It feels like even Western governments are becoming more and more protective of their aristocrat-class, and openly collude and steal from the people.
Canada (legally) abused its judicial reach on finance institutions during the pandemic.
The US Congress is pretty much openly using insider knowledge to win big on stocks.
The Democrats launched FBI investigations against their political opponents without sufficient legal backing.
The Republicans tried to bully their way into countering the will of the people by blocking the presidential election results.
France passed through unconstitutional reforms without the votes.
The UK's Conservative party misled the public about the EU to get the Brexit vote.
All of this without a care in the world about the effects it has on its citizens. All they care about is themselves and their fights. They have completely lost track of serving the people, and are fully comfortable in serving themselves at the expense of the people.
[Disclaimer: Am Canadian, voted Liberal x2, and I disagree with the protests that happened, but I don't approve of that specific measure.]
> France passed through unconstitutional reforms without the votes
As confirmed by higher courts, including the constitutional one, the reforms were constitutional and pushed through via a constitutional measure (49.3) that gives the government the (limited in number of attempts) power to force legislation, unless a motion of no confidence brings them down. The fact that the motions didn't get a majority means that the reforms had enough votes for them, but the members of parliament didn't want to be directly associated with having voted for them, which required the maneuver. The reforms are highly unpopular, controversial, imperfect, but in the end were needed. You could frame it as stealing from the people, I'd frame it as an imperfect attempt to ensure a long-term financial stability (France spends a lot on pensions, regularly runs deficits, and the projections were pretty terrible - optimistic scenarios for 2050 had 15% of the GDP going for pensions, for a median Quality of Life 75% of that of the median active worker. That's fundamentally unsustainable, and vague populist "we'll just tax X" won't fix it. We could have had a better reform, but I'll take a poor one over none at all).
First politicians make unrealistically high pensions to gain votes and then they find out that economy cannot sustain paying them. What a surprise. And now poor 62-year old Frenchmen have to work hard to pay for those politicians' mistakes.
Also, I wonder, if the law is such controversial, why not hold a referendum? Why not let people decide for themselves, whether they want to raise the pension age or lower the pension to more realistic figures? I think that would be the most democratic way to resolve the issue instead of beating people by police.
> First politicians make unrealistically high pensions to gain votes and then they find out that economy cannot sustain paying them. What a surprise
It took multiple decades for it to become unsustainable thanks to increasing life durations.
> Also, I wonder, if the law is such controversial, why not hold a referendum
Because fundamentally, if you ask people if they want to work 2 more years, very few will say yes. This is an unpopular decision, like carbon cutting measures, that is needed at the higher level, but few will choose to make the sacrifice.
> Because fundamentally, if you ask people if they want to work 2 more years, very few will say yes
What's the point of democracy if you don't let people decide anything? (also what's the point of having a Parliament that doesn't decide anything). If people don't want to work, then lower the pensions to realistic figures.
> If people don't want to work, then lower the pensions to realistic figures.
People don't want that too, of course.
> also what's the point of having a Parliament that doesn't decide anything
Parliament decides most things, it's just that there is the option to force stuff through them in limited types of scenarios and a limited amount of times (which they can refuse with a motion of no confidence). So it's not like the President can just rule by decree and do whatever they want.
> What's the point of democracy if you don't let people decide anything?
What can I say, democracy has it's flaws. People are easily attracted to empty populists that promise stuff that doesn't make sense, or would be downright catastrophic; politicians are incentivised to think short term (next election cycle) instead of medium and long term (nobody got reelected because they gave money to a nuclear research programme that is scheduled to finish in 30 years time). Having politicians with the guts to make reforms that are needed, even if unpopular, is crucial for the long term health of a country. Sadly it's quite hard to have that without spiralling into authoritarianism, and downright impossible to differentiate between that and a politician doing things for their own (friends/business partners) benefit - e.g. did Macron force this reform through because, as he says, he believes it's necessary to avoid French debts spiralling out of control, or because it will push more people into private retirement schemes and he's getting a cutback from that?
Note that that clause was added to the constitution as a consequence of De Gaulle's military coup in 1958. The coup is what created the extremely strong French presidency.
And was added to avoid the chaos and instability of the Third and Fourth Republics which were parliamentary but had big difficulties establishing lasting consensus, and thus had most governments lasting barely a few months.
So the military took power, installed a general, and had the constitution changed to allow the president to force through legislation without a parliamentary majority.
The military didn't take power, there was a coup attempt that failed.
> allow the president to force through legislation without a parliamentary majority.
Unless there is a motion of no confidence which can be called immediately after such an act, and if it passes with a simple majority, the legislation doesn't pass and the government falls. Therefore it allows the president's government to force through laws only if there aren't enough members of parliament to vote for them, but not against them.
The 1958 coup was successful. You might be confusing it with the failed 1961 coup.
In 1958, the military in Algeria (then still part of France) rebelled against the government, and successfully invaded Corsica. They threatened to invade metropolitan France unless the government stepped down, which it did. They then installed Charles de Gaulle in power and rewrote the constitution.
As French Wikipedia notes, "il s'agit du dernier coup d'État réussi en France" ("it's the last successful coup d'état in France").[0]
> Therefore it allows the president's government to force through laws only if there aren't enough members of parliament to vote for them, but not against them.
It forces parliament to choose between deposing the government or allowing the law to go through. There's no option to simply reject the law, as would be the case in most normal democracies.
> The 1958 coup was successful. You might be confusing it with the failed 1961 coup.
Indeed you're right, I'm confusing my coups.
> It forces parliament to choose between deposing the government or allowing the law to go through. There's no option to simply reject the law, as would be the case in most normal democracies.
Yes, that's the whole point of the 49.3 provision, for the government to be able to force legislation that parliament wouldn't agree to. That's why there are guardrails around it, like parliament having the option to bring down the government if it disagrees.
Consider me old-fashioned, but I prefer that legislation only pass if parliament approves it. This is an antidemocratic element of the French constitution.
It is antidemocratic, but it's entirely on purpose after the highly unstable Third and Fourth Republics. Therefore it was decided that it's better to have a strong president with limited powers to override democracy, over chaos, instability and lack of progress (if you have a new government every 6 months because majorities are thin and depend on multi-sided compromises that often fall apart, nothing serious can get done)
And now the president is using that antidemocratic element of the constitution - added as the result of a military coup - to force through a highly unpopular (a large majority of the population opposes it, which is why parliament won't pass it), highly impactful pension reform.
I find it funny to use "both sides of the aisle" in the context of the French political system.
> Usage of the term "aisle" comes from the United States Congress. In the Senate, desks are arranged in the chamber in a semicircular pattern and the desks are divided by a wide central aisle. By tradition, Democrats sit on the right of the center aisle (as viewed from the presiding officer's chair) while Republicans sit on the left.
I'll admit I was lazy and did not want to look how to write "both sides of the political spectrum".
Don't know who voted down, but on the off chance that it helps arrange your gripe, here's the list of statesmen and their use of 49.3 (since 1958)
Michel Rocard 28 "left"
Élisabeth Borne 11 "center"
Raymond Barre 8 "center"
Jacques Chirac 8 "right"
Édith Cresson 8 "left"
Pierre Mauroy 7 "left"
Georges Pompidou 6 "right"
Manuel Valls 6 "right"
Laurent Fabius 4 "left"
.. Rocard was in power 3 years, and Borne only 14 months, so if one extrapolates naively she will eventually arrive in top position. But 1) we're not voting on pensions every day and 2) I think one has to admit that the political climate has changed since 1993 and the current opposition does not make a super constructive partner. In the end, the country has to move forward. That's precisely why 49.3 exists.
> I'd frame it as an imperfect attempt to ensure a long-term financial stability
I somehow seriously doubt raising retirement age by 2 years (from 62 to 64, life expectancy is 82) will "ensure a long-term financial stability". There are usually many other way to optimize the system, but macron chose exactly to take from people.
