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This time from Momo's side.

That's basically half the point of a government: they do the things that society as a whole needs, but which no individual will/can do. Like maintaining roads, or the likes of education, health, etc. (Yes, and the military.)

In English history, you find a lot of taxes being levied for specific reasons - a war, a castle, I suppose theoretically a road but the English kings never seem to have cared much about roads. They raised money by basically picking something and taxing it - maybe it's wool sales this time, or maybe the number of windows on your house. At various times they just taxed everyone the same amount, which I think we can all agree is much, much worse for the poor than the rich. (The widow's mite comes to mind.)

Given that my government is an omnishambles right now, I totally agree that "the government knows best" is a dicey proposition, but... what's the alternative? It would be lovely for everyone to just come together and fund currently publically-funded things out of the goodness of their hearts, but with Jeff Bezos sitting here with $150,000,000,000, 10+ houses and a superyacht, I think we can count that out. (Even if we couldn't, when rich people build things, they see them as theirs; there's a long history in the UK of toll roads which you have to pay to use so that the man who built it can turn a profit. I don't think "being able to leave your house" should be based on your income, myself.)

But if people won't use their money for good voluntarily, and you don't want the government taking it with the force of law behind them... what? You wind up advocating for everyone to hold all their possessions in common and use them by direct democracy, which is a beautiful form of primitive socialism that doesn't work either.

Someone - internet says Churchill - said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried." As far as I can see, that applies to taxation as well.

hS

However, that doesn't mean the government should effectively have the power to decide that they have too much. The government should not be able to tell an individual "You have enough money now, so the rest is ours". Even if Bezos is overpayed for his work, the government didn't do any work.

Who will determine whether or not Bezos has too much money, then? Since clearly Bezos does not believe he has too much money. Other people have already contextualised how much money he has in relation to the rest of us, and unless the Ghosts of Christmas exist, he's not going to suddenly decide he has too much money and give the excess away.

Second point: the rich will leave. If John Q. Billionaire will be taxed at 90%, what's to stop him from leaving the country before the bill that implements the 90% tax ecomes law? Why should he let the government takes his money?

Real estate holdings in the US are too valuable for them to leave. Most of the richest people in the world already hold vast swathes of their money in offshore accounts or in states without as stringent tax laws (South Dakota, Texas, Delaware, etc).

The United States' infrastructure is crumbling and its education system is failing. Teachers are underpaid and roads and bridges need updating (and don't get me started on building ventilation in light of the spread of COVID). Tax money goes to repairing these issues. Do I trust the current administration to allocate responsibly? No, not really. But I trust Bezos and friends with that money even less.

Also for your responses to me: Are you implying that he personally underpays Amazon workers? Because I honestly have no clue as to the statistics there. I don’t think Amazon has a workers’ union, but I don’t think the government needs to act as one. If he does run out of workers, then he’ll have no choice but to pay them higher (or outsource overseas). Or, customers could protest the unfair wages as well by boycotting.

Amazon workers are trying to unionize, and Bezos is pouring millions of dollars into union-busting efforts so that he can continue to exploit them. I have no faith in him deciding he'll pay his workers more. The labour in this case is for his fulfillment centres, which have to be on US soil since that's where the items are sorted to get to customers.

Boycotting Amazon is more difficult than you think, given Amazon also has web services that control a good deal of the Internet, not to mention all of its subsidiaries. If boycotting is your only line of defense against exploitative capitalism, you are going to run out of things to consume very quickly.

The government shouldn't have to be a worker's union, but capitalists putting profits over people means currently the only way for big corporations to play ball is legislating for regulation. I'm sceptical of the government, but at least I can have a say in who I put in charge of it.

By the way, what would you consider a “fair share” of taxes on a theoretical person who earns a billion dollars a year? In numbers.

hS has a point. Bezos could give away 90% of a billion and still have enough to live off of, considering he's making more money you and I will ever see in a year each minute.

Yes, there are people have more money than they need.

However, that doesn't mean the government should effectively have the power to decide that they have too much. The government should not be able to tell an individual "You have enough money now, so the rest is ours". Even if Bezos is overpayed for his work, the government didn't do any work.

