While listening to Marty Bent and @ODELL rant today live on Spaces:
You make the "wealth limit" HIGH, high enough to price out the vast majority of the population, and high enough to price out the majority of inheritances (average inheritance size is $46k according to Google)
Since the wealth tax "only" kicks in if you're worth >$15 million or more (actual numbers idk) -- "Oh yeah, tax them! F*ck the rich!" people then say.
Because the threshold for the wealth tax is intentionally so high, that creates a gap for governments to conveniently fill and assume authority to financially surveil and jail everyone and anyone who's hiding meaningful amounts of money from them.
And yet there's massive support for the wealth tax, since it's only affecting 2% (or whatever) of people!
Good explanation that Odell gave..
What is most funny to me about "wealth tax" ideas are the fact that the elite run the world. So what, are they gonna tax themselves? I don't buy it
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They only run the world because we allow them too. Why do you think the Republicans have introduced so many restrictive voter laws and regulations to attempt to suppress the vote in states nationwide? And it's not just requirements for ID. It's about them closing polling places near poverty stricken and black communities. It's about attempting to prevent absentee voting and early voting to ensure lines will be longer in an attempt to keep people from waiting to vote. It's about not allowing unaffiliated volunteers to hand out food and water to those waiting in lines to vote for hours. It's about conservatives wanting people to be allowed to carry guns INSIDE polling places or in front of polling places in an attempt to scare people from voting. It's about gerrymandering districts so the diverse and poverty stricken communities have their votes wiped out by those of the upper middle class by designing the district in a way that makes no geographical sense.
WAKE THE FUCK UP.
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Do you actually believe that only one side cheats?
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Voter ID laws are the norm in Europe and just about everywhere
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To register to vote, yes. But not to actually cast a ballot. Europe also isn't shutting down polling places in majority.brown, black and poverse communities. Europe isn't trying to restrict or make early voting inaccessible. Need I continue?
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Some states have automatic voter registration without identification. This is a way to inflate voter rolls and make it easier to cheat.
You need ID to cast a ballot in Europe.
There is no early voting in Europe.
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My state has automatic voter registration and clearly you're uninformed on how it works. You're enrolled when you turn 18 but that's only for those that have drivers licenses or state id cards prior to your 18th birthday and where they showed documentation proving citizenship when they got.those DL's.or ID's. Obviously in states where undocumented immigrants can get ID's and Drivers licenses they won't be enrolled because they didn't show proof of citizenship to obtain those. Get it? This isn't a hard.concept.to.grasp. you're just against anything that makes it easier.to cast a ballot or to get young people engaged and voting because when more people vote your side loses.
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Why is voter identification a difficult concept for you
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Automatic registration is a recipe for mistakes and fraudulent voter registration lists
Showing ID to cast a ballot is not onerous
Your state doesn’t give drivers licenses to undocumented?
Every state has a different process for automatic voter registration. Why would Democrats want to exclude undocumented from registration? Democrats want to win even if they have to cheat
The craziest thing about the wealth tax idea is that even if we liquidated the entire net worth of every billionaire (somehow without crashing the economy since their wealth is mostly imaginary paper market value)—even if we did that—it wouldn’t cover 1 year of our spending deficit. We would still have to print money to feed the broken system.
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BUT WHO WILL PAY FOR THE ROADS???
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We’ll print the roads too 😹
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In all seriousness, from living in a rural unincorporated town, the answer to that question is “no one” the “roads” are pure gravel/dirt anarchy and full of pockets 😹
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Impossible ser. I was told my tax dollars would build the roads. IMPOSSIBLE.
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Just take in some more right wing propaganda why don't ya?
You do know the tax rate on the top 1% and corporations used to be about 70% right? And it worked.
You people who are so against making the top 1% contribute have clearly never been overseas to Europe and have seen how much more smoothly society functions in most of those countries. You're eating right out of the hand of the corporate billionaires. You're working for them and they're not even paying you by being against taxing those in the top 1%! You're getting played, fools.
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I don't know what's worse about taxes: the fact they steal from you, or the fact they fatten up the dirty, stinky pig that is the state.
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It's the latter. We can make do with less, but without our "contributions" the state couldn't commit its atrocities.
I feel so sad for people who have the form of Stockholm Syndrome known as statism.
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Without taxes you wouldn't have roads, fire departments, law enforcement that you far right extremists say you support. We wouldn't have an education system. You're clueless. And we can get rid of the atrocities by our military by reducing the budget that the Pentagon doesn't even spend all of anyway as they always have a surplus of funds at the end of the fiscal year. Btw, what atrocities do you actually care about? How about our law enforcement murdering unarmed black people? How about those ones, you care about those? How about the atrocities of innocent children dying via assault rifle inside schools due to lack of common sense gun legislation. You care about those ones or nah?
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Oh my goodness.... please grow up from this commie nonsense. As if there would be no private market for all these things the state is offerering with worse and worse quality.
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What you don't seem to understand is that the same private market that created smart phones is not capable of laying down strips of tar between two locations.
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But not for free. Who would fund them? Toll roads only? How's that gonna work
Dude, I'm a vegan atheist anarchist. What about that says "far-right"? Every single thing you insinuated that I believe was wrong. However, since you just parrot DNC talking points I'm not surprised you literally don't have a clue what you're talking about.
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Sorry, but facts and statistics don't have opinions bud. But the fact that you're an anarchist tells me that you're essentially a heartless, selfish, self-righteous individual that doesn't give a fuck about those who aren't as well off as you. Let me guess, you're a straight, white, cisgender male, right? Your privilege REEKS.
