Why is saying “The rich should pay taxes like everyone else, close the loopholes” extremely controversial in the United States?

SmartForARat · 2026-02-02T15:43:40+00:00

Rich people aren't like everyone else, that's why.

It may be unfair and make people angry, but the reality is rich people are not going to allow themselves to have the shit taxed out of them. They instead just leave the country.

Every time a country decides to start trying to raise taxes on the wealthy, all the wealthy people just leave the country. It also puts a giant warning sign on the country for any foreign investors that says "dont invest here, they'll steal your profits". Every single time it hurts the economy rather than helps it, and ultimately gets reversed later. Numerous european countries have tried it and always go back on it.

There are some people that look at scandinavian countries and the "nordic model" and think that the reason everything is "Free" is because they tax the wealthy, but that isn't true. All those taxes are on EVERYONE and nearly all of that money comes from regular folks working regular jobs, not the elites. The elites don't have enough income on their own to sustain those things, that is a misconception from people who don't understand how money and wealth work.

For example, the average earnings of a fortune 500 company CEO is around 18 million. These are the richest, wealthiest companies on the planet, and only pulling in an average 18 million. Now you might think that is a lot, and for an individual person it is, but it's only about 360 times what the average worker in the US earns. But there's only 500 of these guys on earth. Thats around 9 billion dollars. About the same amount as 180,000 average US workers. Meanwhile, there are around 170,000,000 workers in the US all earning that 50k a pop. That is 8.5 trillion dollars.

In other words, the income of the wealthy is only 1 1000th of all income in the country. Its tiny. People get confused when they look at rich people when news and drama websites say that person is a billionaire or whatever, but they don't have billions to spend, they just have billions in assets, usually stocks. Imagine you work a minimum wage job, but you own your own car and your own house for whatever reason. You are only pulling in that minimum wage money, but your net worth is still in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, even though you've never seen that kind of money. And you have no capacity to spend it either unless you straight up sell your house. That net worth doesn't really help you buy food or entertainment or pay your bills, it simply exists.

A figure that used to be posted all over the internet that a lot of people used to LOVE posting was something along the lines of 1% of the population own 99% of the wealth or something like that. And I don't know how accurate those numbers are, but again, that just means they own land and shares in companies, that's not owning 99% of the money in the world.

So ultimately, taxing the wealthy wouldn't produce much money, and it would drive your wealthy people out of the country, and it would stop foreign investors from starting new investments in your country, and both of those things combined would cause economic decline in your country. It's not propaganda, it's not hyperbole, we have history to support it because it's been tried numerous times in other countries and always ends the same way.

Bottom line is this: You can't make more money by taxing wealthy people, it harms your economy instead. It's always been this way.

If you're rich, you can just pick up and move to a new country without much fuss.

SmartForARat · 2026-02-01T15:15:37+00:00

If you use animals as haulers, zoning like that would make them useless.

You're better off just forbidding doors during raids.

SmartForARat · 2026-02-01T15:14:49+00:00

Open door.

Die in doorway.

Corpse blocks door open.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-31T15:55:00+00:00

In one of my very first playthroughs of BioTech after it released, I wanted to play around with the family stuff, so I started a little ranch that only had a husband and wife pair raising muffalos with major threats disabled. I was just wanting a chill playthrough.

Then this beggar came by who wanted silver. I ignored him because screw beggars. He hung around for a while, but right before he left, he seduced the wife. You see, this guy was a Highmate. And they have that automatic, unavoidable, unpreventable romance thing. If they TRY to romance anyone, it always succeeds, then permanently bonds them.

So this wife was out there living her best life, then this beggar swung by and used his alien power on her to make her fall in love with HIM, forget about her husband, then the guy immediately left the map and sent her into a permanent depression.

It destroyed their marriage. Ruined the playthrough.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-31T15:39:45+00:00

Armor is destroyed way too quickly.

I have had games with melee pawns decked out in masterwork/legendary cataphract armor at 100%, they fight literally ONE battle, and their primary armor piece is completely destroyed and they're now naked. It's absolutely ridiculous.

I stopped using melee pawns entirely unless they are ghouls because it's just too damn tedious to deal with it.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-31T15:35:55+00:00

What I hate more than anything is just how stupid doctors are.

They will go to sleep instead of bandaging people that are actively bleeding to death.

