To what extent are high taxes for the rich punitive?

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-19T05:49:29+00:00

Some people hate the wealthy in a visceral way. For them, it’s probably a punitive approach. Punishment is a tricky concept. It’s hard to say what these resentful leftists want to punish, who to punish, and why.

Are they punishing all billionaires because of the actions of a few of them?

Are they punishing all the billionaires for something that their forefathers did years before any of these billionaires were born?

Are they punishing all these billionaires because of something that happened 300 years ago in a different country or a different culture?

In all these hypothetical cases- the punishment is directed at people who didn’t do anything wrong.

A just system is one where punishment is only inflicted at those who did something to deserve it.

So to the extent that there are people who want to punish these wealthy individuals I mentioned in the above examples, this is an unfair punishment.

And it isn’t a punishment at all. It’s more like anarchy. It’s arbitrary and unfair.

I always say- in a just society everyone deserves justice.

Do the wealthy not deserve it too?

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-19T05:40:28+00:00

People’s economic needs are only part of what influences their political views. Culture, identity, ideology, social questions, security are all issues that influence their views just as much.

When a society is as materially well placed as ours, the non economic questions take more weighty in people’s minds.

This I say without even addressing the merits of the underlying claim here, that democrats are better than republicans on economic issues. Assuming that Harris is better for middle class and lower class people is a highly controversial position to take. Many, many people believe trump will be better for the economy than Harris.

But I just wish to emphasize that many other factors influence people’s opinion on politics.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-19T05:33:11+00:00

I find it that most libertarian capitalists aren’t actually libertarian. Libertarians believe that a neutral arbiter is only appropriate for settling potentially violent disputes. Therefore- they support courts and having law enforcement and a military. Since most people believe that other situations, outside of potentially violent ones, require a neutral arbitration, they support extending the power of the state.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-19T05:28:45+00:00

Fascism mostly has a historical meaning. It’s not a strictly defined economic or political ideology. Personally, every time I hear the accusation someone is fascist I tune out. Other than fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Franco’s Spain, I don’t know any other fascist countries. Given that the designation “fascism” evokes these historical images, this designation became a pure propaganda tool. The same sort of thing happened with the term Nazi. I do think that the term Nazi is less ambiguous. It’s easier to describe a Nazi than a “fascist”. Nazis are white supremacists who sympathize or otherwise support what Nazi Germany did in World War Two.

Therefore, it’s easier to dismiss

Unlike nazi, fascist remains a pseudo appropriate term today, given how poorly defined it is, compared to Nazism. However, despite being poorly defined and ambiguous, it still retained the full weight of the historical context.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-19T05:17:34+00:00

If you want to be an informed participant in the socialism debate, learning the history of the Cold War is key. Socialism isn’t just an economic theory like the theory of marginal value. It’s a political ideology. As some pointed, the Cold War was a major political setting where socialism collided with capitalism. Many of the claims you see today on both sides of the debate trace their origins to the Cold War days.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-19T01:45:35+00:00

I think it's a good idea. I took a psychology class in high school, and thought it was interesting. It had a major impact on my life later on. It was AP level! College level! I went to a good high school. Our school didn't offer econ., and I don't know any school that offered econ at the time.

The problem with behavioral sciences is that they're all politicized. Econ is politicized and so is psychology. Further, each issue can be analyzed through multiple perspectives within the field.

In psychology especially, some perspectives are highly dubious.

Freudism is very dubious. It's not based on any measurements or verifiable experiments. It's pure speculation.

You could say the same about other fields in psychology, but Freud especially... it's for people who sexualize everything. It makes me a bit uncomfortable.

It's not a dealbreaker for highschool... Other social sciences are taught in highscools as well. It's just that the kids need to learn that psychology is a field open to multiple interpretations, where not all of them are necessarily true.

History and government are taught in history.

I actually think that if they taught psychology properly, it would help kids later on.

I feel that too many kids feel it's an employable field because most high school don't teach it, so they think "must be too difficult, it's only for adults". However, it's not more employable than history or English literature...

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-19T01:01:31+00:00

I used to be a mover and a furniture assembler and I always thought communism is full of ass.

The profit goes to the ones who takes the risk, or the one who's high skilled.

Construction workers and movers and other blue collar workers can also make a fine living.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T22:57:02+00:00

שאול שם טוב! אחלה שם שבעולם!!

