6 ms·

I got invited to write for the Huffington Post today

124 points by alexfarran 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
markbnj 12y ago
I sympathize and share the author's dislike of this particular business model, however, I am fairly certain the Huffpo staffer addressed didn't read past the first paragraph.
- tomp 12y ago
  Hopefully they will now that it's trending on HN.
- thinkt4nk 12y ago
  On what do you base your fair certainty?
  - markbnj 12y ago
    The fact the reply to an offer by an editor started with three or four paragraphs of political ideology.
    - thinkt4nk 12y ago
      ...the assumption being that the editor has an aversion toward political ideology?
spindritf 12y ago
the class of people who own the world and control all the assets may finally begin to see the error of their ways Their ways? Arianna Huffington didn't cause the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted. She also didn't inherit HuffPo so all that talk about socialism and inheritance tax is just more signalling on the author's part. Which is why they chose him. If some street hustler challenges you to a game of three card monte you don't need to bother to play, just hand him the money, not because you're going to lose but because you owe him for the insight: he selected you.[1] He owes them an article on cancer, I believe. [1] http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/05/dove.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/05/dove.html
- mcguire 12y ago
  "...people willing to write for free to stroke their ego..." Or to get exposure, which is a requirement for making a living in any creative endeavour. Note: Huffington exposure isn't worth much, but neither is exposure from writing articles in most journalism outlets. That doesn't prevent every last writer from having a list of "published in Time, Newsweek, Mr. Peabody's Literary Conglomeration,...and the Washington Post" in their brag paragraph.
- kitsune_ 12y ago
  She was also married to a billionaire and got a nice divorce settlement in 1997.
- autokad 12y ago
  this writer has a real axe to grind with people trying to make money from rent, sheesh
- jseliger 12y ago
  the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted To be fair, some people write for free to learn things, share things, and spread knowledge. That's why I started a blog. And virtually all professors, who produce work for journals, don't get paid directly via their writing, but rather via their home institution, and sometimes other means (like grants). Universities are different than the HuffPo, but the point is still important.
  - cobrausn 12y ago
    I think the real point there is that the professors still get paid.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
  But she is causing it, as are people selling fixie bikes, and barbers who give the bros their haircuts. It's funny that people don't call her Huffington more often, as if she were engaged in something more noble than say Hefner.
salimmadjd 12y ago
Good for the writer. I have written for Hufpo once before and soon I realized how their model works: 1 - get free content from the writers. 2 - get free marketing and traffic from the writers (who tell their friends and follower about their article they've just posted on the Hufpo) Most of the articles you write are all hidden in some sub-pages that no one but your friends or google seo would ever find. edit: formatting.
- rayiner 12y ago
  This is the basic model of a lot of similar companies. Get people to provide content for free, then profit from control over the repository. If it weren't for copyright protections, HuffPo and its ilk would just copy your blog posts verbatim and call it a day. They're one step up from the sites that auto-generate product reviews or display reformatted Wikipedia articles.
  - altcognito 12y ago
    Or link aggregators who get others (for free) to submit links to freely (not always though) provided content. It's all about the traffic.
  - untog 12y ago
    If it weren't for copyright protections, HuffPo and its ilk would just copy your blog posts verbatim and call it a day. They pretty much do anyway. Anything saying "CNN has reported..." is basically just a rewrite of the existing CNN article, to just enough of an extent that they avoid copyright issues. Do slightly better SEO (easy because huffingtonpost.com is more popular than cnn.com) and you get all the clicks. The organisation that spent money on the original reporting gets nothing. Yay.
    - fuzzywalrus 12y ago
      I've been kicking around the idea of a plugin for FF or Chrome to root the source out of a few popular reblog sites (HuffPuff, Upworthy etc) as they usually link it. Rarely do the reblog sites add much other than op-ed commentary to original news item and it'd save me time when someone sends me a link to a news item to root out the source.
sixQuarks 12y ago
I can understand the frustration of the author, however, HuffPo is not a government or social entity. It IS part of the free market. I am a huge proponent of the free market, however, that does not mean the free market will be perfect. In the short term, there are fits and starts and cycles that everything goes through, but it is only through the free market that we will progress over the long-term. Writers are unfortunately caught up in one of these free-market tornadoes, and to survive, they need to transform. The author, instead of looking at this as "writing for free", should look at this as an opportunity to create his personal platform. HuffPo is paying him by giving access to their audience. It is up to him to take advantage of that. Yes, it's not easy, but it's reality.
- vevoo 12y ago
  There is nothing in the free market economic rules that promotes or guarantees progress over long-term, including journalism. The good economic outcomes did not come and will not come out of that rules. All econometric models will show you how other assumptions were required for that to happen. It will be actions other than free market ones that will allow or not the survival of journalism. Hope they will get it before they die.
