I think this is the correct dichotomy for the difference in cultures and better explains the Guesser vs Asker thing. High context cultures (Asia, South America, Mediterranean) tend to be Guessers because they already have the context and that context is the more important part of their communication. In low context cultures (Northern European, Russia, US) communication is more direct and words are more important than non-verbal cues.
> the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south)
Well, the south was the only place where there were any appreciable amounts of nonwhite people. "White supremacy" was just "the way things are" in the north, because they pretty much only had white people.
In 1900, decades after the end of the Civil War, the south was about one-third black; every other region (midwest, northeast, west) were less than 2% black.
No it's not fraud, it's a growth hack. And it's not lying, it's advertising, it's not spam, it's a cold email, it's not patent trolling, it's IP protection.
Fraud is good, these companies need their revenue so they can create an all powerful AGI. If you don't allow them to scam they'll lose against the chinese
Do you believe that the law should treat people differently based on the color of their skin? Do you believe my father-in-law, an Eastern European immigrant who fled communism, should be given disadvantages due to his being white, even though neither he nor his ancestors had anything to do with slavery in this country? Do you believe the likes of Claudine Gay, who hails from a wealthy family and grew up in the very picture of privilege, should be given advantages due to her being black?
Do you believe in punishing the son for the sins of the father? Do you believe in punishing someone who just happens to look like the sinners of the past? Do you believe that nonwhite people's ancestors did not commit the same atrocities at some point or another in history as white people's ancestors?
I'm not white, but I find ideas you espouse to be just simple racism, and nowhere close to "justice".
Your father-in-law, an Eastern European immigrant who fled communism, benefits from ongoing racialized distributions of privilege, power, and money.
So, yes, I do believe he is "cutting in line," and should have the humility to stand in solidarity with, rather than standing on the necks of, marginalized communities. Your father-in-law is not climbing out of anywhere so deep a hole as the Black and Hispanic populations on this continent. Not even close.
Even the Gulag Archipelago pales in comparison to the centuries of slavery, genocide, rape, and disenfranchisement we have visited on these peoples in order to accrue the wealth that your father-in-law now has the privilege to work for.
You're still talking promoting group A at the cost of group B for what group C did to group D, people in groups A and B having not much to do with C and D. Even considering descendants of original group D, the benefits are overwhelmingly reaped by those affected by whatever extant systemic injustice remains the least.
You are currently standing on the shoulders of minorities to rise yourself above others.
If you are indeed honest about it, you can personally take a step back and promote anyone you want. Demanding it from others is just self-righteous and your intentions are questionable.
That Eastern European immigrant is a result of centuries of feudal slavery. The serfdom of population east of Oder meant lack of freedom of movement, mandatory free work for the lord and the clergy, great poverty and no education. Lord could decide about life and death of their serfs and killing of serf by a different noble was just resolved as part of the business with a fine/repayment. Serfs were just another commodity in lords property, the further east, the worse serfs were exploited.
Despite XIX century reforms dismissing serfdom in some regions, generational poverty of peasants kept them in serfdom like conditions up until end of WW2. And even after WW2 you could end in Ukraine with forced exports of food resulting in genocidal famine.
That Eastern European immigrant has family history of half a millennium or more in slave like conditions.
The outsized pay for software engineers in the US takes into account a lot of this stuff. Would you trade those 100 things for, say, a salary of $75k a year for a senior software engineer, like they have in Europe?
Meh. The rest of the world also doesn't have big salaries for software devs. The US is the outlier.
It's not just the labor regulations holding Europe back, it's the lack of funding due to not having a unified European digital market.
Netflix Europe needs to have 20+ licensing deals. Selling across Europe at a large scale requires interactions with 20+ legal teams. Language and cultural barriers kill a lot of things.
How do US giants thrive in Europe, then?
Because they come in directly giant-sized based on growth in the US. They either ignore European legal compliance until sued or pay peanuts for them to handle all the legal aspects.
> Neither of these models is probably appropriate for the present day US, but there must be something out there besides neoliberalism and full privatization. (Futarchy? Some new branch of government to direct state investment? Allow states to own and operate businesses? Creativity is necessary.)