It's quite significant. Life expectancy is about 82 in France. Retiring at 62 vs 64 means:
1. Years of retirement: -2
2. Years of retirement payments: +2
3. Years of retirement fund returns: +2
(3) is significant because at the end the fund will have about 40 years of payments. Suppose an 8% nominal return for two years on average, this means you're getting about 16% on 40 years of savings, or ±6.5 years of savings, on top of 2 years of extra savings by working two extra years, on top of needing 2 years of fewer pay-outs, meaning the 20 year retirement is cut by 8.5 years, or a -42% decrease.
Not to mention side benefits. (ample evidence that working and staying active longer, reduces healthcare costs on society, for example).
I'm simplifying the calculations quite a bit of course, but this actually has a massive impact.
When getting the life expectancy numbers did you exclude all deaths from before "working age"?
Because a significant effect is imparted by childhood deaths to the average life expectancy, especially for men, and those individuals never contribute to any pension fund nor taxes.
That has a massive impact on the results of the calculations.
The projected annual pension defecit was 30 billion in 15 years, then gradual reduction (as people die). This was the most optimistic scenario, based on x% growth and y% unemployment. Other scenarios were analysed.
Btw, these analyses were performed by the Council for the Orientation of the Pensions, a bi-partisan entity.
The other options you mention were :
* more tax on people (france famously already has the highest in the OECD)
* more tax on companies (which will just increase cost of work and thus drive jobs elsewhere)
* run a defecit (debt is already scary high, and it means essentially making pay our kids for grandma's old age)
What is the other way you had in mind?
Note: two years later paying out means two year more paying in. So two years "effectively is 4 years".
in the context of pensions, "tax on companies" generally means "increasing the employer part of social charges" (as apposed to the employee part). The French system requires that the various social systems operate as separate funds, at equilibrium, and does not foresee paying shortcomings from general revenues such as VAT or income tax.
Hence, increasing the employer part of social charges increases the cost of work.
Anyway, the direct tax burden on French companies is already quite high. This means that French companies have difficulties competing with foreign companies. Mutatis mutandis they either raise the price to compensate (and so are more expensive) or keep the same price and lose margin (and have therefore lower capacity to invest).
Countries can fix tax levels as they want (it's one of few policy areas where European countries have full autonomy) but they can't use tariffs or import taxes to protect their market. We have all agreed to free trade, and the WTO will punish those who do. So in reality, you can't just tax any way you want, unless you want to destroy part of your local economy.
Which number would you tweak to make a retirement fund financially balanced?
I am not an expert, but of the top of my mind we have the following possibilities:
[1] balance the bottom of the age pyramid: get more working people. Either by creating a social/financial situation that gives young people the security to get kids or by easing work migration from places with many young people.
[2] balance the top end of the pyramid: make the health aystem worse so people die earlier and you don't have to pay pensions so long
[3] raise the retirement age so the fewer payers raise more money and you have to pay out less over time.
[4] change the way retirement funds are allowed to work with the money so they can work with the interest
[5] If bureaucratic cost is an issue with the retirement system you can save some money here, but it is going to be peanuts in comparison to the other measures.
[6] Raise the money from elsewhere (e.g. by taxing investment gains oe by raising wages and have a bigger fraction of the wage going to retirement funds)
Option 1 either takes long (kids that will be born in a few years will not be able to work until decades later) or has cultural side effects (a significant amount of migration can lead to all kind of tensions with the local population).
Option 2 is not an option on ethical grounds.
Option 3 is the easy option, although it has the side effect that people who know they are never going to retire might not want to get kids so the problem gets worse without some measure to counter this.
Option 4 is something scandinavian pension funds already do (investing the money for returns), although the risk has to be managed properly then.
If you can't motivate people to get more kids (well paying secure jobs and a positive outlook on the future) the only number you can reasonably adjust in an aging society is the retirement age. People live longer so they have to work longer. As a fraction of the average livespan they work the same.
If France raises the retirement age by two years to 64 they are still retiring earlier than all surrounding countries. Italy: 67, Spain: 66, Germany, Belgium: 65
> [6] Raise the money from elsewhere (e.g. by taxing investment gains oe by raising wages and have a bigger fraction of the wage going to retirement funds)
yeah, for example I googled and found that corp tax dropped from 33 to 25 in last five years, so they literally took money from employees and gave to employers.
But trivial change could be to make pensions base on retirement age: someone can retire at 62, but get smaller pension, and another could retire at 78 but get much larger pension, plus have pension base on contribution.
> But trivial change could be to make pensions base on retirement age: someone can retire at 62, but get smaller pension, and another could retire at 78 but get much larger pension, plus have pension base on contribution.
That trivial change is essentially already the case. There's no law that requires you to work like some kind of slave. You can retire whenever you want. The laws are about the age to be eligible for full-retirement. You can already retire early and receive a lower retirement, or keep working for much longer and have a much higher income in retirement.
> corp tax dropped from 33 to 25 in last five years
To drive economic growth. France's gdp per capita is lower today than it was 15 years ago. In the US it's 45% higher than it was 15 years ago. France's corporate system wasn't working, and high taxes were a key reason from lots of studies.
Anyway, taxes aren't really that relevant for retirement. If a person needs to consume 10 units of goods/services (e.g. food, clothes, healthcare, whatever), and workers produce 40 units each, a population of 25 workers can produce 1000 units and sustain another 75 retirees (1000 production, 1000 consumption).
If you lower the retirement age such that there are just 15 workers and 85 retirees, you're now still consuming 1000 units, but only produce 600 units. There's massive shortages, prices skyrocket, and many people become poor because there's not enough production to meet their needs.
Raising lots of money through taxes doesn't change this fundamental issue. Even if you give everyone $ 1 trillion dollars of money, in this economic system, there's still not enough production to meet needs. So you need one of two things to solve it: more workers (= more production), or more productivity per worker (= more production). That latter point is not something the government can really control, although high taxes tend to drive productivity per worker down because economic activity is less rewarding to the source of the activity, as the activity is taxed. So high taxes can actually make this situation worse.
I'm aware I'm simplifying a lot but I hope it helps to show taxes don't address the root-cause issue.
> To drive economic growth. France's gdp per capita is lower today than it was 15 years ago. In the US it's 45% higher than it was 15 years ago. France's corporate system wasn't working, and high taxes were a key reason from lots of studies.
actually, high corp taxes can drive economic growth, because they give incentive to companies to reinvest into the business and not into shareholder's pockets.
The real solution would've been to not create an unsustainable pyramid scheme in the first place. Unfortunately the negative effects of it take so long to appear that the people who created the system will never feel them.
Exactly. We should have based much more of our politics around dealing with the age structure in society, just like we should have dealt with climate change when it was still easier to deal with.
But on the other hand the shareholders were very happy, so there's that.
The population pyramid is mostly due to the post WW II babyboom. Not sure what you're proposing then (family planning?) and now (also family planning but now reverse, mass migration?) going forwards to get a grip on a balanced population pyramid.
I don't think they expected the population pyramid to turn out the way it did. People in the past worried about global overpopulation, I don't think they would've done that if they had had an idea that population would naturally cap itself out without anybody even doing anything.
It's understandable why these systems were set-up, but some generation in the future (maybe us) will pay the price.
What about a system that could encourage partial retirement into part time service industries or consulting? Or to working at non-profits, subsidized by retirement funds. Of course this is already the case, but if it was formalized it could continue to help offset the retirement gap and provide a meaningful opportunities to retirees, and retirement could be seen as an opportunity to pursue a long sought secondary interest or make a difference, rather than being a net drain on society.
This political debate was shitty enough when it happened, there is no need to rehash that political bullshit whenever you see the topic mentioned somewhere.
Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's ethical. The french government has a long history of very legal genocides and working camps, for example.
