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The correct response is to use your legislators to change the tax code to be more fair. Yelling at people for properly taking legal deductions, when you yourse

The correct response is to use your legislators to change the tax code to be more fair. Yelling at people for properly taking legal deductions, when you yourself take deductions on your taxes, reeks of hypocrisy and being mad because Joey got a cookie and you didn't.

wang_li 5y ago
>reeks of hypocrisy and being mad because Joey got a cookie and you didn't. You mean because Joey took his allowance and bought the supplies for a lemonade stand, took the money made from that to buy the ingredients to make cookies, then took the time to bake himself cookies. It's strange that people find a person who creates & grows a company and who pays hundreds of millions of dollars in legally required taxes detestable. Yet a person who fails to gain the basic education that is free to them, who has no ambition, who is literally a drain on society, cannot be criticized. It's astonishing to me that society accepts and allows people to not have a least a high school education. I wonder what the response would be to an article about how trillions in taxes are not paid because there are millions and millions of people who simply don't develop their personal capital and make decent choices that would result in them earning more and paying more in taxes.
- iammisc 5y ago
  Don't know why you're being down voted. I have no love for bezos, but insofar as he seems to mostly follow the law, contribute to society, and built a large employer, he seems more worthy of emulation than the randos we are asked to care for on the government dole
- ndiddy 5y ago
  I don’t know why you are being downvoted. If homeless people simply decided to learn Python and read PG essays for inspiration rather than being a drain on society, we could completely eliminate the homeless problem. Hopefully one day the troglodytes making up the rest of the world will catch up to our enlightened viewpoint.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Hard to tell if this is sarcasm or not.
    - mc32 5y ago
      It’s a riff on the tone-deaf “learn to code”[1] thrown at miners and anyone else losing jobs in the transition to renewables. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/angr4k/what_is_the_deal_with_learn_to_code_being_used_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/angr4k/what_i...
  - wang_li 5y ago
    Good one. I do hope people recognize that homeless people constitute less than 1% of Americans. By contrast 60% of tax returns filed by Americans have negative net tax rates. They literally contribute nothing to the running of the Federal government, and for about 40% they contribute nothing to all other levels of government. This story is about how the very few extremely high earners use sophisticated personal finance strategies to minimize their tax burden. On the other hand huge numbers of people use the unsophisticated strategy of not developing any significant skills or education and not earning much money resulting in not paying any net taxes. Not talking about the super poor who earn nothing, but people who earn $30,000-$60,000/year. At the end of the day, they are not net tax payers.
  - lordlimecat 5y ago
    When the US gets overtaken by other economies in Asia, it will be because people there focused on climbing to the top by any means while we whined about how hard our life is. There are guys in Hyderabad right now in conditions worse than US homelessness learning Python, devops, cloud, virtualization, you name it because that's how they can survive. I know people in fairly poor countries with terrible crime rates and bad job prospects, and I have never heard them complain about how hard life is. They figure out how to get out of their situation and improve their life. The idea that someone else has to fix your situation because life is hard has to be one of the most crippling mentalities you could have. The sheer amount of opportunity we have in the west is unprecedented in human history; instead of crying about the fact that your stable job of 20 years is ending, yes: I'm going to say that it is fundamentally you that has to pivot (even if it would be nice if the government helped).
refurb 5y ago
Yup. Few people know that the 401k deduction is a massive loophole someone found and exploited. It was never intended to be a retirement vehicle or used in a widespread manner. There was discussion of repealing it as the tax revenue hit was not planned for.
ashtonkem 5y ago
> The correct response is to use your legislators to change the tax code to be more fair. My entire thesis is that vigilante leaks like this are a product of the perceived unwillingness of the legislature to deal with the abuse of tax loopholes or to tax the rich at anywhere close to the rate that the overwhelming majority of voters want. If my theory is correct, then saying “talk to your legislator instead” is almost hilariously tone deaf, given that these leakers are probably taking actions into their own hands in response to a belief that their legislator is lazy or corrupt. More broadly, my point is that singling out individual actors is an ineffective way to stop stochastic law breaking. Decry and punish individual law breakers all you want, but don’t expect it to stop until you at least triage the underlying causes.
- justanotherguy0 5y ago
  The tax code is the product of the legislature and the courts, both of which are accountable to voters. The bureaucrats are functionally accountable to nobody. This leak was instigated by a bureaucrat. Fuck the bureaucrats.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    > The tax code is the product of the legislature and the courts, both of which are accountable to voters. That’s the theory, yes. I do not believe this to be true in practice however.

