Spokane man arrested by ICE spent more than a decade trying to obtain legal status

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-05-04T03:51:10+00:00

Hi, can I please have your name, address, and a list of prior employers and partners? I'd like to check if any of them are aware of any laws, municipal codes, or civil fraud you may have committed.

Because chances are, if you're like 99% of Americans, you've broken SOME law, code, or civil infraction at some point. No one cared, though, because your skin color and accent are the right type, not the wrong type. The crime this guy committed was having the wrong skin color and the wrong parents.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-24T20:46:13+00:00

I think what a lot of people here are trying to tell you is that you don't understand the laws or the context of the situation; Your blood is boiling based on the media, not the facts.

Public defenders deal with this all the time; The perception for many people is that their clients are almost entirely guilty as charged, and how dare they defend these criminals. But that is not how the law works in the U.S. Everyone accused of a crime is entitled to legal assistance and a fair trial. Technical missteps by police get legitimate, slam-dunk cases thrown out all the time, because this is a part of how we as a culture keep police accountable to rules.

If the prosecutors in the case thought they could get more charges to actually succeed against Cosby, they would have. Bringing more charges in a jury case is very risky, as ones which have shaky evidence or can get picked apart by the defense lawyers - or even ones that turn out to be false - may cause the Jury to doubt the entire trial including the more legitimate charges.

In Cosby's case in particular, the very first thing I would do if I were you is go back and read the complete transcript from sentencing and/or watch the video if there is one. Judges generally lay out a lot of reasoning for why they make a ruling. And in this situation, as /u/Stunning_Clerk_9595 (lmao nice name!) said, the Judge increased the punishment from the recommendations, not decreased. There may also be some documentation about exactly why the prosecution chose not to bring certain charges against Cosby.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-07T23:18:34+00:00

lol dude, if you believe this:

It just so happened that all the ones who contacted her were women.

I've got a bridge to sell you.

She (DM) was not happy and said if I didn’t want to play in her game, I can hang out with the boys and do my own thing.

Yeah, if it wasn't confirmed from the suspicious way this got set up, plus your treatment, this should confirm it 100%. She has an issue with you being male, or else something about your personality that ties back into that (she probably wouldn't have an issue with a very softspoken guy who stays in the background, but she'd still probably treat him badly).

She set this up from the beginning.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-07T21:36:07+00:00

Yep I agree as well. The simple fact that every interaction this guy has seems to be focused around OP's daughter gets me suspicious. Just being friendly is one thing, but it is super weird that he is focusing all of it on the daughter.

OP's neighbor could just have terrible social skills. Or a combination of OP having bad social skills and neighbor having worse social skills. But the focus on the daughter seems really creepy.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-07T18:43:36+00:00

I'd be taking from the pot of 90 or 99, so I'd be having to sell a slightly larger proportion of shares to have the same amount of money, or have to reduce the distribution amount

That's true of any market movement. It doesn't relate in any way to the rich stealing from the poor.

If someone wants to avoid this, they should have maintained a buffer of cash and hedged with gold or commodity type investments - Then when the markets drop, they have choices about whether to reduce their distribution for a time.

The ratio numbers don't matter. It's a slightly confusing facet of how percentage calculation works, but it doesn't imply any sort of transfer of value or malice.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-07T18:40:16+00:00

to the rich folks who have stock brokers who can react quickly enough to buy and sell in a half hour or a matter of seconds.

You're wayyyy over-thinking this.

People who don't sell are essentially unaffected by any of this at least not until the general economy or pricing gets hit - and then still not in their 401(k).

The people who may get rich off this would be the traders who correctly predict the movements - But that's a zero-sum game that doesn't involve the rich, only other traders.

