How taxes are dealt with in North America. Just send me how much I owe. Don’t have me go through a service to figure it out
Likewise, the IRS already knows everything about me. If I qualify for, say, food stamps, just have the IRS send me the food stamps. Don’t make me jump through hoops when I’m already destitute, come on.
This would make tens of thousands of jobs redundant and make many social programs much more efficient.
And save trillions of dollars, especially if we extended this to Medicare for all
But using resources efficiently isn’t the goal, suffering is!
If Democrats actually wanted to win every election from now until forever, this would do it for them. Imagine worrying how you’re going to feed your kids and then the mail arrives “BTW you’ve qualified for food stamps for the last 18 months, here they are” instant loyal voter.
But they won’t
Materially improving people’s lives is authoritarianism sweaty it needs to be balanced against legalizing violence against marginalized people
You largely have intuit/turbotax/quickbooks/mailchimp/whatever other name they use for that process. Or at least the paying for it part
Intuit is the sole reason our taxes are so obtuse. They lobby for it to be this way.
Not the sole reason. They play a part, same with H&R Block, but it’s more the people working for the ultra-wealthy who keep bribing politicians to create laws that allow their clients to avoid paying taxes. The companies that have tax software for the small people benefit from the tax system getting more complex, but they don’t directly lobby for those rules, they just want any kind of complexity. Their big fight is against any kind of free tax preparation for the poor and middle class.
It’s pretty disgusting what they do though. They make say $20 from someone filing their taxes. They take say $3 from that $20 and spend it to ensure that their customers are never offered a free alternative. They’re basically making their customers pay to lobby the government to keep taxes so complex that the customer has no choice but to use them again next year.
That’s absolutely not the case. They lobby to prevent the IRS making their own version of TurboTax, not lobbying to make the tax code more complex. Taxes are complex because we have little real oversight but a lot of deductions and credits. The IRS literally cannot track everything they offer deductions for, so it goes largely on the honor system until something seems fishy.
If you have a house, you have deductions. If you added solar to your house, you have deductions. If you bought an electric car or a hybrid, you had deductions for a while there. If you rent you have deductions in some states. You have to list your dependents for credits.
The IRS is incapable of tracking all of this.
But like I feel like this system of deduction taxes is more difficult than any other country and it reinforces the need for americans to use software or an accountant. Am I wrong? Are other countries putting up with this shit? The biden admin is the first in my lifetime to give us credits rather than a rebate or deductible.
That’s… Not at all true. There has been a child tax credit for decades. EV credits have existed for quite some time.
And yeah, other countries have some, but iirc they do it because they already track everything for VAT purposes, so it’s just an extension of that.
I should have used more precise language. There’s so much jargon! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_tax_credit_(United_States) To my understanding this is the first time it’s ever been paid directly “in advance” rather than served as a credit against your tax payments, awarding money at the end of the year - or even worse when it was non-refundable. This in advance, far higher amount, fully refundable child tax credit is fucking radical compared to what we had and what we’re going back to.
But that’s only really makes sense in like the simplest of cases. The government doesn’t know if you had a kid this year, or maybe you bought an EV, or maybe you started renting out a room in your home.
If all you have is a single W2 income; then by all means go to your local library, grab a 1040-EZ form, fill it out, and drop it in the mail. Will probably only take you 10 minutes or less.
In all but the most niche cases, they do in fact know that you had a kid. That being said, most things they have a pretty good idea about (or could) and they could easily adopt the system that they do in a lot of other countries where the government sends to a tax form all filled out that says, “we think you owe this much.” Then you just provide the exemptions you listed.
This would save a considerable amount of time when I file my taxes by just being able to double check they got cost basis correct on stocks sold and applied appropriate credits for mortgage interest and what not.In all but the most niche cases, they do in fact know that you had a kid.
How would the IRS know that? The only way I could think of would be the Social Security department sharing the information with the IRS; and are they legally allowed to do that? But let’s even say that’s true; if the parents aren’t married and filing jointly, who gets to claim the child as a dependent? That’s a decision made by the parents (or local courts in case of custody battles), so not something the IRS would decide.