Those pension reforms were not "needed", unless you can argue it with a proper source. There was no present or foreseeable deficit for decades ; you say 2050 yourself. Moreover there's plenty of money around: Macron could just reinstate the ISF tax on wealth he removed, or he could fight corporate tax fraud which is in the dozens/hundreds of billions of euros every year. No, he just wants to tax the poor and redistribute to the rich.
> We could have had a better reform, but I'll take a poor one over none at all
You either say this because you are very young and not yet tired with work, or because you have very comfortable work that does not break your entire body. If you know some people working in factories, in trash collection, or in construction business, ask them what they think about working 2 years more before retiring, while white collars have pre-retirement champagne in the Bahamas built on their backs. Many blue collar workers do not even make it to the retirement age, and work injuries/death have increased dramatically in the past decade.
Since the 19th century, human productivity has increased a hundred-fold. Scientists and politicians across the spectrum back then predicted we would soon have a 4-hour working day. How can you humanely justify taking all this productivity increase and giving all the benefits to the already-rich, even taking away some of the few scraps poor people have?
Pensions schemes as invented in the 20th century are essentially ponzi schemes which are fundamentally unfundable. If you are born in the West after 1980 do no expect your government pension to provide any sort of significant income after retirement. Especially considering the demographical changes in the western world - there will not be enough workers paying for the retired population.
I don't expect to have a retirement, but not due to demographic factors. I don't expect to have a retirement because Sarkozy then Macron have reformed the pension system despite quasi-unanimous opposition across the political spectrum. They are taking it away from us, and short of an actual revolution there's nothing we can do about it.
However, it's important to note that the equation cannot be equated to euros and jobs. As i previously mentioned, due to the increase in productivity in the past centuries, it's now possible to feed and house the entire population with lesser people working these fields. If a government wanted to find a solution, they would at least study the emergence of bullshit jobs, what jobs are actually "essential" (as they said during COVID lockdowns) and how to better share the actual workload and benefits across society.
> Those pension reforms were not "needed", unless you can argue it with a proper source. There was no present or foreseeable deficit for decades ; you say 2050 yourself
https://www.cor-retraites.fr/node/595 (research organisation composed of employers and unions). Again, their optimistic projections, which count on economic growth which isn't a given, project a bleak situation by 2050; that doesn't mean in 2040 it will be perfect. Even 2050 is merely 27 years away, and as was seen, a pension reform isn't easy nor fast to do.
Regarding blue collar manual labour, that's why there's adjustments for such work (it counts more enabling faster retirement). And that's where the real discussions should have been had, IMO, on adjusting for a better scenario for blue collar and similar work, instead of unions and populist political parties flat out rejecting a reform and calling for bringing down the age of retirement. It made compromise impossible.
> Since the 19th century, human productivity has increased a hundred-fold. Scientists and politicians across the spectrum back then predicted we would soon have a 4-hour working day. ?
And in the 19th century they couldn't even dream of the things we have today. The amount and quality of labour that goes into providing all needs and amenities of modern life is much higher than before.
> How can you humanely justify taking all this productivity increase and giving all the benefits to the already-rich, even taking away some of the few scraps poor people have
Where am I doing that, and what does a pension reform have to do with that? France is already one of the countries with the highest tax burdens for the well-off.
That's funny because the report is really not as pessimistic as you say. First, because the part of pensions in the GDP stays more or less the same across their projections, and they say (p.3 synthesis) « the results of this report do not validate the idea that pension spendings are growing uncontrolled ».
Second, because as they say, the government is supposed to bring the pension funds to balance... The same austerity government, who by destroying public service is defunding the pension system (p.5 synthesis): « It is a paradox that the austerity measures on public servants will negatively affect the balance of the pension system ».
> Regarding blue collar manual labour, that's why there's adjustments for such work (it counts more enabling faster retirement)
This is close to non-existent lately. Macron in his working law reform (2016) and pension reform (2023) made it much harder for work hardship to be recognized.
> unions and populist political parties flat out rejecting a reform and calling for bringing down the age of retirement. It made compromise impossible.
Well of course they did just that. We need to work less, not more. The government makes compromise impossible by repeatedly fucking over the poor and giving to the rich (taking from housing aids APL the same month they remove ISF tax on the rich). Then they send riot cops, imprison many and maim countless others. In the early 20th century it was common for workers to be killed by the boss or the government during a strike, so the workers gathered guns and dynamite... we are slowly moving back to this era.
> The amount and quality of labour that goes into providing all needs and amenities of modern life is much higher than before.
This is a non-argument. The "amenities of modern life" are provided by slave labor, mostly from Africa and Asia. Half of people who work in Europe are producing nothing of value to anyone. And those who try to find meaning in their work are prevented by the bureaucrats. I recommend reading David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, and watching his talk from CCC called Managerial feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes.
> Where am I doing that, and what does a pension reform have to do with that? France is already one of the countries with the highest tax burdens for the well-off.
Well you're doing it right here in the next sentence. The rich have it super easy around here. To quote a friend of mine, who's only middle class, « we should pay more taxes ». And she's not even super rich! There's so many ways for the super rich and the powerful to escape any justice in France... Most multinationals do not pay any taxes, while well-known fortunes pay a very small amount due to various montages (see LuxLeaks/BahamasLeaks & others).
And that has to do with poor people breaking their backs producing the wealth of this country, making food and cleaning spaces and working the factories and building infrastructure... and the rich doing absolutely nothing but enjoying life. We french people have a tradition of chopping heads, the rich better start sharing soon or the guillotine will be put back up. Pensions are historically one part of the social contract that convinced people after WWII to stop hanging and chopping heads.
EDIT: Sorry my message was very impersonal. You should ask yourself: are you a billionaire with dozens of empty villas? If not, why defend a fascist government who's only concerned about the rich? There's good chances you are on the side of those who have everything to win and little to lose, but have been convinced otherwise by school and the media.
> « the results of this report do not validate the idea that pension spendings are growing uncontrolled »
It's an organisation which contains unions, and it's not their place to discuss the public budget.
> That's funny because the report is really not as pessimistic as you say
Which is asinine. Their "pessimistic" vision is for 2% year on year growth, which is wildly optimistic in my view; their "it's not too bad, only 15% of GDP" is among the worst in the OECD (along other countries with budget issues like Spain and Italy); their "for pensioners to have 75% of the median quality of life of working people" sounds far from great, and a massive downgrade from today. So they're saying it's going to cost a crapton of money which the country doesn't have, for worse quality of life, but that's fine?
> Well of course they did just that. We need to work less, not more
We need to, and should, ideally. But who will pay for it?
> (taking from housing aids APL the same month they remove ISF tax on the rich)
> This is a non-argument. The "amenities of modern life" are provided by slave labor, mostly from Africa and Asia. Half of people who work in Europe are producing nothing of value to anyone. And those who try to find meaning in their work are prevented by the bureaucrats. I recommend reading David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, and watching his talk from CCC called Managerial feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes.
Amenities of modern life is electronics (most of which comes from Asia indeed) but also cars, entertainment (movies, books, series, food, music, amusement parks), everything digital, etc. Not saying all of it has value in itself, but modern people consume a lot of things that didn't even exist a century ago. A lot of the surplus productivity has went there.
> To quote a friend of mine, who's only middle class, « we should pay more taxes ».
That's commendable attitude, but the problem is, many people don't see it like this. And when you raise taxes too much for those, they'll simply move to Belgium or Switzerland or Luxembourg, and then you lose.
> Most multinationals do not pay any taxes, while well-known fortunes pay a very small amount due to various montages (see LuxLeaks/BahamasLeaks & others).
Yes, and this is things France is actively working on fixing. They require multinational cooperation so it's not easy, but France is one of the most active countries on that front, consistently pushing the OECD and the EU.
> If not, why defend a fascist government who's only concerned about the rich
Oh please, there's nothing fascist about that government. Even the pretty far to the right Darmanin isn't fascist, let alone them as a whole. And I'm going to disagree they're only concerned about the rich; their focus is on the economy and budget as a whole, which translates into serious focus on the wealthy capitalist class, yes; but I've also seen big improvements making it easier for people to start their own business or get to work. Some of them are highly misguided like reducing unemployment benefits to push people to get back earlier, but still.
