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> I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system. I'm going to go out
by danans 5y ago
> I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system.
I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that most of those early benefits were paid for or subsidized by highly progressive taxes.
I can only hope that wealthy people like the author understand this and don't pull up the ladder behind them.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoWater and pasta are not subsidised by highly progressive taxes. I can't speak highly of the education system in Italy, it didn't change since the fascist era and it's still mostly a bunch of rote memorisation and teachers with sadist tendencies. I had to study Latin in a computer science focused high school, for **'s sake. I found the education in Finland or in the UK to be way more reasonable in terms of load. Italy is not overrepresented in the number of people in tech, as far as I can tell; the way in which the author was lucky, was that he had access to tech and was in a stable (familiar and societal) environment that allowed him to focus on computer science, which happened to be a good move, given the value of tech nowadays. Besides "highly progressive taxes" just means that wealthy middle class are footing the bill with half their salary while millionaires use company loopholes to pay 0. Taxes are never going to be fair, because the richest people in society will always have the greatest incentive (aka: a large potential tax bill) and the greatest skills (aka: a lot of bribes and lobbying) in changing the laws so that they're somehow exempt.