The French already pioneered this[0]. Their GDP per capita has flatlined for over 15 years, though in real terms (PPP) it's fairing better. Notably, they remain a modern Western nation that still has significant capability for building new things.
Yes, that’s a great example and it’s unfortunate for the French that France has been steadily moving away from it.
I think that part of the problem is that holding firm against international capital, domestic opportunists, currency speculators, and so on requires an iron political will and a certain tolerance for short term pain. Postwar France was able to manage this but later generations don’t have the same perspective. It may be a cyclical political problem without a good solution, other than documenting the problem for future generations whenever it arises.
So even you concede they benefit almost everyone, only they benefit some more. So should we really be dismantling them and descend into anarchy, just to harm a group you dislike? Doesn't seem like a good move.
Only because you hate the rich.
I get that it encourages them to share to keep the pitchforks off their lawn, and that noblesse oblige has broken down recently, but property laws are the foundation of our prosperity. If you can't have something that's actually yours (property laws) for you to invest in, then there will be little investment.
Wanting property laws not to give additional advantages beyond those that wealth itself already gives is not hateful. It's also pretty reasonable that the vast majority of people who are not rich might not care about preserving "our" prosperity in the current form. I'm pretty certain there have been plenty of societies with worse quality of life for most people in them throughout history with property laws at least as strict as ours, so it doesn't follow that people would overall be worse off with more egalitarian property rights. This doesn't even address the obvious issues with assumptions that maximizing prosperity is inherently the most important thing; it was arguably more "propserous" to avoid regulating child labor, 40 hour work weeks, minimum wages, etc., but I fundamentally disagree that those would be bad policies even if there were provably shown to reduce "prosperity", whatever that means
> Nonsense. The amount of wealth hoarded by the top 0.1%, 1%, and 10% has vastly expanded in the past decades, while the percent of all income and wealth held by workers has been gutted.
> That alone shows the top earners are not being taxed enough.
Is your reasoning that the amount of household wealth and income at each percentile should hold roughly constant over the years, as if this is some law of physics?
The point is: the absolute values are bad the direction and magnitude of change indicates it is getting worse.
The distribution of wealth is already vastly suboptimal, heavily skewed to the most greedy 0.1%-5%.
When the most wealthy society in the history of the planet still has large portions of its population living one missed paycheck or one illness/accident away from being destitute, or being already destitute, while a few at the top have orders of magnitude more wealth than they can spend in a lifetime, something is deeply wrong.
The change numbers show this already the case nearly four decades ago, it has gotten worse.
So yes, the glib argument that "the 1% already pay 90% of federal taxes..." is just as spurious as it is vacuous.
Not only does it ignore the reality of wealth and income distribution that the taxation is far below the misallocation, it also ignores the fact that Federal Income Taxes are only a small portion of our total tax burden, and the poor and middle classes pay vastly more of the other taxes such as sales tax, gasoline and road taxes, fees, etc. IOW, you are cherry-picking, and badly.
>>How do you or anyone else know what's optimal and what's misallocated?
Start with basic empathy and a simple sense of fairness.
No one here is saying everything should be even close to equal, and I certainly am not. But as many philosophers have pointed out through the ages, you can see how ethical a society is by how it treats its lowest members.
Seriously. Anyone who fails to see something is deeply wrong, when the most wealthy society in the history of the planet has half of it's people barely scraping by, while a tiny elite hoard orders of magnitude more wealth than they can spend in a lifetime, is morally blind.
So start there. When the system is producing this well-documented result, the wealthy are most definitely not paying enough taxes to support the society that enabled them to earn their wealth.
>>Income tax is roughly ...
Yes, and you are appearing to be deliberately obtuse by focusing only on specific federal taxes and ignoring the TOTAL tax burden which is what counts when measuring which people are supporting society and which are extracting more than a fair share. And ignoring the proportion of income and wealth that sector takes vs what they pay in taxes.
When hedge fund managers bringing in $billions and Warren Buffet pay lower rates than their secretaries, something is deeply wrong.
