sullat posted:

Yeah the real tax scam is putting in financial assets into your IRA that you think are "only" worth a few thousand and surprise surprise they are actually worth a few million. That's how Romney (and others) get those nine figure IRA accounts.

Subvisual Haze posted:

It's just insider trading. Sure you can only move $6500 a year into your roth IRA, but you can invest that in anything and not pay taxes forever on the earnings. So buy some ultra cheap stock in a company that you know your private equity friends are about to pump up in value. Rinse, repeat, watch your tax free funds increase exponentially.

Subvisual Haze posted:

It's just insider trading. Sure you can only move $6500 a year into your roth IRA, but you can invest that in anything and not pay taxes forever on the earnings. So buy some ultra cheap stock in a company that you know your private equity friends are about to pump up in value. Rinse, repeat, watch your tax free funds increase exponentially.

quote:

Assuming a modest 6% annual return and no withdrawals, his tax-free golden egg could be worth about $263 billion in 2087, when Thiel plans to celebrate his 120th birthday.

actionjackson posted:

Peter Thiel has taken this to an extreme

https://www.propublica.org/article/...fO1A-W9dsaUWVnP

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

My one big consolation is that Peter Thiel will never live to be even close to 120

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

My one big consolation is that Peter Thiel will never live to be even close to 120

Cuttlefush posted:

SlimGoodbody posted:

I don't use discord enough to immediately clock this, but from what I'm guessing by looking at it, this got cross posted to a discord and downvoted thousands of times lol, was it the Tesla discord

Edit: oh, oh no, I see, it's too long and you need... you need to pay extra to... to have enough letters...

Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:

Musk should buy and improve Discord.

SlimGoodbody posted:

I don't use discord enough to immediately clock this, but from what I'm guessing by looking at it, this got cross posted to a discord and downvoted thousands of times lol, was it the Tesla discord

Edit: oh, oh no, I see, it's too long and you need... you need to pay extra to... to have enough letters...

Vox Nihili posted:

Can't believe Wall Street Silver would miss the mark like that...

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

Spaced God posted:

fun fact you can just install BetterDiscord and some scripts and get emojis across all servers, infinite characters, and a bunch of other cool poo poo

Spaced God posted:

https://twitter.com/wagatwe/status/1682737313112113156

PoundSand posted:

I feel like this sort of thing should just be straight up illegal. Hell even listing tax separately in general is dumb, stuff should just be labeled what it's gonna cost. Who would even be against upfront pricing like why is this not a general topic in politics? I should be able to walk into a store or whatever with 20 physical dollars in my pocket and arrive at a register with knowledge that what I picked up will be covered by said money.

RandomBlue posted:

wow, this is theft

PoundSand posted:

I feel like this sort of thing should just be straight up illegal. Hell even listing tax separately in general is dumb, stuff should just be labeled what it's gonna cost. Who would even be against upfront pricing like why is this not a general topic in politics? I should be able to walk into a store or whatever with 20 physical dollars in my pocket and arrive at a register with knowledge that what I picked up will be covered by said money.

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

you joke, but there's this thing that happened in Florida i haven't seen much discussion of: a guy just looked at fox news page sources and found .m3u links to feeds and recorded things not intended for broadcast. got raided by FBI

https://twitter.com/JustinGarciaFL/status/1682495928022728706

quote:

I'm tagging this tech because internet/app stuff does this all the time for the last few years but welcome to hear anything getting worse purely for The Algorithm or other dumb reasons

silicone thrills posted:

Being called hacker for hitting f12 on a web page and right clicking and saving. lmao. lol.

Dumb bitches should have had a better CMS system.

Xaris posted:

there's been some experiments for various independent pizza places or restaurants here in the bay area to say "we're getting rid of tips and giving employees a living wage!" and adjust their menu so food is priced all final-out-the-door and end up going out of business because people get sticker shocked over a $40 pizza and choose Round Table or something instead.

one place that did this but didn't close renegged on this a few years later and went back to cheaper menu-list price food but reducing employee wage, bringing back tips, and taking taxes off the menu price

Martha Stewart Undying posted:

bay area is the worst place to try this because bay prices for pretty much everything are artificially inflated

PoundSand posted:

All the more reason to legislate it! Like I can understand why businesses want to lie about how much their products cost but it seems like it could be a campaign slam dunk to put a stop to it. From people I talk to irl over delivery or w/e everyone seems to have caught onto the whole "hidden fee" thing. As an example I don't fly often and I dunno if it's even a provider in my area but even I'm aware that spirit airlines looks like it has cheap ticket prices but has a million little fees that pile up, your average consumer seems to be generally aware of this phenomenon and not like it even if they might get duped by it in advertising. Just sort of surprised it's not a topic that comes up with campaign runs or such cause it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to legislate "listed prices much match what a customer pays". I know biden decided to try this with ticketmaster of all things to somewhat positive reception so just do it across the board.