To make it more personal: it stings a bit when I see how much of my salary goes to taxes, but I'm well off and I could be taxed a bit more without it impacting my life in the slightest; but I'm not one of those people who see money earned as the ultimate objective in life, so I'm not going to run away if my taxes get too high. That being said, my partner worked in the public sector for a few years, and it really pained me to hear the amount of incompetent fools stealing a living and the amount of layers of waste; that hasn't changed my view on taxes though, and I still happily pay them because I know the majority of it goes to good places for good reasons, and I can stomach some waste.
>Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's ethical.
As long as a country is governed by rule of law, the only form of justice that should have any standing is legal justice.
Ethical justice, more commonly known as social justice, has no place because that flavor of justice is going to vary wildly depending on the individual passing judgment.
None of this is to say legal justice is inherently "right", laws can absolutely be malformed or otherwise unsuitable for purpose. But so long as the laws say something is "right", that is legal justice.
> As long as a country is governed by rule of law, the only form of justice that should have any standing is legal justice.
I don't disagree, but by this standard i don't know any country that is governed by rule of law. France and USA are very famous for high-profile corruption and criminal cases in which politicians/cops/CEOs are either not found guilty (of proven crimes) or somehow never end up in jail despite being convicted (such as in the Balkany case).
As the cynical saying goes, make one crime for a million dollars, end up in jail. Setup a corporation that does thousands of crimes for billions of dollars, get rich.
> and vague populist "we'll just tax X" won't fix it
The richest people and biggest corporations own such an unimaginably large amount of wealth that taxing them would fix just about anything.
In 2017, Apple's cash reserves were $250 billion. That's just a single company, hoarding reserves that could clear the national debt of most countries. Think about that for a second.
There is absolutely no shortage of wealth in the world. There is easily enough to pay all the pensions, including far into the future, even considering demographic change.
But of course, if governments are OK with allowing corporations to act like sovereign countries, raising the retirement age can seem like a reasonable alternative to moving all that wealth to where it actually belongs.
> The richest people and biggest corporations own such an unimaginably large amount of wealth that taxing them would fix just about anything.
Still peanuts comparing to the "global" economy or a country needs (in terms of pension or health). Also a significant portion of this wealth is paper money that will take a significant hit at sale.
> In 2017, Apple's cash reserves were $250 billion. That's just a single company, hoarding reserves that could clear the national debt of most countries. Think about that for a second.
Why not then, dip into your bank account? By this logic, there are trillion of $$ in bank accounts all around the world. That's a lot of money.
> There is absolutely no shortage of wealth in the world. There is easily enough to pay all the pensions, including far into the future, even considering demographic change.
> But of course, if governments are OK with allowing corporations to act like sovereign countries, raising the retirement age can seem like a reasonable alternative to moving all that wealth to where it actually belongs.
Sure, let's make every 20-30-40 something work for these 60+ all day instead of having a life. The reality is that the pension system of France was pretty good when it started because there were very few pensioners. Now that the situation is not the same, it means each pensioner will get a little less. And the system is already maxed out to maximum max. Many people are deserting France because of the high taxes and high pension system contributions.
The cornerstone of a fair tax system is to avoid double taxation. Most countries currently practice triple taxation - they tax personal income, they tax the same income again through taxes on consumption, and a third time through corporate tax. And then there are still countless other small taxes. A fair system would tax people once, on their earnings, and stop there.
So, to answer your question, there should be no corporate tax, and no VAT, if income tax is set at the correct level. It makes no sense for you, as an individual, to compare yourself to a corporation.
>The cornerstone of a fair tax system is to avoid double taxation
That's pretty arguable. To me, "fair" simply means that we all obey the same rules. Those rules can be anything we want, if we think they'll make society work better. In our current system, taxes are levied on money movement, which serves important functions. These functions include signalling to the economy which activities we'd like to encourage and discourage, and providing fair and proportionate funding to government services which deal with that specific activity. For instance, road tax is levied only on car users, and goes towards the maintenance of the infrastructure which car users disproportionately benefit from. That is much more "fair" than what you are suggesting. When you use terms like "double taxation", you are presupposing that tax is "attached to a person", and that income tax is the only "valid" form of tax, which is a radical departure from how most of the world thinks about tax - a fact you acknowledge.
>It makes no sense for you, as an individual, to compare yourself to a corporation.
I agree with this, but probably not the way that you mean.
Apple isn't even a person. It deserves no consideration of things like "rights" and "personal sovereignty". It's merely an organization - essentially, a pile of paperwork - that exists entirely subordinate to the parameters that we agree on through the engine of representative democracy, which is our current best effort at creating an avatar of societal cooperation, for the benefit of all. Ethically, we would be entirely within our rights to tax Apple at a rate of 100%, if we felt it would be a net benefit to society as a whole.
Legally, that pile of paperwork gives the Apple corporation some rights of a person. Obviously it is not a living, breathing person in the biological sense. But it is treated as one from a legal perspective.
Should it be? That's a different question. Changing that would probably upend contract law.
> So, to answer your question, there should be no corporate tax, and no VAT, if income tax is set at the correct level. It makes no sense for you, as an individual, to compare yourself to a corporation.
This is outrageous. Why does, in your world, a corporation have amore rights than a real person?
On the contrary, there should be no personal income tax, only Corporate taxes.
Which, like the "only income tax" would enrich the hereditary wealth dynasties at the expense of the sort of people that actually have to spend most of their income.
Corporate taxes are among the taxes with the highest dead weight loss, and the cost just gets passed on as lower worker compensation or higher prices of goods and services.
The overhead associated with corporate taxes is also much higher for small businesses.
> the cost just gets passed on as lower worker compensation
This applies to payroll taxes, but I don’t think it applies to corporate income taxes. Since corporate income taxes are typically levied against profit, not revenue, wages are paid out of “pre-tax” money. A high corporate income tax rate would actually incentivize paying higher wages and/or hiring more employees.
It is entirely about fairness. We live in a society. Tax is necessary to maintain that society. Everyone needs to pitch in. If you want "rights", that comes with "responsibilities" - they invariably pair.
Did trustfundians pay income tax? How does the son of George Soros, who does not need income, pay income tax? The children of ultra rich are not tax slaves. They escaped.
Yes, a small percentage went to paying interest on loans, and some of the money spent was borrowed. And the majority of spending from income tax still went to the things I mentioned prior.
Are you talking about the idea that taxes are theft, (which I didn't disagree with more) or the idea that wage labor is theft because your employer sells the products for more than they pay you to produce them (which is absolutely theft, imo)?
There's a baseline level of consumption required to survive. Meaning everyone eats, rents, drives to work, buys an entertainment system. Paying for what you consume is a regressive way of generating tax revenue as the tax is raised from the poor masses.
Progressive taxation exists because people with more income have more disposable income. When you tax a poor working single mother of three and she must choose between buying food or paying tax, you will get riots eventually. When you tax a millionaire who's choice is buying a sports car or paying tax, riots don't usually happen.
> Sure, let's make every 20-30-40 something work for these 60+ all day instead of having a life.
Most of the value produced by workers goes into the pockets of corporate overlords. For their bosses and managers, for the shareholders, and for the landlords of the corporate mafia who take in 30-70% of working people's income. By your own logic, abolish corporate profits and for-profit housing, and let every worker enjoy huge benefits and retirement.
> Now that the situation is not the same, it means each pensioner will get a little less.
This is not wrong. But it's entirely due to Macron reforming the pension system with a "point" system. Without such reform, pensioners would continue to get just as much money, adjusted for inflation.
The labor theory of value is simply incorrect. Profit isn't stolen from workers.
The biggest problem in this day and age is cost of living, not wages. Housing is way too expensive. But that's not because it's provided by the market for profit, it's because government hasn't allowed it to be build in large enough volume to satisfy the demand of people moving into cities.
