from US foreign relations.

True. But the website mainly denounces private individuals, and the argument still applies.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#113
post #92

How Hitler Defied The Bankers? http://open.salon.com/blog/gordon_wagner/2010/05/11/how_hitl...

Wow, this is a crazy article. >World Jewry responded by declaring a global boycott against Germany. So we're using "World Jewry" in casual conversation now? Like that's a thing and it gave out declarations? Wow. >All these were paid for with money that no longer came from the private international bankers. How many billions were generated by the nationalization of wealth from Jews and minorities? Killing people and t…

> I find it amusing and unsurprising that the "OMG THE FED IS THE WORST THING EVER" crowd obsessed with Rand/Ron Paul also turn out to be historical revisionists and straight-up racists.

I don't think it's OK for you to generalize like that. Because one article exists on the internet, and is wrong about Hitler and the banks, therefore all Fed haters are racist?

When one makes generalization about the Jews they are roundly chided and rightly so. Consider yourself equally roundly chided. I hate the Fed (it's not an acronym). There's no reason to hate Jews as an ethnicity. The reason to hate the Fed is simple, they have a machine that prints money. Nothing to do with Jews, nothing to do with ethnicity. If the Fed wasn't run by people but only machines I'd still hate it, like I hate High Frequency Trading. Because HFT lied to us about bringing liquidity to the market even though it's not a person but a machine. A lot of people want to derail the discussion from money to race because it's easier. But this is to do only with money and no one wants to talk about it. That's the taboo. Money and machines should not mingle. Do Jews use currency? Yes. Then they are victims of the Fed like every other person is, that doesn't control that machine.

Oh, I also hate when things are passed off as Science when they aren't falsifiable, like Keynesian Economics. Mixing things with machines or formulae that shouldn't be mixed is scientificism. Fed haters want to talk about money but there's a group of people that keep derailing the conversation to non-money issues. You seem to be part of that despicable group. Why? Why worship the money machine? People like you really want for there to be a Science that can predict the future. Well guess what. No such thing.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#114
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is a pack of wolves voting on which sheep to have for dinner. Now, what I'd like to see is each person's vote multiplied by the amount he pays in taxes (all taxes: property, sales, income &c.). That would be fair, and it'd give an incentive to pay up too.

Which is even more cut throat, since you're basically selling political power: rich people would be able to afford way more, than the poor.

Fair point, but it seems relevant to acknowledge that the American campaign finance system as presently organized is exactly isomorphic to the "selling political power" you mention above.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article has some rather strange claims, and there's more than a hint of the traditional anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. No point in starting to refute things point by point, but just to pick a few: At that point the German government thwarted the international banking cartels by issuing its own money. As if the Weimar Republic didn't have its own money, which it printed with lots of zeroes after a non-zero. Wo…

The boycott of "Judea against Germany" is well known or should be, at least. What was the anti-Semitic part again? Or do you just throw accusations like that for no reason? Edit: as far as my reading goes this "Hitler went against the bankers" idea has no place in reality.

You refer to a boycott which was a response to persecution that Nazis commenced right when they were able to, post January 1933.

This was not about bankers. It was a boycott due to Nazis starting to do what Hitler had promised to do, to start his actions on the road to the Holocaust.

Yes, this kind of claims are typical of anti-Semitic nutjobs. I don't throw such accusations for no reason; I throw them because it is repugnant to claim that the Jews brought their misfortunes to themselves by this or that boycott or by being bankers or whatever. There are many Web sites that make a big deal about this "Judea against Germany". And it's mostly disgusting stuff.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of proposals tend to ignore how mobile wealthy people are. They might have more than one home - say, one in US, onw in Switzerland, one in Hong Kong, etc - and they might have luxury items here and there. Taxing such things with wildly different percentages is not going to work very well. The rich guys will just shop for that jewellery in Dubai and keep it in Hong Kong. Will you require him/her to declare a…

What's the difference between what you brought up and wealthy people just moving their holding companies to jurisdictions with lower capital gains and earnings tax? People should be mobile as they want to be in free societies. Do we believe that the state owns their citizens or a portion of those citizens working lives? The income tax presumes they do.

