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> I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked to pay for it for decades. No I don’t think I will. That has v

> I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked to pay for it for decades. No I don’t think I will. That has very little to do with currency and everything to do with you not wanting to pay taxes. You may think that COVID response has been a catastrophic waste of money but if you'd lost your job would you have claimed the increased unemployment benefits? I suspect the vast majority of people would have. There's a lot to criticise in terms of government COVID response (and from your post you could be talking about any one of a number of governments!) but big government spending right now to stop even greater economic depression in the future is not some kind of wasteful accident, it's deliberate action to improve everyone's situation in the long term.

gibbonsrcool 6y ago
Why should one want to pay taxes on debt that was a result of stupidity?
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  No one wants to pay taxes on half of what taxes are being spent on. Every one wants it spent on what they prefer. Your comment doesn’t change that.
RhodoGSA 6y ago
The government forcing me to lose my job by shutting everything down and then giving me a little boost in unemployment does not make me greatful. It makes me resentful that i am forced to rely on them.
- afavour 6y ago
  I didn't ask if you'd be grateful, I asked if you'd take the expanded unemployment insurance. I suspect a lot of people were grumbling all the way to the direct deposit form but filled it out anyway. And it's not as if governments forced these shutdowns on a whim or because they felt like it. They were the result of scientific examination, and more importantly, the majority of voters were in favour of them (I think 8 out of 10 in the US in April?). In this case the government was just expressing the will of the people, whether it was your personal will or not.
  - logifail 6y ago
    > it's not as if governments forced these shutdowns on a whim or because they felt like it. They were the result of scientific examination [Source: a friend of mine who worked in local government disaster & contingency planning] I don't believe that government-mandated lockdowns were ever part of any pre-Covid19 pandemic planning. It was assumed that [for instance] schools might well end up having to close if the spread of disease got so widespread that there wouldn't be enough healthy staff to keep them open, not because government would order them closed.
- sofixa 6y ago
  What should have they done? Nothing? And what about all the dead piling in the streets and freezer trucks?
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    P1 and B.1.351 avoid natural immunity gained from the original COVID19 virus. So if we did nothing, then P1 / B.1.351 would have reinfected the country anyway. Manaus (Brazil) got reinfected and its hospitals are overflowing with P1 infections, even after achieving 76% infection rate last year. I say this because there's a large number of people who actually believe that "do nothing" is the correct response. Now with the hindsight of these new variants, we now know for sure that "doing nothing" is the wrong answer. Not only does "do nothing" fail to prepare against future variants, it CREATES new variants as large masses of the population mutate the virus. ----------- It is increasingly looking like vaccination is our only option. (or really, has always been our only option, and we're only gathering proof today that this is absolutely the case).
    - logifail 6y ago
      > It is increasingly looking like vaccination is our only option For those at high risk, vaccination sounds like an excellent idea. A bit like we do with seasonal flu? Except note that: "Flu viruses are constantly changing, so the vaccine composition is reviewed each year and updated as needed based on which influenza viruses are making people sick, the extent to which those viruses are spreading, and how well the previous season’s vaccine protects against those viruses"[0] What do we do about those who are at low / very low risk from Covid19? [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-selection.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-selection.htm
      - dragontamer 6y ago
        > What do we do about those who are at low / very low risk from Covid19? We give them the vaccine to stop the spread, once the vaccine is proven safe. After all: the vaccine slows down the spread of the disease (probably at a lesser rate than it prevents hospitalizations, but a slowdown in any case is good). I'm not sure what you're trying to insinuate in your post. Since the vaccine has been given to over 30-million Americans, we know it is safe at this point (with issues occurring in literally one-in-a-million allergy issues, which is largely solved by just watching the patients 30-minutes after injection). EDIT: I should note that we should vaccinate the high-risk / high-impact population first. The only reason we don't vaccinate the low-impact / low-risk population yet is because we don't have enough vaccine yet. But as Johnson&Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Novavax release their doses, things will go a lot faster.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ddtaylor 6y ago
I don't think everyone who wants to check and balance the monetary power of the government is anti-tax. I think most of us would just rather they have to do it through legitimate means. Cryptocurrencies cannot be bargained with or taken over. If governments want to print and debase their fiat currencies, they are free to do so, but there will always be an elephant in the room that never does that because it's incapable of doing it.
- ameister14 6y ago
  Cryptocurrencies cannot be bargained with or taken over Sure they can. They are artificially inflated all the time - look at tether.
  - ddtaylor 6y ago