Basically what it seems to boil down to is that filing taxes is complicated because the tax law is complicated.
I was assuming social security could share that information since now there’s a new taxable citizen. The IRS could easily prepare tax amounts assuming married filing jointly, married filing separately, and single. You would just choose one. And like it currently is, if both people attempt to claim dependency, someone gets slapped with a fine.
Tax law is absolutely complicated, and I definitely won’t deny that, but the IRS can make things easier and could do the basic filings.
They don’t share that information unless absolutely necessary. All government agencies hold their cards pretty close to themselves for legal and liability reasons. The IRS will complain that you’ve both claimed a dependent because you have to include that dependent’s information and they can tell when you both try to claim the same one
HAHAHA yah, they don’t know those things about you……sure……
You seem to have a very optimistic view of the efficiency of governments. I mean the IRS is basically running on a budget of table scraps after being defunded for decades.
It’s not “governments”, it’s the “US government”. Here in Europe, it just works.
It was more a statement about data mining. It’s cheap and easy and the government 100% does it
Maybe, and I really do mean maybe someone has a record somewhere that you have a child. That doesn’t mean it is shared with the IRS.
That’s my thinking.
Every large organization, private or public, that I’ve interacted has been basically just a bunch of different people in many different silos. I’m surprised to see so many people have this “well oiled machine” perspective of the government where apparently it is all seeing and all knowing.
So offer it for simple cases. If you don’t like the way it’s done, you can always go and do the simple process you’re describing
Sure, that would be simple enough for them to mail you a letter with like “we’re aware of these incomes from these employers” and any failure to file additional income on your part makes you liable. And of course not filing to claim any credits/deductions on your part just screws your out of your own money.
But then that also assumes the IRS knows your address. Does your employer even report your address when your taxes are withheld from your paycheck? And what if you move in the time between then?
I would be very surprised if they didn’t know the address of every taxpayer, and I do believe it’s reported by the companies you work for. If you move, you can fill out a change of address form with the postal service today, which makes the new address generally available. If they really don’t have any way of knowing currently, it would be worth every penny of my taxes to just make an online portal available where you can enter that information yourself.
Pretty sure it was sarcasm.
They didn’t have my new address until I filed my taxes with my new address.
Yes they do. See, scandinavian countries.
Okay but RIGHT NOW they don’t know. Sure it’s possible for them to track it, but they do not, and the infrastructure isn’t set up to do that.
Okay. I concede to your point, Ithink you’re more correct than I was.
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Tipping.
I feel like that’s a hard one. Whenever I argue against tipping with coworkers (we don’t currently work in the service industry) they will mention how they are all for it and mention how during peak times they made double their usual amount. I feel like it’s really been drilled in that it’s good for the workers
That element of it — when the restaurant is doing well, the windfall is shared with the waitstaff — could be preserved by simply giving the staff a percentage of the price of each meal they work on. Structure it as a bonus, the way salaried professionals can receive a bonus when the company is doing well.
It may be worth noting that worker-owned restaurants, like Cheese Board Pizza here in Berkeley, typically do not solicit tips. (Well, except for the live musicians, who are not worker-owners.) If tipping was really all that great for the workers, then places where the workers literally control company policy would encourage it.
Not necessarily. I don’t know about New York, but in Illinois it’s illegal for owners or management to receive tips.
It is not illegal for owners or managers to receive tips for work they perform. If the manager is waiting a table, they can receive that table’s tips.
Where the restaurant is owned by the workers, an individual worker-owner will still collect the tips for the work they perform. An owner who is not working that day has no claim to tips earned that day.
Are you sure? Even when I’ve been at places where the owner works, those owners haven’t taken tips, instead splitting any they receive among the other staff.
Employers, managers, and supervisors may not keep any portion of the employee’s tips, and may not participate in a tip pool. But yes, they can certainly accept their own tips.
Consider a small, mom-and-pop diner. Pop cooks, mom serves. They co-own the diner. They can certainly accept tips.
