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> Don't believe me? Watch Eric Schmidt or Marc Andreessen talk about Europe. Yes, let's follow the guy who was "proud" of Google's tax avoidance scheme [1] or

> Don't believe me? Watch Eric Schmidt or Marc Andreessen talk about Europe. Yes, let's follow the guy who was "proud" of Google's tax avoidance scheme [1] or the guy that's happy that oxycontin and video games exist to keep poor people quiet [2]. If these are the parts of the US you want to import to the EU, no thanks. [1]: https://www.itpro.com/644638/eric-schmidt-proud-of-google-tax-avoidance https://www.itpro.com/644638/eric-schmidt-proud-of-google-ta... [2]: https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-24-my-dinner-with-andreessen/ https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-24-my-dinner-with-andrees...

api 2y ago
A lot of people go for this crowd and their cartoon amphetamine futurism because the apparent alternative is fear, paralysis, and regression. If you don’t put forward a positive expansive vision for the future someone else will do it for you, like these guys. (Edited) There was a time when leftism and liberalism did this. Leftism put forward a vision of equality that featured workers cooperating to go to the stars. Liberalism and its relatives put forward a world of global trade leading to shared global prosperity and again, to the stars (either literally or metaphorically). Now it’s all whiny doom and gloom and degrowth, which is a luxury belief for people who are already rich. One of the biggest things that worries me about our discourse is that only fascists and adjacent types are talking positively about the future. That’s terrifying. Snap out this performative doomer nonsense or fascism is what we get.
skywhopper 2y ago
Yeah, Schmidt and Andreessen represent the absolute worst of American VC hyper growth culture. They made their money in old models and lack any new ideas other than squeezing the stones of Google etc. Their model will not win the future. They are the ones dragging down the present.
csmpltn 2y ago
You know what would change people's minds about taxes? Actually seeing how those taxes are funneled back to improve the lives of the people paying those taxes in a pragmatic and efficient manner. What tends to happen instead? The cities/countries with highest tax rates (also in Europe) also seem to have an increasingly high violent crime rates. Public transport gets worse every year. The infrastructure rots and collapses everywhere. The public sector is growing increasingly fat and inefficient (pulling the taxes up with it), the queues for social help programs and payouts grows increasingly large every year (more and more people start depending on government payouts). Out-of-control asylum-driven immigration from 3rd world countries. Out-of-control expenditure on war and arms trading. Currency devaluation and high inflation due to bullshit government policies. So as a tax payer, at some point, you start questioning everything. What are you paying for? Why? Where is this all going? And once you realize how the system truly works - yes, you start thinking about ways to minimize your tax footprint.
- deleted 2y ago
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encody 2y ago
I don't really know much about the two people mentioned above, outside of being tech businessmen. Tax avoidance is different from tax evasion: one refers to not voluntarily donating money to the government, and the other is a crime. The similarity in terms is misleading. The characterization of the Andreessen quote is 1) inaccurate, as the antecedent in the actual quote is unspecified, and 2) described in the linked article as not being a direct quote. Eu/acc does not appear to be promoting those two aspects of those two people. All people are multifaceted and flawed. Probably, the website is referencing them because of their apparent success as tech investors/founders.
- themoonisachees 2y ago
  Taxes are very much not voluntary donations to governments. They are enforced by threat of state-sanctionned violence.
  - dagw 2y ago
    The argument that paying more taxes than you strictly have to is a "voluntary donations". If you can legally (ab)use loopholes in the tax code to pay less taxes and choose not to, that is an active choice you are making to pay more taxes than necessary. Furthermore you could even argue that as a company it's not even 'your' money, but your shareholder's, and as such you have a duty to them to pay as little tax as legally possible.
deleted 2y ago
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api 2y ago

A lot of people go for this crowd and their cartoon amphetamine futurism because the apparent alternative is fear, paralysis, and regression. If you don’t put forward a positive expansive vision for the future someone else will do it for you, like these guys. (Edited) There was a time when leftism and liberalism did this. Leftism put forward a vision of equality that featured workers cooperating to go to the stars. Liberalism and its relatives put forward a world of global trade leading to shared global prosperity and again, to the stars (either literally or metaphorically). Now it’s all whiny doom and gloom and degrowth, which is a luxury belief for people who are already rich. One of the biggest things that worries me about our discourse is that only fascists and adjacent types are talking positively about the future. That’s terrifying. Snap out this performative doomer nonsense or fascism is what we get.

skywhopper 2y ago

Yeah, Schmidt and Andreessen represent the absolute worst of American VC hyper growth culture. They made their money in old models and lack any new ideas other than squeezing the stones of Google etc. Their model will not win the future. They are the ones dragging down the present.

csmpltn 2y ago

You know what would change people's minds about taxes? Actually seeing how those taxes are funneled back to improve the lives of the people paying those taxes in a pragmatic and efficient manner. What tends to happen instead? The cities/countries with highest tax rates (also in Europe) also seem to have an increasingly high violent crime rates. Public transport gets worse every year. The infrastructure rots and collapses everywhere. The public sector is growing increasingly fat and inefficient (pulling the taxes up with it), the queues for social help programs and payouts grows increasingly large every year (more and more people start depending on government payouts). Out-of-control asylum-driven immigration from 3rd world countries. Out-of-control expenditure on war and arms trading. Currency devaluation and high inflation due to bullshit government policies. So as a tax payer, at some point, you start questioning everything. What are you paying for? Why? Where is this all going? And once you realize how the system truly works - yes, you start thinking about ways to minimize your tax footprint.

deleted 2y ago
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encody 2y ago

I don't really know much about the two people mentioned above, outside of being tech businessmen. Tax avoidance is different from tax evasion: one refers to not voluntarily donating money to the government, and the other is a crime. The similarity in terms is misleading. The characterization of the Andreessen quote is 1) inaccurate, as the antecedent in the actual quote is unspecified, and 2) described in the linked article as not being a direct quote. Eu/acc does not appear to be promoting those two aspects of those two people. All people are multifaceted and flawed. Probably, the website is referencing them because of their apparent success as tech investors/founders.

themoonisachees 2y ago
Taxes are very much not voluntary donations to governments. They are enforced by threat of state-sanctionned violence.
- dagw 2y ago
  The argument that paying more taxes than you strictly have to is a "voluntary donations". If you can legally (ab)use loopholes in the tax code to pay less taxes and choose not to, that is an active choice you are making to pay more taxes than necessary. Furthermore you could even argue that as a company it's not even 'your' money, but your shareholder's, and as such you have a duty to them to pay as little tax as legally possible.

deleted 2y ago

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