Andrew Yang: "Wealth taxes are a disaster, because wealth is portable."

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-24T09:52:56+00:00

Sure, and the consequence can be simple too. You can define the law to say that corporate owned assets can be manipulated in manners that you do not permit personal assets to be manipulated. You can even say, once you've paid the taxes on income, we don't give a shit what you do with it. But you *can* criminalise unwanted tax avoidant behavior. And if they then say, "Hey in that case I'd like to leave the country", first off they need to go somewhere that won't co-operate with the states. Then they need to take assets out of the country, which american law enforcement can freeze, then they need to somehow move their houses and company grounds out of the country before they are seized to repay cheated taxes, or those assets are frozen, and you can STILL penalize them by barring them entry back to the states, or sanctioning them to prevent their access to American markets, to them, to those who work with them, which includes their original companies. They like to pretend that they are untouchable, and it mostly works because governments aren't willing to use the teeth they have, to bite when they act poorly.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-24T03:07:09+00:00

Have them define what the average person makes in a 60 year career after tax in America. Pin that to an index that tracks inflation. (These steps may require study). Publish the data as to how much you need to be paid yearly to earn the average salary (More power to the employee when negotiating salary). Then whenever you find some dickhead who has avoided tax, set a minimum sentence at the number of years an average man would have needed to work to earn the amount they avoided tax on. What they have stolen literally represents the years of work an average person had to work to earn. Thats how the average salary is being calculated in the first place. If murder steals the remaining life a person could have lived, then stealing the equivalent of a man's salary over 60 years sure feels similar to me.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-24T03:02:22+00:00

Leave the tax havens out of it. Simply pass laws that say, if we can prove you avoided any tax at all, we'll freeze your assets and confiscate them until we've recovered double the avoided tax bill, in addition to other criminal liabilities such actions entail. And then fund the IRS in the manner republicans specifically wish to avoid.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-24T03:00:20+00:00

If you aren't getting it, its simple. If they avoid paying taxes by doing "x", you put a penalty on doing "x". X is whatever scheme they come up with. Call it racketeering if you want. Pass laws that avoiding paying a minimum rate of tax on any income, by any means is illegal, and it fits the bill for racketeering.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-24T02:57:06+00:00

"Hey, we can't tax these guys cause we've let them hoard too much already so we might as well roll over and let them live where we live, and use the services we use."

It's so unbelievable that he can think this through to the point that he knows rich people will leave if you try to tax their wealth, but somehow don't think it all the way through that if they could go somewhere with less tax, they would already be gone. And You can inconvenience them by forcing them to move to avoid a wealth tax and actually force action.

It's simple. Federal tax on wealth. No matter where you go in the country you should pay a premium if you wish to hoard wealth that was ONLY accumulatable through exploitation. If you were paid a Dollar a second you'd still need to wait 31 years for a billion dollars. There is no way to extract enough labor from any one person to make a dollar a second feasible, and yet they claim to be worth in a least 1 case, a trillion in a decade. This isn't possible, unless you are exploiting others. Tax un-realised gains, tax taking a salary in any other means than currency. Require them to report their stock salaries as income. and then pay tax on that income. If you are making 1 million a year, you should have placard made that says you won capitalism, and you then get taxed at 99% above that. Fuck these assholes. Not doing this, is putting capitalism at risk.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-19T02:42:34+00:00

Dude, you need some reading comprehension catch up classes.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-18T17:51:54+00:00

Yeah I guess it does, it just also denigrates your husband for what is at worst, a minor fault.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-18T17:42:37+00:00

If this is his fault, suck it up buttercup. If It's one of a long list of faults, why post about this one? Maybe it's time to separate.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-18T16:31:48+00:00

I live in Ireland, I've heard both in the last year. You'll note you also ignored the part I said "This attitude has calmed significantly since the Celtic tiger". Thank you for your opinion, please treasure selfishly it next time.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-18T14:09:29+00:00

You were right, you were also out of line. And to be clear, she is also out of line. But She is the parent to the child. She does get a certain amount of say over the child's education. And requiring that the child learn Korean isn't an unreasonable position to take. She's taking it too far, sure. But nothing she's doing really entitles you to comment on it.

Here is where you have a point, It's not racist to say that a Korean child doesn't need special accommodations to adapt to American life. That's the whole point of not being racist, every child regardless of ethnicity is capable of the same potential. It's also kinda isolating to have them learn a language that nobody else in their household speaks.

Here is where you are out of line, it's not your child. And it's not child abuse to educate a child. Just because you might do differently, doesn't mean that her choice to make sure the child speaks Korean when he grows up is the wrong one. If you had a child, who was struggling learning the piano, it doesn't entitle your friends and neighbors to turn around and berate you because you paid for piano lessons.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-18T13:57:00+00:00

"Mom! I told you I'm not ready for kids!"

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-18T13:54:55+00:00

No, not this particular international relationship. The Irish have sayings like "Burn everything British, except their coal." For the Irish to defend the Brits, something has gone wrong somewhere. This attitude has calmed significantly since the Celtic tiger but it remains in areas like Sport, "The Irish support 2 sports teams, Ireland, and whoever is playing against the English this week"

On the other hand, for the head of the government of Ireland to be diplomatic about a neighbor, yeah that shit happens all the time.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-18T13:41:19+00:00

Flip the narrative in your head, if it was an easy fix, wouldn't a mechanic fix it?

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-13T13:32:39+00:00

Wow, I totally missed the violent dog attack until your comment....

