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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Okay, cool, that’s not the question. Are you for taxing the ultra wealthy based on their wealth or against? Are you saying you’re against this specific form of wealth tax and because you believe that’s the only form of wealth tax you’re against the whole concept? What’s your fundamental position and point, because I’m not proposing a bill here, I’m taking to strangers on the Internet.



  • I’m literally agreeing with that statement. The ultra wealthy make all their money from their wealthy. Yes. Can we all agree that that’s what’s happening? Yes? Good.

    Now ALSO can we agree it’s sane for someone to suggest taxing ultra high income earners? Like in 2012, just reading off the wiki here, the median cash compensation for a US CEO was 5.3 million. That’s cash. That’s about as much money as I want the limit to be on anyone in the world in terms of wealth and these fuckers are getting paid that a year. Can we agree we should tax cash incomes over oh idk 1 million dollars at something like 90%?

    Like guys come on, this isn’t hard. Don’t just knee jerk react to the topic, read what is being written. Yes, tax wealth. That’s the most important thing every government can do. Yes, I’m saying that because I know wealth begets wealth and it cascades, the wealthy are wealthy because of their wealth (no shit). ALSO, yes we should tax ultra-high income earners. If you get paid enough money to retire in two years of normal full time work you should be taxed accordingly (with something like Germany’s tax law that let’s you spread it out over X years so if it was a one time thing you get taxed normally but if it’s an every year salary it gets taxed correctly).


  • Idk if you know this but governments are composed of a lot of people. We can fix multiple issues with multiple solutions. Right now the top 0.01% have absolutely too much money. The top 0.1% also don’t get taxed enough. The top 1% also don’t get taxed enough. The top 10% likely could handle more taxing as well depending on what country we’re talking about.

    The reality is there are hundreds of problems modern governments need to solve, most of which require revenue, so getting more revenue from the people who own a ton and people who make a ton is good.

    I don’t understand why we have to pick one solution when we definitely can handle talking about (especially casually on the Internet) multiple solutions, those solutions are good, and we agree on the ranking of importance (wealth tax first, anything that goes after the top 1%, and then income taxes, anything that goes after the top 10%). Like, I don’t think it’s that hard.



  • I don’t think you’re helping the cause. A perfect solution is not the goal, and a good idea that fails to address the targeted problem is still a good idea.

    You can at the same time think:

    • people shouldn’t be allowed to have a salary of 1 million
    • that the ultra rich aren’t ultra rich because of their salary
    • believe that we should tax ultra-high income individuals highly
    • believe that we should tax ultra-wealthy individuals highly

    Don’t be a bad progressive by discouraging progress. “Tax wealth not work” is a great slogan to unify the working class. We should also probably tax ultra-high income individuals as well.


  • I completely agree with the concept of taxing income above a certain limit entirely. I think that only solves a portion of the problem, with the majority of the problem being solved by well implemented wealth taxes. Every dollar of wealth over something like 50 million USD should be taxed at 100%. No one should ever become a hundred millionaire again, let alone a billionaire.


  • I’m self-hosting my own music as of recently. I’m paying for every song. I don’t have as much music as I did on Spotify, but I’m also A) owning the music B) slowly acquiring more and C) actually paying the artists. For me this is a good step in the right direction.

    I’m seeing a lot of comments about music discovery being the reason to not stop paying Spotify. Idk if that’s something I’d agree with. First of all, I personally listen to singles and not albums but I’ve been buying albums simply because that’s easiest for a lot of sites (or cause I’m getting them on vinyl). So swapping over has led me to listening to full albums and thus a bit of discovery. That may not apply to everyone though. Several of those albums or artists have had collabs that have turned me on to other artists, again, maybe the music discovery people think this is child’s play but it’s led to a noticable increase in my collection.

    Second, can’t you just use Spotify free version to discover music? That’s what I plan to do if I’m feeling like my current collection is getting stale. But between friends, other web services for discovery, various platforms like YouTube that happen to unveil a song here and there, indie concerts that show off new openers to me, or what have you I feel like my discovery is more than sufficient to grow the list of music I need to pick up faster than I’m burning it down or becoming bored with it.

    Also, I don’t understand how discovery can represent a majority of a person’s listening habits. Like isn’t the point of collecting favorites songs and making large playlists to listen to those things. I’ve got playlists with like 48 hours of music on them which cause me to not hear a repeat idk, more than once a month if I’m not seeking them out. That’s partially because I have 3 playlists or so I rotate through but like… Is music discovery so critical and so exclusive to Spotify that it’s worth the subscription. More me it’s not.

    Not to yuck anyone’s yum or anything. Just trying to add an alternative perspective to these pro-spotify comments.



  • You’re missing the point I think. People want better politicians, Democrats are better than Republicans meaningfully but not so meaningfully that they could fix the issues we’re seeing in society. People like Cuomo and Newson are just power hungry people, who may be better than Trump but the people won’t be satisfied with replacing their turd sandwich with ultra processed fast food, they want a healthy nutritious meal. Newson is fast food, it’s a meaningful step up from turd sandwich but it won’t fix the American diet.

    It’s Germany being upset at the traffic light coalition and then electing Merz. They went from one back stabbing party to unhealthy and destructive fast food. This will only upset people enough to eventually elect their version of a turd sandwich - the AFD.


  • Sometimes I feel so new to setting up my own digital ecosystem because I look at a thing and think “that’s so cool” but struggle to imagine it at home. So could someone help me understand.

