The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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Caporegime
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Well you've introduced a different system of administration as someone has to assess and review the negative income tax based on personal circumstances like number of children, disabilities etc.

Most of this does not require human assessment, in fact the meagre amount of money saved currently by sanctioning people viewed as "playing the system" is vastly outweighed by the cost of the job centre apparatus itself which is why staff were given sanction targets.

Anyway, whatever money is saved you have a system which ensures literally everyone is better off?

Reduced administrative costs are used to help people and when the tax rate is lower you tend to have less avoidance and evasion, thus more tax revenue paradoxically. Just look at the income tax rates in the USA, they were reduced massively in the 20's and as a result tax revenue from the rich increased so much they ended up with a budget surplus. But people want to hit the rich with a high tax rate so much that they cut their nose off to spite their face.

As economist Thomas Sowell puts it, "do you want a symbolic high rate of income tax or actual increased tax revenue?".
 
Caporegime
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Counties that have a flat rate.
flat-rate.jpg

It's like a Who's Who of dysfunctional fiscal management.

:eek:
 
Caporegime
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An individual who's paying more tax is worse off. Perhaps you'd like to define "better off".

At the risk of repeating myself, the lower marginal tax rates means expensive avoidances schemes are no longer worth it, so while the super rich will be paying more tax their financial position will mostly balance out, and better off in the context of tax evasion is pretty obvious, not at risk of going to jail. We need to change the incentive structures if we want to successfully target tax evasion. There is also the scope to improve public services with the increased revenue.

However there is really no need for people to pay more tax with a negative income tax, if you have a surplus that allows you to reduce the tax rate.
 
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Soldato
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I'd take the money and run if I was a significant shareholder, that is an utterly insane some of money. The hopefully Musk takes the controls off and breaks it so badly it gets regulated to death it's a win win Musk loses a fortune and the world is free from twitter!
 
Caporegime
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A negative income tax guarantees everyone a basic level of income based on personal circumstances like number of children, disabilities etc. that can replace the current benefit system where we have all these useless job centres distributing universal credit that do nothing other than try to save a few quid here and there by sanctioning people, getting rid of the job centres alone would have enormous cost savings.
So you want everyone to pay a flat rate.

Apart from those with disabilities.

Or those who can/choose to have children.

Almost like the actual net tax effect is... somewhat... variable!
 
Soldato
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The thing is whilst, as I mentioned earlier, I dislike the social aspects of Twitter, I do think in some respects it's an incredibly important tool, as we're seeing in Ukraine right now.

If we could keep that side but ditch the cancerous "everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi/Snow-flake who needs banning" aspect it'd be a far better platform I think, but how you'd do that I've no idea.
 
Caporegime
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Good luck to him making advertising money off the platform, if he does truly enable anyone to post and say anything on it.....

It being controlled trolled privately by one man does not scream "free speech" to me...
 
Caporegime
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But it did when Jack Dorsey was at the helm?

i don't think it ever has or ever will. As long as it is a business that needs to make money, it will never offer what can be considered "free speech" (which people often get confused about when it comes to what companies allow individuals to do on their property, and what "free speech" actually means in terms of governance/freedom etc).

It is all a red herring, and manipulation, likely designed to make Musk even richer. But people will lap it up as though he is some sort of god.

First rule of life - never listen to, or believe a salesman.
 
Soldato
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i don't think it ever has or ever will. As long as it is a business that needs to make money, it will never offer what can be considered "free speech" (which people often get confused about when it comes to what companies allow individuals to do on their property, and what "free speech" actually means in terms of governance/freedom etc).

It is all a red herring, and manipulation, likely designed to make Musk even richer. But people will lap it up as though he is some sort of god.

First rule of life - never listen to, or believe a salesman.
no one is even really asking for "free speech" as any platform will be subject to various rules, laws, restrictions etc. The issue most people have with Twitter is political bias and different treatment based on your political views which is something Tim Pool did well to highlight in his interview with Jack Dorsey. Twitter famously suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the election and people were rightly angry that a platform as large as Twitter can have such influence over public opinion or access to specific news. That's the issue as I see it.
 
Caporegime
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no one is even really asking for "free speech" as any platform will be subject to various rules, laws, restrictions etc. The issue most people have with Twitter is political bias and different treatment based on your political views which is something Tim Pool did well to highlight in his interview with Jack Dorsey. Twitter famously suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the election and people were rightly angry that a platform as large as Twitter can have such influence over public opinion or access to specific news. That's the issue as I see it.

How do you ensure a business has no bias though? Impossible. They are Twitter's servers and as long as they don't do anything illegal or discriminatory, they can host or not host whatever they see fit.
 
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