Hiring a part-time busboy as a worker doesn’t mean that he automatically earns all tips received during his shift. Mom still gets to collect tips for serving, pop still gets to collect tips for cooking. They don’t get to receive tips in their managerial capacity, only in their capacity as workers.
It is important to note: A traditional owner/manager only performs managerial work. This is the kind of scenario we are usually talking about when we hear about scummy managers stealing tips, but it is not the kind of scenario we are talking about here.
We are considering a restaurant that is owned by the workers. We are talking about a mom-and-pop diner with a whole lot of moms and pops doing the work.
Important distinction! All the places I worked where the owners also worked were pool houses, and as you said, owners can’t take from a pool.
One of the best guys I ever worked for used to say, “Those are your tips. When the restaurant does well, that’s my tip.”.
Absolutely, those who get high tips stay in the industry. Those who get low tips are fired. Places don’t keep those who aren’t tipped well because it means they have to pay more out of the budget. If you aren’t getting high tips you are seen as lazy or not doing enough as a waiter. In reality tipping has more to do with who you get as customers (and what they find attractive) than quality of service. https://scroll.in/article/860274/does-tipping-really-ensure-better-service-probably-not
Just another way to divide. Typically FOH staff get all or most of the share, while cooks get screwed, in my experience.
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Tips = To Insure Prompt Service It’s a slavery term
In Norway, restaurants started to implement applications or websites to order at the restaurant. Scan a QR code or download an app (yuck) to order the food and preemptively pay for it. While that might be fine, I find it really strange when I’m asked about tipping when I place my order. I have literally not seen a waiter, I have just sat down and looked through a website, and now I’m asked if I want to tip? Why? What for?
Luckily, 0% tip is very common in all services in Norway, so it’s not considered rude to refrain from tipping.
Over-reliance on proprietary, closed-source products and services from megacorporations.
For instance, it’s really absurd that people in many parts of the world cannot function without WhatsApp, they can’t even imagine a life without it. It seems absurd that Meta literally has them by the balls, and these people can’t do anything about it.
Also the people who base their entire careers on say Adobe or Microsoft products, they’re literally having their lives dictated by one giant corporation, which is very depressing and dystopian.
It’s worse in China. WeChat is EVERYTHING.
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It seems absurd that Meta literally has them by the balls, and these people can’t do anything about it.
I don’t get this sentiment. If anything happens to WhatsApp, they’ll just switch to another IM. WhatsApp wasn’t the first to come along, and won’t be the last. How exactly does Meta have them by the balls?
In some of those countries, it’s not really a choice. Like, WhatsApp is the only way of contacting a company’s customer care (via chat bots that run on it), colleges and universities may have study groups on it and teachers may hand out notes etc in those groups, also apparently it’s also the only way to contact even some government agencies.
I know, I’m from those countries. Like I said, we used other IM apps before WhatsApp came along, and if something changes we can use a new app. WhatsApp currently leads the market due to the network effect, but it doesn’t have us ‘by the balls’.
(Though the most likely successor would be WeChat, which is arguably much much worse in many ways)
Do you require WhatsApp to contact certain government agencies? Do you require WhatsApp to get access to customer support? Do you require WhatsApp to get access to lecture notes? No? Then you’re not from one of those countries.
Yes, yes and yes. Yes I’m from one of those countries
Which means you can’t really switch to other apps then, which means Meta has you by the balls.
I suppose that depends on your definition of by the balls. Like I said, it’s not difficult for everybody to switch if they piss everyone off. On average people here have 2-3 IMs installed.
it’s a shame.
So many people use it, that the barrier to change to another application is high. They would need to fuck up on very large scale.
Yes, they currently have the market share, and network effect keeps them there. Nevertheless, my point was it’s not a monopoly, so how does Meta have everybody 'by the balls"?
Network effect might as well be a monopoly until the network kills itself.
I take issue with the concept of one company owning an entire communications network in the first place. Federation is a step in the right direction but it’s not enough yet.
I remember listening to a podcast that talked of how in the Philippines (I think it was), Facebook is the internet, because Meta/FB effectively subsidised the carriers into allowing FB access to not use up any data allowance. As a result, if all you do is go on FB, you don’t pay a penny. If WhatsApp is included in this, then yeah, you’re locked in with no real alternative.