    This would be a replacement for something like Google Drive or Proton Drive? The actions I would use this for would be:

    • sending files to friends
    • managing a collection of files like PDFs, music, ISO’s that could be accessible by my friends (or just my household)

    So I would spin this up on my NAS or my main PC and replace those services and accomplish those actions using this software?

    Are there other services or actions I’m missing? Am I misunderstanding the premise entirely?






  • I apologize, I think we’re getting tripped up on terminology.

    Where ever you live, you are correct in believing you should strive to make that a home. Make a community, make a place of comfort and security and artistic energy etc. But that’s not what I mean.

    Owning your place allows you the freedom to make your home better in a way that renting it doesn’t. How many people with they could add AC to their flat but can’t because the landlord doesn’t want them to? How many people wish they could add solar panels to their roof but can’t because the landlord doesn’t pay the electricity bill and therefore doesn’t care if it’s inefficient? How many people want to renovate a bathroom, tear down a wall, install permanent fixtures or shelves, etc etc but can’t because they don’t have permission or the rights to the place they live in?

    The relationship between landlord and renter is one whose major purpose is to drain money from the poor to the wealthy. I don’t really wanna turn this into a rant against landlords, but they should be outlawed or taxed out of existence. Landlords are deincentivized to improve their properties, they are deincentivized to help you make your house a home, they are deincentivized to charge you the cost of that housing. The system should be abolished.

    Going back to your ancedote, relativity is not a good measurement of objective truth. The fact that most people didn’t own their homes where you grew up doesn’t change the fact that that meant they were losing money every year, that they weren’t building wealth every year. Things should be improved based on and towards objective truths/metrics - not comparatively to bad examples. The US has worse public transit - does that means we shouldn’t strive for better train networks and services? It’s illegal to be a homosexual in Singapore - does that mean we should allowed gay rights to worsen simply because they’ll still have it better than other countries?

    I make this point because this argument of relativity often hinders progress. Humans are creatures of relativity and if we allow our systems to be judged relative to others we will make progress slower than is possible (and arguably necessary).

    You should be able to own a home. You should be able to own a home within the first 5 years of working at least and it shouldn’t cost you a loan that’ll last a lifetime. Housing shouldn’t be an ever growing cost. We can make this the reality if we vote correctly and hold our politicians accountable (and our neighbors).

    If the CDU/SPD/AFD remain in power there will be plenty of countries that are at a similar quality of life and that are improving or worsening at a slower rate. Some country will eventually crack the code of taxing the wealthy and banning landlords and focusing on the working class (the 99%). It’s only a matter of time. The goal is just to avoid needing a WW to get us there.


  • I think the Germany benefits are amazing but I suspect people undersell how important baseline pay is for deciding on if you want to have kids. I’m a software engineer in Germany, I get paid a decent thriving wage, but I’ll never own a home as long as real estate is an investment option for large businesses and conservative governments continue to get elected.

    Who would raise a child without a home to call their own? That’s what goes through my head. Even if all the costs for raising a kid were offset, I’d still be behind what I need to be in my opinion. I think some people answer that question and say “I would” and I think a greater percentage agree with that sentiment.

    Couple that with the predictability of the political climate and you get an even more clear picture. Who would raise a kid in a world that’s getting worse? I might need to leave Germany if the CDU and AFD stay in power for too long. I may need to leave to a country that is making progress against inequality instead of expanding it. At the current pace of the world we are approaching another major Multi-national war in the next two decades, why would I have a kid in such an unstable time.

    Having spoken to a couple women now in Germany about this subject - some of them broach the subject from a place of never wanting to but the few I’m spoken to also claim the factors above as major reasons against it.

    I think countries need to start considering that extra pay and benefits for parents is not as effective as fixing the economy and political system for everyone is if their goal is to have kids.


  • The keyword is viewpoint. The inherent problem with conservatism across the globe, but obviously in the US, is the “viewpoint” is anti-science, anti-common-sense, and at worst disconnected from their policies.

    I think there’s a place on social media for people who believe tariffs could, over time and at great expense, bring manufacturing home and that some viewpoints want that. That’s a viewpoint to debate. I do not think there’s a place for people to deny climate change, there is no debate to be had there.

    I think there’s a place for people who want to discuss immigration policies and how best to balance the need for immigrants, the want for immigrants, the assimilation of immigrants, and the quantity/quality of immigrants. There’s system design to be had there. I do not think there’s a place for hate speech and dehumanization of immigrants as if they’re bad people (or when they’re used as political weapons like “caravans” in the US or “Sharia law”).

    It doesn’t matter if conservatives agree with fixing healthcare or being against the rich, their politicians are only interested in using those as talking points because their allegiance is to their biggest donors which is big healthcare and the rich.

    Conservatives across the globe, from everything I’ve seen in my admittedly short lifetime, are either anti-science/progress, pro-hate and emotionbaiting, or obvious liars.

    In the US there is no Republican AOC or Bernie Sanders at the national level - who obviously and vocally are fighting for the workers. In Germany (where I am now) it’s the conservative AFD party that is a neo-nazi party and it’s the conservative CDU party that flirts with giving them partial power just to maintain their own power. Side tangent, it’s the libertarian (read conservative-lite) FD party that sabotaged the left leaning coalition just last year.

    The people that flirt with destruction and societal regression are the conservatives, so it’s important that if they are allowed on any platform that their viewpoints are moderated. At least until they can stop flirting with fascism and lethal policies like remigration.