- Borogravia 12y ago
  No, I think the author has every right to be insulted and angry over the presumption that he should work for free. Just saying "well, that's the way it is" is intellectually lazy, and portraying a dominant middleman like HuffPo as a healthy part of a genuinely free market is simply wrong.
  - autokad 12y ago
    i disagree. the huff has a business model weather you like it or not. clearly the value proposition doesn't fit what the writer wants, but can you blame huff for asking? thats like being insulted because the ugly guy at the bar asked you out. what ever feelings you have from it are justified, but this writer goes and blogs online about their 'experience' wanting sympathy and traffic. so yeah, the writer wants your business and what they offered was them complaining that they had a job offer that did not pay.
sparkzilla 12y ago
I wouldn't pay him either. I got bored after the second paragraph. Before you downvote: I have hired hundreds of writers in my time, and am currently paying out hundreds of dollars/day to content creators at http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/ http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/
- hartator 12y ago
  I have up-voted your before your edit.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  For the curious: We pay $1 for each approved post. Each post is 50-100 words, has to follow our simple style guide, and must to link to an original news article.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
josh_fyi 12y ago
I write free articles only for marketing, and only on sites that will give me traffic that makes it worth my time. This means that such sites will get only thinky veiled marketing.
exelius 12y ago
I agree with the writer's points that HuffPo seems like a pretty bad deal for the writer; but honestly how different is that from HN? Ignoring the fact that HN makes no money; the product they offer is obviously desirable or people would stop visiting. Therefore, it is worth something. A large portion of the top content on HN comes from peoples' personal blogs. While these blogs often run ads, I seriously doubt those ads provide much income beyond covering the hosting bills. So people are obviously willing to write for free. HuffPo realized there was a market opportunity in connecting people who were writing for free anyway with an audience for their content. I guess my biggest problem with their business model is that the offer seems like a freelance writing gig and could obviously dupe someone who doesn't ask the right questions. So in the end I don't really have a problem with their business model, but their approach to sourcing content seems a bit disingenuous. If they were more up-front about the lack of payment, I would have less of a problem with this.
- aikah 12y ago
  > Ignoring the fact that HN makes no money You cant,HuffPo is totally for profit and sold like 100millions to AOL.HuffPo is a giant ad page like most AOL "news" network.
  - tekacs 12y ago
    In which case, compare Reddit instead. :P
- gjulianm 12y ago
  The difference is that no one from HN is asking you to write something. It's not the same "I wrote this thing because I wanted to and I'm letting HN/HuffPo link/mirror on their site" and "You asked me to write something for you, so you can win more money, and I'm doing it for free". One is an article for you, the other one is work for another person.
- joekrill 12y ago
  I'm not exactly sure how HuffPo works, but my understanding was that they host, display, and provide the content as their own. Which is completely different from HN, which simply LINKS to the content itself. So the author/whoever is free to generate their own ad revenue or whatever else they'd like from their content. And HN does none of that. How is that even remotely the same? Plus: > Ignoring the fact that HN makes no money; Isn't that kind of a huge point?
hartator 12y ago
Did you ask money to prove a point or just to stroke more your ego?
- eloisant 12y ago
  How about to put some food on the table?
petercoolz 12y ago
By the same logic the author shouldn't tweet for free either.
mrottenkolber 12y ago
I can not stress this enough: NEVER work for free. Don't do unpaid internships. Also try to avoid selling yourself under value (hint: you are probably worth at least twice you could imagine). Ever had someone accept your demanded rate without negotiating? You know you must ask for more next time. Besides owing it to yourself, working for less than your right wage will harm your industry.
- autokad 12y ago
  im just kidding, but if they are working for 0 and you said they are worth twice as much as they imagine (0), aren't they still worth 0? :P reminds me of al bundy, no phone calls today, but tomorrow twice as many!
jebus989 12y ago
The same guy contacted me and I've submitted a couple of pieces since. He was very upfront and clear about what was being offered, i.e. submit the things you're writing anyway to us, and subject to editorial discretion they may be featured on some hugely-trafficked section, else just archived on "the blog". For doing this they offer you a small profile with various links: to your amazon books, your website, twitter, an RSS feed as well as the "exposure" and (ever decreasing in value) bragging rights of writing (well, blogging) for the Huffington Post. You give them doctored versions of the blog posts you're writing anyway with a slight risk of hurting your own SEO. I think everyone is privy to their business model but IMO it's win-win unless you're in a position where others are already keen to pay for your work.
- cliveowen 12y ago
  If you look from the right angle everything it's win-win, the point is how much one win is worth compared to the other. Your boss tells you he would totally give you money if you do some boring chores he doesn't want to do, it's win-win. But if he gives you $1000 and then proceeds to make 10 times that with the product of your work, then it's actually a WIN-win for him.