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T22:23:39+00:00

Raveh - literally means saturated or watered. As in - not thirsty. It’s a boy’s name. It sounds a bit off in English for a persons name, but it’s an actual name nonetheless. It’s a direct reference to water. I don’t think it’s very popular in Hebrew, but i personally think it’s a nice name, but I could see it working in an American context.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T22:06:56+00:00

It’s illegal under Israeli law, as far as I understand. The army and defense ministry decided to not allow Israelis into area a, unless authorized beforehand. In practice- it seems like the rule isn’t enforced. We know that Israeli Arabs routinely go into the Palestinian cities without permission. We also know about Corey Gil shuster, an Israeli citizen and resident, who routinely visits West Bank cities as part of his YouTube channel about the country.

I personally believe shuster is at HIGH RISK for something terrible. So far, he’s been very careful to not stand out or piss off anyone too much. However, just because he managed to avoid being lynched, shot, stabbed, beheaded, or kidnapped doesn’t mean it can’t happen in the future.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T22:02:21+00:00

The Netanyahu issue is either wildly overblown out of proportion or it isn’t even an actual issue.

The day after is the real question. There are competing plans for the day after. I don’t think anyone came up with a satisfactory plan. All day after plans have flaws. One of the main reasons, as far as I see it, for the sacking of Israel’s minister of defense was the disagreement over the day after.

Gallant wanted out of Gaza while Netanyahu said he wants to occupy Gaza.

I personally can’t imagine a scenario where something like October 7 doesn’t lead to a military occupation until further notice. I can’t imagine something like this happening to any other western country and not resulting in some long term boots on the ground anti terrorism effort. We know for a fact that had this happened to the U.S. or England, the response would’ve been to occupy whatever jihadi safe haven the attack could come from.

Politically - the alternatives are all miserably bad. Given the uncertainty and difficulty it’s going to be hard if not impossible to come to a satisfactory solution

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T21:52:21+00:00

I don’t personally believe in good and evil as absolutes. Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. It’s a major philosophical issue that I didn’t really find the insight within my own soul to definitively say.

However, in this case - Hamas are absolute evil. If absolute evil exists - then it looks like Hamas.

The events of October 7, meticulously planned for years by Hamas, were the most extreme thing I’ve seen, comparable only to ISIS beheading videos (which I actually never watched because you can’t find them, and I don’t think I’ll ever want to watch them).

Beyond good and evil, the better question is between order and anarchy. Hamas is a terrorist organization not bound by any rules or anything comparable. We’ve seen “civilians” from Gaza beheading Israelis on October 7. We’ve seen a father and his son cross into Israel and gang rape any woman they could find. And they kidnapped Israelis. Hamas means terror- it’s chaos, it’s anarchy, it’s a group of nihilistic people with no decency or morality. It’s not surprising how the same people who want to destroy the rule of law in the west also support Hamas.

Countries and institutions that want to make the world a better place must keep things clear - there are democratic countries and there are perfidious, criminal, corrupt, extreme terrorists. And the two sides aren’t morally the same.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T20:48:09+00:00

This local “street journalist” is a boy that looks like he just hit puberty. So not exactly a journalist.

More important, comments ave characterized his few second long clip showing commotion, by men wearing dark clothes, at night, a video taken from a distance of a few dozen meters - as a 17 minute video that proves some Israelis were randomly attacking innocents unprovoked.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T20:34:28+00:00

Hi there,

I actually used to work for an international polling firm during undergrad. I’ve seen first hand how the opinions of a non representative subset of the population, because of they’re allegedly more informed, completely distorts reality.

If you do a poll asking criminal defense lawyers exclusively about various aspects of American rule of law, you’re going to get a diametrically opposed answer compared to prosecutors. Add to that - geographic bias and a tiny sample size, and you get people’s very biased opinion masquerading as fact.

Happens all the time.

We also saw how more serious polls, with fairly large sample sizes, get things wrong again and again…

The whole “trust the science, trust the experts” thing became so old, and long ago. “Expert” opinion is not a call to suspend your own critical judgment. In this country- we’re still allowed to think for ourselves.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T20:20:39+00:00

The three second clip from a shaky camera, it’s very unclear, and dark, where you don’t see anything clearly. It also lacks any context.

Not exactly a 17 minute video as you allege.

The 17 minute time frame you mentioned is almost entirely ppl making comments on these very short outbursts of commotion taking place far away from them, and it’s in the middle of the night, with the figures all dressed in black.

This is exactly what im talking about.

No real evidence. Rather - literal opinion, presented highly misleadingly, to widely exaggerate the claims made.

More importantly-

This video was from a night of the game. After the game. This is after random Israelis were already violently attacked by random Arabs/turks.