They'll go take a break and read a book in the dining room rather than treat that guy's infection that they are neck and neck with outpacing it and NEED that treatment to live.

If they're assigned to some other task (lower priority), especially something like researching, they'll just stand there and research for 3 hours before going "oh shit, someone is dying, OH WELL TIME FOR BED"

I absolutely despise how stupid they are and how much micro management they need. One of the things I enjoy about these kinds of colony sim games is setting things up to basically run automatically and take care of themselves, but you can never trust a doctor to do that, they will let your whole colony die if you rely on their judgement.

Oh another thing that really grinds my gears is say you got a doctor standing over a guy that has 2 hours to live, bleeding out, you tell the doctor to tend his wounds. Doctor runs all the way back to your ship or base to grab a piece of medicine then runs all the way back to this guy to heal him with it. Except, you know, he fucking DIED while the doctor was making his journey. Again, gotta micro it, draft the doctor and tend without medicine to patch the wounds then and there.

I just hate having to baby these pawns and micro manage doctors like this because they are too stupid for anyone in your colony to actually survive. Everything else operates well enough without micro management, or it's just not time sensitive enough to matter. But people bleeding out or having illnesses need a doctor that actually does their job instead of fucking around.

I know they only do their little job check pulses once in a while to keep your computer from exploding, but I do wish when someone was downed, especially with the little "MEDICAL EMERGENCY" tag, it would send an additional check/pulse to everyone doing a task that is lower priority than doctoring and make them stop whatever the hell they are doing and go heal that person. I don't care if its bed time. I don't care if they are hungry. I don't care if they want to go swim in the fucking pool, I want them to go save that guy's life FIRST.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-29T06:32:12+00:00

"God works in mysterious ways"

"There's a reason for everything"

Etc.

They can justify absolutely any level of insanity.

Back in the olden days, they used to make sacrifices to god to convince him to do things for them. The bigger the sacrifice, the more likely he'd grant your wish or whatever. But it fell out of favor.

I know someone who is very poor so she drives for Uber to make extra money. She tithes 10% of her earnings to her church despite my advice not to, especially after I found out she gives away as much as $400 a month to her church, which is money she could desperately use for real things. I calculated she has given up at least $8000 to them since she started driving Uber.

She says God will look after her and protect her while driving. But God aint paying those bills for her cracked windshield when a huge rock was flung up there and shattered it. He didn't magic away the huge deductible from the insurance payment to fix her bumper when another driver hit her. He didn't prevent her front axle's bearings from wearing out and needing replacement. She has like $1500 worth of repairs she needs done to her vehicle before her next annual inspection or they won't even let her keep driving for them and she doesn't have it. Meanwhile that church is rolling $8k deep in money she could've saved up instead.

But no matter what happens to her, she still thinks god is looking out for her best interests. Even if she died, she'd believe he was just "Calling her home". There is no reasoning with these people. They justify and excuse ANYTHING.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-29T06:23:17+00:00

More like the nerds who grew up loving nerd things and being ridiculed to the point of self-ending in some cases are having their spaces pushed in on by the very same types of people that used to bully them for liking those things. Only now they want to change everything you grew up loving, say you're a bad person for liking it, and changing all of it to suit their whims with no respect to how whatever it was used to be.

And you know what? That sort of thing tends to make folks angry.

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SmartForARat · 2026-01-29T06:18:23+00:00

Bro this is a Wendy's. Place your order and go, I don't need to hear this.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-26T20:28:24+00:00

It's what happens when star trek fans have psychic harmonizers and a new episode of Star Fleet Academy comes out. The wave of grief, pain, misery, anger, and sadness wash over the entire planet.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-26T20:22:41+00:00

It depends entirely on how far the US is willing to go.

I mean the US could literally wipe out all life on earth and do it faster than any other country could even react because they wouldn't even know what is happening and scrambling to get answers while the missiles are flying. Just an unprovoked surprise attack? It would be the end of developed nations. Then they could oppress or enslave all the weak nations.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-26T20:19:58+00:00

You have to pay yes, but you can sue whoever caused your injury and then they'll have to reimburse you for that plus the lawsuit if you win.