  - jebus989 12y ago
    I don't think this is a strong argument, how is everything win-win? What if I get hit by a car on the way home, is that win-win?Likewise getting fair compensation for a task, do boring/hard chores get money, isn't win-win it's zero-sum. Re: the last sentence, welcome to capitalism where we don't typically evenly share out the earnings from anything.
gambiting 12y ago
Not related,but I would like to mention this regardless: >>No party will suggest the rational solutions: if hard work makes us rich, let’s tax inheritance at 85%, so the children of rich men have to work hard too. But no: that would never do I never understood this argument. I am not rich by any means,but why would my children have to pay 85% on things that I want to leave them?? It's idiotic - I worked hard to earn those things,why would the government want 85% of their value?? On what basis and logical reason? To make my children "less lazy" by doing so?? They can mind their own children - I will mind mine.
- rjaco31 12y ago
  You want to give money/goods to your children so that they have a easier life and need to work less to get the same decent life as anybody. This is totally valid, up to a certain point. Let's take the other extrem, when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life. There is absolutely no need of such a concentration of wealth. That's why inheritance should have a strongly progressive taxation rate.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    >>when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life Why not? If I, as a parent, worked hard enough to make life easy for my child, who are you to tell me that I can't do it?(I mean in general, don't take this personally) I have paid tax on everything that I made, bought, or built - why would they pay tax on the same things again?? Following your argument, we should stop giving our children absolutely anything - you could argue that someone's child should not be given a phone or a car,because it's unfair towards someone else who had to work for it,right? But then why do you care - I worked hard to buy those things to give to my children. Anything else is irrelevant. I can give you another example which makes me hate inheritance tax with passion - I know a family, which had a house which was owned by them for centuries. And then, when the parents died,they didn't have a lot of money, so the only thing left was that house. HMRC enters the scene -> children have to pay inheritance tax on the house. There is no money left,so they have to sell their family house, purely because people think it would be "unfair" for them to keep it. Absolute BS if you ask me.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Grae 12y ago
Scalzi's thoughts on the matter [1] are a classic entry into this genre and make for an enjoyable read. [1] http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/12/09/a-note-to-you-should-you-be-thinking-of-asking-me-to-write-for-you-for-free/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/12/09/a-note-to-you-should-y...
smnrchrds 12y ago
I then researched how long people typically last writing for the Daily Show (about 6 weeks) This seems awfully short. Can anyone shed some light on why this is the case?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mcguire 12y ago
"The wealthiest families in the UK are those of the Earl of Cadogan and the Duke of Westminster, both of which inherited ownership of prime London real estate. They have done nothing to develop that real estate, nothing to earn it, and their ownership benefits absolutely nobody except for themselves. In fact, their total control pushes housing costs so high that the entire nation has become indebted to pay excessive mortgage costs, simply to protect their ownership of land that is, in national and global terms, economically dormant." This is completely true, apparently. I was just listening to an Economist podcast episode on real estate in London. Existing housing property cannot be redeveloped for higher density because the existing long-term leases do not come up for renewal at the same time and must be renewable. On the other hand, the freeholder (the one actually owning the property) is in theory responsible for infrastructure but is apparently free from that responsibility in practice. London sounds worse than San Francisco.
gdewilde 12y ago
Great blog, very enlightening write up. for as far as I could figure out... If a for-profit business seeks to employ you without financial compensation they are breaking the law. If you offer your services below minimum wage you are breaking the law. If the worker's services are an integral part of the employer's business the worker is an employee of that company. If the role isn't an essential functions of the company you could be a contractor. Either way you must pay wages. Or can the text on pages like these be stretched to say exactly the opposite of what it says? us: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp Under the FLSA, employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers. uk: https://www.gov.uk/employment-rights-for-interns https://www.gov.uk/employment-rights-for-interns Employers can’t avoid paying the National Minimum Wage if it’s due by: saying or stating that it doesn’t apply making a written agreement saying someone isn’t a worker or that they’re a volunteer The netherlands: http://www.belastingtips.nl/zakelijk/aftrekbare_kosten/vergoeding_voor_vrijwilliger/ http://www.belastingtips.nl/zakelijk/aftrekbare_kosten/vergo... Vrijwilliger verricht werkzaamheden voor een organisatie zonder winstoogmerk. De organisatie mag geen (bedrijf) B.V. of N.V. zijn, tenzij sportvereniging. De vrijwilliger verricht het werk niet als zijn beroep. translation: Must be a no-profit, must not be the same work as your paid job. You may help relatives for free as long as you are not getting social support. I'm curious now, how does Hufington Post (New York) do it?