Oh right. Not quite nowadays, they get subsidised from multiple companies, including Google (YouTube) and such. I hate to say this, but WeChat would probably be happy to jump in and grab some market share if Meta does something egregiously dumb
It’s an issue of userbase.
WhatsApp can and will get away with a lot before it drives users to a mass exodus, when messaging should have just been an open protocol from the start.
Talk to some older folks about what it was like when there was only one phone company and the alternative was snail mail.
I was there. It was fine. You didn’t need phones to be able to function in a society. Phones were something like an optional convenience that you had only at fixed places, like your home or office. If you were out and about, you typically didn’t have access to a phone, unless you were in the vicinity of a payphone, so you weren’t expected to be available on phone. Whereas in the countries where Meta has monopoly over, everyone expects you to be on WhatsApp, and you don’t really get a choice in the matter.
Whatsapp is just a text service that gained popularity because it bypassed expensive text messaging rates, and it’s superior to SMS in most ways anyways. If meta starts charging people will go somewhere else. It’s odd to hear this take that people are somehow dependant on it. It’s more replaceable than a pair of shoes.
That may be the case where you and I live perhaps, but these countries that I speak of, have an entire ecosystem built around WhatsApp. Many companies there no longer provide a customer support number that you can call for instance, they expect you to interact with a bot run on WhatsApp, which can further lead to chatting with an actual agent speaking to them, but that’s all done via WhatsApp. Also many teachers in schools and universities share lecture notes and study material via WhatsApp groups. Doctors and medical labs may share electronic copies of your reports via it. Some restaurants accept reservation requests solely via WhatsApp. It can even handle payments now, and besides using it as a means to send money to someone, some companies have even built entire e-commerce platforms around it, using interactive bots and the payment features. So for you and I, WhatsApp may be just another messaging service, but in these countries WhatsApp is quickly turning into an “everything” platform, and it’s not trivial for someone to just replace it, unless they want to go live in a cave and cut themselves off from modern society.
Wow, that’s news to me. I didn’t realize it had gone so far in some places.
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This is an issue with the bourgeois character of American society and government. Monopolies are not a problem if workers control them.
And if they’re managed well on top of being worker controlled, but that’s usually been a mixed bag historically
There are plenty of free and open source messaging alternatives, they just don’t have the branding money to make sure a user base appears. To some degree the people using the apps are choosing the proprietary option.
We collectively need to be doing more to support and promote free open source software to avoid this issue. Secure peer to peer communication protocols should be more more ubiquitous than even http.
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Ads being everywhere.
I have so many measures in place to block them whenever I do see them it always catches me off guard. The volume of them is ridiculous
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It’s going to be a weird time when we hit that level of tech with AR
Fuck billboards so very much.
I heavily support any gas station that doesn’t have fucking video ads blasting at every pump.
Cars. Fuck cars.
So tired of being here in the states where people think you need a car, like it’s required to live. It’s only needed because we allow our infrastructure to be so lacking that we depend on cars. There are places both built up and as rural as the states where they don’t need cars, where driving for 3 hours for a road trip is considered ludicrous.
I use a car about 4 times a month. On those 4 occasions I need that car. When buying my house I considered some extra criteria like proximity to a bus stop, train station and a good cycleable connection to daily goods stores. Even 10 years ago that caused my house being 15 to 30% more expensive as houses in different areas.
I am lucky to be able to afford such a thing but now I don’t own a car for about 4 years and the cost of owning and maintaining a car seems to be far more expensive than the extra I had to invest in my house. Cars have become a lot more expensive while inflation made it easier to do the downpayments on my house.
Yup in the same boat, and I’m baffled that you get a downvote for this very mild opinion lol, shows the weird car focused culture we have, that someone telling us how they like living without a car is worth downvoting.