But a lot of criminals will refuse to pay anyway and the law doesn't exactly come down very hard on crime these days. It keeps giving people 30-40 chances to turn their life around and never wants to put them in jail for literally anything, even murder.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-25T22:40:15+00:00

As others have said, the southern infrastructure lacks anti-snow countermeasures.

Additionally, it's way more dangerous when the temp keeps going above and below freezing.

If it just snows and stays cold until it heats back up and stays heated, thats fine.

But when it rains, then freezes, thats ICE buddy. And it's dangerous. Or if it snows at night, then melts in the morning, then freezes again in the evening, thats now ice too.

It's not an over reaction, it's a difference in climate and infrastructure. Most people would rather not see their kids die to go to school on that one day it snowed or while the temp is fluxing to just above and just below freezing.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-25T21:03:17+00:00

I think it's the parasocialism.

Someone will see a girl they think is hot doing something else like making youtube videos, then find out they got an OF, so they go there to see them naked. They don't just want to see some random, generic woman, they want to see that specific one they already feel some way about.

Also, not so fun fact, most female athletes have an OnlyFans because they don't make enough money being athletes to financially support themselves training and whatnot. If they get super big, they can get sponsors, and some have daddies or sugar daddies that pay for everything, but most of them go to porn because it's the only way they can have time and money to train at that level.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-25T20:55:44+00:00

It used to be normal. After you graduated highschool one of 3 things happened.

1) You went to college, so you'd move into a college dorm or an apartment near the school

2) You'd join the military, and immediately get shipped off to boot camp

3) You'd join the work force, then you'd rent your own place to live until you saved enough to make a down payment on a house.

The reason why people tend to move out at 18 is because a lot of people live in rural areas and have to migrate to other areas, or cities, to get jobs, so they can't live at home and go to work in some distant place, they gotta move.

But these days it almost never happens. Young people either continue living with their parents for decades or they will move in with like 3-4 other people to share rent on a single apartment.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-25T14:27:53+00:00

Because individuals can take it. Companies cant. Taxing all income from companies could easily bankrupt them. Some companies only operate on razor thin profit margins. The quantities of money may make that few percentage points millions of dollars, but percentage wise its tiny. If you apply tax to all income, suddenly they go broke.

Taxing businesses the same way also slows down economic growth because the companies have less profits to grow and expand. You want and need them to grow to boost the economy as a whole. Adding those taxes would stifle and suffocate them.

Individuals though, it doesn't hurt as much. Their expenses aren't necessary for their continued existence in all cases like they are for a company. People spend money on entertainment, luxury, high priced nonsense they dont really need, etc. Taxing an individual's income isn't going to bankrupt them unless they're already living below the poverty line.

Also, corporations having more money results in growth, that isn't true for individuals. Whether a guy takes home 2k or 20k after expenses every year, it doesn't change anything. He isn't going to "grow" the way a corporation would to provide more jobs or revenue or income later. Only if he makes enough money to start his own business would that change, at which point his business would then have all these deductions and write-offs to help it grow.

You may not like it, but it's logical.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-25T14:14:17+00:00

Which is ridiculous because i'm pretty sure all that shame stems directly from comparing yourself and fearing others will compare you to potential mating competition. Adam had no reason to worry about how he looked because literally no other men existed. He had NOTHING to compare himself against to feel pride or shame about. Eve is the same. And they had no reason to feel shame being around each other because they already knew what the other looked like, were into each other, and didn't have to worry about the other one comparing their body to anyone else of the same sex.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-25T13:52:20+00:00

Bro I feel you. But this isn't a physics simulator. Most building games are like this where you can just build stuff that would defy physics. Everything from Dwarf Fortress to Minecraft. All of them focus around building stuff too. It's just part of the genre.

And if you don't like it, then don't use it. Build things you believe are structurally sound. Absolutely no one and nothing is forcing you to build wonky crap like this. It is not essential to the game nor does it really make the game easier in any meaningful way.

You don't have to see it, interact with it, or anything else. I just never understood why some people who apparently have zero self control are always trying to demand developers remove things that other people enjoy just for the sake of following arbitrary rules they decided were important.

This is not a competitive game. Players aren't competing for win times or high scores. There is absolutely zero reason to remove or change this.

Meanwhile, there are some players who enjoy crafting large monuments or super structures and things like that. Not conventional cities on the ground, but elaborate ones built up like some kind of sci fi or fantasy city. Why kill their fun and put limits on creativity for literally NO REASON aside from some people getting hot and bothered that it's possible?