124 points by alexfarran 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

I sympathize and share the author's dislike of this particular business model, however, I am fairly certain the Huffpo staffer addressed didn't read past the first paragraph.

tomp 12y ago
Hopefully they will now that it's trending on HN.
thinkt4nk 12y ago
On what do you base your fair certainty?
- markbnj 12y ago
  The fact the reply to an offer by an editor started with three or four paragraphs of political ideology.
  - thinkt4nk 12y ago
    ...the assumption being that the editor has an aversion toward political ideology?

spindritf 12y ago

the class of people who own the world and control all the assets may finally begin to see the error of their ways Their ways? Arianna Huffington didn't cause the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted. She also didn't inherit HuffPo so all that talk about socialism and inheritance tax is just more signalling on the author's part. Which is why they chose him. If some street hustler challenges you to a game of three card monte you don't need to bother to play, just hand him the money, not because you're going to lose but because you owe him for the insight: he selected you.[1] He owes them an article on cancer, I believe. [1] http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/05/dove.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/05/dove.html

mcguire 12y ago
"...people willing to write for free to stroke their ego..." Or to get exposure, which is a requirement for making a living in any creative endeavour. Note: Huffington exposure isn't worth much, but neither is exposure from writing articles in most journalism outlets. That doesn't prevent every last writer from having a list of "published in Time, Newsweek, Mr. Peabody's Literary Conglomeration,...and the Washington Post" in their brag paragraph.
kitsune_ 12y ago
She was also married to a billionaire and got a nice divorce settlement in 1997.
autokad 12y ago
this writer has a real axe to grind with people trying to make money from rent, sheesh
jseliger 12y ago
the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted To be fair, some people write for free to learn things, share things, and spread knowledge. That's why I started a blog. And virtually all professors, who produce work for journals, don't get paid directly via their writing, but rather via their home institution, and sometimes other means (like grants). Universities are different than the HuffPo, but the point is still important.
- cobrausn 12y ago
  I think the real point there is that the professors still get paid.
0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
But she is causing it, as are people selling fixie bikes, and barbers who give the bros their haircuts. It's funny that people don't call her Huffington more often, as if she were engaged in something more noble than say Hefner.

