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No One Goes There Anymore

noonegoesthereanymore.blogspot.com

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Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#181

Post by [deleted] »

teddyh wrote: post #180
dang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you've resumed posting flamebait, we've banned you again. Could you please not create accounts to break HN's guidelines with? You're welcome here otherwise; you've posted some quite good comments and I appreciate those, as I'm sure many readers have. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: That was probably the wrong call and I reversed it; see comments below.

I must say that I don’t see the alledged “flamebait” in freefriedrice’s comment. What is it that you see that I don’t?

[deleted]

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#182

Post by benhurmarcel »

dan-robertson wrote: post #60
ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If half your paycheck is going to taxes you must have a bunch of $$$, I personally make around 300k/year and I feel like I'm not paying that much taxes. I could be paying much more and still live pretty comfortable, it's pretty outrageous.

Few countries even in Europe will let your effective income tax rate reach 50% but this may be an effect of tax system structure more than anything else. Eg in the U.K. the max marginal income tax rate is 45% but that doesn’t count payroll taxes (employer or employee), which are called “national insurance”, or student loan “repayments” (9% of income above a threshold, though not super relevant to people in the top ba…

According to an official simulator for France [1], more than 50% of what is paid by the employer goes to taxes and "cotisations" when you earn more than €32k/year (USD $35k) after all taxes.

[1] https://mycompanyinfrance.fr/simulators/salaried

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#183

Post by jfnixon »

QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #145
AdrianB1 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that?

Nation-sized leverage. The same reason why equivalent pharmaceuticals are cheaper elsewhere in the world.

Nation-sized leverage? Piffle. Pass a law that Big Pharma can't price higher in the US than the lowest price negotiated elsewhere. Boom, problem solved.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#184

Post by ido »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #178
jerome-jh wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this side of the Altantic, it looks like the US economy is organized so that the lower working class only earns just enough to live. No wonder they are homeless when illness, disability or bad luck strikes. I am not implying this applies to OP.

I worked at an international company where we frequently had employees from other countries visit the US for a while. Some even chose to relocate to the US. These were almost all technical people, raised on the Internet, social media, and discussions in comment sections. It was fascinating to see how bad they expected America to be according to Internet comments and news articles. Many of them were shocked to realize…

I don't buy it, due to first-hand & second-hand experiences of friends and relatives I have in the US.

Let me give you one example: my friend(and at the time business partner)'s wife got cancer in the US. It was fairly "mundane"/common cancer that got treated and everything was alright at the end. He was working as a software developer (normal employee, not self-employed - our venture was a side project) with the aforementioned "good health insurance" well paid professional middle-class Americans get. At the end of the ordeal he was stuck with a $65k bill (presumably that's just the tip of iceberg and insurance paid more).

Years later I had a malignant tumor here in Germany. Again everything is fine at the end, but it was in many ways a worse case than my friend's wife (due to where the tumor was) & I spent several weeks in a (very nice) hospital in Berlin. I also get an MRI every 6 months to keep track of the situation. I paid a grand total of ~€500 despite being self-employed at the time (so I only had standard public insurance everyone in Germany gets). My twice-yearly MRIs are free. When I was diagnosed with the tumor they offered me an appointment for surgery for 3 days later (I ended up taking it a week later than that as I wanted to get a 2nd opinion).

Neither mine nor my friend's experiences are exceptions.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#185

Post by newacct583 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #99
rayiner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital gains is 20% federal plus state (13% in California). Germany’s capital gains rate is 30.5%, lower than California and New York. Regardless, there is just not enough capital gains income for that to matter. For example, Biden’s plan to tax capital gains as ordinary income for taxpayers making over $1 million per year is expected to bring in less than $50 billion a year in revenues. Eliminating the capital gain…

I like your posts on this topic. Talk to wealthy EU citizens about their tax rates. They hate them. And bringing that model,here won't fund the social plans we are told we need. Why? There just too few people in that echelon for higher taxes to make a dent. So one might think these pushers of more social aid might realize, "ok we have to raise taxes on the middle class to get the funds we need... and introduce a nati…

I think you're strawmanning. No one in this thread is talking about "social aid" programs or budgets for them, the subject at hand is tax fairness. At least you'll agree that the US tax regime, as it's implemented right now, is unfairly regressive, right? And that should be fixed, at least as far as it goes? Bezos currently pays less tax than I do, and he should at least pay that much, right?

> No, they imstead promulgate ideas such as wealth ceilings: anything you earn over 100 million is taxed 100%. There can be no billionaires.