    Manipulating speculation on any asset isn't what I'm referencing there. I'm specifically talking about manipulating the supply.
    - ameister14 6y ago
      The supply can be manipulated as well, just like how the supply of diamonds is manipulated.
    - lottin 6y ago
      Have you ever heard of fractional reserve banking?
      - ddtaylor 6y ago
        "Not your keys, not your coin"
tengbretson 6y ago
> That has very little to do with currency and everything to do with you not wanting to pay taxes. > You may think that COVID response has been a catastrophic waste of money but if you'd lost your job would you have claimed the increased unemployment benefits? I suspect the vast majority of people would have. Do our expenditures like unemployment benefits actually have any relationship with tax revenue at this point?
- vzcx 6y ago
  Only weakly in that others will only extend credit to USG as long as their revenues are sufficient that they do not default.
kortilla 6y ago
> That has very little to do with currency and everything to do with you not wanting to pay taxes. Debasing a currency is not a normal tax. Currency debasement is extremely regressive. - The poorer someone is, the more of their assets are likely to just be some cash in the bank. - it is a permanent loss of quality of life for people on fixed incomes. - it doesn’t exempt people a normal tax code does (low income, blind, high dependent count, etc) > it's deliberate action to improve everyone's situation in the long term. This is the justification for nearly every government action.
- FabHK 6y ago
  > extremely regressive Wouldn't call it extremely regressive. > The poorer someone is, the more of their assets are likely to just be some cash in the bank. The poor generally have less cash in the bank than the rich. > - it is a permanent loss of quality of life for people on fixed incomes. Those living of fixed incomes are rarely the poorest, either. Pensions in many countries are tied to inflation. > This is the justification for nearly every government action. Yes, and in many many cases, that justification is entirely justified. Where it isn't, the problem typically is bad government, not government.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    Overall I’m not in disagreement but: > The poor generally have less cash in the bank than the rich. The OP said the only assets some poorer people will have will be some cash [in the bank]. Is this not correct? I’ve been near broke before. The only assets I had besides a dying car was money in between Venmo, PayPal, bank account, and actual cash.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > The OP said the only assets some poorer people will have will be some cash [in the bank]. Is this not correct? I’ve been near broke before. The only assets I had besides a dying car was money in between Venmo, PayPal, bank account, and actual cash. Honestly, all the fretting about the debasing of value of a poor person's small pile of cash seems like outright misdirection to me. You have to look at the whole picture, and that whole picture is that the poor person might be trading say a <$10 loss to inflation on a small savings account for a $1000 stimulus check. That's a good bargain. More broadly, the hard money/bitcoin people seems to want exchange the elimination of their hypothetical fear of (hyper)inflation for a very real likelihood of lingering recessions due to austerity policies. That doesn't seem like a good bargain to me.
billylindeman 6y ago
It absolutely IS about currency. They're printing money to pay for shit they can't afford. That is in ADDITION to the taxes that will be levied. Big government spending is absolutely a waste of economic resources, and will make the situation worse. The REAL problem is that most americans don't have enough money saved to take care of themselves during hard times. Why might that be? The FED's influence has resulted in our entire economic structure discouraging saving. This is specifically a problem bitcoin tries to solve (by having a specific and tapering inflation curve that results in deflationary pressures).
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
  >That is in ADDITION to the taxes that will be levied. Or inflation will be used to reduce inequalities now that taxes have been made unacceptable by the rich (who wouldn't pay taxes). It's more a replacement than a sum. Elected officials don't have much of a a choice when the economy goes to trash and the poor becoming poorer to a point where violence becomes a good solution for the poor to have some control over the economy (who should serve society and not the other way around). > The REAL problem is that most americans don't have enough money saved to take care of themselves during hard times. Why might that be? Because they already went through economic crises than got them near bankruptcy?
  - coryfklein 6y ago
    Inflation is a progressive tax, but in the opposite direction we normally expect. The wealthy hold a much smaller proportion of their wealth in cash than do the poor so inflation is, in fact, a way to extract more wealth from the poor. The rich tend hold their wealth in stock, land, and other assets. Most of which inflation is mostly neutral or beneficial to. The dollar value of TSLA goes up in response to general inflation, but the purchasing power generally remains the same.
    - kpommerenke 6y ago
      Wouldn't that make inflation a regressive tax?
kneel 6y ago
We're tired of war currencies, let's do better. There's a lot more than this, but at the heart of this debt system is a war machine.
conanbatt 6y ago
If the existence of fiat currencies is to levy taxes, what better use-case for bitcoin can you imagine than to protect its user from taxes?

gibbonsrcool 6y ago

Why should one want to pay taxes on debt that was a result of stupidity?

skinnymuch 6y ago
No one wants to pay taxes on half of what taxes are being spent on. Every one wants it spent on what they prefer. Your comment doesn’t change that.