salimmadjd 12y ago

Good for the writer. I have written for Hufpo once before and soon I realized how their model works: 1 - get free content from the writers. 2 - get free marketing and traffic from the writers (who tell their friends and follower about their article they've just posted on the Hufpo) Most of the articles you write are all hidden in some sub-pages that no one but your friends or google seo would ever find. edit: formatting.

rayiner 12y ago
This is the basic model of a lot of similar companies. Get people to provide content for free, then profit from control over the repository. If it weren't for copyright protections, HuffPo and its ilk would just copy your blog posts verbatim and call it a day. They're one step up from the sites that auto-generate product reviews or display reformatted Wikipedia articles.
- altcognito 12y ago
  Or link aggregators who get others (for free) to submit links to freely (not always though) provided content. It's all about the traffic.
- untog 12y ago
  If it weren't for copyright protections, HuffPo and its ilk would just copy your blog posts verbatim and call it a day. They pretty much do anyway. Anything saying "CNN has reported..." is basically just a rewrite of the existing CNN article, to just enough of an extent that they avoid copyright issues. Do slightly better SEO (easy because huffingtonpost.com is more popular than cnn.com) and you get all the clicks. The organisation that spent money on the original reporting gets nothing. Yay.
  - fuzzywalrus 12y ago
    I've been kicking around the idea of a plugin for FF or Chrome to root the source out of a few popular reblog sites (HuffPuff, Upworthy etc) as they usually link it. Rarely do the reblog sites add much other than op-ed commentary to original news item and it'd save me time when someone sends me a link to a news item to root out the source.

sixQuarks 12y ago

I can understand the frustration of the author, however, HuffPo is not a government or social entity. It IS part of the free market. I am a huge proponent of the free market, however, that does not mean the free market will be perfect. In the short term, there are fits and starts and cycles that everything goes through, but it is only through the free market that we will progress over the long-term. Writers are unfortunately caught up in one of these free-market tornadoes, and to survive, they need to transform. The author, instead of looking at this as "writing for free", should look at this as an opportunity to create his personal platform. HuffPo is paying him by giving access to their audience. It is up to him to take advantage of that. Yes, it's not easy, but it's reality.

vevoo 12y ago
There is nothing in the free market economic rules that promotes or guarantees progress over long-term, including journalism. The good economic outcomes did not come and will not come out of that rules. All econometric models will show you how other assumptions were required for that to happen. It will be actions other than free market ones that will allow or not the survival of journalism. Hope they will get it before they die.
Borogravia 12y ago
No, I think the author has every right to be insulted and angry over the presumption that he should work for free. Just saying "well, that's the way it is" is intellectually lazy, and portraying a dominant middleman like HuffPo as a healthy part of a genuinely free market is simply wrong.
- autokad 12y ago
  i disagree. the huff has a business model weather you like it or not. clearly the value proposition doesn't fit what the writer wants, but can you blame huff for asking? thats like being insulted because the ugly guy at the bar asked you out. what ever feelings you have from it are justified, but this writer goes and blogs online about their 'experience' wanting sympathy and traffic. so yeah, the writer wants your business and what they offered was them complaining that they had a job offer that did not pay.

sparkzilla 12y ago

I wouldn't pay him either. I got bored after the second paragraph. Before you downvote: I have hired hundreds of writers in my time, and am currently paying out hundreds of dollars/day to content creators at http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/ http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/

hartator 12y ago
I have up-voted your before your edit.
jessaustin 12y ago
For the curious: We pay $1 for each approved post. Each post is 50-100 words, has to follow our simple style guide, and must to link to an original news article.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

josh_fyi 12y ago

I write free articles only for marketing, and only on sites that will give me traffic that makes it worth my time. This means that such sites will get only thinky veiled marketing.