I choose my home on walkability and ease of access. I’m “lucky” that in the states I have a coffee shop and a few restaurants that I can walk to, and a bus stop a block away. We aren’t at the “No cars” yet unfortunately, I’m in Seattle and while it’s easy to go a lot of places without a car, unfortunately the surrounding area is very car centric. But, we are moving towards being a one car household
It’s not even a mild opinion, it’s a reality that more and more of my friends are living in. I’m in my mid 40’s so it’s not that it has anything to do with strong opinions, it just makes sense. 9 years ago we bought an electrified cargo bike. That was the first step in realizing we don’t really need a car. I just added it all up and it made sense.
Well good luck making them change that In the meantime, I’m using my car so it doesn’t take 2 hours to walk to the grocery store and only bring back what I can carry.
No one is saying you can’t if you don’t have access, we’re saying it’s ridiculous that we don’t have actual decent transit infrastructure. You should use your car if it’s the only option, but it’s ridiculous that it is the only option.
If you think about it, they’re absurd. To go buy some groceries, someone has to use enough power to move a ton of metal, plastic and rubber around.
People don’t notice the absurdity because gas is so incredibly cheap, but gas is only so incredibly cheap because we’re not paying for the long-term consequences of burning it, only the short-term costs of getting it out of the ground and refining it.
If anybody has trouble seeing the absurdity of cars in cities, imagine a hockey game, except each player has a Zamboni instead of skates.
The American Healthcare system
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Mine cost me 4k a dose and they gave me two. Absolutely remarkable.
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I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
My wife spent no less than 5 hours on the phone with just as many groups of people to organize a blood draw that took a grand total of three actual minutes.
That’s just the efficiency of the free market.
Work to live.
Edit: we have built a world where we measure success by money. This has meant we are all in pursuit of it all the time, even if we don’t want to be. The rich get richer by driving us to do more with less, which marginalizes those who cannot be a productive part of that. We supress our compassion because it isn’t making money. People suffer. Those of us who can contribute subject ourselves to a different kind of stress so we can enjoy a few hours of leisure here and there but we never really are free of the shackles of our employer. If you advance to a management position you are forced to evaluate and possibly fire people you could be friends with. When hiring you are evaluating how well people bend the knee. It’s not a great world we’ve made for ourselves.
For me it’s that for a culture that fetishizes “freedom” we sure are fucking willing to accept a reality where we have to give it up for most of our waking life just to be able to live and provide for our families. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
How is that an absurdity? Humans have needed to work ever since we evolved from other species.
Yeah, it would be more correct to say “work for others to live” is absurd.
People always had to do some work to survive, but in a world were all the land is owned, if you are one of the majority which is born landless you generaly can’t work for yourself (even to open your own business you need starting money) just enough to live by with (say, build your own house and do subsistence farming), so unless mommy and daddy have lots of dosh you’re going to have to work for others within the constraints of the existing system (or become a criminal, in which case the system will punish you) and unlike when just working to provide to yourself, working in this system means competing with everybody else - and were, again, how much support mommy and daddy can give you makes a massive difference - to such a level that you have to run just to stand still.
Compared to plain old subsistence farming the whole way work is done in the current system is absurd, mainly because it has to produce way more than what is actually needed to provide for all, since a tiny slice of the population are massive money hoarders leeching out of the rest so tons of extra wealth has to be created just for them.
Whatever the optimal system is for “the greatest good for the greatest number” (which would be more than just everybody doing subsistence farming), mathematically it’s clear it can’t be one were some people have control over billions of times more resources than others.
Religions.
This is one of the most obvious answers.
Hahaha i read the 102 current comments and basically 90% of those that name the absurdity is just “capitalism” or its consequences.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t think about the root causes of these problems. So there’s a lot of focus on the symptoms without thinking about the underlying dynamics of capitalism that cause these issues.
Trump
Normalised by America, maybe.
Outside of it, we’re all wondering what the fuck is going on.
A lot of us inside the US are wondering the same thing still
And still wondering if he might actually come back.
What do you think the odds are?
After his arrest, probably 50/50.
I say this as a liberal with conservative family. They’ll vote for him again.
Despite the Capitol’s riot, a survey showed 1/3 of Americans thought Biden’s presidency was illegitimate. The conservatives see the lawsuits as political prosecutions.