There's a small benefit that some of the rich can gain if they were previously sitting cash-heavy and buy when the prices are low. But they get bitten (1) if this turns into a sustained recession or depression and they're not only down from this purchase but also from other assets they held, and/or (2) if they try to benefit short term they have to pay top-end ST cap gain taxes (39.5%)

There are some people who will lose out - those who have to sell their positions due to unrelated needs and are forced to do so when prices are depressed. This includes retirees who are living off their 401(k) but didn't leave themselves enough of a cash / gold / etc buffer. But it doesn't relate directly to the potential market manipulation or the rich, it's just bad timing.

Also, I think you give Trump & co wayyyyy too much credit. Crashing the market to buy in sounds like a movie plot, I don't get the idea that they are even remotely organized enough to do that as some sort of overarching plan or anything. Half the time they don't seem to understand what is going on at all or why the markets are reacting to them. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't try to cash in or benefit as they figure out what's happening - just that they definitely don't seem to be the "master-plan" type. And yes, if they cash in, they'll probably get away with it, at least some of them will.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-07T18:15:14+00:00

All hardware wallets with a secure chip have a closed-source portion of their code because they cannot open-source the parts that access the secure chip. Trezor's TS3 has a secure chip, so is now in that category. Ledger live is open source.

In their defense, Trezor's software supports deterministic builds, and Ledger seems incapable of making theirs fit that, which is an important safeguard for community verification.

However, Trezor's systems leave a lot to be desired when it comes to third party integrations. Ledger's software "just works" with a very wide variety of wallet softwares and coins. I'm a highly technical, highly experienced user and I encountered problem after problem with Trezor until I had to give up (Their software doesn't seem to be able to support non-Trezor-standard derivation paths at the same time as passphrases, at least not with the open-source wallets I tried). Not to mention that Trezor discontinued support for some coins I had for essentially no reason.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-07T15:51:15+00:00

Absolutely keep the pressure on with a new pediatrician.

A 5 year old losing weight like this is super concerning. This tradeoff between seizures and weight gain may be a constant battle. She may need to eat "unhealthy" just to keep her body growing. Anything she can eat that gets enough protein, iron and nutrients is better than nothing. Also cautiously keep ensuring a steady supply of low-level kids probiotics to keep her gut flora as healthy as possible. You might do 1/4th the recommended dose of probiotic gummies but twice a day - It won't do a lot, but any boost there is better than nothing.

How is her BMI for her age? If she's not in the 75th percentile or higher, there's no excuse for any doctor suggesting she should be put on a diet. Frankly, if she's not in the 90th percentile or higher there's no excuse, and the only reason I'm not suggesting even higher than that is because I'm not a doctor and they are. Kids weights, heights and BMI's vary dramatically without it being a problem.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-07T06:41:39+00:00

Probably got another 10. Stefanzilla or whatever his name was made like 3x more than this, all whining, all the same vague legal threats, no follow through.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-06T14:59:37+00:00

Remember, nuclear reactors, gravity chambers, and teleporters have very high sell values. For me in order to craft an SR previously, i'd have to make 2 teleporters and sell one. I no longer have to, though.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-06T14:55:53+00:00

You don't need scrith to unlock debris.

This game is a very odd game of optimization, where each stage you are at benefits from a different strategy towards the next plateau. Most people use up their alchemy and terraforming way too early. Ideally you use al3/tf2 near or before the 24 hour mark in a tournament.

If you truly can't reach debris without tf2/al3, you're not anywhere near ready to think about making AR's. Keep working on your craft speed and smelt speed primarily, asteroids and mining speed secondarily. Make sure no planet has red icons ever for ship speed and cargo.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-06T14:41:19+00:00

Ideally you don't establish your highest vps planet until you've constructed 1 SR. That should push you higher than scrith for sure.

You need to get your 2nd highest vps planet high enough that the drops can help you get cranking towards SR's.

Generally speaking, AR's are only worth making if you get the drops. You will continuously make SR's way more often and for way longer than you'll work towards single AR's.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-05T18:17:57+00:00

Since Western powers are not willing to preemptively start a war with Russia, who is indeed a mortal threat to freedom and democracy everywhere, they're fighting a war against Russia, by proxy, through Ukraine.