wang_li 5y ago

>reeks of hypocrisy and being mad because Joey got a cookie and you didn't. You mean because Joey took his allowance and bought the supplies for a lemonade stand, took the money made from that to buy the ingredients to make cookies, then took the time to bake himself cookies. It's strange that people find a person who creates & grows a company and who pays hundreds of millions of dollars in legally required taxes detestable. Yet a person who fails to gain the basic education that is free to them, who has no ambition, who is literally a drain on society, cannot be criticized. It's astonishing to me that society accepts and allows people to not have a least a high school education. I wonder what the response would be to an article about how trillions in taxes are not paid because there are millions and millions of people who simply don't develop their personal capital and make decent choices that would result in them earning more and paying more in taxes.

iammisc 5y ago
Don't know why you're being down voted. I have no love for bezos, but insofar as he seems to mostly follow the law, contribute to society, and built a large employer, he seems more worthy of emulation than the randos we are asked to care for on the government dole
ndiddy 5y ago
I don’t know why you are being downvoted. If homeless people simply decided to learn Python and read PG essays for inspiration rather than being a drain on society, we could completely eliminate the homeless problem. Hopefully one day the troglodytes making up the rest of the world will catch up to our enlightened viewpoint.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Hard to tell if this is sarcasm or not.
  - mc32 5y ago
    It’s a riff on the tone-deaf “learn to code”[1] thrown at miners and anyone else losing jobs in the transition to renewables. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/angr4k/what_is_the_deal_with_learn_to_code_being_used_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/angr4k/what_i...
- wang_li 5y ago
  Good one. I do hope people recognize that homeless people constitute less than 1% of Americans. By contrast 60% of tax returns filed by Americans have negative net tax rates. They literally contribute nothing to the running of the Federal government, and for about 40% they contribute nothing to all other levels of government. This story is about how the very few extremely high earners use sophisticated personal finance strategies to minimize their tax burden. On the other hand huge numbers of people use the unsophisticated strategy of not developing any significant skills or education and not earning much money resulting in not paying any net taxes. Not talking about the super poor who earn nothing, but people who earn $30,000-$60,000/year. At the end of the day, they are not net tax payers.
- lordlimecat 5y ago
  When the US gets overtaken by other economies in Asia, it will be because people there focused on climbing to the top by any means while we whined about how hard our life is. There are guys in Hyderabad right now in conditions worse than US homelessness learning Python, devops, cloud, virtualization, you name it because that's how they can survive. I know people in fairly poor countries with terrible crime rates and bad job prospects, and I have never heard them complain about how hard life is. They figure out how to get out of their situation and improve their life. The idea that someone else has to fix your situation because life is hard has to be one of the most crippling mentalities you could have. The sheer amount of opportunity we have in the west is unprecedented in human history; instead of crying about the fact that your stable job of 20 years is ending, yes: I'm going to say that it is fundamentally you that has to pivot (even if it would be nice if the government helped).

refurb 5y ago

Yup. Few people know that the 401k deduction is a massive loophole someone found and exploited. It was never intended to be a retirement vehicle or used in a widespread manner. There was discussion of repealing it as the tax revenue hit was not planned for.

ashtonkem 5y ago

> The correct response is to use your legislators to change the tax code to be more fair. My entire thesis is that vigilante leaks like this are a product of the perceived unwillingness of the legislature to deal with the abuse of tax loopholes or to tax the rich at anywhere close to the rate that the overwhelming majority of voters want. If my theory is correct, then saying “talk to your legislator instead” is almost hilariously tone deaf, given that these leakers are probably taking actions into their own hands in response to a belief that their legislator is lazy or corrupt. More broadly, my point is that singling out individual actors is an ineffective way to stop stochastic law breaking. Decry and punish individual law breakers all you want, but don’t expect it to stop until you at least triage the underlying causes.

justanotherguy0 5y ago
The tax code is the product of the legislature and the courts, both of which are accountable to voters. The bureaucrats are functionally accountable to nobody. This leak was instigated by a bureaucrat. Fuck the bureaucrats.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > The tax code is the product of the legislature and the courts, both of which are accountable to voters. That’s the theory, yes. I do not believe this to be true in practice however.