> By your own logic, abolish corporate profits and for-profit housing, and let every worker enjoy huge benefits and retirement.
Corporations are owned by pension funds. Investment funds own 80% of the S&P 500. They would be insolvent if corporations stopped posting profits.
But also, the reason corporations make so much money is regulatory capture. They buy laws that foreclose competition which makes everything cost more. It's the same reason housing is so expensive (the anti-competition laws there are zoning rules). You can't fix this with taxes -- tax them and everything still costs too much. Meanwhile the government is not going to give the money to you, they give it to the politically connected or use it to buy votes from interest groups with inefficient programs.
You have to actually fix the laws that enable this -- as in repeal them, not add some more to the pile.
> Corporations are owned by pension funds. They would be insolvent if corporations stopped posting profits.
Not in France, where retirement fund is a nation-wide socialized entity, which was the core of this debate. Private pension funds are close to non-existent here ; i personally cannot name a single person doing that because the public model worked so well for decades.
> It's the same reason housing is so expensive (the anti-competition laws there are zoning rules).
I don't entirely disagree because France has the more draconian housing regulations you can imagine: it's to my knowledge the only country in the world where it's illegal to build your own house (or lightweight housing) and produce your own electricity off-grid on land you actually own.
However, the argument doesn't stand scrutiny. According to public studies there's hundreds of thousands of empty dwellings in France... not even counting secondary/vacation housing or AirBnBs. There's two faces to the housing crisis here in France.
The first is the landlord mafia keeping apartments empty on purpose for speculation. Because if the entire supply was put on market, the prices would collapse, and people could actually afford housing. We could design a law to tax empty housing proportionally to the owner's wealth, and see how fast we get housing for everyone.
The second is the government backed off on public housing. Low-cost housing (HLM) programs started after WWII have been mostly cut, and whatever funding is left has been diverted to "ownership accession" and higher-standing "low-cost" housing which are luxury housing below market rates but very inaccessible to minimum-wage workers. To give you an idea, a two-bedroom apartment in standard HLM usually costs 200-500€/month in Paris. The newer ones being produced from public funds are rented for ~800-1500€/month, while the minimum wage is around 1300€ after taxes.
I have a hard time calling this a "crisis" when it's a massive defrauding operation orchestrated by the State and the housing mafia.
> Not in France, where retirement fund is a nation-wide socialized entity, which was the core of this debate. Private pension funds are close to non-existent here ; i personally cannot name a single person doing that because the public model worked so well for decades.
It's not that extreme. There are a lot of "assurances-vie" which are quite literally meant to be private pension funds (with lots of tax incentives...). That being said no-one actually relies on it, and the core of pensions are definitely the nation-wide entities. (Yes plural, we wouldn't be french if there weren't dozens of competing institutions doing the same thing, with of course people getting sucked dry but that administrative complexity)
> The first is the landlord mafia keeping apartments empty on purpose for speculation. Because if the entire supply was put on market, the prices would collapse, and people could actually afford housing. We could design a law to tax empty housing proportionally to the owner's wealth, and see how fast we get housing for everyone.
I don't agree on the "proportionally to the owner's wealth", simply on the empty apartments' value. But yes, we need to tax empty housing. And we're getting there. There has been a lot of changes with regards to housing taxes that are largely going towards taxing (relatively) more empty housing, with this year being the first year you need to properly declare for every housing you own what its use. And I feel like it's just the start, and we're going to keep those taxes evolving towards taxing empty apartments while taxing less family housing.
Government has become captured by wealthy interests and has created a legal system that benefits the rich at the expense of the working class.
If the power of the government can be seized, the wealth of the rich can be taken and used to help the working class.
Problems with this:
A) this essentially is a revolution to seize control of the government to take the wealth from the powerful and wealthy.
B) there is a high risk that the attempt to seize control of the government will fail, but the wealth transfer will still occur, just from the middle class to the government/wealthy.
C) it's unsustainable.
When most people say tax the wealthy they are actually literally saying, tax them on what they make. The middle class pays pretty much all the taxes in the US while the world's wealthiest tend to pay as much as someone who is upper middle class.
Some people are now proposing a wealth tax on anyone with more than a billion dollars. That's surprisingly reasonable. It is also completely sustainable, and does not require overthrowing any government ...
Where does your idea that “the middle class pays pretty much all the taxes in the US” come from?
As far as I can tell, the top 1% of earners pay 42.3% of income taxes and earn 22.2% of income. The average 1%-er makes 1.76 million dollars a year. They pay as a group approximately 722 billion dollars annually in income taxes [1]. Then factor in estate taxes and corporate taxes which are disproportionately ultimately borne by the very rich. Then factor in payroll taxes, which are 50% paid by companies. The top 1% bears an incredibly large portion of the national tax burden, as I see it. One could argue it should be more, but I don’t see the argument that the middle class pays “pretty much all the taxes”.
As for a wealth tax, a lot of wealth isn’t in a liquid form. Would you see it forcibly liquidated or would you like the government to have substantial holdings in US companies?
Personally I think there are much more fruitful ways to go about addressing inequality than the progressive “eat the rich” agenda.
The list goes on and on. Once you have enough money you use staff lawyers at your company to pay nothing taxes either for your company or for yourself.
I am highly sceptical of this accounting. Many properties, in say, London, are owned through shell corporations in secretive jurisdictions.
My landlord is in a tax heaven. It's a corporation and there is no way for me to know who own it! What if I am paying rent to a war criminal? How do they account for this?
But let's look at a simpler situation - say you own a company, company let's out apartments, the rent is used to buy new apartments -> if you time purchases of new property well, there is never a profit to tax, corporation tax is zero. If I never take money out, but just grow my net worth, then my personal tax is zero too. So my net worth can keep growing forever, without ever paying tax.
You only ever pay tax on the small amount of money you take out of the company for living expenses, like food.
> Why not then, dip into your bank account? By this logic, there are trillion of $$ in bank accounts all around the world. That's a lot of money.
Because wealth is immensely concentrated. There isn't nearly as much money in everyday individual bank accounts as in those of ultrawealthy individuals and corporates; and the trend since the 80s is for this to accelerate.
The government does it every time when it prints money. Note that with cryptocurrency or golden money that would become impossible. Maybe that is why government set up obstacles for buying gold or cryptocurrency.
Way to attack a straw man.
>> The richest people and biggest corporations own such an unimaginably large amount of wealth that taxing them would fix just about anything.
> Still peanuts comparing to the "global" economy or a country needs (in terms of pension or health). Also a significant portion of this wealth is paper money that will take a significant hit at sale.
> In 2017, Apple's cash reserves were $250 billion. That's just a single company, hoarding reserves that could clear the national debt of most countries. Think about that for a second.
> Why not then, dip into your bank account? By this logic, there are trillion of $$ in bank accounts all around the world. That's a lot of money.
Well they mentioned Apple's cash reserves that's traditionally easily accessible funds that do not take a significant hit at sale (although the number I read is $55 Billion), but if we talking about Apple's cash and cash equivalents, that was $20,535. That money would fix quite a few economies (and pension funds).
I'm not sure why you bring up peoples bank accounts. They were specifically talking about the worlds richest people and companies, you're average Joe doesn't count. The whole argument is that many economies are in this mess because the super-rich companies and individuals have not been paying their fair share of taxes (as sufficiently document by e.g. the Panama papers etc.).
Look, I completely agree that the wealthiest should be sharing more of the burden. However France already has quite high taxes, and is in the EU, so when the taxes get too high, people and companies can very easily move to a neighbouring country. Removing the fortune tax in France resulted in a net tax benefit because people who were subject to it returned to France and their regular taxes were added.
It seems like a fundamental error to believe that money itself has value, but many people make this error all the time, as you just have.
Just because cash exists somewhere as numbers in a system, it doesn't mean those numbers can jump out of the system and suddenly manifest as young, capable humans who can help retires. Plus, as others have pointed out, 250 billion it isn't even a drop in the bucket.