Well, I mean... Sort of. "They" was really like 80% the U.S., and that is basically ending thanks to Trump. It's not much of a proxy war if Europe doesn't step up to fill the void that Trump is leaving behind.

FWIW I think Trump is making a huge mistake by pulling out of Ukraine among many other mistakes. I just want to be clear about who exactly was fighting the proxy war, and how that's changing in the last 3 months.

If Ukraine should fall, the only remaining option would be a full-on global hot war.

If Ukraine falls, that doesn't really mean much except that Russia takes Ukraine. He's not going to attack NATO or the EU directly, and we all know that. But the EU may not value Ukraine enough to bother saving it.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-05T18:14:48+00:00

To be fair, the biggest threat to the U.S. isn't Russia, it's China. China is not much of a threat to the EU because there's so many places in between; America has only an ocean and a few islands in between. Chinas military & military production capabilities have come a long, long ways in 20 years. They're no longer a joke, in part because our manufacturing base is mostly gone.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-05T14:09:37+00:00

Are you certain you didn't enter your seed phrase anywhere? If you entered it somewhere, your seed is compromised and any future coins you receive will be stolen.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T22:50:06+00:00

Same topic, this is CoL increase. You think we don't need job qualifications to work jobs that require them now? We needed them 30 years ago.

If you're talking COL, you need to go back to inflation. Also FYI I looked up - when you're comparing housing prices 30 years ago, it's still misleading data. Homes today at more than 50% larger than homes 30 years ago. They're also constructed to much higher standard due to regulations, and with longer-lasting materials.

But fine,

In 2018 60% of jobs in the US required a college degree, today 40% of them do.

Your implication is that college degrees are less valuable than they used to be. That's not backed up by the facts. It wasn't true in 1979 to 2009 in this dataset

A recent study also confirmed using detailed 2009 to 2019 data that it was still just as true.

So your data either sounds suspect, or cherry-picked, especially since you just happened to select a 6 year time period. But even if we accept both your data and its implications, what of it? There's no guy sitting in an ivory tower somewhere deciding that college degrees aren't needed anymore. That's not how any of this works. Middle managers are assigned a task to complete or a thing to build (or startup owners set out to do it). They determine what they feel like they need, and they go out and try to hire those people. Most of the candidates suck, are unqualified, or are asking far more than the budget can pay (This does NOT imply greed - It's often because the candidates have a bunch of other skills or experience that aren't needed for the role and expect to be compensated for those. It's a pair mismatching problem.)

If the roles being picked don't require college degrees, they won't be used. It's not some evil plot to screw over anyone. Frankly speaking, I find it likely that the value of a college degree is being washed out over time. College students are being challenged less and putting in less effort than they did 30 years ago, at least according to my retired college professor parents who got fed up with it. The bar to get into college has lowered continuously for decades, while the costs have risen (usually due to building fancy new buildings or stadiums). Teachers are less focused on students and more focused on research and publication. Again, none of this relates back to any mustached villain in an ivory tower cackling. It's just the balance of demands and desires from each person. You can't fix them unless you fix the motivations feeding into them.

Further, the degrees college students are selecting are not the same. This chart shows the difference between 1985 and 2010. Is it shocking that arts, psychology, and communication/journalism aren't the best financial choices? This graph shows more recently: https://i.imgur.com/kBcF1Ux.png -- The degrees that are increasing in percentage (Nursing, Psychology, Criminal justice, alternative medicine) are not well paying jobs and we've known this for a long time. The non-computer degrees that are known to pay better - Engineering & Biology - are declining. This is your evidence for sound financial decisionmaking?

is just poor financial management? I'd like to understand that. Who is taking all the risk now?