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One question: wtf does ''cisgender'' mean? That crap sounds like one of these new absurd words out of the Davosian commie kitchen to enrich this world with new attack vectors to fuel the long march.
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There are cis and trans fatty acids. If you're in Europe, my response to you is cisatlantic. And those who obey the law are cisgressors, a.k.a. cucks.
Cisgender is the term used for those who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth. It means they are not transgender. And before you call me a "woke liberal," I'd rather be awake and with the times instead of asleep and being left behind.
I wasn't being snide or sarcastic when I said I feel sad for people like you. Sincerely get well soon.
You don't have to internalize the priorities of the largest group of mass murderers in human history. You also don't have to otherize those who are outside of your cult. You could choose to ask questions, rather than traffic in baseless assumptions. I wish you a speedy recovery.
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The only one in a cult is you. But typical of the far right to project what they are doing onto someone else in an attempt to make it seem they are innocent. You people want anarchy and are okay with people dying of treatable diseases and are okay with innocent children being murdered in schools. But yeah, I'm in a cult. You literally are the definition of a cult in your views. Selfishness and arrogance run deep in cults and you have those traits clearly.
It's not stealing it's how a society functions. It's how you fund roads, fire departments, law enforcement, education systems, healthcare, so people don't have to die from treatable conditions because they can't afford their medications. That's how a society is actually supposed to work. But I forgot you far right extremists are selfish, arrogant, hypocrites.
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Asking genuinely out of curiosity, how do you see bitcoin's future? what's it here for in your eyes? I know it's easy for myself and other bitcoiners to tune out of politics (for good reason still imo) but i am interested how bitcoin can attract such a variety of worldviews
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I make significant money via arbitrage trading cryptocurrencies and I enjoy the complete anonymity of gambling online via Bitcoin with lightning and sometimes other crypto's. I also enjoy that i get my withdrawal virtually instantly via crypto instead of having to wait sometimes 24 hours if I withdrew off a fiat casino. Sometimes longer actually.
However, I also do believe that cryptocurrency of some sort is the future of payment for goods and services worldwide and i have used lightning a couple times to pay in store for items, so theres that.
I just am a realist and I can see flaws and point them out in everything, and there are flaws in Bitcoin that need to be addressed that unfortunately the Maxi's can't grasp. It saddens me because I truly do believe Bitcoin would be the currency of the future if the issues were addressed.
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I think the disconnect here with other bitcoiners is in our perspectives on "how society functions"
Most here (on SN at least) are viewing of society in terms of what it could become rather than what it is now (where you seem to be coming from). Many here I think would ascribe to the belief that technology can better dictate the people's interactions and relationships long term than governments can. Again, just a fundamental difference in perspective. Maybe I am assuming too much, apologies if so.
I'd say we're more alike than you think though. We both would consider ourselves realists and can see and call out flaws. Bitcoin has plenty of problems to address -- that are being addressed every hour of the day -- but if we are alike, let's look at the current monetary system. It has a literal infinite number of more problems (and currency units) to address.
The left nor the right nor anyone nor any policy "within" the system will solve it. It needs a replacement.
I understand that we can't just ignore the way things work now. The realist in me is thus much more at odds with government policy that never seems to work, and only seems to makes things worse with time. I'm much more critical of that than of bitcoin's problems, because bitcoin works basically flawlessly regardless of them.
Let's think beyond taxes. It's how we fund roads today. But maybe not tomorrow. Humanity is much cooler and more capable than that..
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1632 sats \ 2 replies \ @TomK 1 Dec 2023
Sorry, but have You been in Europe recently? I would invite You to come and visit some of the dead economies of the south where people are paying 1. Income tax. 2. Vat 3. Co2 tax 4. Taxes on inheritance 5. Taxes on real estate (to erode the substance) etc etc. The rich 10% are paying more or less between 50 and 70% of the bs our polit clowns are wasting to secure their re-election. It's the state that has to shrink!
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Yes I have. And society functions much more cohesively than in the US. In Europe, people aren't dying from curable diseases or because they can't afford their prescriptions. In Europe, people aren't stuck working for wages that still put them under the federal poverty level working 40 hours a week because the Republicans fail to do anything to raise the minimum wage so it can catch up with the inflation rate. (It would need to be $34/hour btw if we look at the rate of inflation since a minimum wage law was implemented.) In Europe, they have high speed rail systems between countries and much better infrastructure and interstates. In Europe, the prison populations aren't full of people that sold some weed and aren't full of minorities put away simply for being a minority. In Europe, the leading.cause of death for people under 18 IS NOT GUN VIOLENCE. NEED ME TO CONTINUE?!
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Oh boy, may I ask You: are You german? You clearly never have been south of Switzerland. What You are describing is a fantasy land that doesn't exist. Start collecting data on (relative and adjusted) purchasing power in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. After that we talk again. But You are german, aren't You?
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ser this is my propaganda
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this is amazing
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prob a top 3 bitcoin meme for me
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That worked back when we weren’t spending $1T/year just to service our debt payments. Double check the Fed spending vs income and then come up with a tax plan. I’ll give you a short cut: we can’t tax our way out of this system. It works in smaller countries where they don’t own $33T and counting in debt, and where they aren’t spending $6T/year. It won’t work here. There is no tax formula that will save us from the need to print more money.
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This is straight up fear mongering.
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Yep. That's all right wing propaganda is. Fear mongering and spinning their listeners into submission so they keep those at the top, at the top.
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