If there is 2 trillion dollars of profit held as cash by companies, that doesn't mean they are holding back 2 trillion dollars worth of production. It means they're holding a claim on the purchasing power of 2 trillion dollars VS the total of all worldwide cash value, say 2% as an example.
If the 2 trillion is taken out of the bank and spent, say on social services, it just dilutes the current purchasing power of the remaining cash value. It does not create 2 trillion dollars worth of value from nowhere. I return to my opening claim, that money itself doesn't have value.
If anything, money could be described as, "A claim on a certain percentage of the worlds output at any given moment, limited by locale." That percentage claim is wildly unstable and changes as money is created/destroyed.
250 billion isn’t much relative the revenue and expenditures of governments. Government operates in the trillions. California lost 40 billion in a couple months trying to administer unemployment insurance, something you would expect a government to be able to do with some competence, having many decades of experience. But nobody cares in the government if the government should lose 100 billion here, a trillion there, because hey there are still rich people we can tax to get more money! There are no consequences for losing tens or 100s of billions on dollars, you get promoted in the public sector because your budget was large, not because you spent the money well.
Government will never be incentivized to function properly until their revenue, like any and all successful institutions, is dependent upon their own competence. Endless skies the limit money with no consideration for how wisely or efficiently that money is used is an obvious recipe for national failure.
> The richest people and biggest corporations own such an unimaginably large amount of wealth that taxing them would fix just about anything.
They don't have wealth though, they have capital or money but not wealth. Wealth is actual goods and services, money is an abstract representation of the ability to obtain these things. As the pandemic proved it doesn't matter how much money you have, if there just isn't stuff to spend it on.
To quote Douglas Adams "Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
Any real solution needs to focus on wealth creation, and not on moving around small green pieces of paper. As long as people's standard of living is increasing they really care a lot less about money and income inequality, people only start caring about that when they realize things are getting worse.
I mean put it into perspective. There's 300 million Americans who will live on average 15 years in retirement, currently at an average retirement income of $75k. So this group will be spending about $1 million in retirement per person, so for 300 million Americans you're talking about 300 trillion in spending during their retirement.
Now you take the most wealthy and successful corporation in the history of mankind, Apple, take its cash reserves (250 billion), subtract its debt (100 billion), and tax it (e.g. 10%) and you're left with 15 billion, which gives you the fraction 0.00005 of the 300 trillion you'll want to raise for US retirement of everyone alive in the US today. So in actuality you'd need to have another 20 thousand Apples, and you'd get to your number, just for the US population.
Ignore of course the rest of the 97% of the world population, despite Apple having earned its cash reserves from its global business, they'll need to find their own first-in-class corporate behemoth to tax for their retirement.
----
I think more importantly, you have to acknowledge that money is just a tool for expressing value, but fundamentally has no value. What does have value is actual production. Everything that the people of the Earth can produce in a given year, and consume in a given year, constitutes their wealth. The more people work & produce, the richer we are, in total. Apple could have 1 quadrillion in cash, if nobody on the planet is working, Apple and everyone else is extremely poor. Retiring simply means: you do not produce, but you do consume what others produce. And that's fine if it's sufficiently balanced, where the working produce sufficiently for their and the non-working's consumption. And in France it was extremely clear from all studies that this condition wasn't going to be met the coming decades. Raising money through taxes doesn't change that fundamental truth, that this system is only sustainable if it is balanced, and it wasn't.
To simplify it, if every working person produces 2 loafs of bread, and every person eats 1 loaf of bread per day, in a population of 10 people you need 5 to be working, and 5 can retire. 10 loafs are produced, and 10 loafs are consumed.
If the retirement age is low enough that 3 people work and 7 retire, you'd produce 6 loafs, but the population still needs 10 loafs to consume.
Taxing companies in this population to finance this earlier retirement age, just puts money in the hands of the 7. It doesn't change the fundamental issue, which is that there's 6 loafs of production and 10 are necessary. So you'll see rapid inflation, bread becoming very expensive, some working and some retirees having no bread, in other words, poverty, versus the situation where the retirement age was a bit higher and all demand was being met by supply.
Of course actual economic models are way more complex, but this example illustrates: it's not money, or taxes, that constitutes or generates wealth, it's just a unit of account. What makes us wealthy is that which we produce. And human activity (= work) is the engine of that production. Reducing the retirement age = less human activity = less work = less production = less wealth. You can put taxes at any level, but that remains true. And France chose heed this rule, because all actuarial & demographic tables showed it can't sustain the wealth with the growing number of retirees, lower number of working age population, and growing life expectancy, at the old retirement age.
With 40M people, that's more than a 1% per year. And note, those are immigrants, not refugees, or other classes of new Canadians.
Just the housing and infrastructure needs alone, and initial support, as well as dealing with validation -> full citizenship is mind bogglng.
But beyond that, I believe it is too fast as a culture shift. I want new blood, new ideas, but I also want the ideals of a hoghly democratic nation, its openness to newcomers, its tolerance to not be lost in a voice of newness.
EG, I want newcomer input, but I don't want it to drown out what's here.
But that's how worrisome the population graph is. There are not enough young people to take care of the old, the old who have worked their entire lives, building what is around us, and paying for tgeir elders to retire, a social contract that is vital.
So we know we are doing a risky thing, as all fast change is risky.
But we must, or... what?
France chose another path. I can't say it is right or wrong.
But ... if nothing is done, it won't be good.
The stupid part is, everyone is dealing with this. China, Russia, the entire West, we all knew. We all knew the numbers, all of us, decades ago.
But we waited. For example, Canada could have ramped up immigration a decade ago, thus softening the social impact.
If we taxed wealth at 1%, the wealthiest would still be getting wealthier and we'd be able to cover the needs of so many more people, fight climate change, or whatever else.
You think Apple stops operating here because of a 1% headwind? No way.
If wealthy companies should pay French pensions, simply because they can, do you think that wealthy westerners should pay for, say, pensions or services in Africa?
Raising taxes on wealthy companies to cover pensions seems arbitrary and unfair (by which I don't mean that taxes shouldn't necessarily be raised).
> do you think that wealthy westerners should pay for, say, pensions or services in Africa?
If they have business interests in Africa, absolutely.
The world's biggest corporations are profiting massively from having access to the French market. But that access is not a given, it is being granted by the French people, and can be taken away at any time for any reason the French people consider valid.
Ah, yes, the famously non-corrupt FBI! No skeletons in its closet!
There are things going wrong now, but to suggest there’s some golden incorruptible past we’ve strayed from is ahistorical. Serving the people? The good old boys network was just how things worked!
Democratic government has always - to a greater or lesser extent - had to fight against the demons of human nature.
This is not to imply we can be complacent, but we shouldn’t collapse into despondency either. There are good people fighting (metaphorically) the good fight just as there always have been. They need our support.
The winds change and each party has their turn sharing a common enemy with the bureau. With righteousness and zeal, they claim the throne of patriotism.
I'm not sure if it's dissonance or political opportunism, or a mix.
I would like to think anyone with some knowledge of US history would be weary and proceed with caution whether they find themselves in alignment with authorities or not.
Nit: you probably meant wary, though I am also weary of politics.
But I agree. The solution is limited power in the center of government. If you don’t want your political enemies to have the power you enjoy, then you need to abolish that power, because sooner or later it will turn on you.
Thats a natural consequence of a large federal government. You said Western but I dont see a counterpoint outside the west. Maybe in tiny countries? But in the Us look to your local government and you’ll (hopefully )see a very responsive government that actually represents constituents.
Its not necessarily even the federal government’s fault. The distance between the federal government and its constituents is far by nature. They are making laws that apply to both Texas and California - there is not much that both will want.
>Its not necessarily even the federal government’s fault. The distance between the federal government and its constituents is far by nature. They are making laws that apply to both Texas and California - there is not much that both will want.