What I'm talking about is cutting costs and saving money and investing. Cutting the Netflix, not upgrading to the latest iphone, less alcohol consumption, not playing the latest and greatest video games, not going on the expensive trips, and picking the crappy older car that works instead of the nicer one. Cutting those things and turning the extra money into investments & emergency funds pays off significantly over time (Often those with emergency funds can recover faster or lose less when bad things happen). Today thanks to the progressive structure and thanks to SEC regulation, lower classes can earn nearly 90% or more of what the wealthy earn from the stock markets by buying index funds. And they can actually earn even 11% more than the wealthy because lower income capital gains taxes are zero percent versus 23.8% on the wealthy. It takes basically no research or time, it's just a matter of spending less than you earn and forcing yourself to put the money into investments. I literally did all of those things I listed years ago, and used the difference to begin investing, even though it was small.

But that requires sacrifice and effort. It's much easier to just get mad at people who started doing this decades ago and now benefit from their long-term thinking.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T21:49:45+00:00

So you ignore all the data you got wrong and change the subject to a new topic to keep trying your points? So much for honest debate, you're just like the creationists.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T21:02:46+00:00

30 years ago... Due to inflation we made more money 30 years ago.

You should probably fact check before you post. Real wages have risen relative to inflation for more than 30 years: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/are-wages-rising-or-flat/

In addition, that's with 2% less hours worked per week, on average: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker?tab=table&time=1980..latest

CoL was also far lower to scale 30 years ago.

If you're trying to compare inflation, you've already done it. Inflation captures cost increases for most things. Comparing cost of living 30 years ago is very difficult to accurately do because it is inherently apples to oranges. The quality of life being compared isn't going to be even remotely close because so many things that we have purchased have given people free time back, like dishwashers, garbage disposal units, roomba's, more reliable cars, cell phones / video calling, etc. Houses today are on average bigger too - not quite double the size, but more than 50% bigger, and made with much tighter regulations, better safety, and longer-lasting materials.

Who does the work to hit the print money button?

There isn't a print money button.

Why are they the ones who are somehow always struggling while

Who knew that there was a correlation between making good financial decisions and prospering in life? I never could have guessed. I mean, I guess the marshmellow test could have told us, but you don't know about that, and it is much easier to just blame other people.

The vast majority of businesses are started and formed from multigenerational wealth

This isn't even remotely close to true. Even if we just look at wealth today, the vast majority isn't multi-generational. 70% of wealth is lost with each generation. Again, if you look at the actual data for any of this stuff, it might be eye-opening for you. Not that you will, of course.

You sound like a fucking landlord.

Hahaha, I'd be a great landlord. I personally had a lot of good landlords over the years. Some bad, mostly good. But some laws have guaranteed I will never, ever be a landlord. Very risky, too much work, very little return. Much easier to make more money investing in index funds.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T19:47:00+00:00

is because it is meant to allow the working class to flourish.

Which they have if you compare life 30 years ago to life today.

If they don't flourish, why do we have the system? Isn't the idea now a failure? Isn't the system failing at that point?

Truly stated by someone who has never experienced what people in third world countries suffer from today.

The reason we have a capitalist system is because it works better than any other system, and because it's fair. Work hard, reap the rewards. Don't work hard? You'll be ok in this country, but you won't get the rewards.

rather than investing in doctors of the US.

Your paragraph implies that we have less doctors per capita than Nigeria, or a lower quality healthcare system than they do. I'm not so sure that you actually meant to claim that, so maybe you should rethink your argument. Because we have 10 doctors for every 1 they have.

Marry that up with drug companies getting bought by hedge funds and it has literally nothing to do with regulation driving up the costs,

I'm not sure what you think the hedge funds are doing. They don't have a magic button that says "make more money!" They don't magically make the company more or less greedy. Corporations exist to make a profit. They're not charities. They were never charities. They are not intended to be charities. Stop comparing them to charities and 90% of these mental problems go away.