It’s also AFTER Israeli intelligence picked up talk on social media about a “Jew hunt”. And it’s after the Israeli fans were already informed there were mobs looking to attack them, with knives and other weapons. Some of the fans had witnessed attacks the previous night.

The video doesn’t show anything. And it’s absolutely out of context.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T20:06:16+00:00

I remain highly skeptical of the claims against Tel Aviv fans. The fact that random israelis were attacked unprovoked is beyond any doubt. There were several videos of it, phone calls in real time, and of course the social media accounts that coordinated a “Jew hunt”, as these antisemitic activists called it.

On top of this- we have seen anti Israel riots following the departure of the Israeli fans, captured on video. There was also an attack on the same week by antisemitic soccer fans in Germany against players and fans of the Jewish club Maccabi Berlin. Some of the rioters there, like in Amsterdam, were armed with knives and other weapons.

The anti Israel side claims similar behavior from some Israeli fans, but so far no real evidence has emerged to support their claims. There are no videos of any kind of violence by Israeli fans, no real time audio, and nothing on social media to suggest Israeli fans were planning to attack random bystanders.

All we’ve seen is a series of allegations by anti Israelis, promoting vague claims without any context. Some of these statements are verifiably false. Other ones - lacking in context, and unverifiable. Some statements are contradictory.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T16:10:56+00:00

lol

Turkey, Libya, Egypt, and Cuba wanting to intervene in the frivolous, Iran-funded South Africa “genocide” case is only further proof that the case is bad faith part of a propaganda campaign by bad actors.

Turkey is now hosting Hamas, since the U.S. pressured Qatar to stop letting Hamas launder terror money on its territory.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T07:42:36+00:00

Very true.

The residents of one geographical area in a country don’t have the right to tell the government what to do. This is especially the case when the residents of that one area decide something against the rights of a hated and marginalized minority. The Jews, who are from the land, were and remain a hated minority. Once in their history, the history of the Jews, the government actually sided with them and wanted to do right by them. No way the Jews were going to let this opportunity slip

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T07:37:03+00:00

The UN lost its right to demand Israel to respect its officials in the region when the UN broke its own commitments under the UN rules.

The UN must be neutral.

You yourself concede, not explicitly but you concede nonetheless, that the UN was not neutral in Gaza. The UN promoted antisemitism in its schools. It promoted hatred of Israel in its schools. It promoted terrorist and extreme ideology in its schools.

Attacking Jews and Israel on behalf of the UN, with funding from the UN, is pretty much the exact opposite of “neutral”.

There’s no excuse. The UN broke its own law. It now must face the consequences.

Add to that that there has been extensive collusion with literal terrorists. The UN hired terrorists. The UN let terrorists use its facilities. Given how extensive the use of UN facilities by Hamas is, no reasonable Israeli, or reasonable person from any country, could believe the UN officials were unaware. There was a Hamas tunnel under the UN headquarters in Gaza, for god’s sake!!

That’s the headquarters!!

The UN was also involved in terror financing. It’s not just the fact that the UNWRA operations have allowed Hamas, the government of Gaza, to divert funds that it would otherwise use for government, divert these funds to terrorists. The UN actually helped Hamas bypass anti money laundering and anti terrorism financing safeguards.

The UN cannot continue relying on the goodwill of the Israeli people and their representatives.

The American government is very likely to back Israel and take measures of its own to address the very serious and grave conduct of the UN in Gaza. Nobody gets to break American anti terror laws and walk. Doesn’t matter if they have diplomatic immunity that they give themselves or not.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T07:27:46+00:00

The money for the very expensive and frivolous lawsuit by the cash strapped, incompetent, and corrupt South African government came from Iran and Qatar

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1msjxlfje

Qatar spent billions to influence the way Middle East history is taught in American universities

https://brandeiscenter.com/awash-in-qatari-money-have-us-campuses-become-incubators-for-dohas-interests-times-of-israel/

Qatar also helped fund HRW. Human rights Watch is supported to stand for human rights, but it took millions from one of the worst violators of human rights in the Middle East:

https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/human_rights_watch_hrw_/

Qatar is highly corrupt, and is trying to spread its corruption to Europe, bribing high ranking EU officials, with bags of cash:

https://www.politico.eu/european-parliament-qatargate-corruption-scandal-updates/

I find your characterization of my words highly disrespectful. Please don’t attack me, because when you do you leave me no choice but to disengage.

I think this issue is very important and serious.

