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Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

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Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#321

Post by vasilipupkin »

vonnik wrote: post #307
vasilipupkin wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are changing the argument. I'm not defending trump and I am not saying he is or isn't a crook. I'm saying your original statement and argument is false.

I'm not changing the argument. I answered your question precisely, and added new information about criminal activity at the building in question. You have not given a satisfactory explanation of the discrepancy between what the market pays, and what Trump pays. Lacking subpoenas, it's unlikely that we can know what the other side of the trade was. But Mueller's team surely knows. That's why Mueller hired a team of fi…

Where did you get the number that he paid 1/8th the market price ? You provided zero evidence to this effect. If he did pay 1/8th the market price, I'll concede that something shady was taking place

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#322

Post by grondilu »

barrkel wrote: post #275
grondilu wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should the family I was born to determine wether I have clean water to drink or not, for example? Because of this thing called reality. If the circumstances of your birth are unfortunate, that's sad, but it does not have to be other people's problem.

The only thing stopping someone stronger than you taking all your stuff are the rules society makes up. That's reality.

Fair point. I guess Reality is what we make of it, so I stand corrected.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#323

Post by jknoepfler »

weirdstuff wrote: post #230
ianai wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They clamor for justice behind Donald Trump though. He’s used the mass’ frustrations to his own end, and they loved it enough to vote him into power.

I know Trump voters, the majority of whom don't like Trump at all. Their reasoning: "Why delay the inevitable? How else to wake up the country but to elect a disaster? As things get worse we're ready as we'll ever be." (FYI: I'm in Michigan where enough of us held back our Clinton vote to send a message that we need a progressive non-corporatist. Margin of victory for Trump was smaller than empty presidential section…

I hope they realize that their elected legislative representatives matter a lot more for this... The president is chief diplomat, chief military and legal executive, a veto holder. They also do a lot of appointing. Not much else, in reality. So we elected a bloviating racist to be our chief diplomat, because we don't like corporatist legislators? Ok...

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#324

Post by dang »

vonnik wrote: post #212
vasilipupkin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But he borrowed 160 mln against the building" This is where your argument collapses. The building dramatically increased in value - that's why he was able to borrow so much against it. That's the real estate game - and it's legit.

Hi Vasili - I don't think you understand. He bought an office building on Wall Street in the mid-1990s for $1 million. That's a price so low that it's shady. As usual with Trump, he buys real estate at prices that don't make sense unless you assume there's another half to the trade. Then he borrows money against the building's supposed increase in value and uses that debt as income without an income tax. His deals ar…

You've stooped to the kind of personal attack that is most unwelcome in HN threads, especially partisan/political flamewars that we don't want on HN in the first place.

We ban users that do this, so please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and clean up your act if you want to keep commenting here.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#325

Post by [deleted] »

nickysielicki wrote: post #159
nickthemagicman wrote: post #89

My parents always taught me to be honest and care about those around you. The older I got the more I realized that was mal-adaptive behavior in capitalistic society. The real goal of capitalism is exploit or be exploited.

You're posting on a website of a venture capital group.

[deleted]

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#326

Post by cjslep »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #289
vonnik wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He bought it for 1/8th of the price it sold for two years earlier. During those two years, the US economy was on an upswing. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is... And the building looks like this: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-trump-40-wall-street... It's a shady price, and a shady building, because he now rents it out to crooks like himself. (See Bloomberg piece.) In the future, d…

You are changing the argument. I'm not defending trump and I am not saying he is or isn't a crook. I'm saying your original statement and argument is false.

And yet the comment you just replied to gives evidence that you are the one actually incorrect, as it backs up his original statement and strongly counters your assertion.

