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[–] 247 points 1 year ago* (18 children)

Perpetuating the myth that student loan forgiveness means “your taxes are paying off student loans,” when it really means “government is telling banks to fuck off with their excessive interest rates on student loans.”

Tax money isn’t going to the banks* or the students. The students have usually paid off the loans, and are now struggling with the interest debt. The gov’t telling the bank to give up on that debt isn’t hurting anyone, but the bank doesn’t get as much profit as they could have - and since the banks own the senators & media outlets, we get the myth that student loan forgiveness means “taxes paying off student loans.”

*note - I think some deals do include the gov’t giving the banks some money to “cover their (imaginary) losses.”

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Also in the US, the bottom 50% don't pay a dime in federal income taxes.

    Also the concept of "MY" tax dollars is super selfish.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Imma need a source on that. Bottom 50% of who?

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

    The bottom 50% of Americans make less than $40k a year. They do pay some federal taxes, but with the standard deduction, the 19.3% of working Americans that make less than $15k a year don't pay any federal taxes. The standard deduction goes up to $22.5k for a head of household (i.e. a single working parent). Given that the federal minimum wage still works out to $15,080 a year, that means a full-time minimum wage worker doesn't make enough to get hit with income taxes.

    Edit: Here's a wikipedia article with the numbers I pulled and the tax bracket info is on the IRS website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    An important thing to note is that 50% don't pay federal tax, as you said here

    They still pay sales tax and taxes of that sort (which actually are significant), just not the federal income/property taxes

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    And that's not even getting into state income taxes, Medicare taxes, and Social Security taxes. Those all have different brackets and some states are more regressive than others. There are states like Texas that don't have income taxes, but they make up for it by taxing everything else through things like sales and property taxes.

    Of note: sales tax is always the most regressive taxation model, and tariffs are basically sales taxes on steroids.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There are states like Texas that don't have income taxes, but they make up for it by taxing everything else through things like sales and property taxes

    Fun fact: last I checked (~2 years ago) TX was like 8% more taxed than famously tax-happy CA, which pissed some Texan dickheads off when I pointed it out

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    [–] 116 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    can we yeet all these individualistic, self-righteous fucks into a volcano already?

    I'm so tired of having to convince these unempathetic, short-sighted dregs that caring about your fellow human is actually a good thing, and, y'know, kinda the whole basis to having a functioning civilization

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    [–] 111 points 1 year ago (22 children)

    Our ancestors worked 16 hours a day 6 days a week. Maybe we should go back to that just to be fair. My grandparents didn't have the polio vaccine better stop that too.

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  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-29/leisure-time-from-middle-ages-to-today-witold-rybczynski/103500020

    "In the Middle Ages, people actually had more leisure time and more holidays than we do," cultural historian Witold Rybczynski tells ABC RN's Life Matters.

    "Leisure was more important in terms of everyday life than the work. The work was harder and broken up much more … compared to today."

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Except, no?

    Medieval peasants had SOOO many holidays.

    It was a cheap way to keep them from violently revolting. Even then, it didn't always work.

    Speaking of violent revolt against an oppressive system, where are we at?

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    [–] 60 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Because "f u, I got mine" (and the other side of the coin too: "if I got fugged, so will you") is the one true creed in American society, and everyone that opposes it is a heretic/commie.

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    [–] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Oof is not really the appropriate title.

    The title should be whatever response you would make when somebody detonates a nuclear warhead directly inside of your soul.

    If I was her, I would put my phone down and walk outside of my house into the woods and never return.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago

    Do we know if she supports paying for her son's incarceration?

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    Oh gawd I hope this is real....thats

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I know this is not the point, of the post, but what the hell do they mean by calling the raped teen a Battlefield teen? Was she a pro gamer?

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    The show-me state strikes again

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    An Oklahoma man accused of sneaking into a teenage girl’s bedroom in the middle of the night in Battlefield and then raping and assaulting her was sentenced on Friday, Jan. 24 to 20 years in prison.

    Patrick Shane Sparkman, 41, entered Alford pleas of guilty to the charges of first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped one count of sodomy, two counts of molestation of a child between the ages of 4 and 17, one count of enticement of a child and one count of third-degree assault.

    According to online court records, Greene County Judge Kaiti Greenwade sentenced Sparkman to 10 years for the rape charge and 10 years for the sodomy charge and ordered those sentences be served consecutively.

    An Alford plea under Missouri law means a defendant does not admit they committed a crime, but admits prosecuting attorneys have enough evidence against them that a court could reasonably convict them of a crime.

    Charging documents described Sparkman as someone who’d been living in Battlefield at the time of the assault on Dec. 31, 2023, but had few ties to the area. He was arrested on March 29, 2024.

    According to the probable cause statement used to charge Sparkman, he “claimed he had no memory of the event ever happening. He stated he had been drinking heavily during the day which amounted to what he described was a ‘handle’ of alcohol.”

    A handle of liquor is a 1.75 liter bottle of liquor; it has 39 1.5-ounce shots in it.

    The victim told police the assault lasted about two hours. She also told police she told Sparkman “no” several times and that Sparkman at one point choked her.

    The probable cause statement says the investigating officer contacted the Stillwater, Oklahoma, police department about a “past rape charge” against Sparkman and obtained information that case involved a 10-year-old victim.

    Sparkman is from Oklahoma and has no ties to Battlefield, according to court documents.

    Sparkman remains in the Greene County Jail awaiting transport to a Missouri Department of Corrections prison.

    https://sgfcitizen.org/government/crime/man-sentenced-to-20-years-for-sneaking-into-battlefield-teens-room-and-raping-her/

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago*

    The probable cause statement says the investigating officer contacted the Stillwater, Oklahoma, police department about a “past rape charge” against Sparkman and obtained information that case involved a 10-year-old victim.

    Fuck it. Burn it all down. I think dolphins are next in line. Let's hope they do better than we did.

    EDIT - Goddammit I forgot dolphins are extremely rapey too.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (18 children)
  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (12 children)
  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (11 children)
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