Second point: the rich will leave. If John Q. Billionaire will be taxed at 90%, what's to stop him from leaving the country before the bill that implements the 90% tax ecomes law? Why should he let the government takes his money?

--Ls thinks American federal taxes should be lowered.

Now I want to write about an elf named Jason.

--Ls

This is how income tax works in the UK. You get the first £12K or so tax free, then pay 20% on everything else up to about £50K. That jumps to 40% on everything from there up to £150K, and then... ticks up only a fraction more.

A normal person, who earns money even vaguely proportional to the amount of work they do (as opposed to the amount of work other people do), will pay between 10-20% of their total income in taxes. Jeff Bezos, if he could be bothered to pay taxes and was in the UK, would pay effectively 45%. At one point he was earning $230,000 a minute, but the UK government loves pandering to the rich, so it would still be 45%.

It should be much, much higher. Make it 90%+ once they reach a certain level. I think Bezos made $24 million in the first year of Covid - tax the top $23 million of that at 90% and it would still be $2.3 million.

Nobody needs that much money. Just going by Wikipedia the man has at least ten houses in the US and a half-billion dollar yacht. Nobody needs that much money.

Tax the rich. They can afford it.

(US tax brackets, by comparison, tax the poor more than the UK and the rich less.)

hS

Um, the way your first sentence is phrased it sounds like you support a flat, equal-rate tax for everyone, so I’m not sure I get the “naturally.”

I suppose he does make more than the average worker, but, again, he automatically would pay more by virtue of earning more under a flat-rate tax system.

Are you implying that he personally underpays Amazon workers? Because I honestly have no clue as to the statistics there. I don’t think Amazon has a workers’ union, but I don’t think the government needs to act as one. If he does run out of workers, then he’ll have no choice but to pay them higher (or outsource overseas). Or, customers could protest the unfair wages as well by boycotting.

Tl;dr, the government needn’t be a workers’ union.

I’m honestly not sure what the relevant data to this would be.

By the way, what would you consider a “fair share” of taxes on a theoretical person who earns a billion dollars a year? In numbers.

—Ls

If we pay x% of our income in taxes, so should he. That naturally means he should pay more, because he makes more (and off the backs of his workers, no less!), so if he doesn’t want to pay so much, maybe he should consider lowering his own paycheck and giving more to his workers, or hiring more workers so they’re not spread thin running around that warehouse. Though it sounds like given the high turnover rate at Amazon fulfillment centres that he’s gonna run out of people to hire…

There is a Style Guide if you need help with that.

Are you referring to E.V.L.? Because if so, I have to inform you of a couple things: SkarmorySilver, her author, is no longer active. That, and you can do whatever you want in missions. Only on the Board is there a PG-13 rule, though you have to warn for any content in missions. (To be clear, I’m asking mostly as a courtesy to those [myself included] who Don’t Swear.)

So...there’s not really anything that can be done about it, and most non-German speakers would never notice. As for “no one else cares”—that’s totally fine. As long as one person cares, you can post about it on the Board.

—Ls

...Sure, I'll do that. If not, I'll figure out something else for warning. Uh, I'm not so sure about the severity. It really depends on the circles people move in, I suppose. In general, most uses of strong languages don't really bother me, whether I use it myself or not. Added to cultural differences, I am generally grateful for pointers.

If I recall correctly, the "main offender" are the stories with the agent with detachable head. I can't remember her name, so I can't check for sure. The one I've referenced really really really ought to be flagged. Considering what you asked me to spoiler here, it's an Instant Banhammer level expression, so maybe I ought to try and find it. I admit, I tried to push it from my mind because it's so very out of place- a kind of cognitive dissonance and strong enough it overcomes my usual "strong language happens" attitude.

Anything else, it's sort of, yeah, it puts up the rating and makes all those "frells" read somewhat hypocritical, but not really concerning either way. It's not always possible to check the complete set of connotations, so I doubt most people would really get upset or even notice.