None, really, I wasn't trying to show such difference. Of course the same thing applies to many kinds of wealth.

Except land, which you cannot very easily move from one jurisdiction to another.

Edit: One recent example of the latter comes to my mind, of course. This is the case of properties in Crimea, now annexed by Russia. This is effectively a jurisdiction change. And it has some practical consequences, of course, although maybe not immediately related to tax; Crimean people need to register their properties into the Russian system, because Ukrainian property ownership is not recognized by the new powers-that-be. And registering is not free, and not even cheap, from what I hear.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#117
post #104
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no moral reason why a government deserves 50% of everything you have made. Why? Personally I think the marginal tax rate should be much higher on the highest earners, for the simple reason that the impact of exact additional percentage point tax is far lower for a higher earner. To me the actual percentage is irrelevant. The relative impact is far more important. If I had to pay 1 percentage points more ta…

> Personally I think the marginal tax rate should be much higher on the highest earners, for the simple reason that the impact of exact additional percentage point tax is far lower for a higher earner. To me the actual percentage is irrelevant. The relative impact is far more important. So, you define a fair tax system as one whose perceived impact is identical across the tax base. I define it as one where people pay…

"I define it as one where people pay in proportion to the benefits they receive"

I believe that countries want to survive as entities, and being fair is not necesarily the best course of action. If rich people pay more, but they don't do anything aggresive in response, that's ok. Surely most of the population will be happier - and, in return, won't rise up and kill the rich. If the amount of capital going out of the country starts being so aggresive that it is dangerous for the country, the country will end up responding.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#118
A crappy website (iOS not recommended) is not nearly as useful as the actual data which might be really interesting.

Why are news organizations so often barriers to getting information? Please release the source documents.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boycott of "Judea against Germany" is well known or should be, at least. What was the anti-Semitic part again? Or do you just throw accusations like that for no reason? Edit: as far as my reading goes this "Hitler went against the bankers" idea has no place in reality.

You refer to a boycott which was a response to persecution that Nazis commenced right when they were able to, post January 1933. This was not about bankers. It was a boycott due to Nazis starting to do what Hitler had promised to do, to start his actions on the road to the Holocaust. Yes, this kind of claims are typical of anti-Semitic nutjobs. I don't throw such accusations for no reason; I throw them because it is…

> persecution that Nazis commenced right when they were able to, post January 1933

> Nazis starting to do what Hitler had promised to do, to start his actions on the road to the Holocaust.

Can you source those claims? I don't remember Hitler giving any orders to start a persecution of Jews, but I do remember mainstream holocaust historian Raul Hilberg saying under oath in a 1985 Toronto trial that there are no documents to source that claim, and that the Nazis conducted what they did through a "meeting of minds, a consensus mind-reading by a far-flung bureaucracy". Without documentation, this is conspiracy theory at best.

No doubt the Nazis killed millions of Jews. But they did not conspire to do so. Let's make sure we teach people real history, not conspiracy theories with hidden pro-Israel agendas. The Nazis committed innocenticide at a large scale, but after 1970s WWII became all about the chosen people, and I thought we were all Africans.

I'll preempt your calling me "anti-Semite" by saying I have nothing against any ethnicity (but I do have something against religions that say their people are better than other people, like the Nazi religion or the Judaism religion, in fact I'm against all religions) and I do not believe for a second that religious Jews conspire in any way, like Raul Hilberg believes the religious Nazis conspired through mind reading. That, my friends, is preposterous.

Edit: If you read Raul Hilberg's book The Destruction of European Jews you'd learn that in 1933 the final solution was deportation. Only after 1941 is it ever seriously claimed by mainstream historians that the final solution became killing. So Judea declared war on Germany over their plans to deport Jews. This should put things in perspective and this is mainstream history no matter how uncomfortable for you it is to accept.

PS: if you do come up with a source, please also address why Raul Hilberg did not consider that a source when he testified under oath in 1985.

PPS: downvoters, could you please point out where I'm wrong or why am I deserving of downvoting?

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