Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

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It's not about opposing guilt to anger. It's about pointing out that many of the public policies which most increase inequality are sops thrown by the very top to the broad class of well-off salaried workers immediately below them. Read the fine article: it's talking about things like restrictive zoning laws, 529 college-savings plans, and the mortgage-interest tax break. These are state subsidies for the well-off.

(Hell, my wife's parents saved up a 529 plan, and then she went to a state school on a full scholarship. Now we're apparently allowed to spend the 529 money to put a down payment on a house as a young couple, without any tax penalty. How is this allowed!?)

The question isn't, "Should people on HN feel guilty?". It's, "should people on HN receive a state subsidy for being fortunate?". Should we first make a nice living in tech, and then have the government write us extra little checks for all the ways we can pass our class down to our children?

> (Hell, my wife's parents saved up a 529 plan, and then she went to a state school on a full scholarship. Now we're apparently allowed to spend the 529 money to put a down payment on a house as a young couple, without any tax penalty. How is this allowed!?)

I'm not sure it is allowed. There must be some other transaction happening to make this without penalty. [1]

Also, why is everyone on this thread [not you] speaking of a 529 as if it's some elite 1% benefit? It's open to anyone. Most states have a $25 minimum, a lot of states have no minimum contribution at all [2].

[1]http://www.montereyherald.com/article/ZZ/20111006/NEWS/11100...

[2]http://www.savingforcollege.com/compare_529_plans/?plan_ques...

Edit: after some more research, it sounds like it may have been rolled over into an IRA for use with a first-time homebuyer exemption. See (http://finance.zacks.com/convert-529-ira-10479.html) under "Penalty Exceptions".

>The question isn't, "Should people on HN feel guilty?". It's, "should people on HN receive a state subsidy for being fortunate?"

The feelings of instilling guilt goes hand-in-hand with convincing the intended audience that they got to their position because of fortune instead of hard work. (The chain of thinking is then: your hard work didn't get you to the position of taking the mortgage deduction; instead it was your luck that did it.)

The writer wants workers with 100k salaries to vote for higher taxes on themselves by supporting politicians that promise to remove mortgage deductions and 529 education savings plans. In other words, he has to convince HN programmers making 100k that they are in fact, oppressing the low-income class. (E.g. Those tax deductions for home & college are subverting meritocracy and you should _feel bad_ for taking advantage of them.)

Do you think the writer's style of rhetoric was effective at persuasion? Or was he only effective at getting people who already agreed with him to nod in affirmation?

"The feelings of instilling guilt goes hand-in-hand with convincing the intended audience that they got to their position because of fortune instead of hard work."

People shouldn't feel guilty for the advantages their parents and ancestors worked hard to secure for them.

Sorry, my conjunction made that unclear.

The "guilt" is not about what their parents gave them; it's about making people feel guilt for taking the home & education tax deductions. (Although those are legal deductions, the writer wants to convince 100k earners that they are morally wrong for meritocracy.)

Nobody's talking about how you got into your position. We're talking about whether the government should send you free money for a position you've already got.

>Nobody's talking about how you got into your position.

Yes, the author did "talk about it" when he contends that people got that 100k jobs because of "luck" and "good fortune" instead of meritocracy. The author is throwing that premise-as-fact into the reader's face. The author has overlooked the fact that the reader must agree with that "luck" premise as a precondition of agreeing with the author's policy changes.

>We're talking about whether the government should send you free money for a position you've already got.

Ok, don't just write that sentence as some abstract credo. What does that mean in terms of concrete policy? Let's play that scenario out. That's what I tried to do with my last comment.

Are we wanting $100k job earners to vote for raising taxes on themselves via abolishment of mortgage and 529 tax deductions? Yes?

If so, you think his arguments persuasive to those who don't think those deductions were morally wrong? Did he successfully convince them that they are oppressing the low-income class?

>Are we wanting $100k job earners to vote for raising taxes on themselves via abolishment of mortgage and 529 tax deductions? Yes?

Yes, and I'd say we have pragmatic reasons to do so: the money for nice things has to come from somewhere. How is the subway system or Medicare supposed to run without tax money? If you make $100k and own a house, but have kids, where are your kids supposed to get affordable housing (and a rung onto the property ladder) of their own, without healthy pro-density zoning?

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