exelius 12y ago

I agree with the writer's points that HuffPo seems like a pretty bad deal for the writer; but honestly how different is that from HN? Ignoring the fact that HN makes no money; the product they offer is obviously desirable or people would stop visiting. Therefore, it is worth something. A large portion of the top content on HN comes from peoples' personal blogs. While these blogs often run ads, I seriously doubt those ads provide much income beyond covering the hosting bills. So people are obviously willing to write for free. HuffPo realized there was a market opportunity in connecting people who were writing for free anyway with an audience for their content. I guess my biggest problem with their business model is that the offer seems like a freelance writing gig and could obviously dupe someone who doesn't ask the right questions. So in the end I don't really have a problem with their business model, but their approach to sourcing content seems a bit disingenuous. If they were more up-front about the lack of payment, I would have less of a problem with this.

aikah 12y ago
> Ignoring the fact that HN makes no money You cant,HuffPo is totally for profit and sold like 100millions to AOL.HuffPo is a giant ad page like most AOL "news" network.
- tekacs 12y ago
  In which case, compare Reddit instead. :P
gjulianm 12y ago
The difference is that no one from HN is asking you to write something. It's not the same "I wrote this thing because I wanted to and I'm letting HN/HuffPo link/mirror on their site" and "You asked me to write something for you, so you can win more money, and I'm doing it for free". One is an article for you, the other one is work for another person.
joekrill 12y ago
I'm not exactly sure how HuffPo works, but my understanding was that they host, display, and provide the content as their own. Which is completely different from HN, which simply LINKS to the content itself. So the author/whoever is free to generate their own ad revenue or whatever else they'd like from their content. And HN does none of that. How is that even remotely the same? Plus: > Ignoring the fact that HN makes no money; Isn't that kind of a huge point?

hartator 12y ago

Did you ask money to prove a point or just to stroke more your ego?

eloisant 12y ago
How about to put some food on the table?

petercoolz 12y ago

By the same logic the author shouldn't tweet for free either.

mrottenkolber 12y ago

I can not stress this enough: NEVER work for free. Don't do unpaid internships. Also try to avoid selling yourself under value (hint: you are probably worth at least twice you could imagine). Ever had someone accept your demanded rate without negotiating? You know you must ask for more next time. Besides owing it to yourself, working for less than your right wage will harm your industry.

autokad 12y ago
im just kidding, but if they are working for 0 and you said they are worth twice as much as they imagine (0), aren't they still worth 0? :P reminds me of al bundy, no phone calls today, but tomorrow twice as many!

jebus989 12y ago

The same guy contacted me and I've submitted a couple of pieces since. He was very upfront and clear about what was being offered, i.e. submit the things you're writing anyway to us, and subject to editorial discretion they may be featured on some hugely-trafficked section, else just archived on "the blog". For doing this they offer you a small profile with various links: to your amazon books, your website, twitter, an RSS feed as well as the "exposure" and (ever decreasing in value) bragging rights of writing (well, blogging) for the Huffington Post. You give them doctored versions of the blog posts you're writing anyway with a slight risk of hurting your own SEO. I think everyone is privy to their business model but IMO it's win-win unless you're in a position where others are already keen to pay for your work.

cliveowen 12y ago
If you look from the right angle everything it's win-win, the point is how much one win is worth compared to the other. Your boss tells you he would totally give you money if you do some boring chores he doesn't want to do, it's win-win. But if he gives you $1000 and then proceeds to make 10 times that with the product of your work, then it's actually a WIN-win for him.
- jebus989 12y ago
  I don't think this is a strong argument, how is everything win-win? What if I get hit by a car on the way home, is that win-win?Likewise getting fair compensation for a task, do boring/hard chores get money, isn't win-win it's zero-sum. Re: the last sentence, welcome to capitalism where we don't typically evenly share out the earnings from anything.

gambiting 12y ago

Not related,but I would like to mention this regardless: >>No party will suggest the rational solutions: if hard work makes us rich, let’s tax inheritance at 85%, so the children of rich men have to work hard too. But no: that would never do I never understood this argument. I am not rich by any means,but why would my children have to pay 85% on things that I want to leave them?? It's idiotic - I worked hard to earn those things,why would the government want 85% of their value?? On what basis and logical reason? To make my children "less lazy" by doing so?? They can mind their own children - I will mind mine.