Again, a simple sense or empathy, ethics, and fairness can be your guide. These are evidently foreign concepts to you, and I recommend you look into them.
> when the most wealthy society in the history of the planet has half of it's people barely scraping by
Real median household income has been steadily rising over the past few decades; it's up nearly 20% over the past 20 years[0]. American median disposable income is the highest in the world[1] that isn't a tax haven or a petrostate. Mississippi, often panned for its poverty, has a higher median household income than Germany, often considered the strongest European economy.
Now, you might point out that the CPI gets fudged in a way that doesn't fully capture the costs of living that these figures are adjusted for; I'm sympathetic to that argument, but the numbers are what they are, and the numbers do not support your claim that half of America is "barely scraping by".
> while a tiny elite hoard orders of magnitude more wealth than they can spend in a lifetime
I'm not sure what your operating definition of "hoard" is. There are no Scrooge McDuck vault full of gold coins. The ultra-rich's net worth is based on ownership of companies that often times were founded by them (granted, some people inherit, though not as many in the US as in more egalitarian nations[2]), and is a fictitious figure based on the number of shares they own multiplied by the last-traded price per share. There is no world in which they could actually liquidate those shares to get the number of dollars that are thrown about.
And those companies are almost always publicly traded and owned by heaps of other people, retirement funds for middle-class workers, and whatnot; and generate value to the purchasers of the goods and services they provide. I'm not sure where in this picture comes hoarding.
> Warren Buffet pay lower rates than their secretaries
Warren Buffett paid $23.7M in federal income tax alone over five years[3]. A hypothetical secretary living in Omaha, NE making $300k would have paid $69k in federal income tax in 2025, with another $30k or so in payroll and state taxes. In five years, Buffett paid to the federal treasury alone 237 years worth of income, FICA, and state taxes that this well-paid secretary would have!
Besides, when publications talk about "lower rates" of the ultra-rich, they're always comparing taxes paid on their income against the rise in the valuation of the stock that they own. It's comparing apples and oranges to come up with sensational figures.
> the wealthy are most definitely not paying enough taxes to support the society that enabled them to earn their wealth
The society that is a necessary but not sufficient condition of earning that wealth.
> focusing only on specific federal taxes and ignoring the TOTAL tax burden
Are you claiming that there exist some other taxes through which the working masses are shouldering above their "fair share", whatever that may be, of the burdens of maintaining a functioning society? What taxes are those, exactly? Do you think if you added up all the sales, property, income, FICA, estate, etc. ad nauseam taxes that the average American pays, we'll actually discover that the unsung hero of taxation is someone making $50k a year?
Some estimate that the average American will pay roughly half a million dollars of taxes of all kinds through their lifetime, out of a lifetime earnings of about a million and a half[4]. So Warren Buffett in five years of federal income tax alone (not counting any other taxes he paid) paid as much as almost fifty average people would have over their entire lives in any taxable domain. Jeff Bezos over the same five years, nearly two thousand average lifetimes' worth. To me, it's hard to make the argument that the likes of Buffett and Bezos aren't paying enough.
> a simple sense or empathy, ethics, and fairness can be your guide
Countless millions of people have been immiserated by those preaching empathy and fairness, just in recent history. I prefer to deal in what works in the real world to enrich the lives of the average among us; and as it turns out, systems that let rich people be result in better median outcomes than systems that confiscate and punish.
What is your fair share? Moreover, what is your fair share of what somebody else worked for? How much of the earnings of a waitress, plumber, doctor, Fortune 500 exec, and Elon Musk is due to you, personally, as your empathic, ethical, and fair share?
Sure "Real median household income has risen" and other nice stats exist. And much of the society looks like they're OK. But the reality is this is extremely brittle.