I'm sorry... who is saying this? This isn't a serious policy promoted by anyone that I'm aware of.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#186

Post by Kye »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #178
jerome-jh wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this side of the Altantic, it looks like the US economy is organized so that the lower working class only earns just enough to live. No wonder they are homeless when illness, disability or bad luck strikes. I am not implying this applies to OP.

I worked at an international company where we frequently had employees from other countries visit the US for a while. Some even chose to relocate to the US. These were almost all technical people, raised on the Internet, social media, and discussions in comment sections. It was fascinating to see how bad they expected America to be according to Internet comments and news articles. Many of them were shocked to realize…

Visiting is not the same as living it. You can't see how bad it is until you see people around you struggle or fall all the way down because they were short $20 on bills one week and no one around them had money to lend.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#187

Post by drpgq »

sandworm101 wrote: post #112
amscanne wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s just that it has risen over 50%, the increases over the last ~6 years are quite rapid. Consider BC [1]: Top income tax bracket in BC in 2013: 43.7% Top income tax bracket in BC in 2014 and 2015: 45.8% Top income tax bracket in BC in 2016 and 2017: 47.7% Top income tax bracket in BC in 2018 and 2019: 49.8% Top income tax bracket in BC starting in 2020: 53.5%. I believe that there have been similar e…

Don't forget the tax brackets: 2015 top bracket: "over $151,050" 2019 top bracket: "over $205,842" So anyone anywhere near that bracket, despite the increased percentages, is probably paying less tax overall.

How would they be paying less overall? They just added new brackets.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#188

Post by newacct583 »

rayiner wrote: post #88
newacct583 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're quoting nominal rates and not effective taxation. The very wealthy don't pay their "marginal dollar" in "income tax" at a 37% federal bracket (plus state), they pay it in capital gains tax at 20%. If they pay it at all, given that in fact much income at these levels is sheltered from tax entirely via international tricks. There's plenty of analysis out there showing how the very wealthy in the US pay less effe…

Capital gains is 20% federal plus state (13% in California). Germany’s capital gains rate is 30.5%, lower than California and New York. Regardless, there is just not enough capital gains income for that to matter. For example, Biden’s plan to tax capital gains as ordinary income for taxpayers making over $1 million per year is expected to bring in less than $50 billion a year in revenues. Eliminating the capital gain…

> Tim Cook’s tax rate on his $135 million bonus a few years ago was 52%

This is the kind of selective data that makes this subject so infurating to argue about. I'm sure this fact is true. But what you're trying to imply is that Tim Cook's overall tax payments were very high, and that's not remotely true at all! A bonus is one of the few bits of income he has, in fact, that is taxed as routine "income" that the rest of us pay. Almost everything the guy makes is in long term assets, and those are absolutely not taxed at 52%.

Tim Cook shouldn't pay a lower tax rate than I do. And while I don't have numbers for Cook specifically, I'm pretty sure he does. Everyone in that world pays less tax than I do. And they shouldn't.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#189

Post by drpgq »

amscanne wrote: post #87
drpgq wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Ontarian it is frustrating how the marginal tax rate has risen over 50% over the last decade, but ignorant people think things are the same as in the US. Of course capital gains on primary residences is taxed at 0% so it isn't really surprising that real estate and its financialization is Ontario's main industry.

I don’t think it’s just that it has risen over 50%, the increases over the last ~6 years are quite rapid. Consider BC [1]: Top income tax bracket in BC in 2013: 43.7% Top income tax bracket in BC in 2014 and 2015: 45.8% Top income tax bracket in BC in 2016 and 2017: 47.7% Top income tax bracket in BC in 2018 and 2019: 49.8% Top income tax bracket in BC starting in 2020: 53.5%. I believe that there have been similar e…

The rapidity is similar in Ontario. I think that's why the public still thinks that the top rates are around the 2013 values and say we need to raise the top rates higher.

Re: No One Goes There Anymore

#190

Post by eplanit »

fastball wrote: post #150
c3534l wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is its one of those style over substance articles, like something by David Sedaris. Not really something we're used to on hackernews where we expect the author to argue X is bad, or we need more Y. The point is entertainment or poetry. Maybe I'm wrong and the author wants to achieve some rhetorical goal, but I think its just a blog post for the sake of it.

Do you personally find it compelling in a stylistic sense? If I was going to judge the quality of this writing, I don't think I could rate it much higher than "mediocre". Obviously this is my own opinion, but I don't find this compelling in terms of style or substance. Honestly it comes across as more of a rant.

Victimhood is today's Heroism. We're supposed to admire and respect her for her unnamed mystery ailment, and disparage the society around her.
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