I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today • Hacker News Board

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#71

Post by gambiting » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 4:49 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #67

gambiting wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you are talking about extreme cases, where people inherit millions of dollars, and that's probably 0.1% of all inheritance cases. I am arguing that this would hit regular people with regular incomes. You save up $100,000 for your child to go to collage over 25 years of your career, and then happen to die? Well, shit son, your child only gets $15,000, rest is taken by the government to make life more fair. But hey…

> I am arguing that this would hit regular people with regular incomes. It won't, and it doesn't. You're misinformed on this topic. There's a blanket exemption for estates up to $5,000,000: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employ... Nobody is interested in taxing your kid's college fund--we just don't want the Waltons running our country for the next 100 years: http://walmart1percent.org/family/

Despite majority of HN thinking otherwise, there is world outside of US. Here in the UK the threshold for the inheritance tax is £325,000, and unless you live in a 2 bedroom apartment or a very small house in the countryside, you will most definitely hit it, which means that most people in the UK will have to pay inheritance tax on their family homes once their parents die. This is wrong in my opinion.

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#72

Post by vevoo » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 4:52 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #7

I can understand the frustration of the author, however, HuffPo is not a government or social entity. It IS part of the free market. I am a huge proponent of the free market, however, that does not mean the free market will be perfect. In the short term, there are fits and starts and cycles that everything goes through, but it is only through the free market that we will progress over the long-term. Writers are unfor…

There is nothing in the free market economic rules that promotes or guarantees progress over long-term, including journalism. The good economic outcomes did not come and will not come out of that rules. All econometric models will show you how other assumptions were required for that to happen.

It will be actions other than free market ones that will allow or not the survival of journalism. Hope they will get it before they die.

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#73

Post by mcguire » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 4:53 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #5

the class of people who own the world and control all the assets may finally begin to see the error of their ways Their ways? Arianna Huffington didn't cause the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted. She also didn't inherit HuffPo so all that talk about socialism and inheritance tax is just more signalling on the author's part. Which is why they…

"...people willing to write for free to stroke their ego..."

Or to get exposure, which is a requirement for making a living in any creative endeavour.

Note: Huffington exposure isn't worth much, but neither is exposure from writing articles in most journalism outlets. That doesn't prevent every last writer from having a list of "published in Time, Newsweek, Mr. Peabody's Literary Conglomeration,...and the Washington Post" in their brag paragraph.

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#74

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 4:55 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #70

gambiting wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax. Anything in between doesn't make sense as it it completely arbitrary. Why 10%? Or 60%? Or 85%? If you support the notion that children should work for themselves, then don't let them inherit anything from their parents - in which case, the government has to provide at least a place to live in. If you don't support the notion of taxing inheritance(li…

> Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax. Then you need to mature your point of view because the world isn't so absurdly simple and black and white. No thinking person can look at this country (U.S.) today and say accumulated wealth isn't causing a whole host of problems. The wealth inequality in this country is bad and needs to be addressed. The rich are out of control.

Yeah but taxes aren't why. Its the rigged financial markets that have swiftly vacuumed up all the money and put it into the hands of those that - guess what - handle money.

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#75

Post by ForHackernews » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 4:55 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #71

ForHackernews wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am arguing that this would hit regular people with regular incomes. It won't, and it doesn't. You're misinformed on this topic. There's a blanket exemption for estates up to $5,000,000: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employ... Nobody is interested in taxing your kid's college fund--we just don't want the Waltons running our country for the next 100 years: http://walmart1percent.org/family/

Despite majority of HN thinking otherwise, there is world outside of US. Here in the UK the threshold for the inheritance tax is £325,000, and unless you live in a 2 bedroom apartment or a very small house in the countryside, you will most definitely hit it, which means that most people in the UK will have to pay inheritance tax on their family homes once their parents die. This is wrong in my opinion.

Then maybe there's a case for increasing the limit in UK tax policy, or perhaps granting a special exemption for family homes.

It's not a case for totally eliminating estate taxes.