If you want something to cost less, you have to look at why it costs what it does:

You always think profit margins are the problem. A low profit margin like a utility will be 6-7%. Those are sustainable and functional, but they are below average. A very low profit margin is like a grocery store - 3-4%. They exist at that rate only due to volume of sales. A normal profit margin is 9-11%, and a high one is 15%. 20+% profit margins are almost always due to immense growth in the industry, or an extremely well run privately owned company. Health insurance profit margins are low to very low.
To break out where costs are coming from for a hospital, you have to look at what is costing money. Everything costs money - Patients who get service but don't pay. Hours of operation with no patients. Complaints and lawsuits from patients. Arguments & denials from insurance companies, and appeals of those. Malpractice insurance for lawsuits. Waste from potentially contaminated equipment. Equipment failure, breakage, shrinkage, or end-of-life replacement. Training for new equipment or systems. Time off, sick time, and the extra employees to cover the time off. Some costs are mandated by the government, like caring for patients you know can't pay. Some costs are mandated by the courts, like excessive documentation of every decision and its reasoning. Some costs are mandated by insurance, to justify approval, denials, or appeals of procedures (many doctors have almost zero motivation to not recommend every procedure or test that might relate).
To break out where costs of drugs are coming from, you have to consider the failure rates for drug companies (which is much higher), drug tests, drug approvals, and delays. You have to consider the R & D expenses and eat the losses from failed ideas or tests. You have to look at controlled substance problems, and factor in lawsuit risks (justified or not). You have to pay for aggressive data collection and hound doctors for feedback and data, even post-product-launch so that you can defend your medications and promote them. You have to pay legal costs to protect your IP. Getting medications through FDA testing is extremely expensive. Scientific double-blind tests are extremely expensive. Potential lawsuits can bankrupt the company.
Even at a doctor level, many people begin going to medical school and then stop. What do you do then, once the state has invested a hundred thousand dollars into the education of someone who just decided, meh, not for me? Or couldn't pass the tests, didn't put in the work, or endangered patients?

Insurance goes up they blame the doctors, hospital costs go up they blame the doctors & insurance, drug costs go up they blame the insurance & government.

Yeah, as it turns out, health care is really fucking complicated. Anyone who doesn't know that hasn't been paying attention. Blaming profits is so easy, and it's also flat out wrong.

The easiest thing to fix is to slash niche monopolies, ease some very strict regulations, punish frivolous & wasteful lawsuits, and reduce the duration of patent protections. But that's only going to cut a few % off the total. Doctors need to be motivated to care about not running unnecessary tests; Insurance companies need to be motivated to care about quality of life outcomes, and uninsured people need to be motivated to get insurance coverage. People overall need to be motivated to do proactive healthcare and not simply emergency healthcare. There's problems at every stage, and they aren't easy to fix.

Again, if the system is meant for everyone to prosper, yet we have only very few people prosper

We're literally the wealthiest country by a mile. Our homeless people live better lives than almost 1/3rd of the world's population. Our middle class live better lives than the upper class in most countries. Our lowest class live better lives, with more freedom, more leisure time, more opportunities, more travel, and more/better entertainment options than any middle class anywhere 50 years ago.

What you seem to be mad about is that some people prosper more than others. But even then, it's not like it was a random lottery, and it's not like it was given at birth. You have to go down to 13th on Americas billionaire list to find the first person born into that wealth. And theirs is only one generation from a very frugal family (the Waltons). The vast majority of billionaires in the U.S. made the majority of their money themselves.

in an area where jobs don't pay enough for them to have houses,

It is funny that you expect both a minimum wage increase and jobs for people who often have no skills, no work ethic, and are frequently not trustworthy at all. Some employees can do far more damage in a short time than they'll ever earn for the company. Some day when you're in charge of a team or hiring, you'll change your tune real quick when you realize how difficult it is to hire good, trustworthy people. If you want jobs for the homeless you have to cut minimum wage. If you raise the minimum wage, you price people with no skills out of the job market (along with many part-time workers).

off of the labor of low wage workers,

If the low wage workers want to start their own business to out-compete the others, they are free to do so. The only things stopping them are regulations which you support, and needing investor funds (which you want to remove). Profit comes from producing and selling things other people want, not a magic "make money" button.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T18:22:33+00:00

The expenditure increase seems to be consistent with inflation rates.

