Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

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you are the problem. please set up a charity. feel free to part from your money. there are many of us who cant...unlike some americans, some of us have responsibilities..aged parents living overseas, children, relatives..i would rather use my wealth to make sure that my parents and in laws and aunts and uncles live well before they die. what i am is because of the people who raised me and i owe them a debt before i owe some random homeless person on the street shooting up.

please be generous. the world needs more people than you. immigrants have a different mentality when it comes to familial responsibilites. i have two sets of grandparents and three dozen aunts. and i dont even know how we are related. extended families are really really really extended. and i derive so much pleasure in making their lives better and happier. why should i trade my pleasure for your philanthropy disguised as milking me for tax dollars.

hundred dollars fed half a dozen people in my indian home state for a month. californians complained that $1200/month isnt sufficient. i know where i want to send my money. i feel like what i do is real redistribution of wealth. so..no to your idea.

if you really want to help people, reach out to me..i know where you can send your extra dollars to other parts of the world where people have no job, no means of feeding themselves and their families and their govts are too powerless to take care of all their millions.

Just because people have it worse off somewhere else does not mean that people don't also have it bad here. There are people in the states who have raw sewage dumped into their yards every time it rains. There are children who starve here. We could house everyone here, if we made it a priority. It's unconscionable to me.

By all means, continue to aid the organizations that bring you happiness. I will continue to try and make a positive impact on the sphere I am familiar with (generally the Pacific Northwest.)

I regularly do give up money and time, in multiple ways. From purchasing land and reforesting it then protecting it with conservation easements, to giving to social housing efforts, to giving aid to overseas organizations.

That said, I don't view raising taxes as philanthropy. To me it's about maintaining the minimum set of societal standards that anyone should be able to enjoy -- housing, healthcare, food, etc. should be accessible to anyone, no questions asked. If that means that those of us at the top need to operate with less income, then I see that as a good tradeoff.

That said, I'm only interested in folks who really are at the very top of the income brackets.

I don’t disagree with what you said in your first paragraph. But taxation is not the answer. We have billions of dollars already collected for the state and federal dollars.

The first order of business is to find accountability and trim the excess and make the current dollars work. Before instituting new taxes.

Someone who earns 500K a year and who wants to be taxed more isn’t the problem. They are a principled social democrat. A thing that a country like the US could use more of.

People who look out for themselves and their family only and who wants to make public goods into a voluntarist thing through charities are the problem. They are of no use to anyone except their immediates and are only holding progress back.

I am not a flaggelist. You must have confused me with someone who would be affected by what you wrote. I don’t expect to carry everyone’s burden because I don’t suffer from a Saviour Complex. I believe in human beings ability to be resilient and survive against odds. By themselves. YMMV.

Also: do you really expect people to live in penury or ignore their ‘immediates’ to deliver more taxes to a govt that has proven itself to be inept again and again and again showing no transparency, accountability or efficiency. That’s just daft. Who really dumps their money voluntarily to the taxman when your family..your friends..your neighbors needs and suffering can be alleviated with immediate results. I literally have no more words for you.

> Who really dumps their money voluntarily to the taxman when your family..your friends..your neighbors needs and suffering can be alleviated with immediate results.

The question I think you are asking is, "If you give your money to the government, you don't know where it goes. Perhaps it is wasted. If you give it to people you know need it locally, you can have immediate results. Why push for the former?"

If I've understood you correctly, that's a totally valid question, and it's one I think about quite a bit. I could, for instance, really focus on helping people in my immediate area. I could buy a lot of meals for a lot of people.

But ultimately, I think I can achieve more by organizing. If I can spend some money on mutual aid to help out some folks locally, and spend some on building coalitions and participating in collective action, I think I ultimately achieve more.

You could organize those who want to contribute voluntarily. A tax is mandatory.

Example: We have a homelessness industrial complex in California. Our taxes go more towards paying activists and those who work with the homeless rather than building homes. The only way to get rid of homelessness is to build homes. It’s not like you can talk your way out of street living with talk therapy. While a portion need help..all of them need to be off of the streets. When California shows some results, I will consider supporting more taxation.

You and I agree here. Build homes. Use tax money to build and operate housing. (Don't do the shitty American thing where you spend on the capital budget but not the operational budget.)

We also need crisis intervention, counseling, drug programs, and support.

There has to be three streams. Housing those who need to get a job/reskill/can’t work. Another for medical intervention. And the third is rehab for addiction issues. This would be the largest group.

I want to share more re problem statement/solution strategy..but a little busy now. I hope to revisit this at some other time. I just have to find it for a quick cut and paste from where I had written earlier. Cheers.

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