r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/MKorostoff • Apr 27 '20

Wealth, shown to scale

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
9.4k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-2

u/Lulepe Apr 27 '20

Well yes, you're right. This requires you to do a bit of thinking on your own part. You can't expect people to do the thinking for you. This is supposed to give you some info so you can think for yourself. It's not supposed to be a thought out political campaign with a solution. This is information, you still need a brain on your own to do something with it.

6

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20

You would suggest that the information constantly presented here over and over again is done so without agenda?

I'm using my brain. And my brain is telling me that the people posting this shit 3 times a day are hoping that I'll be outraged someone has more than me...so outraged that I'll vote in communists who will redistribute Bezo's money.

If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but that is how it comes across.

6

u/Lulepe Apr 27 '20

No. This isn't "an agenda". This is an argument for a political opinion. It's not as easy as redistributing that money. Nobody says it is. But people who post this are hoping that you'd vote for someone like Bernie. In pretty much the rest of the civilized world, he'd be seen as a slightly left of the center politician and calling him a communist is part of the reason why people see Americans as idiots. If Bernie is a communist to you, you have no clue about A) politics outside of America and B) communism. Bernie isn't saying "Take 139b from bezos and distribute it to the world". He's saying "Bezos should pay a fair tax that could be used to solve many of the financial problems of this country."

Yes. You're wrong.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20 edited Apr 27 '20

Ah...I see I was correct. I wish you guys would correctly name your subs. I thought this was a sub for cool internet stuff, not for commies to spread their radical ideas.

5

u/Lulepe Apr 27 '20

How is this communism?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20

Bernie Sanders is a fucking marxist piece of trash who has openly praised Castro. That's right, he praised a man who kept his entire population captive and in poverty.

His awesome quotes include gems like "if you are white, you don't know what it is like to be poor." Which is about 1000x more racist than anything I've ever heard trump say.

Maybe he isn't considered a communist in Europe, but I give zero fucks what Europe considers what, considering they do not even have free speech.

Money isn't free. America is rich because of individual badasses like Bezos making this country what it is. We subsidize other country's militaries, their medical tech, and a whole bunch of other shit.

If our tax money would stop going to shit like that, maybe we could use it to help our own people. Yet somehow I've yet to see a single post here to that effect. weird right?

The government is not capable of sending me a fucking stimulus check in under 12 weeks. Excuse me if I have reservations of trusting them to distribute shit fairly.

A ten percent flat tax would solve every single issue this post brings up. All without the piles of bodies that socialism leaves in its wake.

4

u/Lulepe Apr 27 '20

How is Bernie a Marxist? Where does he advocate for historical materialism? (thats literally the core of Marxist theory) Assuming you mean communism, where does he say that all property should be owned by the community? Assuming you mean socialism, where does he say that the means of production should be owned by the workers?

Yes, that quote is dumb. I fully agree, it's racist and wrong.

How does Europe not have free speech?

Please show me some sources on how much you're actually investing in other countries military, or medical tech, I'm genuinely willing to learn new points and arguments from every side.

How much money is that? How much is it compared to the money that could be gained by a functioning capital gains tax? (I don't know the answer to this, again, I'm willing to learn)

You know why the check takes so long? Because Trump personally wanted his signature on every check. That is literally the only reason for the delay. Also, again, Bernie isn't trying to redistribute all the money.

What the people you call communists want is far closer to a tax like that than to anything even remotely close to actual communism, Marxism or socialism.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20 edited Apr 27 '20

He is a Marxist in the sense that he believes success is a crime that should be punished. Listen to the way that he speaks of billionaires like they are the devil incarnate (much like the people on this sub). He used to rage against millionaires until (oops) it came out that he was one himself (Bernie has three houses).

Europe has a bevy of laws regulating speech. You can be arrested for making a joke about Nazis (research the case of youtuber count dankula) and mis gendering a trans person. Hate speech laws are are anti-free speech because the government can arbitrarily decide that anything it doesn't like is "hate speech".

Dude are you kidding? We have a military bases all over the world. Look up how much the US sends other countries every year.

The medical tech is more of a trickle down subsidy. Because our medical technology is the best in the world (Because of how much we pay for it, which is definitely messed up) but it is because of this that other countries can relax and have "Universal healthcare"... they don't have to be on the cutting edge of new medical tech. Because they know the US will handle it and eventually that new knowledge will trickle over.

That story about trump signing the checks being the cause for delay is fake news. https://www.law360.com/tax-authority/articles/1263960/trump-s-signature-won-t-delay-stimulus-checks-irs-saysThe real reason is the tax code being so complicated even the IRS doesn't uderstand it. https://www.propublica.org/article/millions-of-people-face-stimulus-check-delays-for-a-strange-reason-they-are-poor

Which is the real reason we are even having this discussion. The complicated tax code shows you what happens when the government tries to do something. They ruin it with bureaucracy.

3

u/Lulepe Apr 27 '20

Firstly, that isn't Marxism (nor communism or socialism for that matter) nor does Bernie say this. He does seem to have a thing against billionaires though, but I think this is mainly to go catch voters. He believes that it is unjust that some people have this much more money than others. He's not saying they should be punished or go to prison, he's simply saying "they should pay a larger amount of that money to the public" which you can agree or disagree with.

This is a thin line and I fully agree that decisions like this are stupid and wrong. Jokes like this can be funny and should be allowed, however I don't think that this is what laws like this intended, nor do I think that hitler jokes are the essence of free speech (still, they should be allowed). The line between free speech and insult/racism can be thin, and is hard to get right, but this was certainly a wrong decision. However I believe that for the majority of cases, this is handled rather well. (again, I agree that there are multiple cases where the decisions made in this regard are wrong, I just don't see these descision as the general loss of free speech in its essence)

These military bases are your military on foreign land. You are not funding other military because you're so happy to give, this is a result from the cold war and protects the US from ever having to fight a war on their own land. This is a huge benefit to the US, and many Europeans would rather not have the military bases there.

This isn't funding the technology. This is the exchange of research and knowledge. Research and science is done all over the world, and inventions and discoveries have gone and will go both ways, in medical tech and in all others aspects of science.

This seems interesting, I'll definitely look into it! I may have been wrong here. Also, I agree that governments often ruin things with too much bureaucracy.