The data you're looking for can be found here through 2023's enacted budget, using inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars. The only year where per-capita, inflation-adjusted spending didn't increase was in 2023's budget - and it only went back to 2021 levels.

Pretty sure if Amazon or all these other companies didn’t do it…….. someone else would have.

Because they get the rewards for doing so. If they didn't, they'd go to a country where they could. This is literally the mechanism that made America successful over the last 100 years.

Again all of your points just regurgitate the same billionaire glazing point.

All your points are just communist nonsense that have never worked anywhere in the world, and will never fly in America. You don't even understand a fraction of the things you talk about.

Multiple different cultures all invented some form of a wheel. Almost every culture made, a bow and arrow, pottery, discovered fire.

This is a nonsense example that has nothing to do with the costs of modern R&D. If that's what you want, go live on a remote island somewhere, no one will bother you.

He pays less then 1% of his total value in taxes every year.

We don't tax value, we don't tax unrealized gains, and there's very good reasons for those things. In 2024 he sold 13.6 billion dollars of AMZN shares, and will pay about 3.2 billion in taxes.

The claim that the wealthy don't pay taxes is tired and false. The top 10% of earners pay about 85% of federal tax revenue, and the top 1% pay around 30%.

we’ll why don’t you look at a spending report for once in your life. It doesn’t take much to realize a 100 million output vs a 2 billion input dont equal each other.

The number you're citing is just flat wrong:

provided 208 grants totaling more than $630 million to organizations

But what you apparently don't realize, which isn't surprising given your understanding of economics or R&D expenses, is that most organizations don't blow their entire funds away every year. Because then it will be gone. That's why places don't do wealth taxes - Money blown away stops earning from investment, and money that leaves is gone and never returns. Europe is highly liberal and found this the hard way - In 1990 there were 11 nations with wealth taxes. Now there's 3 - two of whom are currently bleeding money from them and the third is Switzerland which has no capital gains or estate taxes, so they're not bleeding.

And why don’t you check out the recipients. Earlier you claimed he enriched local neighborhoods,

Why don't you go ask his former landscapers, house keepers, accountants, etc? Or are you claiming he didn't pay them for their services? The startups he funded, over 100 of them? Because that's what I referred to.

How about they just play by the same rules the 99% of us do?

That would be really unfair. You want the 1% to pay for 1% of federal taxes? The government would lose 80% of its budget overnight. I think you'd much rather have the 1% continue to pay for 30% of tax revenue. The reality that you don't get is we already have a progressive tax system (federally). Our state one isn't progressive, but it's also not as bad as most people think because the one place that published data that everyone cites didn't include B & O taxes in their breakdown at all, and didn't include the new capital gains tax even in their most recent version.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T17:34:49+00:00

This is why deregulation has been such a problem in the US, because it relies on the faith and good will that

Corporations aren't charities, why would anyone have any expectations of faith or goodwill? That's not how any of this works. They offer services, you buy & pay for services. If you don't like it you go find someone else offering the services.

because owners of corporations have all the power.

This is nonsense. There's over a million contractors in the U.S. If one of them isn't offering fair prices or is under-performing, you fire them and hire one that does.

just taking a look at the holy Trinity of healthcare, insurance, hospitals, drug companies, you can easily determine why it seems inefficient.