Which arguably is be design; the framers knew that it was better for the states to largely handle their own affairs. The problem is now everyone thinks their laws are so important that they have to be federal, instead of just letting different states do their own thing.
So within a massive investigation that was completely above board 99% of the time and led to arrests and prison time for dozens of officials that were involved in corruption on a mass scale, one wiretap application was improper and led to a one year suspension for the FBI agent who oversaw it? And this is supposed to be evidence that the Democratic Party as a whole are purposely lying to investigate their opponents?
They spent millions of dollars investigating at a bunch of beltway bandits and were only able to convict a handful for tax fraud, lying to law enforcement, etc. Note the distinct lack of any convictions for spying for Russia, or acting as a Russian agent.
The most serious was Manafort, and it was related to his previous work in Ukraine, before he was hired by the Trump campaign. Cohen was convicted for fraud and campaign finance violations, and then Papadopoulos, Flynn, and Gates were convicted of lying to law enforcement and got slaps on the wrist.
The Mueller investigation was a complete flop, and to top it all off they deleted their own cellphone records in potential violation of federal record keeping laws.
Why would you lie to investigators? Why commit a felony and spend years in jail? Maybe if we had a real prosecutor that actually runs a real investigation and puts the main target in front of a grand jury instead of doing some bogus here’s some questions for you to answer whenever you want bullshit. That has to be history first and speaks to the coverup by Republican prosecutor to protect a Republican president.
Fear of embarrassment, arrogance (not having legal counsel present), or ignorance (not realizing that it was a hostile interview with the FBI, rather than information gathering).
Those charges aren't the end goal of a serious investigation. Papadopoulos, for example served 12 days in jail. Flynn was pardoned and served zero. They are just a pressure tactic to try to convince low-level people to provide information or testimony. The fact that they cite those convictions as crowning achievements of their investigation means that they utterly failed in accomplishing their goal.
Being pardoned by your co-conspirator doesn't exactly scream innocence.
> The fact that they cite those convictions as crowning achievements of their investigation means that they utterly failed in accomplishing their goal.
Yeah, wonder why it failed. Almost like there was a corrupt criminal with pardon powers who told everyone to lie or clam up.
There’s more. Russians were talking with Trump kids from emails released and even tweets from his kids admitting to talking with them. Mueller never too bothered to put any of Trumps family in front of grand jury or prosecute the campaign finance violations they uncovered. It was a fake investigation to trick the American public.
They got the soft-glove Republican run investigation treatment and they still ended up charging 30+ people, including those closest to Trump. They also proved _numerous_ extremely suspicious ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, and produced a report that showed obstruction all over the place. Obstruction, by the way, is what you do when you know you broke just _all_ the laws and have to break the law more to prevent getting caught.
That was never followed up on due to _other_ Trump admin corruption. Congratulations, they managed to cheat the rigged system. It's good to be rich and well connected if you're going to crime I guess.
If you consider the absence of evidence as evidence of absence then sure 99% above the board. If on the other hand you consider that any hint of misdoing by prosecutors, much less lying to a judge in any context, much less within a secret national security court, as smoke that may or may not indicate fire in other places, then one might not be so sanguine.
Durham had years and his only goal was to discredit the investigation. All he came up with was bullshit. That's more than evidence of absense. It's not absolute proof that everything was above board, but it's very suggestive.
I cannot tell if you are serious or not, but in case someone else reads this:
All his stories revolve around a single person in the Russia investigation who may have been targeted incorrectly. The rest of the investigation turned up a lot of people going to jail, but there were errors in one case.
Source[2] is about someone adding the annotation "not a source" to an email about the person (not forging an entire email out of thin air) when asked to check if that person was a source. Everyone involved believes that was an innocent error, probably summarizing the contents of the email they got back when they forwarded it to someone else. That is, A asked B to ask C if someone was a source. C emailed back to B who added the line "not a source" and forwarded it on to A. Turns out A was a source.
His sources [0] [1] explicitly says that there was no evidence it was politically motivated. The second paragraph of [1] is:
> The inspector general found no evidence that the Russia probe was launched for political reasons but did conclude that the FBI’s FISA process fell “far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate,’” according to the extensive report.
You are aware that there were dozens of arrests from that investigation of literal foreign agents working with that presidential campaign right? It wasn't without merit... At all... There's been MORE arrests since as well.
Same guy who lost all his cases when they went to trial for this “corruption”. Republicans have led the FBI for the last 20 years. Comey, Mueller, Wray,Freeh are all republicans.
Republicans have led the FBI effectively since it was established. Even Democratic Presidents have appointed Republican heads of the FBI, though it's possible that there's been an acting head that was A Democrat.
It's such a weak argument when defenders of the FBI and democrat corruption cite the failure of its victims to prove that corruption in court (usually in front of a DC jury that voted 92% democrat). Like, that's the point. One side of the political apparatus weaponized the justice system against the other, then covered it up, and obscured any investigation into it through equally corrupt lawfare and political deflection.
I see the same argument attacking the credibility of the whistleblower who was a business partner of Hunter Biden when they received money from the Chinese energy company CEFC - "oh your whistleblower was indicted by the DOJ so he has no credibility" - well, the accusation begs the question that the Republicans are complaining about in the first place, namely why wasn't Hunter Biden similarly indicted for the same FARA violations as his business partner who's blowing the whistle on his lack of indictment? It's flawed logic. You can't cover up your crimes by arresting the criminal you did the crimes with and then saying he's got no credibility because he's a criminal.
> You can't cover up your crimes by arresting the criminal you
> did the crimes with and then saying he's got no credibility
> because he's a criminal.
Are you aware of something specific that establishes that that’s a true statement? Because if this is about the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, I haven’t seen a single thing to suggest that the impetus for that investigation was “the Democrats”. I think if anything should be clear, the FBI doesn’t need outside direction to abuse their power.
> It feels like even Western governments are becoming more and more protective of their aristocrat-class
I'm confused about how this is the takeaway from a story about how the government was spying on a US Senator, who presumably is a member of the aristocrat-class?
IMO this is a story about how politicians, in the name of "security", empower a bureaucracy that becomes more powerful than the politicians themselves. The same thing happens at the local level with city governments and police departments/police unions. The politicians lose control of the security apparatus.
They used the Emergencies Act, which is supposed to be used to keep the country safe from terrorism. This was obviously not terrorism, albeit very heavy-handed. This was a police matter to clear them, not something they should have gone through FINTRAC.
The issue is that they can pretty much do whatever they want as long as they have majority, similar to the USA PATRIOT act of 2001.
This is the logical end-game when you don't have a direct democracy.
There's 0 reason for politicians to "do as they promised during the campaign" other than their own ethical beliefs and some laws that they can change or otherwise neutralized. And even if they do as they promise, they can still do so while enriching themselves through other unethical behavior.
PS: the biggest source of stock market income for politicians isn't trading on insider knowledge. It's guys like Kenneth Griffin (the future Madoff 2.0) donating a 100 million USD a year to GOP for example. Ken is essentially paying off politicians with money he stole from households on the stock market.
> The Democrats launched FBI investigations against their political opponents without sufficient legal backing.
You'll have to expand on this. IG Horrowitz didn't find in his report evidence to suggestion what you're saying:
"We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations"
It absolutely did, and you can read the executive summary [0] to see the details in just a few pages. I'm not going to copy/paste the whole thing here but start with page 9 (which highlights the contrast of reckless investigations into the Trump campaign compared with cautious refusal to investigate the Clinton campaign), and continue onto pages 11-12 (which describe the origins of the investigation, namely an uncorroborated document containing opposition research created by a paid contractor of the Clinton campaign).
I'm not sure how you can read this as anything other than suggesting clear political bias in the handling and opening of the investigation into the Trump campaign, which - as the Durham report makes clear is its central point - was opened completely without basis in a manner divergent from all proper procedure.