MuadDib Atreides posted:

ive applied for hundresd of jobs im overqualified for and not got an interview. Been thanking my lucky stars that the econmic is heathy....

quote:

Hello! I’m on the job hunt now and I thought everyone here would enjoy hearing some of the reasons recruiters gave me for rejecting me after the first/final round interviews:

In the first interview, they asked what I disliked about my last job. Trying to choose something benign, I said employees had to park in a satellite lot about a quarter mile away from the office and walk, which was tiring in the summer. I was rejected because their office is set up as a multi-building campus which involves walking from building to building.

Another company rejected me after finding out I had a week-long trip planned in advance to help my retiring mother move to her new home. The job would start Aug 1st, the trip was for August 22-25. Apparently I could never recover in training if I missed a week within the first few months of the job (this was a retail position).

The recruiter told me there would be a travel commitment if I were offered this job and I asked what portion of time the team typically travels. Apparently this shows that I’m not dedicated to the work and just want to maximize my time at home

For an administrative assistant job, I seemed too excited about a simple office job

Not enough experience

Too much experience

My salary expectation was too low (???). They figured I wouldn’t be a good negotiator. I could see how that might be an issue in a job that requires negotiating, which this did not.

quote:

Xaris posted:

i'm in a comfortably employed in a unionized public agency job where i cant get fired or laid off, but ive been enjoying reading recruitinghell recently to remind me how horrible jobs are https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/

Martha Stewart Undying posted:

bay area is the worst place to try this because bay prices for pretty much everything are artificially inflated

PoundSand posted:

All the more reason to legislate it! Like I can understand why businesses want to lie about how much their products cost but it seems like it could be a campaign slam dunk to put a stop to it. From people I talk to irl over delivery or w/e everyone seems to have caught onto the whole "hidden fee" thing. As an example I don't fly often and I dunno if it's even a provider in my area but even I'm aware that spirit airlines looks like it has cheap ticket prices but has a million little fees that pile up, your average consumer seems to be generally aware of this phenomenon and not like it even if they might get duped by it in advertising. Just sort of surprised it's not a topic that comes up with campaign runs or such cause it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to legislate "listed prices much match what a customer pays". I know biden decided to try this with ticketmaster of all things to somewhat positive reception so just do it across the board.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/ghost_motley/status/1682796531055820805?t=3LnNfwxLqVLwPK2jVk_eJQ&s=19

MickeyFinn posted:

This will never happen because there are plenty of people with political power who want you to see the word "TAX" on everything so you can imagine the government reaching into your pocket in exactly the same way the "health insurance" line item on restaurant receipts is supposed to work. You are supposed to think "this is not part of the price, this is someone hurting my financial health for nothing." If you folded all of these items into the price, people would forget about them in a few months and you can't make political hay about something no one remembers or cares about.

Nothus posted:

Is this actually true, or is it spin to cover the fact that the Nomenklatura sold everyone out on the promise of joining the global cybernetic capitalist elite

Communism in Wonderland, Blackshirts and Reds posted:

...

Wanting It All

I listened to an East German friend complain of poor services and inferior products; the system did not work, he concluded. But what of the numerous social benefits so lacking in much of the world, I asked, aren’t these to be valued? His response was revealing: “Oh, nobody ever talks about that.” People took for granted what they had in the way of human services and entitlements while hungering for the consumer goods dangling in their imaginations.

...

Likewise, the big demand in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was for travel, new appliances, and bigger apartments. [27] The New York Times described East Germany as a “country of 16 million [who] seem transfixed by one issue: How soon can they become as prosperous as West Germany?” [28] A national poll taken in China reported that 68 percent chose as their goal “to live well and get rich.” [29]

In 1989, I asked the GDR ambassador in Washington, D.C. why his country made such junky two-cylinder cars. He said the goal was to develop good public transportation and discourage the use of costly private vehicles. But when asked to choose between a rational, efficient, economically sound and ecologically sane mass transportation system or an automobile with its instant mobility, special status, privacy, and personal empowerment, the East Germans went for the latter, as do most people in the world. The ambassador added ruefully: “We thought building a good society would make good people. That’s not always true.” Whether or not it was a good society, at least he was belatedly recognizing the discrepancy between public ideology and private desire.

