domain:putanumonit.com
BurdensomeCount
Messenger Status: Shot
2hr ago
Top 1% wealth for a household requires a minimum of something like $15 million these days. So basically for the top 2% (who all have wealth above around $5 million) the median wealth is around $15 million and the mean will be significantly higher than this. A 1% yearly tax on wealth for those in the top 2% will thus raise at least $150k per person (in reality a lot more because of the skew). The US has about 130 million households. So even if we assume we don't hit anybody below the top 2% at all we'll raise at least 1.5*10^5*0.02*130*10^6 = $390 billion.
Note that this is a gross underestimate because it fails to account for the skew. The US budget deficit is around $1.6 trillion (and this is with the super expensive Trump tax cuts, naturally if they expire things will look much better) so this is *only* 25% of the full deficit, but like I said, it fails to account for the skew. Gemini 2.5 Pro thinks the mean wealth in the top 1% is $37.7 million (so ~40 million) while for those in the 2%-1% bracket is probably around 10 million. Using these numbers the 1% yearly tax on the top 1% will generate $520 billion and on the 2%-1% will generate another $130 billion and so together we get $650 billion, that's 40% of the deficit gone like that...
It's precisely the obscene levels of wealth in the US that allow this sort of tax to be viable. A similar wealth tax in Europe would fail for precisely the reason you are talking about: In Europe they really don't have enough wealthy to make taxing them raise significant money (besides not taxing their citizens world wide); in the US they do and the IRS is perfectly set up already to make this a much easier task than say for the Germans.
TIRM
2hr ago
Adam Friedland is neither charismatic nor funny. He won't be the next generation's John Stewart or Bill Maher or the left's Joe Rogan or whatever he is trying. He can get around a guest per month on his show and he's not a good interviewer. This is going nowhere.
I heard the first few minutes of the Hasan Piker interview. He says he invested his life savings in this failing show. He will have to give up eventually. I suppose when he can't pay his help or make rent. So sad he squandered his Cum Town millions on this. He won't get a second chance since he is so unfunny.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2hr ago
It seems it really depends on what you do with it. If you borrow from your children to build a something that gets a positive return after interest, it seems like a win still. There are legitimate business reasons to take on debt that aren't fatal spirals, and for various reasons printing cash looks more like printing shares, which can also be a positive.
The general question of which debts are useful is not trivial. And it doesn't just apply to debt: spending your capital assets for this isn't really much better even if it doesn't accrue interest.
FtttG
3hr ago
My understanding is that he intentionally drove into a crowd of pedestrians, but it wasn't political or a nihilistic mass murder: he was just on a lot of drugs. It doesn't appear to have been an accident.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
From my limited reading on the Wars of the Roses, this was also a factor there - Henry IV's usurpation of the throne meant that all the various cadet branches of the Plantagenets felt they had some kind of a claim.
Pongalh
3hr ago
Definitely messier, but that's what happens when you relax rules of expression. I for one like the democratization of ads. So random now, showing Americans' quirky idiosyncrasies in all their guy-or-girl-next-door glory.
Disclosure: I'm a proud producer of what is arguably definitely AI slop. (Check out my cheeky YT shorts channel, in fact: https://youtube.com/@ShockJonesy/shorts)
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
And where did "this one thing" come from? It didn't fall out from the sky, it wasn't a preexisting institution that managed to resist takeover by happenstance, it was built from scratch. If progressive propaganda was limitlessly effective this wouldn't happen in the first place, and they wouldn't be pulling their hair out at their inability to reproduce it.
nopie
3hr ago
Not true. There have been times when printing money was correct policy, for example, after big crises of 2008.
ChickenOverlord
3hr ago
Isn’t the solution to reduce executive power so whoever wins the next election can’t just destroy whatever’s been built? On the other hand, much of what restrained the executive was convention and tradition, which has been razed in the last 10ish years.
10 years? Try 200. There hasn't been any real appetite in the general public (nor amongst elected officials) to reduce the power of the executive since Andrew Jackson. Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR are some of the starkest examples of executive power increasing significantly (and never really decreasing after).
AnonymousActuary
3hr ago
I think the argument would be that the deficit will eventually trigger some sort of economic death spiral that would be very unpleasant. So if your party can be reasonable, it might postpone said death spiral a few more years.
AnonymousActuary
3hr ago
because the cost of social security benefits and the cost of medical spending are growing at two very different rates.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3hr ago
Canada used to be seen as a “nicer America”, an uncontroversially well-running state.
No, it didn't. Or if it was, it was by ignorant people living half a world away teaching your high school geography class. This is so far from Canadians' self-conception that at least on this point, I can confidently say that you have no idea what you're talking about.
phailyoor
3hr ago
Transing Afghans didn't exactly work out. Seems like bringing in lgbt and feminism just made them hate us more.
phailyoor
3hr ago
True in some degree, but it was the Democrats who spearheaded billions in weapons for Ukraine.
ChickenOverlord
3hr ago
Defense spending in the US (about $800 billion) is about 1/3 the dollar amount spent on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (about $1.9 trillion). Even if the US spent closer to what a typical country spends on defense (about 1.9% of GDP as opposed to the US's 3.4% of GDP) it would still spend about $450 billion on defense. Right-wing love of defense spending doesn't even hold a candle to left-wing love of entitlement spending.
