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Hapankaali

@ Hapankaali @lemmy.world

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146
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • The Economist: Don't go after the rich to fix broken budgets.

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  • Both the standard of living in a society and the rate of innovation are strongly positively correlated with the progressivity of the tax system. Yet we should believe the author's unsourced "research" that supposedly proves having wealthy people live in slightly smaller mansions will dampen innovation somehow. Horseshit. Both the Netherlands and Switzerland, countries that are more prosperous and more innovative than the US, have wealth taxes (albeit not very high ones) and far more progressive income tax brackets as well (albeit not at Nordic levels).

  • What's "email"?

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  • The amount (usually much less - unless there was some marauding army nearby) aside, it was more complicated than that. Taxation was delegated across a hierarchy of various stages; at each stage a mixture of negotiation, deception and coercion would be used to determine the taxation amount. The lowest-level tax collectors typically worked akin to a mob protection racket, and their own livelihood depended on extracting a surplus above what their employer (typically some noble) demanded.

    Certainly substantially less transparent and simple than clicking through an online form in a few minutes.

  • What's "email"?

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  • Pretty sure filing taxes (taking all of 5 minutes) is a heck of a lot simpler for me than for any medieval peasant or minor nobility.

  • Is £70 becoming harder to justify? The rise of cheaper blockbuster games

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  • $100 today is about $40 in 1990. In those days games were made by a handful of people or even a single individual in one of two years of development. Chris Sawyer started work on the 1994 classic Transport Tycoon in 1992 and wrote the entire codebase in x86 Assembly. The price isn't really that crazy considering the comparatively massive undertaking that is GTA6 development.

    Having said that, it's rare nowadays for any AAA game to release anywhere near its best state, so it tends to be worth it to wait even if money isn't the concern.

  • Life expectancy in U.S. States and Select Countries

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  • There is a strong correlation between shitty health care and low life expectancy.

  • British far-right activist Tommy Robinson, previously barred from the US due to criminal convictions, received a US visa

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  • Makes sense. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is notorious for helping paedophiles in the UK.

  • Bayer agrees to pay $7.25 billion to settle Roundup weedkiller cancer lawsuits

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  • The argument that because the epa didn’t put a warning on there they are free to not warn people about dangers they know exist is incredible. Because we corrupted the federal regulatory agency, we are free to poison everyone that trusts the system with impunity.

    This isn't really a fair representation of the situation. Here's the current version of Wikipedia's article on Roundup concerning its potential carcinogenic properties:

    There is limited evidence that human cancer risk might increase as a result of occupational exposure to large amounts of glyphosate, such as agricultural work, but no good evidence of such a risk from home use, such as in domestic gardening.[31] The consensus among national pesticide regulatory agencies and scientific organizations is that labeled uses of glyphosate have demonstrated no evidence of human carcinogenicity.[32] Organizations such as the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues and the European Commission, Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment[33] have concluded that there is no evidence that glyphosate poses a carcinogenic or genotoxic risk to humans. The final assessment of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority in 2017 was that "glyphosate does not pose a carcinogenic risk to humans".[34] The EPA has evaluated the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate multiple times since 1986. In 1986, glyphosate was initially classified as Group C: "Possible Human Carcinogen", but later recommended as Group D: "Not Classifiable as to Human Carcinogenicity" due to lack of statistical significance in previously examined rat tumor studies. In 1991, it was classified as Group E: "Evidence of Non-Carcinogenicity for Humans", and in 2015 and 2017, "Not Likely to be Carcinogenic to Humans".[35][36]

    One international scientific organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classified glyphosate in Group 2A, "probably carcinogenic to humans" in 2015.[27] The variation in classification between this agency and others has been attributed to "use of different data sets" and "methodological differences in the evaluation of the available evidence".[32] In 2017, California environmental regulators listed glyphosate as “known to the state to cause cancer.” The state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment made the decision based in part on the report from the IARC. State Proposition 65 requires the state office to add substances the international agency deems carcinogenic in humans or laboratory animals to a state list of cancer-causing items.[37]

    Why is Bayer setting aside billions to settle claims specifically in the US? Because they know how incredibly broken the US legal system is, and they may very well face expensive legal judgements issued by easily manipulated juries and/or "judges" looking to score career points - despite the lack of any convincing evidence Roundup is carcinogenic.

  • What tourist destinations do you think are NOT overrated?

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  • Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Not a "nice" or "beautiful" tourist experience, obviously, but an extremely impressive one. I'm not a very emotional person, and have no personal link to the Holocaust, but one of the few times of my adult life I cried was when I visited the memorial site.

  • If you made $50,000 a year and donated 0.06%, you'd donate $30... that's it.

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  • Fair point. The human right situation here is a bit better, so I don't feel like I need to do anything other than try to vote for the least shitty politicians. That might change if the (increasingly popular) fascists get their way, though thus far the threat doesn't seem immediate.

    There is no bail either, that's just class justice and an egregious human rights violation.

  • If you made $50,000 a year and donated 0.06%, you'd donate $30... that's it.

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  • Keep in mind that donations to religious institutes are counted as charitable donations, whereas they can - in the best case - be more accurately described as variable membership fees. That's 39% of all donations according to the link.

    Some of the donations to education institutes (19%) are also not really donations but rather bribes, aimed at receiving preferential treatment for children in admissions.

    Even taking that into account, charitable giving (by non-billionaires) tends to be quite high in the US compared to other western countries. Perhaps general distrust of the government plays a role. Speaking only for myself, I could give much more to charity, but only give to the Wikimedia Foundation since by my reckoning most of the causes that should get more money (e.g., scientific research) can be handled overwhelmingly more efficiently by the government. So I would end up spending money which goes to lobbying against what I consider the better solution. I would much rather pay more taxes and vote accordingly.

  • EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

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  • Sending it to "poor countries" (outside the EU) is more expensive than sending it to a local charity or just putting it on sale.

  • Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free

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  • You should also take into account that expenses are reduced because the need for payment infrastructure and processing disappears.

  • Merz Urges Germans to Work More, Cites Greece as Model

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  • Productivity in any case craters after about 30 hours per week, but people like Merz don't realize that since they haven't actually worked in their lives.

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene Drops Bombshell: Trump ‘Fought the Hardest’ to Bury Epstein Files, Warns MAGA It Was No Hoax

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  • "Get caught" in what sense? Surely you don't expect him to face any consequences?

  • Video Games Need to Be Cheaper to Buy

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  • AAA games are significantly cheaper in real terms than they were in the 90s.

    30 CAD in 1993 is about 58 CAD today, and those weren't even the most expensive games in the flyer you saw then.

    Especially console titles were expensive by modern standards, the main titles like Mario games retailed for something like 150 USD in 2026 dollars.

  • It's the reality! (reposted to ensure accuracy)

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  • Ranked-choice voting in single-member districts is a small improvement over first-past-the-post, but it maintains a two-party system. Proportional representation is a necessary requirement for a functional democracy.

  • How seriously is Quantum Immortality taken?

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  • Because empirical evidence is lacking.

  • How seriously is Quantum Immortality taken?

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  • Not at all. Yes, there are a few such as Penrose and Josephson who have dabbled in this nonsense, but very few in the community take it seriously.

  • Gallup to stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years

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  • That was true... in 1979.