Anyhow, I didn't mean for this to get so... involved? If you are interested in pursueing this further, possibly we could find a way that doesn't clog up this space. I'm always up for a linguistics debate, as far as my limited knowledge allows, but I'm not sure if this is of interest to anybody else here.

As for participating elsewhere, sure, if I have something (hopefully) meaningful/funny/interesting to contribute, I will. I'm certainly reading along with great interest!

Read.

It was...kinda generic. Nothing particularly stood out to me.

—Ls

I meant to link to here.

Sorry.

Seriously, what’d you think of VEEL? I need allies in ze fight against ze Regulation.

Jokingly, —Ls

You're right. Cursing is a sociolect thing.

I think PPC authors are only using German profanity because they a) don't realize how bad it is and b) assume their readers will just go "Hey, look, He's swearing in German! I have no clue what it means, so it isn't really profanity. By the way, which mission(s) did you observe this in?

Also, we tend to spoilerthings, so...can you put your use of the s-word under spoiler? I' don't think it's a mild as its German equivalent.

Also, if you want to be active? Trying commenting in one of these threads. We like that.

--Ls

By the way, how do you feel about my Plortitical alter ego?

--Ls only recently realized that "Plort" and "plot" sound alike in British.

Yes, I am a Christian and a capitalist. I solemnly swear not to make "Morgoth I name you" speeches at people. I won't pester you into converting to Christianity either. Pestering people doesn't make them want to convert, it just makes them cranky.

I think cursing is a lot about what you're used to... what is considered "strong language" really varies between groups. I've noticed great variations, depending on the groups of people- kind of a sociolect thing, in places. I had to tone it down, myself, because I tend to be fairly direct and at times somewhat, hm, crusty? But if it doesn't get the message across because the tone reads differently than intended, it's better to change it.

For some reason, I've found several PPC stories by different authors using German curses. For me, this is extremely strange, because they are not toned down at all in some cases and may not necessarily fit the rating. In one instance, someone used a term that is very much in "whoa, you didn't just say this" territory. Even if it is congruent with the emotions described (rage, disgust and scorn turned to the maximum, specifically aimed at women), it rather floored me. Probably because it's not what I'd expected here.

The occasional "shit", well, that's just what people shout when they hit their thumb with a hammer, so someone saying "Scheiße" is not really upsetting. Just rather hilarious when the same text would use "frell" otherwise (again, depending on the character- if someone else does this, it might work fine).

I'm quite probably overthinking this. But, as you said, it's about having fun, and puzzling out these linguistic things is fun for me.

More cookies :-) Cookies are good.

I haven't touched the Pern books in a while, so I'll be confused on details anyhow. And, yeah, they are in German. Also, a lot of them are from the eighties, when translation of anything not deemed literary enough could be somewhat creative. As in, losing or abbreviating chapters, fully translating names so there's no chance to have a discussion without making a reference list, and usually changing the titles in such a way that there is no recognizable connection to the original title. This has gotten somewhat better, though probably not disappeared altogether.

In essence, I try to get English books in the original these days. Makes it a bit harder on the kids, but they've got to develop their own fandoms. And the watered down older versions are often somewhat more kid friendly than the originals. (No idea why, for things marketed to adults- but then, maybe the publishers thought nobody older than sixteen would read it?)

I remember this mission!

Agh, Serenity. I remember her too.

Ooh, mental floss. I want some.

I rather like the bring-a-camera-to-Hogwarts bit, it validates something I’m doing in an upcoming mission.

Taking “pff” up the stairs. I love that.

Huh, I kinda though “Ran” was a mini-Aragog based on the badfic text. Guess not, though...

“Periods! They go at the end of sentences!” Yes. Yes, they do, Jay.

"Aske...?" Jay asked, listening outside the door. I don’t quite get that dialogue.

Ooh, I like the arguing-with-the-teachers scene. Fun.

"Oh, look, the author stuck all the missing periods from everywhere else into that sentence. Charming," said Acacia sourly. Love. Love that so much.

Lightsaber training? No way they get every agent with a lightasber to go through with that.

—Ls, going hoppity skip. He’s not on drugs.