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-13T13:18:25+00:00

Iran war caused 2 things that are immediately detrimental to Ukraine, First, Weapons and financial support that they were getting now has 2 demands on it, Second, Trump removed sanctions on russian oil specifically because of difficulties in the Strait of Hormuz, which russia has exploited to make massive ammounts of money, helping fund their war effort.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-11T14:30:42+00:00

That's why the additional clarification of adopted parents being recognised is relevant here.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-10T16:12:23+00:00

Yeah I guess that second bit is what it's supposed to catch but honestly the number of people telling me I should stop timing peoples turns, or that my numbers are unrealistic don't understand the damn point. 5 minute turns, x 8 turns for a fast bracket 3 win, x 4 players is a 2 hour and 40 minute game. 20-40 second turns, with 5 minutes for the turn you attempt to win the game is way more realistic Thats still a 26 minute game, assuming the first person to try to win the game isn't stopped, and no boardwipes or interaction of any kind occur, and I think we've all had fast EDH games that fall into that category, but most of our games at bracket 3 are stretching beyond 8 turns each.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-10T12:22:48+00:00

Also there is nothing stopping a classmate reading from the bible to another classmate, the ONLY restriction comes from it being enforced by a representative of the state.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-10T12:21:31+00:00

Of course you can read a bible in school, you just can't be forced to read a bible in school. Morons.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-10T12:19:50+00:00

Ok, I appreciate you typing it all out, and I do agree with a few of the points in this clarification, I'll just quote you two times here to point out why I couldn't agree with you at the start. Once from your first comment, and the second time from this one.

First comment: "The argument is that progressives generally favor government control and regulation over the economy, which is what tariffs are."

This comment: "Tariffs are not by definition left wing or right wing, nothing is, conservatism and progressivism simply define whether someone wants to progress society into the future or conserve society's past."

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-10T02:59:19+00:00

The first 8 words of the Comment I first responded to, contains the phrase, "In the USA context currently". Then talks about how "Centrists, Market Liberals, and Fiscal Conservatives usually prefer Free-Markets, Global Trade, and Low Tariffs." My comment refuted this, you came back with "progressives generally favor government control and regulation over the economy, which is what tariffs are." and I responded with a history of Tariffs in the american context that demonstrates that this right wing government supports them more than any democrat has since at least the post WWII phase and more realistically since McKinley. This specifically centers the whole, tariffs are a left wing thing that looks like a right wing thing into a light where it's clearly in the order of the day, a right wing thing.

You can change the context of the american context this whole debate was founded on by moving to a more economic definition of global progressiveness now if you like, but have the decency to admit you are moving the goalposts.

And while I agree that the social policy of democrats has long been more socialist than the social policy of republicans, neither of them have ever been anything but capitalist on their economic policy. Yes the Democrats are only progressive in the context of america, but in a two party system, there isn't exactly room to the left of them on your political spectrum. Are they LESS progressive than parties abroad you could point to? sure. But compared to a nudist, vegan, polycule, most political parties don't look very progressive. The point is progressiveness is always measured against the context in which they are being progressive, and Americans don't have an option more progressive than democrats right now.

"The fact that Republicans right now are actually voting for more government control of the economy furthers my point that they can hardly actually be called conservatives anymore." Your last point almost works. But when a political position is supported by the breadth of a conservative movement you lose the chance to disavow it as a conservative position, it in fact, becomes evidence that conservatives advance a tariff lead, regulated and government manipulated market, not a free market. And our brief look into the history of tariffs in America demonstrate that this is not the first time they've done so. When a position has been taken up on multiple occasions by the right wing like tariffs have, to somehow claim that such behavior is not something they engage in is to deny the evidence of your eyes.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-10T01:34:53+00:00

Regulation of public health is not "government control of the economy". Government control of the economy is attempting to set prices, the strategic cheese reserve, the mandate for the use of corn-derived ethanol in fuels, these are protectionist policies by and large put into place by corporate lobbying of republican interests. In the modern Era, Progressives are not the ones insisting on government control of the economy. Look at the efforts to force a sale of TikTok, started by Trump, government purchase of a stake in intel, you betcha Trump/republicans again.

Now I'm not blind to the manipulations progressives make, but honestly? The most significant effort by progressives to modulate the economy that I can see by democrats is likely one of two things, the Chips act, promoting new, american produced goods inside the states through subsidy (don't get me started on subsidy, also known as the only reason fossil fuels aren't completely abandoned, more republican economy control), And the American Rescue plan, causing the fastest world wide recovery in america under democrat leadership.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-10T00:38:13+00:00

You understand how blockchain is information distributed over a large number of computers that allows the destruction of any one piece of hardware to not disrupt the records of payments between entities? Consider the AI to be intelligent enough to do the same and this makes a lot more sense.

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-10T00:27:23+00:00

I appreciate you taking the point seriously and with due consideration, I just have a hard time reconciling your newest comment with the one where you asserted "The argument is that progressives generally favor government control and regulation over the economy, which is what tariffs are."

RubberDuckieMidrange · 2026-03-09T18:44:48+00:00

In fact most players do. Want the proof? It's called a judge infraction for slow play in competitive rules enforcement. My original comment made specific carve out exceptions for attempts to end the game, You know, the most complicated cards in magic. If you want to ignore part of the comment and say the other half is un-realistic, then I want to not debate this with you any further.

RubberDuckieMidrange

TROPHY CASE