I’d say unless the non-trump voters come out to vote in a historical number like the last election, he stands a good chance of becoming a president again. And a number of states have passed laws that would make it harder for some subsets of voters to vote.
He’s a heckin’ cheeto!
Destroying our only habitable planet.
I feel like this should have way more upvotes.
our strange treatment of animals
we anthropomorphise and infantilise our pets, yet boast about the animals we eat who’ve had legit insanity level cruel lives thanks to our systems.
[ not saying fussing over your pets is bad, i love it too, just the contrast is whiplash++ ]
lack of body autonomy
hint: most lqbqtia rights, reproductive rights, medical/medication rights, are all the SAME RIGHT:
your body, your choice.
it is constantly under attack, and diffused into separate arguments when its the one right effecting all these issues. newsflash: when it comes to my body, your unwelcome opinion, religious or otherwise, ain’t worth the air its vibrating through.
slippery slope gatekeeping laws
making harmless x illegal because a subset of x might lead to harmful y. if y is bad, then enforce your ban on y, and fuckoff trying to use it as an excuse to control x₀, x₁, x₂ etc.
“Your body, your choice” has a limit once a super dangerous pathogen shows up and people start refusing the best tool we have to stop it for increasingly batshit reasons.
If you choose not to vaccinate, you’re directly putting everyone else you interact with at risk. So there’s a limit
Eh, “your body, your choice” still holds. The rest of us just also get to use our bodily autonomy to say “fine, but stay away from society”. Go live in the wilderness and avoid the 5Gs or whatever as you die of a stubbed toe because of your choices.
when anything is that important, the medicine must be opensourced 1.
if so, and it’s handled correctly, you can still have body autonomy in those situations due to the resulting freedoms - much akin in nature to the software foss freedoms we all cherish. and in that sense, would not be a limit of “Your body, your choice". while still maintaining, if not increasing, the public protection to such threats.
it was really refreshing to see some discussion in public health policy from some very smart and relevant people for opensourcing those medications. unsurprisingly it was swiftly shot down, but it was nice to at least see it taking place - which is a small positive change.
1 naturally we decouple authentication and traceability from commercial interests. and ofc it does not mean noone gets paid
That’s definitely a valid concern, I don’t think private enterprises should hold the secrets to protecting people from deadly diseases.
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What about people who can’t be vaccinated?
There is no limit. Even in those cases they could be treated without vaccination. And the unvaccinated could be banned from spaces where they would be a danger. I mean come on, you’re not even liberal? This is a super basic liberal principle baked into our society snd you just… disagree with it.
Having opinions about other peoples gender, sexual orientation, private matters. Also legislating about that.
Once got in a conversation about nuclear power that hit the point of “Yes nuclear is safer and more efficient but what about the jobs of the coal employees? Do you want them all to starve?”
Took a while to digest because there’s a lot of normalization surrounding it, but after a while I realized what I had been told was:
“We have to intentionally gimp our efficiency in both energy production and pollution generation in order to preserve a harder, more costly industry, because otherwise people wouldn’t have a task that they need to do in order to feed themselves.”
Kinda disillusioned me with the underpinnings of capitalism, just how backwards it was to have to think this way. We can’t justify letting people live unless they’re necessary to society in some way - which might’ve made solid sense in older, very very different times in human history, but now means that so much of our culture is tied up in finding more excuses to make people do work that isn’t really necessary at all.
New innovations happen, and tasks are made easier, and that doesn’t actually save anyone any work, because everyone still has to put in 40 hours a week. New tech lets you do it in 10 hours? Whoops, actually that means that you’re out of a job, replaced with an intern or something. Making “life” easier makes individual lives harder, what the fuck? That isn’t how things should be at all!
Not exactly an easy situation to crack, but to circle back to the point of the thread - I hate how normal it is to argue on the basis that we need to create jobs, everywhere, all the time. I wish we’d have a situation where people can brag for political clout about destroying jobs instead, about reducing the amount of work people need to do to live and live comfortably, instead of trying to enforce this system where efficiency means making people obsolete means making people starve.
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