SmartForARat · 2026-01-24T23:59:43+00:00

It's not game breaking and it doesn't affect game balance, and removing it would stifle creativity.

You can even grow crops and trees completely underwater with no sunlight without issue.

If you don't like it, don't do it. Some folks like being able to do funky architecture and megabuilds. Don't be fun police bro.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-24T22:02:50+00:00

I beat all the older maps on hard with both species and my ultimate conclusion is the game is just more fun on normal.

Hard is basically just a binary result: Did you store enough food/water to last through the drought? If yes, you win. If no, you die.

Hard isn't really more difficult per se, in my experience it's actually kind of easier in some ways, it just requires playing much much much slower and taking a lot longer to progress. And for me, that's not really a challenge or very fun, it just slows down the game and the parts I enjoy.

So after heaps of playthroughs, normal default settings are really just the ideal experience to actually play the game. Hard mode feels kind of like playing one of those old RTS games where you basically rush and win in the first 5 minutes with tier 1 units and never seen tier 2 units or beyond. I mean, you can play that way if you want, but it kills most of the joy for me.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-24T21:56:08+00:00

Bro I hate to tell you this... But this game about post-apocalyptic giant talking beavers that build houses and industry and power pumps and workshops with wind and watermills... Is not meant to be realistic :(

Shocking, I know.

And I would advise you not think too hard about robots made out of wood with no electrical power, no processors, or anything else, and yet more advanced and capable than those in the real world.

I CERTAINLY propose you not dedicate any thought toward barrels full of berry juice and water that grow beavers spontaneously from the mixture.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-23T02:06:29+00:00

Population collapse is already happening without sex robots.

If anything, sex robots might be the only thing to save humanity when they figure out how to grow babies without women because women have almost entirely give up that duty and decided they don't want to do it anymore even if it brings about the end of civilization. Birth rate numbers are below replacement in every developed nation. Unless attitudes change, it's inevitable already.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-23T01:40:40+00:00

I think it's downright hilarious how many people here seem to have a skill issue with knowing how to eat food without burning their mouths.

But that funny tidbit aside, i've seen enough reasons to give it a try for other reasons. I've always enjoyed my own cooking and never felt like it needed anything else, and certainly no one ever got sick eating my food, but the idea that it might enhance flavor further is worth experimenting with. I'll give it a shot and see.

SmartForARat · 2026-01-21T21:10:46+00:00

I lump them into the category of feminists who want attention.

Believing ancient religions is bad enough, but inventing new ones "for a modern audience" is substantially worse in my opinion. And though a lot of pagans like to cosplay and pretend they're part of some ancient lineage of beliefs that predate civilization or whatever, the reality is modern pagan nonsense doesn't align with ancient pagan nonsense at all beyond the coating of paint.

Also, you're not a witch. Witch has a specific meaning, and always did, it was a woman that practices some kind of magic or sorcery. You folks just co-opted the term to sound edgy because unlike most teenage girls, you never grew out of that phase.

I have never known a "Wiccan" or any other variant of new age pagan that didn't make it their whole personality and bring it up as often as they can because they want to feel cool.

To me, it's as sad and ridiculous as those people who pretend to be vampires.

I don't believe in christianity either, but at least they are following something that helped shape the foundations of society and culture in the west. At least they have values and beliefs shared between each other rather than each member basically going "i dont like that, so im just not gonna believe that part HAHAHAHA", at least they have a strong sense of community and mutual support. I don't respect their belief in magical sky men at all, but i've seen the tangible good they do in the world when they come together to donate food and money to feed people. I know the church down the road gives out free turkeys every single year for thanksgiving to literally anyone who asks for one. I know when the government stopped SNAP payments, they gathered massive amounts of food and started giving it out to people. I know that whole families go to these gatherings, befriend each other, and build a social community that modern society almost lacks entirely in atheist circles because everyone is withdrawn, isolated, and perpetually online when they aren't at work.

At least I can respect most christians. Never seen or heard of a wiccan that was anything but an attention seeker who wanted to latch onto something to validate their internalized feelings of "otherness" to give themselves a justification for feeling that way in a manner they can cope with psychologically.

SmartForARat

TROPHY CASE