RhodoGSA 6y ago

The government forcing me to lose my job by shutting everything down and then giving me a little boost in unemployment does not make me greatful. It makes me resentful that i am forced to rely on them.

afavour 6y ago
I didn't ask if you'd be grateful, I asked if you'd take the expanded unemployment insurance. I suspect a lot of people were grumbling all the way to the direct deposit form but filled it out anyway. And it's not as if governments forced these shutdowns on a whim or because they felt like it. They were the result of scientific examination, and more importantly, the majority of voters were in favour of them (I think 8 out of 10 in the US in April?). In this case the government was just expressing the will of the people, whether it was your personal will or not.
- logifail 6y ago
  > it's not as if governments forced these shutdowns on a whim or because they felt like it. They were the result of scientific examination [Source: a friend of mine who worked in local government disaster & contingency planning] I don't believe that government-mandated lockdowns were ever part of any pre-Covid19 pandemic planning. It was assumed that [for instance] schools might well end up having to close if the spread of disease got so widespread that there wouldn't be enough healthy staff to keep them open, not because government would order them closed.
sofixa 6y ago
What should have they done? Nothing? And what about all the dead piling in the streets and freezer trucks?
- dragontamer 6y ago
  P1 and B.1.351 avoid natural immunity gained from the original COVID19 virus. So if we did nothing, then P1 / B.1.351 would have reinfected the country anyway. Manaus (Brazil) got reinfected and its hospitals are overflowing with P1 infections, even after achieving 76% infection rate last year. I say this because there's a large number of people who actually believe that "do nothing" is the correct response. Now with the hindsight of these new variants, we now know for sure that "doing nothing" is the wrong answer. Not only does "do nothing" fail to prepare against future variants, it CREATES new variants as large masses of the population mutate the virus. ----------- It is increasingly looking like vaccination is our only option. (or really, has always been our only option, and we're only gathering proof today that this is absolutely the case).
  - logifail 6y ago
    > It is increasingly looking like vaccination is our only option For those at high risk, vaccination sounds like an excellent idea. A bit like we do with seasonal flu? Except note that: "Flu viruses are constantly changing, so the vaccine composition is reviewed each year and updated as needed based on which influenza viruses are making people sick, the extent to which those viruses are spreading, and how well the previous season’s vaccine protects against those viruses"[0] What do we do about those who are at low / very low risk from Covid19? [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-selection.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-selection.htm
    - dragontamer 6y ago
      > What do we do about those who are at low / very low risk from Covid19? We give them the vaccine to stop the spread, once the vaccine is proven safe. After all: the vaccine slows down the spread of the disease (probably at a lesser rate than it prevents hospitalizations, but a slowdown in any case is good). I'm not sure what you're trying to insinuate in your post. Since the vaccine has been given to over 30-million Americans, we know it is safe at this point (with issues occurring in literally one-in-a-million allergy issues, which is largely solved by just watching the patients 30-minutes after injection). EDIT: I should note that we should vaccinate the high-risk / high-impact population first. The only reason we don't vaccinate the low-impact / low-risk population yet is because we don't have enough vaccine yet. But as Johnson&Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Novavax release their doses, things will go a lot faster.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ddtaylor 6y ago

I don't think everyone who wants to check and balance the monetary power of the government is anti-tax. I think most of us would just rather they have to do it through legitimate means. Cryptocurrencies cannot be bargained with or taken over. If governments want to print and debase their fiat currencies, they are free to do so, but there will always be an elephant in the room that never does that because it's incapable of doing it.

