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Comment by cschep | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what would happen if it wasn't such a waste of money to give it to the government. Would people be more inclined to stick around and do so? I don't blame him one bit, seems like most of his money would end up bailing out a bank or something equally disagreeable.

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The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

If you start from an unproven assertion ('all government spending is waste'), you can believe whatever you want. Things like, "Hey, I'm not being an out-for-myself bastard who's reneging on his obligations to society by being a tax cheat, I'm John Galt! I'm a good guy!".

Without the US ecosystem, it's hard to see facebook being as successful as it has been. It's pretty weak to turn around after that and say you're not obligated to pay US taxes.

Well of course he has been paying US taxes, while he lived here. When he stops living here, the USA shouldn't have any claim to tax him anymore, that's just common sense. He's going to pay taxes on the stocks he owns when he leaves as if he had just sold them; that's about half a billion dollars in taxes. Congress thinks that's not enough, apparently.

He presumably paid capital gains taxes on his Facebook stock when he left the country.

You might find his disloyalty to America distasteful, as I do - if his citizenship was so easily discarded, perhaps he shouldn't have acquired it in the first place. You might believe long-term capital gains tax rates are too low. But if you're implying this man is a tax cheat who's reneging on his obligations to society, that's just slander. As far as I can tell he followed the law, paid his taxes, and kept his obligations.

I wasn't slandering Saverin specifically so much as the notion that there's a principled reason to avoid paying taxes. There are plenty of selfish reasons, and I'm not Mother Theresa so I'm not claiming to be better than anyone. But call it what it is.

I know that some level of taxation is necessary to keep society running along, and am not against taxation per se. But I do try to legally minimize my taxes, because I want my own family to be well-provided for and because I want to direct my charitable giving to my own community and causes.

If that's selfish, I guess I'm selfish - but is this motivation truly so terrible?

Nothing so bad about that, I do the same, within reason. I'm just saying acknowledge it for what it is. And when you have billions, it's a fair bit more selfish.

First rule of false argument is to push a sound argument to an extreme and ridicule it. The argument is not "all government spending is waste" but rather "significant part of government spending is the product of narrow, sectorial and personal interests which are not that different from Saverin's". That's unfortunately a sound argument. You could easily find sum equal to his tax savings wasted without a remote linkage to anything patriotic.

"Significant part" is a weasel word. You talking 10%? 90%? In order to justify a moral imperative not to pay taxes, it's gotta be towards the 90% end, so I wasn't misstating the implication. Just cutting through the weasel words.

I wasn't pushing the argument to the extreme - it started off as extreme.

Even 1% would be far more than Saverin's saving. You should really read Lawrence Lessig.

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