rjaco31 12y ago
You want to give money/goods to your children so that they have a easier life and need to work less to get the same decent life as anybody. This is totally valid, up to a certain point. Let's take the other extrem, when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life. There is absolutely no need of such a concentration of wealth. That's why inheritance should have a strongly progressive taxation rate.
- gambiting 12y ago
  >>when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life Why not? If I, as a parent, worked hard enough to make life easy for my child, who are you to tell me that I can't do it?(I mean in general, don't take this personally) I have paid tax on everything that I made, bought, or built - why would they pay tax on the same things again?? Following your argument, we should stop giving our children absolutely anything - you could argue that someone's child should not be given a phone or a car,because it's unfair towards someone else who had to work for it,right? But then why do you care - I worked hard to buy those things to give to my children. Anything else is irrelevant. I can give you another example which makes me hate inheritance tax with passion - I know a family, which had a house which was owned by them for centuries. And then, when the parents died,they didn't have a lot of money, so the only thing left was that house. HMRC enters the scene -> children have to pay inheritance tax on the house. There is no money left,so they have to sell their family house, purely because people think it would be "unfair" for them to keep it. Absolute BS if you ask me.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Grae 12y ago

Scalzi's thoughts on the matter [1] are a classic entry into this genre and make for an enjoyable read. [1] http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/12/09/a-note-to-you-should-you-be-thinking-of-asking-me-to-write-for-you-for-free/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/12/09/a-note-to-you-should-y...

smnrchrds 12y ago

I then researched how long people typically last writing for the Daily Show (about 6 weeks) This seems awfully short. Can anyone shed some light on why this is the case?

deleted 12y ago

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mcguire 12y ago

"The wealthiest families in the UK are those of the Earl of Cadogan and the Duke of Westminster, both of which inherited ownership of prime London real estate. They have done nothing to develop that real estate, nothing to earn it, and their ownership benefits absolutely nobody except for themselves. In fact, their total control pushes housing costs so high that the entire nation has become indebted to pay excessive mortgage costs, simply to protect their ownership of land that is, in national and global terms, economically dormant." This is completely true, apparently. I was just listening to an Economist podcast episode on real estate in London. Existing housing property cannot be redeveloped for higher density because the existing long-term leases do not come up for renewal at the same time and must be renewable. On the other hand, the freeholder (the one actually owning the property) is in theory responsible for infrastructure but is apparently free from that responsibility in practice. London sounds worse than San Francisco.

gdewilde 12y ago

Great blog, very enlightening write up. for as far as I could figure out... If a for-profit business seeks to employ you without financial compensation they are breaking the law. If you offer your services below minimum wage you are breaking the law. If the worker's services are an integral part of the employer's business the worker is an employee of that company. If the role isn't an essential functions of the company you could be a contractor. Either way you must pay wages. Or can the text on pages like these be stretched to say exactly the opposite of what it says? us: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp Under the FLSA, employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers. uk: https://www.gov.uk/employment-rights-for-interns https://www.gov.uk/employment-rights-for-interns Employers can’t avoid paying the National Minimum Wage if it’s due by: saying or stating that it doesn’t apply making a written agreement saying someone isn’t a worker or that they’re a volunteer The netherlands: http://www.belastingtips.nl/zakelijk/aftrekbare_kosten/vergoeding_voor_vrijwilliger/ http://www.belastingtips.nl/zakelijk/aftrekbare_kosten/vergo... Vrijwilliger verricht werkzaamheden voor een organisatie zonder winstoogmerk. De organisatie mag geen (bedrijf) B.V. of N.V. zijn, tenzij sportvereniging. De vrijwilliger verricht het werk niet als zijn beroep. translation: Must be a no-profit, must not be the same work as your paid job. You may help relatives for free as long as you are not getting social support. I'm curious now, how does Hufington Post (New York) do it?