Lauchs
@Lauchs@lemmy.world
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
First, thank you!
There’s a website that’s kind of helpful:
Basically, digital stuff is probably the easiest. And as others have pointed out, visiting helps!
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
Ahhhh, gotchya, sorry missed that!
Though, I think tax cuts are fine to spur demand (especially targeted at lower income levels) though I’m a little hesitant about cutting spending. I’m in the camp that feels deficit spending is okay, maybe even desirable for things like recessions and wars. Spending cuts usually act as a drag on growth so if your goal is to heat up an economy, cutting taxes AND spending seems counter productive…
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
Oh, if the impetus is just to cut taxes, well I don’t think that’s particularly ideal.
If you’re cutting taxes in the hopes of Laffer striking again, fine but that’s supposed to be revenue generating.
If you’re cutting taxes for the sake of lower taxes, then you need to have some services in mind that are worth less than the value of the tax cuts, not just in terms of dollars but in terms of what they do. For example, you could cut SNAP benefits but yeah, most would be against that because feeding poor kids is pretty popular.
I don’t think these are unpopular because people don’t know economics so much as there aren’t many services they’d give up for marginally lower taxes.
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
Fair but I’m not sure what the point of spending cuts is beyond ,shrinking the state, cooling down an overheated economy or reducing a deficit. What am I missing?
A lot of government spending is super popular (think entitlements, healthcare, infrastructure etc.) I have an econ degree (admittedly, not particularly used as I’m now a dev) but I’m still not seeing a particular impetus…
- Comment on How are you actually doing today? 3 weeks ago:
Hope your mom gets better, sounds like a super shitty day though.
- Comment on How are you actually doing today? 3 weeks ago:
(Champagne problems warning) Was goddamn great until I pulled a calf muscle playing soccer tonight and now probably can’t ski on Friday and Monday, despite our mountains FINALLY getting a nice dump.
Admittedly, my problems are nothing compared to the children who mined the cobalt for my phone but godfuckingdamnit.
- Comment on Anon has a business idea 3 weeks ago:
We’re already reaping the benefits of social media/internet addled brains hitting voting age… I’m not sure ai images are a particularly harmful step from those poisons.
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, I’m not sure I’ve seen any of those in my lifetime. I’m Canadian and even Steven Harper, who would be almost a Democrat by American standards, wanted to go to war with the census for Reasons.
Broadly though, my understanding of Conservative values, peeling back the state, more self reliance etc is broadly unpopular to the many who think the state has a big role to play in social welfare from education to healthcare
If you could offer just rough ideas/goals, what would your sane, honest Conservative budget feature? Not looking to fight just genuinely curious. (No numbers obviously but like what would you want to cut. No vague “government waste” though please.)
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
Honestly, I’m just not sure deficit spending outside of wars/economic emergencies was a great strategy and instead, a time bomb Reaganomics left everyone else to deal with. I think that’s the ridiculously outsized part of spending that would’ve been the best to cut. If I remember correctly, servicing the debt is now on par with American military spending…
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
Cool to know about, thanks!
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
Oh interesting, I wasn’t aware there were actually examples of the Laffer curve working in reality! I alwats thought it was just a theoretical that conservatives had latched onto…
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
Oh absolutely, it’s just the VAT itself is regressive, not the overall tax system.
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
No, EU member states handle taxes individually.
But, that ease of travel is one inducement. (Consider, as billionaire Spaniard learns the government plans to tax an additional 100 million euros. With no border, is moving a few km next door to Portugal worth a 100 million?
More meaningful though is business taxes/regulations, which are a large part of why Europe has lost so many Unicorns to the NYSE and why within America, Texas is kind of killing it in terms of business relocations.
I personally think it’s a race to the bottom but those are the constraints that exist.
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
It’s obviously a tax on the biggest consumers.
Yes and no.
You’re absolutely correct in terms of total dollars contributed.
But the flip side is in terms of percentage of income. The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to have stocks, property and the like, which are usually exempt. So, as a total percentage of income, a VAT tends to hit the poor harder. (That being said, other taxes like capital gains are more progressive etc to make up the difference.)
- Comment on Isn't EU's "VAT" a regressive tax? Why do they have that, instead of something like, taxing the rich? 3 weeks ago:
They also tax the rich through progressive income taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes etc.
If you’re asking why not just tax the rich in place of a VAT, well, it’s sort of why not tax the rich to pay for absolutely everything we could want. The costs and difficulties in taxing the rich generally scale to the point where the marginal revenue raised by the tax becomes negative.
- Comment on Legal experts said the president was testing the boundaries of executive power with aggressive orders designed to stop the country from transitioning to renewable energy. 4 weeks ago:
And still, despite the harm to so many billions and your fucking kids, a disproportionate of the memes and discourse tomorrow will revolve around Musk succesafully trolling us, albeit without that framing and more breathless “Is Musk bringing back Nazis?!?”