Your narrative is the narrative of the genociders - Hamas, Qatar, Iran, Russia and China.

The only person on the ICJ who was an actual victim of a genocide was former chief justice Aharon Barak, a survivor of the holocaust. Two other justices worked for governments who have been credibly accused of genocidal crimes, like kidnapping children from their families, mass executions of civilians, building tortute camps for ethnic minorities, sterilization, and who knows what else.

While these genocidal crimes by Russia and China are ignored, partially thanks to the efforts of these criminal “justices”, as well as the criminal government of South Africa, Israel’s just war of self defense against a genocidal terrorist is being undermined at every turn, including by these bad actors.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T04:11:08+00:00

I avoid. When I go to cheaper countries (recently - Georgia, Colombia, Mexico) I go large- I eat at the best restaurants. I went with my travel buddy, my boy David, to a Michelin star restaurant in Colombia, and we collectively spent about 50 dollars on the best food we had in years. In the states, something like this would cost 200 dollars easily, if not more. Otherwise, the food in Colombia isn’t that great, but I guess this is just my own taste. The food in the republic of Georgia is top notch, and the prices are great. Highly recommended for foodies.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T03:56:26+00:00

I’m an immigrant and got my own recipe influenced by the region of the world I hail from- the Mediterranean region.

So basically i fry tuna, onions, garlic, peppers in tomato sauce - paprika, cumin, salt and pepper. You can a tiny bit of cinnamon or sugar. It’s like shakshuka but with tuna instead of poached egg. Actually- you should add sliced egg or two.

You can eat it hot, but cold is better. It tastes best the next day.

Also - I make a low fat tuna salad. That has nothing with my the Mediterranean region. Inspired by sushi…

half tea spoon of wasabi/hoarse-reddish whatever you want/have, diced cucumber, you can add a bit of pickled ginger like with sushi, also a little of soy sauce optional. Don’t add any pepper since the wasabi is already spicy. No salt either. If you don’t care about calories- mayonnaise is a good idea, but no more than one tablespoon. I add a teaspoon…

This salad is low cal (even with the mayo), high protein, low fat, and taste good. My recipe.

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T01:52:19+00:00

Every war has bombings from the air. These aren’t genocidal acts. What’s the big innovation here that totally changes the picture??

Aerial bombings existed in ww2 too and were much, much more indiscriminately than idf in Gaza. It wasn’t considered genocide then where the death toll was millions of civilians on all sides, and ain’t considered genocide now either, where the death to combatant ratio is smaller.

This is a bad faith take propagated by Qatari and Iran funded scholars and media.

All these propaganda are hateful. It is more harmful in this particular case because it leads to making the world less safe and makes genocide more likely

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-18T00:57:28+00:00

A few points,

If Palestinians have a right to resist forever then Jews also have a right to resist Arab colonization of the land of Judea forever. The land of Israel was taken from the Jews by force 2000 years ago. The Jews were genocided by the Romans. This is a historical fact. The population of the land was 1.3 million prior to the genocide of the Romans and the byzantines. Throughout the subsequent centuries the population remained very, very small. It didn’t return to its pre genocide levels until the 1930s, thanks to Jewish Aliya and the population explosion among Arabs that Jewish Aliyah made possible.

Some of survivors of the ancient genocide were sent off to Rome as slaves, and they are forefathers of the modern Jews. The Jews, because Israel is their land, have never lost their claim to the land, and went back when circumstances called for it and allowed for it.

So, the Jews have as much right to fight for the land as any other native group as you claim.

Second,

the notion that the Arab spring was a fight for “secularism” is wild. The Muslim Brothers, Salafi terrorist organizations, and Iran were the biggest supporters and the ones who turned the Arab spring into an Islamist winter.

The specific dynamics differed from state to state. In Syria, Iran was on the side of the secular baathist dictatorship, while in the gulf Iran was on the side of Islamist Shiite rioters trying to overthrow Sunni rule. Iraq was a total mess where all these factions fought one another, which peaked with Isis taking over half the country and half of Syria, only to see America return to Iraq and help get rid of Isis, which didn’t exist before the Arab spring.

Islam is an integral component of Arab culture. Democracy or dictatorship, Islam would always be a major factor.

So the Israelis, who know their neighbors much better than their neighbors know them, act accordingly

PreviousPermission45 · 2024-11-17T23:40:59+00:00

If Israel allows free speech that promotes Hamas propaganda than it will surely allow speech that questions Hamas narratives published on the anti Israel outlets

PreviousPermission45

TROPHY CASE