In Cuba today many youth see no value in joining the Communist party and think Fidel Castro has had his day and should step aside. The revolutionary accomplishments in education and medical care are something they take for granted and cannot get excited about. Generally they are more concerned about their own personal future than about socialism. University courses on Marxism and courses on the Cuban Revolution, once overenrolled, now go sparsely attended, while students crowd into classes on global markets and property law. [30]

With the U.S. blockade and the loss of Soviet aid, the promise of abundance receded beyond sight in Cuba and the cornucopia of the North appeared ever more alluring. Many Cuban youth idealize life in the United States and long for its latest styles and music. Like the Eastern Europeans, they think capitalism will deliver the goodies at no special cost. When told that young people in the United States face serious hurdles, they respond with all the certainty of inexperience: “We know that many people in the States are poor and that many are rich. If you work hard, however, you can do well. It is the land of opportunity.” [31]

By the second or third generation, relatively few are still alive who can favorably contrast their lives under socialism with the great hardships and injustices of prerevolutionary days. As stated by one Cuban youth who has no memory of life before the revolution: “We’re tired of the slogans. That was all right for our parents but the revolution is history.” [32]
...

Reactionism to the Surface

For years I heard about the devilishly clever manipulations of communist propaganda. Later on, I was surprised to discover that news media in communist countries were usually lackluster and plodding. Western capitalist nations are immersed in an advertising culture, with billions spent on marketing and manipulating images. The communist countries had nothing comparable. Their media coverage generally consisted of dull protocol visits and official pronouncements, along with glowing reports about the economy and society — so glowing that people complained about not knowing what was going on in their own country. They could read about abuses of power, industrial accidents, worker protests, and earthquakes occurring in every country but their own. And even when the press exposed domestic abuses, they usually went uncorrected.

Media reports sometimes so conflicted with daily experience that the official press was not believed even when it did tell the truth, as when it reported on poverty and repression in the capitalist world. If anything, many intellectuals in communist nations were utterly starry-eyed about the capitalist world and unwilling to look at its seamier side. Ferociously opposed to the socialist system, they were anticommunist to the point of being full-fledged adulators of Western reactionism. The more rabidly “reactionary chic” a position was, the more appeal it had for the intelligentsia.

With almost religious fervor, intellectuals maintained that the capitalist West, especially the United States, was a free-market paradise of superabundance and almost limitless opportunity. Nor would they believe anything to the contrary. With complete certitude, well-fed, university-educated, Moscow intellectuals sitting in their modest but comfortable apartments would tell U.S. visitors, “The poorest among you live better than we.”

...

Romanticizing Capitalism

...

Most people living under socialism had little understanding of capitalism in practice. Workers interviewed in Poland believed that if their factory were to be closed down in the transition to the free market, “the state will find us some other work.” [39] They thought they would have it both ways. In the Soviet Union, many who argued for privatization also expected the government to continue providing them with collective benefits and subsidies. One skeptical farmer got it right: “Some people want to be capitalists for themselves, but expect socialism to keep serving them.” [40]

Reality sometimes hit home. In 1990, during the glasnost period, when the Soviet government announced that the price of newsprint would be raised 300 percent to make it commensurate with its actual cost, the new procapitalist publications complained bitterly. They were angry that state socialism would no longer subsidize their denunciations of state socialism. They were being subjected to the same free-market realities they so enthusiastically advocated for everyone else, and they did not like it.

...

Still, substantial numbers, especially among intellectuals and youths — the two groups who know everything — opted for the free-market paradise, without the faintest notion of its social costs. Against the inflated imagination, reality is a poor thing. Against the glittering image of the West’s cornucopia, the routinized, scarcity-ridden, and often exasperating experiences of communist society did not have a chance.

It seems communism created a dialectical dynamic that undermined itself. It took semi-feudal, devastated, underdeveloped countries and successfully industrialized them, bringing a better life for most. But this very process of modernization and uplift also created expectations that could not be fulfilled. Many expected to keep all the securities of socialism, overlaid with capitalist consumerism. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, they were in for some painful surprises.

One reason siege socialism could not make the transition to consumer socialism is that the state of siege was never lifted. As noted in the previous chapter, the very real internal deficiencies within communist systems were exacerbated by unrelenting external attacks and threats from the Western powers. Born into a powerfully hostile capitalist world, communist nations suffered through wars, invasions, and an arms race that exhausted their productive capacities and retarded their development. The decision by Soviet leaders to achieve military parity with the United States — while working from a much smaller industrial base — placed a serious strain on the entire Soviet economy.

The very siege socialism that allowed the USSR to survive made it difficult for it to thrive. Perestroika (the restructuring of socioeconomic practices in order to improve performance) was intended to open and revitalize production. Instead it led to the unraveling of the entire state socialist fabric. Thus the pluralistic media that were to replace the communist monopoly media eventually devolved into a procapitalist ideological monopoly. The same thing happened to other socialist institutions. The intent was to use a shot of capitalism to bolster socialism; the reality was that socialism was used to subsidize and build an unforgiving capitalism.

Pressed hard throughout its history by global capitalism’s powerful financial, economic, and military forces, state socialism endured a perpetually tenuous existence, only to be swept away when the floodgates were opened to the West.