- Comment on Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture 4 weeks ago:
And that alarm was listened to by the same people who already believe he’s a nazi, convinces and mobilizes zero people and makes the majority of voters who voted for trump even less likely to listen to us when someone isn’t just making a stupid salute but actually doing dangerous shit that actually harms people.
I get that for spoiled mostly white kids online, life will pretty much go on and nothing that bad will happen. But to those of us who actually understand the potential harm, we also underground that how we react matters more than what feels good or is easy, like screaming nazi.
- Comment on Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture 4 weeks ago:
If you are representing most Americans, then presumably you voted trump?
Musk is playing us apparently beautifully.
What literally made trump President is people didn’t believe the warnings on the Left, presumably because we screamed FASCIST for oh, the last 8 years and even the trump presidency we feared didn’t bring about a fascist revolution. But hey, now that there are hand waves it is clearly important to get outraged and be taken even less seriously! Otherwise trump might not dominate the mid terms I guess.
Fuck I wish my side wasn’t so goddamn easy to bait.
- Comment on Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture 4 weeks ago:
It’s not important, it just makes us look like we’re in hystrionics about Musk etc.
To most Americans, they’re not worried about a handful of idiots in swastikas. When we take this sort of bait it just makes real criticisms look like more Lefty whining.
- Comment on Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture 4 weeks ago:
Please can we not take the bait?
The goal of this is to get us flipping out while the Right and casual voters go “jesus, he just waved weirdly.”
Now more than ever we have to pick our fights well. More than half the country voted trump in part because they think The Left is overreacting, please don’t feed that narrative.
- Comment on Did a Lemmy post offend you? This doctor can help 5 weeks ago:
I do love that the “popooh, are you offended bro?” Folks are rhe ones who are also driven into hystrionics by the word cisgender.
- Comment on If this was all before you were born you just can't realize the how great the newest technology is 5 weeks ago:
Oh yeah the first ones were pretty bad for that. But once they figured “anti shock” iirc they were good enough to play from my jacket pocket while walking around.
Mp3s were absolutely a game changer. I bizzarely had a cd player that could handle regular cds and cds with MP3s and spent a couple days copying over a few cds worth of mp3s before I spent a year abroad.
And for all that, I bet you also appreciate the shit out of having all music all the time in all the places.
- Comment on If this was all before you were born you just can't realize the how great the newest technology is 5 weeks ago:
Maybe fully appreciate isn’t quite the right phrase but there is something to having been forced to do things a worse way that helps you remain constantly grateful for the improvement.
Eg…I went from walkmen to cds. Holy God that was so much better, even if the first few players were pretty bad. I still chuckle when I think about my effectively unlimited access to almost all the music I can imagine vs fast forwarding to get to the song I wanted, if I was lucky enough to have the right tape on hand.
Oddly, off the top of my head, I’m not sure the most recent generation of younger adults (say, 18-25ish, whatever the “basically grew up w smartphones” generation is) have had any similar groundbreaking changes beyond AI which uhhh, isn’t super popular here. Some stuff has improved (graphics etc) but off the top of my head I can’t think of something that’s really solved a constant annoyance. (I imagine fully autonomous vehicles would be another similar tech leap.
- Comment on Sorry, Canada — We Don’t Want You 1 month ago:
Feeling is incredibly mutual.
Why on Earth would we want to get rid of our healthcare, adopt terrible American schooling results, lower all our safety standarda and flood our streets with guns?
Everytime I visit America it looks like you just lost a war, I don’t want that here.
- Comment on why does everyone i know treat me like a child or if i was a very childlike person?? 1 month ago:
If you talk at all like you’ve written, I would treat you like a child too.
Maturity has nothing to do with your calendar age.
- Comment on Anon hates smartphones 2 months ago:
Thanks, I basically agree with you.
Like most of the tragic collective action problems (climate change, sweatshops etc) I’m just trying to moderate as best I can for my own soul/health and try not to be too sad about it.
- Comment on Anon hates smartphones 2 months ago:
A lot of those are problems caused by phones regardless of whether one uses one themselves.
But for the personal ones, there are self aware addicts of all kinds. Smokers know cigarettes are killing them, complain about them, sometimes even hard them can’t stop.
- Comment on Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell 2 months ago:
I thought the game awards were like the Oscars in that they are supposed to ignore the commercial success of the nominations? (Never follow that stuff so I could be completely wrong.)
- Comment on Excellent anti smoking ad 2 months ago:
Probably the coolest looking group of non ninja/mutant/teenage animals I’ve ever seen.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
A lot of folks are overlooking one of the largest factors, unlimited student loans for whatever.
As long as people have access to an ever increasing amount of money to use for tuition, it is in those institutions’ interests to rise their prices to extract as much as possible.
Whereas other countries tend to subsidize their education at source, that is to say, by funding the schools directly which somehwat obviates the price gouging aspect.