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#76

Post by phkahler » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 4:57 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #51

rjaco31 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to give money/goods to your children so that they have a easier life and need to work less to get the same decent life as anybody. This is totally valid, up to a certain point. Let's take the other extrem, when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life. There is absolutely no need of such a concentration of wealth. That's why inheritance should have…

>>when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life Why not? If I, as a parent, worked hard enough to make life easy for my child, who are you to tell me that I can't do it?(I mean in general, don't take this personally) I have paid tax on everything that I made, bought, or built - why would they pay tax on the same things again?? Following your argument, we sh…

Let us first say that if you sold it to someone else there would likely be sales tax involved (in most places) so the idea of giving someone stuff tax-free is unusual. The point of inheritance taxes is not to prevent you passing it on, it is to prevent the building of family empires which tend to screw people (in addition to being another revenue source). But why? The ONLY purpose of government is actually to preserve order by preventing people from being assholes to each other. Turns out people tend to do that if nobody keeps them in check. Now the rich kinda think the purpose is to keep people from doing anything to THEM, but even that still concedes my stated purpose for government. Large accumulations of wealth can be both good or bad, but from where I sit it looks like the super-rich aren't even sure what to do with all their money, so why not? Estate-tax is just another knob to turn in the preservation of society. The only real question is how far to turn it. I'm open to debate from all sides on that issue.

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#77

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 4:58 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #71

ForHackernews wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am arguing that this would hit regular people with regular incomes. It won't, and it doesn't. You're misinformed on this topic. There's a blanket exemption for estates up to $5,000,000: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employ... Nobody is interested in taxing your kid's college fund--we just don't want the Waltons running our country for the next 100 years: http://walmart1percent.org/family/

Despite majority of HN thinking otherwise, there is world outside of US. Here in the UK the threshold for the inheritance tax is £325,000, and unless you live in a 2 bedroom apartment or a very small house in the countryside, you will most definitely hit it, which means that most people in the UK will have to pay inheritance tax on their family homes once their parents die. This is wrong in my opinion.

This article says the average home value is £187,000:

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jun/03/uk-average-hous...

The tax is apparently 40%. So the heirs of a single person with a home worth twice the average will owe £11,600 in taxes (it looks like some of the exemption is transferable for couples, so ~0 taxes for lots of people).

It doesn't seem so onerous for people receiving a $600,000 house to have to pay $20,000 in taxes (it's certainly an amount that most owners of such houses will be able to plan for).

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#78

Post by gnaritas » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 5:01 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #74

gnaritas wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax. Then you need to mature your point of view because the world isn't so absurdly simple and black and white. No thinking person can look at this country (U.S.) today and say accumulated wealth isn't causing a whole host of problems. The wealth inequality in this country is bad and needs to be addressed. The rich are out of control.

Yeah but taxes aren't why. Its the rigged financial markets that have swiftly vacuumed up all the money and put it into the hands of those that - guess what - handle money.

There is no one why, there's a host of things that allow wealth accumulation and they all need to be tackled, but inherited wealth produces dangerous people: aristocrats who have no idea what it means to work and no appreciation for those that do, and that cannot be ignored.

And without all that wealth accumulation, the financial markets wouldn't be rigged. They were rigged by the wealthy buying politicians to get the laws they like passed. The markets are a symptom of the problem, they aren't the problem itself; accumulated wealth is the problem.

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#79

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 5:10 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #61

ForHackernews wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, talk about black-and-white thinking. Consider: There may be other alternatives that fall between the extremes of "My kids get all the free money I can give them!" and "The government should confiscate all possessions and give everyone a state-sponsored apartment."

Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax. Anything in between doesn't make sense as it it completely arbitrary. Why 10%? Or 60%? Or 85%? If you support the notion that children should work for themselves, then don't let them inherit anything from their parents - in which case, the government has to provide at least a place to live in. If you don't support the notion of taxing inheritance(li…

> Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax. Anything in between doesn't make sense as it it completely arbitrary.

The distinction between inheritances and other forms of income in tax treatment is at least as arbitrary. If we tax income in general, why should income from inheritances be treated specially?

Re: I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

#80

Post by fuzzywalrus » Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 5:19 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #17

rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the basic model of a lot of similar companies. Get people to provide content for free, then profit from control over the repository. If it weren't for copyright protections, HuffPo and its ilk would just copy your blog posts verbatim and call it a day. They're one step up from the sites that auto-generate product reviews or display reformatted Wikipedia articles.

If it weren't for copyright protections, HuffPo and its ilk would just copy your blog posts verbatim and call it a day. They pretty much do anyway. Anything saying "CNN has reported..." is basically just a rewrite of the existing CNN article, to just enough of an extent that they avoid copyright issues. Do slightly better SEO (easy because huffingtonpost.com is more popular than cnn.com) and you get all the clicks. T…

I've been kicking around the idea of a plugin for FF or Chrome to root the source out of a few popular reblog sites (HuffPuff, Upworthy etc) as they usually link it.

Rarely do the reblog sites add much other than op-ed commentary to original news item and it'd save me time when someone sends me a link to a news item to root out the source.