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by zepto
1809 days ago
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> he barely pays taxes - as a simple example of how wealthy people use their influence to distort social systems That’s an innuendo right there. Even if you are right that there are wealthy people (which ones?) Who have ‘distorted’ social systems (‘distorted’ from what ideal?), it’s innuendo to imply that Musk is somehow doing this, unless you have some specific evidence about his actions. The tax system may or may not be wrong in some way which we can discuss, but that isn’t about Musk and his businesses. Casting ‘billionaires’ as a group as all somehow bad in this way is a meaningless way to think about this. Frankly this is just political disinformation aimed at creating animus towards people rather than solutions. A parallel would be a statement like “Activists lies harm our political discourse and increase polarization”. Equally just innuendo, and equally meaningless although superficially ‘truthy’ looking. |
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> people in Musk's category of wealth have been increasingly effective at consolidating their wealth over the last 60 years
This is an empirically observable fact.
> His effective tax rate hovers around 5%
This is a quantitative statement.
I combine these two facts with a theorem - these realities do not emerge by accident. They are the byproduct of an intentional effort.
Therefore:
> It is not an accident that someone can accumulate wealth and find ways not evade taxation through measures not available to other people in society.
No innuendo. Also - I explicitly refuse to inject innuendo into the argument, admitting that the "goodness" or "badness" of this sort of manipulation is difficult to prove. I think his 5% tax rate is a problem. You do not. Fine. But before we can even talk about solutions, we need to accept a baseline of reality.