To paraphrase for you:

vonnik: $1m purchase price is shady

vasilipupkin: No its not it is the real estate game, unless you can show me $1m in mid 90's is shady for a 71 story office building in premium location on Wall Street

vonnik: OK here is source: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is...

vasilipupkin:

My advice is it would help to have evidence, instead of seeding conversations with comments that cast doubt with very little evidence.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#327

Post by thaumaturgy »

grondilu wrote: post #240
thaumaturgy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, let's set aside for a moment your personal politics, since compassion is clearly not a concept you're likely to grasp right now. As a practical matter, what do you think happens to any society that suffers a class divide severe enough that (a) the majority of the citizenry ends up in the underclass and (b) being in the underclass sucks badly enough to really piss people off? Societies need to take care of their c…

> Societies need to take care of their citizens and ensure they receive, if nothing else, fair treatment under law and approximately equal opportunity. I'm not sure what you mean by "approximately equal opportunity", since the circumstances of life are so different it seems delusional to me to hope for equal opportunities for everyone. But I do agree on the concept of fair treatment under law, and I believe it's a fu…

This is still dodging the point that societies don't survive long with large numbers of poor, unhappy citizens.

But anyway, your belief doesn't agree with reality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSH9_IWeSK4

"Terry Bossert, Range’s vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs, told a Pennsylvania Bar Institute gathering in Harrisburg earlier this month, that the company tries to avoid siting its shale gas wells near “big houses” where residents might have the financial resources to challenge the industrial-type developments." http://www.post-gazette.com/powersource/latest-oil-and-gas/2...

"I’m a public defender. It’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-public-defender-...

"How companies make millions off lead-poisoned, poor blacks" https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/how-compa...

"I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don’t pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing?" https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br...

"How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/...

"As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying The Price" http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-fee...

I have 5,233 carefully-organized bookmarks in Pinboard. I can keep doing this for a while.

The fact of the matter is that poverty by itself is unfair treatment. Those living in poverty automatically have fewer judicial options in legal disputes, bear an unfair proportion of costs in legal matters, have their communities unfairly targeted by exploitative businesses that know the citizens don't have the resources to fight back, and are subjected to poorer nutrition and harmful living environments which virtually guarantee that those people born into poverty will also die in it -- and of it.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#328

Post by anigbrowl »

Clubber wrote: post #135
mindcrime wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just answer the question: "how do we fund the things that are currently funded by taxation, which are actually necessary / desirable, without using violence or the threat of violence?" C'mon, we're hackers... we can do better than relying on violence and aggression. What happened to the idea that we could apply our intellects, reason, logic, and rational thinking, and improve on the old way of doing things? I mean, i…

>What happened to the idea that we could apply our intellects, reason, logic, and rational thinking, and improve on the old way of doing things? There are powerful groups of people with intellect, reason, logic, rational thinking but also have large sums of capital and the government's servitude to counter anything we try to change.

It doesn't say much for the level of economic/political debate on HN that simple factual observations like this are systematically downvoted.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#329

Post by nickpp »

gaius wrote: post #51
rothbardrand wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You invoked morality. The moral calculus is pretty clear to me: I’ll take the gay loving advancer of technology over governments stealing money to use it to blow up people any day. Apple has the moral high ground, and that ground is higher the less taxes they pay. Remember military spending is far more than roads.

Military spending got you the Internet, GPS, jet engines, microwave ovens and a million more things that you take for granted ...

No, government spending got us super expensive connections between a handful of universities. Free markets took that and brought it as the internet to our doors.

Military invented expensive microwave radar. Free markets turned it into $100 kitchen appliances.

The government put satellites on orbit at tremendous cost for military positioning system. Free markets put Waze driving directions on my phone.

Yes, we have a bunch of expensive things due to government spending. Imagine how many more we would've had and how much cheaper if free markets were allowed to create them...

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#330

Post by sgt101 »

nickpp wrote: post #261
nickbauman wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you are misinformed. You're describing "communist dictatorship". There are other forms of Communism in the world. From the Israeli Kibbutz to the Mondragón Corporation, the gamut of communism as implemented is wide.

Is there any other form of communism than dictatorial? Dictate number 0 of communism is: you cannot leave. Cause of you could, all productive people would flee instantly. That, in my book, makes is a dictatorship.

History says that there is (at least) one counter example : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia

In fact, people flocked to it.

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