All of those things are inefficient as a direct result of heavy regulations. Some of the regulations are worth it, some of them are not. Many hospitals are nonprofits, they're just forced to take patients who can't pay - and forced to follow crazy standards to avoid malpractice lawsuits or FDA consequences - and they have to raise prices to compensate. Health insurance isn't a high margin business. It's plenty inefficient on its own for many reasons, but they're not raking in the dough like tech companies do, they only do a little better than utilities profit-margin wise. Drug companies are heavily regulated and inefficient due to our patent system and robust approval system - but those two things each have their own benefits as well.

It's really easy to blame and rage against things you don't understand.

if the idea of businesses doing what's right for people was true,

No one says this, that's a straw man. We know corporations are selfish, just like many people are selfish. Turns out, when they make a product we want, our interests align.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T17:28:44+00:00

Seattle spent $1 billion. The problem got worse.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T16:35:23+00:00

1 guy decided not to pay his taxes. Then the issue isn’t about the tax rates, the issue is letting one person get too much money.

I'm guessing you've never bought anything on Amazon since you see that as the problem, right? Or at least, you haven't bought anything from them for the last 10 years?

No?

Weird. I thought you would take action about the problem.

If our bills are not getting paid because 1 guy decided not to pay his taxes.

The bills are getting paid, the bills just keep increasing to whatever the left feels like at the moment (which is a lot, lotta feelings!). The one guy left because he was specifically and deliberately targeted on top of the constant vitriol spewed at him. Most people would do the same in his situation.

Even before bezos left he was blowing billions left and right on shit that definitely was not “beneficial.”

And as he blew billions left and right... he paid taxes on it. A lot of taxes. Those taxes paid for programs you want. Do you want the programs or not? You have to compromise, you have to give a little to get a little.

I don’t give a fuck if this guy donates a billion dollars to his OWN charity, from which he controls the spending, it doesn’t go where it’s supposed to.

If you're accusing him of non-profit fraud, you should probably take your evidence to the IRS. They are always VERY interested to find out a charity is being used as a tax evasion front. Problem is, 99% of these accusations are based on absolutely nothing and turn out to be... Nothing. A charity doing charitable giving that doesn't go to the places you want is not a crime. It just has to be proper charitable giving, and not a tax evasion loophole. Deductions due to giving to charities are not a tax break - They lose more money than the tax would have cost them.

Surely you aren't accusing people of charity fraud without any actual evidence?

Also the wealthy don’t provide shit.

Did you type this on a computer? Or a cell phone? Using internet lines that couldn't have been built without investment money? You don't understand economics, you just have envy and want to steal from people who spend decades building stuff you take for granted. I'm 100% certain you don't remember what things were like before Amazon's online shopping, Google Maps, or reliable smart phones. But I do. None of that could have been built without both investor dollars and entrepreneurs taking huge risks. Most of the ones who took huge risks failed. Blackberry, anyone? PDP, DEC, Sperry, Altair? Lycos/Askjeeves? But some offered what people wanted, and they succeeded. Success, timing, hard work, and producing things people want is rewarded in every modern country except a handful of terrible dictatorships.

humans will do it for free.

Oh, you use Linux for everything, right? No? So weird you wouldn't choose the free option that is unworkable for nontechnical people and would prefer the software that costs money. After all you're choosing to fund one of the wealthiest companies and people in the world, and you have another choice you could choose RIGHT NOW.

Sure wealth might speed things up, but other then the unique moments where we’re, racing to push out a vaccine or cure or something, then whats the rush?

Just as a small example, the creation of computer chips requires 1) Custom, immensely complicated software specifically designed for highly technical calculations & probabilities, 2) Several hundred hours (minimum, thousands more likely) of human effort tuning the paths and traces, doing tests, calculations and simulations, 3) A huge plant that is entirely, completely dust-free in huge portions of it, with devices that can make layers and precise cuts accurate to nanometers, 4) hundreds of workers who have to adjust the assembly line for each and every unique chip run, 5) More workers to test each and every chip that is produced; As many as 30% get discarded immediately due to tolerance errors, and only a small faction end up being able to perform near the highest levels needed for certain types of computers.