There is near-zero buffer for about half of the country's people. Only 55% of adults have enough savings to cover 3 months of expenses, and 30% could not cover it by any means. 37% of people cannot even handle a $400 surprise expense out of savings, 18% can't even handle a $100 expense! Only 48% could handle a surprise $2000 expense, which is a ar breakdown or a ride to the hospital. [0]
Seven percent of adults did not have enough money to eat at times in the prior month. [0]
28% of adults went without some kind of healthcare because of the expense, and 17% are carrying medical debt. [0]
You can quibble about the exact threshold of what counts as "scraping by", if you have to worry about your next meal, worry about whether you should go to the doctor, worry about being wiped out if your car breaks down or you have a minor accident, you are scraping by. And whether that applies to exactly half, sixty percent, or "only" one third, it is too much. The wealthiest society in the history of the planet should be able to care for all of it's residents.
>>operating definition of "hoard"
Of course there are not Scrooge McDuck vaults, and they are entirely unecessary for the activity of keeping for yourself amounts of wealth that are orders of magnitude more than one could possibly spend in a lifetime.
It doesn't matter how you got it, once you are past $20-$50million, it is not about personal wealth or lifestyle (the interest alone at $25mm is over $4,000 per day); it is hoarding wealth for power, and at the cost of the rest of society
>>Warren Buffett paid $23.7M in Federal Income Tax ... 237 years worth of [secretary's taxes]
Yes, and his reported $125million income reported was 416X the secretary's pay, and the $24Billion wealth gain over the five years was 16,200X the secretary's 5-year earnings. We can take Warren at his word when he says he's paing lower rates.
>> society that is a necessary but not sufficient condition of earning that wealth.
Exactly. I'm glad we agree. A sound soceity is a NECESSARY condition to earning the wealth. We don't see many even millionaires coming out of low-tax states in East Africa, but they way you type scream about taxes one would expect them to be minting trillionaires.
>> deal in what works in the real world
Yes, we agree. I am not proposing any kind of -ism, only making a system that is fair for all and produced the most broadly prosperous society in history, specifically the US system based around a very broad middle class.
>>systems that let rich people be
I am not suggesting not letting rich people be rich, and certianly not confiscating or punishing; I'm suggesting a system that will actually have MORE people be rich
>>what is your fair share of what somebody else worked for?
OK, what is the billionaire's fair share of the labor stolen from workers paid exploitation wages?
When 20%+ of WalMart's full-time employees qualify for Food Stamps because we allow them to pay poverty wages, those billionaires do not have a business model, they have an exploitation model. They owe their employees a living wage, and they owe the rest of us the taxes they failed to pay to cover those food stamp benefits. They are stealing from all of us.
>>What is your fair share? How much of the earnings of a waitress, plumber, doctor, Fortune 500 exec, and Elon Musk is due to you, personally, as your empathic, ethical, and fair share?
Mine? I'm already above the threshold. OUR fair share is a fair system requiring EVERYONE to contribute, and contribute enough that the least among us have food, housing, healthcare, and education without undue worry. The entire society, especially the rich benefits when everyone is operating at their best potential, not primarily worried about being one slip from the ditch.
And while we still have income taxes (I actually think they should be eliminated in favor of transaction taxes, see other posts), the hedge funders should be required to pay tax on their millions of "carried interest", and capital gains taxes should be realized in ANY event where stock is utilized at it's current value, e.g., as collateral for a loan, not only when it is sold.
A lot of other detail, but it is not good to see the country which was the greatest in history with a large middle class slide backwards into a new corporate feudalism by allowing the rich to excessively hoard the wealth of the nation that made them rich. The irony is that the more wealth becomes concentrated, the harder it is to be and stay wealthy -look at any nation with a few rich in their gated communities - it declines for the rich even more than the poor.
Right, but you won't receive 8x the benefits that your payroll taxes will eventually pay for, either. In fact, your wife will probably receive a higher percentage of her FICA contributions in eventual SS benefits than you, because there's a slight element of redistribution built in; it's not a straightforward "you get back what you paid into".
For me, the much more concerning part of Social Security is the demographic challenge: the program started out with over 10 workers per retiree and is down to less than three[0]. It doesn't matter how you play with the sliding scales of who pays how much and what the earnings cap is, when in the end it's two to three working people's wages being taxed to support one retiree.
That's okay. I also won't receive as much benefits from my income taxes as my aunt who has a serious brain injury and can't take care of herself. I don't exactly need the money.
See also the concept of high-context and low-context cultures.
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