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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • The day before the first day of work from home I got fired from my engineering job at an oil company. Soon after I smoked weed occasionally for the first time in years after having received random drug tests. Unemployment extensions were nice too!

    I bought a big laser cutter and started making art. Spent more time helping out at the local artist collective sprucing things up.

    Eventually I got hooked up with a cool LED art installation company helping them install their projects as a freelancer. Now I’m full time with them!

    It’s lower pay than the oil company but it is so much more rewarding, interesting, cooler people, better work/life balance. Overall the pandemic was fun times for me personally.




  • I’m specifically talking about very low income families since I am talking about the general pros and cons of applying an inheritance tax to all citizens since we are discussing why the inheritance tax might have been removed in Austria / German. I’m not familiar with international tax law to be more specific about income levels so I’m trying ro cover all bases.

    If a poor family is sharing a car or a family restaurant, it could be very damaging to have to pay tax on these assets if they don’t have savings.

    I understand that this doesn’t apply to families with large assets and I agree that an inheritance tax is generally a good thing when applied progressively.



  • I think this viewpoint assumes that everyone lives independently. A lot of families function as units and they all live and work together. If you inherit post-tax income from a family member, then the money has been fairly taxed regardless of your viewpoint.

    Why should you have to pay the government to inherit your late-parent’s car or business? What happens if you can’t afford to pay the tax?

    For the low income families this can make or break a person’s way of life, for the 1% it is a way of hoarding the world’s wealth and maintain power.


  • For regular people, an inheritance tax is not great. For the ultra-wealthy it should be mandatory.

    Arguments against an inheritance tax:

    • Double taxation: Critics argue that inheritance taxes are a form of double taxation, since the assets being inherited have already been taxed once during the decedent’s lifetime.
    • Hurts small businesses: Family-owned businesses can face hardship if they must be sold off to pay inheritance taxes.
    • Discourages investment: Inheritance taxes can disincentivize people from saving and investing, as they know a portion of their wealth will go to the government.

    Arguments for an inheritance tax:

    • Reduces wealth inequality: Inheritance taxes help to redistribute wealth from the very wealthy to the rest of society, reducing income inequality.
    • Prevents concentration of power: By limiting the ability of wealth to be passed on unchecked, inheritance taxes can help to prevent excessive concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a few families.
    • Source of government revenue: Inheritance taxes can be a significant source of revenue for governments, which can be used to fund social programs and public goods.






  • It mostly bothers me when I just order 1 entree and a water. At one place that might cost $10, and at another place it might cost $30, and all the wait staff did was carry a plate from the kitchen to me in both cases.

    It doesn’t seem fair that the wait staff at the more expensive place gets tipped more than the less expensive place just because of an arbitrary custom.

    The extra cost of the expensive meal is mostly due to ingredients, the cooking process, the location, and maaay slightly more complicated table setting.


  • This is like when I was 11 and my family went hiking up a mountain in Yellowstone. My young cousin and I thought my brother was ahead of us on the trail so we hurried up trying to catch up to him. We were passing many hikers on a busy trail and being safe.

    An hour later my brother comes running up behind us saying everyone is looking for us! Apparently the park rangers had been mobilized to search for us, the missing children, and when we got down the mountain an hour or more later our families were down there in tears fearing we had fallen off the mountain or something.

    Point being, it’s totally possible for everyone to think you’re lost and in danger when you are fine and know exactly where you are.



  • At the risk of sounding like propaganda myself… Just because you don’t witness poverty and crime doesn’t mean it is propaganda. US has a major homeless and drug epidemic that is getting worse. It is easy for those with money to put it out of sight and ignore it.

    I’m visiting China for the first time right now for 2 weeks and I must say I’m very impressed with how clean the cities are and the lack of homeless and drug addicts.

    In the US my old house in OKC has been broken into twice by homeless and my parent’s house in Miami twice as well, and their car stolen twice. Walking to work in Brooklyn, people are literally sleeping on the sidewalks under trash bags every night as everyone walks past like they aren’t there.

    Even in my my home town in Vermont, population under 10,000, there are always homeless people out in the cold begging and sleeping in tents in the woods. These people have given up on life, or given bad luck, or addicted to drugs.

    I haven’t seen any of that in China so far. Sure there are some areas outside the city centers that are more depressing looking, lack much personality, and have run down buildings but at least everyone has a home, a job, and is taken care of. People here seem to have more respect for themselves and for others. It is part of the culture here.

    Everyone I talk to here says it is incredibly safe. In fact, today I saw my first 2 police cars on the highway for the first time a week into my trip. And we’ve been driving an average of 3 hours per day everywhere between Shenzhen and ChengDu (visiting factories ). There are many cameras everywhere but there isn’t a need for hundreds of police to patrol the streets non-stop like in every city in the US. I haven’t heard a single siren the entire trip either - in cities of 20 million. You won’t find that in NYC which has half the population. Just some thoughts I wanted to share, thanks for reading.