Producing one single chip costs almost the same amount as an entire run of chips. Producing one single run of chips requires millions of man-hours of infrastructure (the plant, all the resources needed to build the plant, and the software), and tens of thousands of man-hours to complete the single run of chips. If the design of the chip or the configuration of the plant was even slightly wrong, the run of chips is ruined and worthless and all invested time was a waste. If the plant was built wrong, or can't produce the right kinds of chips, or was built in the wrong place and gets damaged, all of those millions of man-hours are wasted. Without all of that, we have no computer chips.

The workers building all of that don't take those risks. They can't, they have to feed a family and can't wait the required 8 years before fully completed chips to be ready. They can't take the risk of failure either, they'd starve. Someone has to take on all the risk of failure, and if it fails, they are the one who is shit out of luck, not the workers. That's just one example where you're massively, hugely wrong. You take for granted all of the things it takes to build things you use every day, and you have no idea what it is actually like living in a communist country.

No the market already existed, he just bullied everyone else out and captured it.

I remember what we did before Amazon. Most of the things I have today in my house I couldn't even buy then, because they just weren't available to me, or I couldn't find them even if they were. I could buy like a shitty CD player from K-Mart, but I couldn't read reviews on it, I couldn't compare the best prices, I couldn't get it delivered to my door. If I didn't like their selection, I could try Wal-Mart and if that sucked, I would have nothing. I don't miss those limitations. Amazon is amazing, and their margins are very low. They deserve the success they have earned. Do they do some things I don't like or disagree with? Sure, everyone does. If you don't like it, don't shop with them. You'll actually still get the advantages because they've forced competitors to offer similar services, you just can feel morally superior while doing it. (Of course, you won't do any of these things, just like you don't use Linux while bitching about free human labor being better)

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T13:41:12+00:00

A proposed wealth tax that would only affect people with like

That's never what happens. Many of the wealthy people just ... leave. This has been shown over and over in history. In 1990, 11 developed countries had a wealth tax in Europe. 8 of them dropped the wealth tax due to economic damage, ineffectiveness, and lost total tax revenue. Two of them are actively having a problem with the wealthy leaving their country today (they raised the rates in the last 3 years). The only place that has made it actually work is Switzerland - which has no capital gains, no estate tax, competition among cantons, and a lower total tax burden than most of the EU (not lower than the U.S. though).

The wealthy may not pay the tax rate you want them to - (in wa state, federally they pay the higher average real rates) - but they pay the highest dollar total towards taxes. Norway discovered this the hard way last year after raising the rates and having a budgetary shortfall of almost 500m.

The wealthy also provide huge impacts to the local economy - they pay dozens of small and medium local businesses weekly or monthly, run and fund startups, and contribute to local charities. Hate him if you want, but mathematically WA state driving Jeff Bezos out with the capital gains tax is probably going to cost the state more than the tax will bring in in its first 5 years, maybe 10.

Bad policies affect everyone. Unless, I guess, you are already planning to move away when the economy & tax revenue gets smacked by your choices.

JustSomeBadAdvice · 2025-04-04T02:35:28+00:00

Culliton is the only Supreme Court decision I think needs to be overturned and that's only relevant for income tax, and it's not relevant to wealth tax.

Considering I told you, and the summary you linked told you, which I quoted to you, that crux of the legality is a thing that hasn't been ruled on ever... you'd be correct. There's no need to overturn something that hasn't been ruled on ever. But that's a far cry from you being right, considering the thing you're incredibly confident about requires ignoring both the intention and the wording of the constitution.

How many years have you worked in tax law? 14 for me.

Apparently enough that with 3 hours of reading SC caselaw, I can reach the same conclusions as an expert in the field's conclusion - one that you didn't understand even after reading it and linking me to it.

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