ameister14 6y ago
Cryptocurrencies cannot be bargained with or taken over Sure they can. They are artificially inflated all the time - look at tether.
- ddtaylor 6y ago
  Manipulating speculation on any asset isn't what I'm referencing there. I'm specifically talking about manipulating the supply.
  - ameister14 6y ago
    The supply can be manipulated as well, just like how the supply of diamonds is manipulated.
  - lottin 6y ago
    Have you ever heard of fractional reserve banking?
    - ddtaylor 6y ago
      "Not your keys, not your coin"

tengbretson 6y ago

> That has very little to do with currency and everything to do with you not wanting to pay taxes. > You may think that COVID response has been a catastrophic waste of money but if you'd lost your job would you have claimed the increased unemployment benefits? I suspect the vast majority of people would have. Do our expenditures like unemployment benefits actually have any relationship with tax revenue at this point?

vzcx 6y ago
Only weakly in that others will only extend credit to USG as long as their revenues are sufficient that they do not default.

kortilla 6y ago

> That has very little to do with currency and everything to do with you not wanting to pay taxes. Debasing a currency is not a normal tax. Currency debasement is extremely regressive. - The poorer someone is, the more of their assets are likely to just be some cash in the bank. - it is a permanent loss of quality of life for people on fixed incomes. - it doesn’t exempt people a normal tax code does (low income, blind, high dependent count, etc) > it's deliberate action to improve everyone's situation in the long term. This is the justification for nearly every government action.

FabHK 6y ago
> extremely regressive Wouldn't call it extremely regressive. > The poorer someone is, the more of their assets are likely to just be some cash in the bank. The poor generally have less cash in the bank than the rich. > - it is a permanent loss of quality of life for people on fixed incomes. Those living of fixed incomes are rarely the poorest, either. Pensions in many countries are tied to inflation. > This is the justification for nearly every government action. Yes, and in many many cases, that justification is entirely justified. Where it isn't, the problem typically is bad government, not government.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  Overall I’m not in disagreement but: > The poor generally have less cash in the bank than the rich. The OP said the only assets some poorer people will have will be some cash [in the bank]. Is this not correct? I’ve been near broke before. The only assets I had besides a dying car was money in between Venmo, PayPal, bank account, and actual cash.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > The OP said the only assets some poorer people will have will be some cash [in the bank]. Is this not correct? I’ve been near broke before. The only assets I had besides a dying car was money in between Venmo, PayPal, bank account, and actual cash. Honestly, all the fretting about the debasing of value of a poor person's small pile of cash seems like outright misdirection to me. You have to look at the whole picture, and that whole picture is that the poor person might be trading say a <$10 loss to inflation on a small savings account for a $1000 stimulus check. That's a good bargain. More broadly, the hard money/bitcoin people seems to want exchange the elimination of their hypothetical fear of (hyper)inflation for a very real likelihood of lingering recessions due to austerity policies. That doesn't seem like a good bargain to me.

billylindeman 6y ago

It absolutely IS about currency. They're printing money to pay for shit they can't afford. That is in ADDITION to the taxes that will be levied. Big government spending is absolutely a waste of economic resources, and will make the situation worse. The REAL problem is that most americans don't have enough money saved to take care of themselves during hard times. Why might that be? The FED's influence has resulted in our entire economic structure discouraging saving. This is specifically a problem bitcoin tries to solve (by having a specific and tapering inflation curve that results in deflationary pressures).

rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
>That is in ADDITION to the taxes that will be levied. Or inflation will be used to reduce inequalities now that taxes have been made unacceptable by the rich (who wouldn't pay taxes). It's more a replacement than a sum. Elected officials don't have much of a a choice when the economy goes to trash and the poor becoming poorer to a point where violence becomes a good solution for the poor to have some control over the economy (who should serve society and not the other way around). > The REAL problem is that most americans don't have enough money saved to take care of themselves during hard times. Why might that be? Because they already went through economic crises than got them near bankruptcy?
- coryfklein 6y ago
  Inflation is a progressive tax, but in the opposite direction we normally expect. The wealthy hold a much smaller proportion of their wealth in cash than do the poor so inflation is, in fact, a way to extract more wealth from the poor. The rich tend hold their wealth in stock, land, and other assets. Most of which inflation is mostly neutral or beneficial to. The dollar value of TSLA goes up in response to general inflation, but the purchasing power generally remains the same.
  - kpommerenke 6y ago
    Wouldn't that make inflation a regressive tax?

kneel 6y ago

We're tired of war currencies, let's do better. There's a lot more than this, but at the heart of this debt system is a war machine.

conanbatt 6y ago

If the existence of fiat currencies is to levy taxes, what better use-case for bitcoin can you imagine than to protect its user from taxes?