PokerPirate
3hr ago
There's a reason there's no Oakland Amish.
There's no Amish, but there are self-declared pacifists. See for example https://oaklandcatholicworker.org.
This is not an argument against the values described, just a note on their evident limitations.
I disagree this is a limitation of pacifism. No body wants to live in "Oakland" (which I'm assuming is metonymy for any violent place). I claim that pacifism has better outcomes than non-pacifism for someone who must live in such a place. I don't think these are always strictly better outcomes for the individual, but that these better outcomes are society-wide.
Pacifism works when you live with other committed pacifists.
You imply that it doesn't work around non-pacifists, which I disagree with. Although the disagreement is probably about the aims that we should be working towards.
Distance can replace walls and spears.
Most reasonable people would prefer to be away from violence. So I don't think this is a unique jab at pacifism.
The implication is that pacifists cannot strategically interact with violence in a way that achieves their aims. But there are plenty of pacifists who would strategically reduce their distance to conflict in order to effect change that cannot be accomplished with spears. The AFSC ambulance units that helped combatants and non-combats on all sides in WWI and WWII is a standard example. In my own life, I've lived in North Korea trying to reduce conflict between them and the US.
phailyoor
3hr ago
Tax cuts are far more fiscally responsible than an equivalent amount of deficit spending. With tax cuts, you can always raise taxes later and people will grumble and accept it. But god forbid you try to take away someone's gibs. Remember that Elon literally killed over 300,000 people by cutting usaid.
dasfoo
3hr ago
In the best possible case that I can see, we would be expending our political power to create stable economic conditions for our opponents to then rule.
You just explained why any party that campaigns on cutting spending will never do it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3hr ago
Usually punishment is confinement to her room for X amount of time, the worst was for two days in a row when she was suspended from school.
We tried spanking for a span when she was four, but it didn't have any effect. Confining her to her room doesn't really have an effect either, except giving her space to calm down.
My mom just recommends taking the next treat away, but the behavior is so continuous, disruptive, and unsafe that we're at the point where we don't do treats. We don't get to go to parties, play dates or movies. We take away the next trip to Costco.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
3hr ago
it seems quite likely that transing a neutral country will bring it culturally closer to the American universal culture fold
Surely Coca-cola and McDonald's have been doing a better job for decades with less risk of cultural backlash? Or does it need to be specifically government-funded imperial initiatives that count?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3hr ago
If either or both of them dedicate significant resources to striking at each other, then that will confirm that the breach is serious in nature, and that will bode extremely ill for my faction.
...why? I mean, firstly, 'significant resources' is load-bearing here in a way that's difficult to falsify. Secondly, I recoil at the use of 'my faction' (where's the guy who was trying to address the address the hate in his heart with his pastor, or something like that?) but I guess that ship has sailed. Thirdly, what does it matter to you whether Trump cancels Elon's contracts or Elon doesn't show up for republicans next election? Your coalition is the same, the people who vote for guns and the people who vote for abortion and the people who vote for whatever else will turn out in 2028.
Either way, I'll go way out on a limb and predict that the presidency goes D in 2028, without knowing who either candidate will be. In the grand scheme of things, Elon-Trump beef is irrelevant.
this would be evidence that our leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional, and I would expect that to manifest in other ways in relatively short order.
Again, why? Obviously your leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional - how can you read what Elon and Trump are tweeting at each other and conclude anything else? Would you ever behave that way, let alone behave that way if you were representing a nation? They're just dysfunctional in ways that you or your 'faction' approves of.
What updates beyond this would you recommend?
You should probably update on at least the stability of Elon. Whether the drug of choice is ketamine or culture war, something degraded significantly in the last couple years, and I say that as a papa Elon fanboy.
I'd say you should probably update on Trump as well, but I expect you already think he's bonkers and love him anyways or you'll never change your opinion, so that's probably not a worthwhile conversation.
thinly-veiled
Was this meant to link to a pop song? If so, the reference went over my head.
Where do you expect the thinly-veiled minecraft references to be directed?
From Trump supporters, towards Elon.
oats_son
3hr ago
It makes sense to me that different things framed differently can get more or less popular at different rates. With the amount of media coverage being dedicated to transgenders, it is likely more normie-coded than wearing assless leather out in public, giving cover to anyone undertaking the transgender path. I'd argue a huge part of the discourse is in trying to present an obviously sexual thing as not sexual at all. The way it's presented is "transgenders are just normal people like you and me trying to navigate their mental illness (even though dysphoria isn't actually a requirement in the public eye anymore), so most restrictions are hateful." I think that kind of framing would have a big impact on uptake of any paraphilia, or any trend at all, like T-shirt wearing or membership in a gun club or motorcycling.
As a longtime "Reduce Defense!" hawk and a former left-libertarian, it's just not enough. The Pie Chart doesn't lie.
I have enough friends in the MI complex to know how fatty and corrupt the whole thing is, but if you're serious about cutting spending, you actually shouldn't start there for two reasons:
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