ThenElection
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User ID: 622
ThenElection
5d ago
I think he and Musk are joking.
90s era Nick Land is spectacular, in all senses. And he's probably the most important philosopher-poet for the AI era. Meltdown:
http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm
Nothing human makes it out of the near-future.
Sidestepping the question of whether tax refunds that refund more than you paid in can be considered morally a tax cut...
EBT at most gives a few thousand dollars a year. It's true that the most of recipients are net negative in revenue, but there are still sundry taxes they do pay: sales tax, taxes on social security benefits, payroll, taxes on unemployment benefits, gas taxes, etc. We have a lot of taxes. You can dig through those and find enough they do pay so that you can refund them for food purchases without dropping into negative for taxes paid.
It would be a somewhat silly accounting game and wouldn't change how decidedly net negative they are in revenue. The trick here is in leaving out the really big redistributionist things (e.g. education, healthcare) and not counting it against their tax contributions.
Going back to actual net revenue, I can see the argument that it's impossible for anyone who's negative net revenue to receive a tax cut. But this has the side effect of meaning it's impossible for the large majority of Americans to receive a tax cut, because most are negative net revenue, both annually and over their lifespan. On an annual basis, the guy I originally mentioned above getting tens of thousands of value in property tax deferral is almost certainly net negative (though over his lifespan he's probably net positive so far).
ThenElection
6d ago
There are clever ways you could make EBT structured as a tax cut instead of spending as well. I don't think that would make it any less objectionable to the people who object to it.
To your more abstract point, the government is an institution like any other, and it will extract value from the economy to sustain its own existence. As part of my negotiating with its power, I want it to do what it does in as fair and transparent a way as possible, in a way that minimally distorts the economy or incentivizes putting effort and planning into schemes to take advantage of it.
ThenElection
6d ago
We could just dump it in the water supply. No need for the authoritarianism; there's the precedent of fluoridation for polluting our precious bodily fluids. Just have to make sure sodas also have it in them.
ThenElection
6d ago
Any kind of subsidy or redistribution will have some kind of waste built in from people exploiting it. I just can't get too worked up about EBT: sure, it isn't 100% efficient, but a substantial portion of it does reach people who need it.
Another California program: property tax deferral for the needy. If you own your house but have an income below ~60k, you can defer property taxes indefinitely, as a loan at a simple (not compound!) rate of 5%. One one-time coworker has engineered his income and assets (multi million dollar Roths FTW) so he no longer has to pay property tax through this program; this ends up amounting to something like 20k in benefits per year (that's after subtracting the accrued debt). That's a lot more scamming of the system than someone buying shitty mushroom snacks on EBT.
My main objection to the people in your example is the obesity and the festering sores. But, that's what poverty looks like in the US today. If you want to avoid it, shop at better grocery stores than the bargain market.
Twitter bots need freedom, too.
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