The comment I was replying to was rebutting the notion that “the Democrats” launched FBI investigations into their political opponents. That’s what I was referring to. Durham didn’t suggest anything of the sort.
And if there were such clear political bias, how do we explain the repeated decisions by the Director to make public spectacles and admonishments of Clinton regarding the investigation into her handling of email?
> I'm not sure how you can read this as anything other than suggesting clear political bias in the handling and opening of the investigation into the Trump campaign
Because you haven't answered the question as to why the Durham report was needed at all given the DOJ IG was doing his job. In fact, we know Durham was full of shit because he ended up with nothing except some whining. Everything concrete thing he found was already found by Horrowitz. So he was redundant there.
Where Durham was not redundant was in his "speaking indictments" which didn't actually result in a single conviction, but instead just speculated wildly outside of both fact and the law, but existed within court documents, so the patina of legitimacy was applied. But again, Durham never proved anything. We also know he's full of shit because in his final report, he tried to relitigate the cases he actually already had lost in court. Very unprofessional, worst SC since Starr. Just a lot of whining and complaining over nothing.
Trump incited Jan 6 and he will be imprisoned for it.
Trump stole national secrets and he will be imprisoned for that too.
Trump attempted to rig Georgia's election and he will be imprisoned for that as well.
Trump also, on top of all of that, colluded with the Russians in the 2016 campaign, and he will not go to jail for that, for it isn't a crime. But he did it, the Mueller report and Senate Intel Committee report proves it, and the Durham report failed to find improper predicate.
This is completely in the face of Trump-world lore, where Obama illegally spied on Trump, and the Clinton campaign caused the FBI to start a "witch hunt" investigation. No. It was found the Trump campaign colluded, and he was investigated because he did the thing. The investigation was not found to be improper by Horrowitz, fire was found where there was smoke.
And let's say you are correct, that there was "political bias" in opening the investigation. Does that mean instead, we should have just let Trump's collusion with Russia go uninvestigated? Meeting with foreign spies promising relaxed relations in return for dirt on your opponent? Turning over campaign data to the Russian GRU while they are waging a psyops campaign against Americans?
My god, might as well just invite the Russians into the oval office and just hand them them classified information. Oh wait, he did that too.
Come back to me once he's convicted and tell me again how the FBI shouldn't have investigated him. He's a career criminal and a psychopath. Also known as a fascist, and he
should be nowhere near the presidency ever again. We should all be politically biased against such a person.
Weird part about the attention economy, where leaders emerge quite fast out of the blue and are capable of pulling huge attention to issues, is they all end up following the same playbook after getting popular.
>> The Democrats launched FBI investigations against their political opponents without sufficient legal backing.
If you're referring to the Trump investigation (during his first run), then your claim is false. No court or legal investigation including that of the special counsel or general inspector's report, has reached such a conclusion.
The special counsel report did determine there was enough grounds to start an investigation but it said it should have been a preliminary investigation and not a full-blown investigation.
Also, the FBI was led by a Republican (James Comey) appointed by a Democrat (Obama) specifically because he was supposed to be independent-minded (as the Deputy AG under Bush, Comey refused to sign an extension of a warantless spying program because he felt it was illegal and the program lapsed; Comey then rushed to the hospital to make sure the AG who wasn't sick wasn't tricked into signing it)
It's like we have become the enemy we despised during the cold war. We used to make fun of the Stasi and how they spied on everyone to have control over everyone. We touted a government of the people for the people. We highlighted how anti-authoritarian we were and how suspicious of we were of governments seeking more power... yet, here we are we are become that which we despised. These are things one might expect from a banana republic. Not “the leader of the free world.” Were just as subject to the vagaries of the apparatus in power.
When is the Congress going to take back its power from the executive and rein in the abuses? Jefferson and Eisenhower were right. JFK tried and everyone knows how it ended up for him.
One man isn’t an apparatus in lockstep seeking to perpetuate its power for its own sake. That’s not at all the same.
This is the state believing it has preeminence over the people and can ignore laws to further their own goals without public input and without discussion; without hearings.
> One man isn’t an apparatus in lockstep seeking to perpetuate its power for its own sake.
From the linked Wikipedia page: "Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more accurately conveys the breadth of the phenomenon, and that the term McCarthyism is now outdated. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that Hooverism after FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover is more appropriate."
So we're back to the apparatus being the baddies, right? That's what we're talking about. They're accountable to no-one, they can't be voted out --only Congress, who seem happy to abrogate their powers can rein them in, yet seem unwilling. It's this that Jefferson, Eisenhower, JFK and others warned us about and we've only allowed them deeper penetration into power.
That’s one of the problems with politics currently. Everyone is focused on republicans versus democrats, when in my opinion it should be the people versus those in power first and foremost.
While I agree that there are important issues that the different sides disagree on. Realistically they seem to be in agreement >90% of the time. I think not tolerating corruption, incompetence, and an unwillingness to make progress is the most important thing a voter can do. But we are distracted by the parties and the media and tricked into fighting each other, instead of holding those in power accountable.
> The UK's Conservative party misled the public about the EU to get the Brexit vote.
Saying nothing about your wider point, the Conservative Government was pro-Remain - all the major parties were. There were two Leave campaign groups, and many individual Conservative MPs signed on for them. Official policy was pro-Leave but to let everyone campaign as they saw fit.
This argument totally misses the context of that appointment, which was the tremendous pressure Trump was under from the Democrats and DC establishment after he fired Director Comey. Trump appointed Director Wray, yes, but the appointment was made basically under duress. It was hardly his choice, and he was under immense political pressure to assuage the optics of what looked like a coverup in his firing of Comey. He had to choose someone recommended by uniparty politicians like McConnell.
Dems couldn’t do anything. They didn’t have control of house so they couldn’t impeach. It also unprecedented to fire an FBI director. More cognitive dissonance trying to say the Dems controlled a Republican controlled institution.
this “moral decay of the West” was one of the primary observations and frustrations of Osama’s writings if you ever read it
he was a scholar from a rich family before he chose violence
not trying to be edgy, just reminded me that it is a recurring observation and it takes more and more candid actions for people raised within those countries to notice for themselves and consider it egregious or intolerable
It's very common in both alternative/anti-idpol left wing (stuidpol/Redscare) and contrarian/non-MAGA right wing subreddits.
He provided one of the best and most relevant-to-today critiques of the progressive virtue-signalling strain of American liberalism that's very popular today.
> What specifically from him do you like the most?
These three parts in Chapter 1 always stuck in my head:
- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM
- FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY
- OVERSOCIALIZATION
Copied the first 2 below:
----------------------------
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM
6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of
the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism,
so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to
the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.
7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could
have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is
fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we
speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists,
collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability
activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is
associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to
get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as
a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we
mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
leftist psychology. (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)
8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than we
would wish, but there doesn’t seem to be any remedy for this. All we are
trying to do here is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two
psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving force of modern
leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist
psychology. Also, our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We
leave open the question of the extent to which our discussion could be
applied to the leftists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call
“feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization.” Feelings of inferiority
are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is
characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment
is highly influential.
FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY
10. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the
strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; low self-esteem,
feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-
hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings
(possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in
determining the direction of modern leftism.
11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him
(or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has
inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among
minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups
whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to
designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities.
The terms “negro,” “oriental,” “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an
Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory
connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of
“guy,” “dude” or “fellow.” The negative connotations have been attached to
these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have
gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by
“animal companion.” Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid
saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be
interpreted as negative. They want to replace the world “primitive” by
“nonliterate.” They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest
that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply
that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the
hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)
12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are
not the average black ghetto- dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or
disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even
belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society.
Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who
have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom
are heterosexual white males from middle- to upper-middle-class families.
13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups
that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians),
repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel
that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that
they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these
groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean
to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making
a point about leftist psychology.)
14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as
capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as
strong and as capable as men.
15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and
successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate
white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for
hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives.
They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist,
ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist
countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or
at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY
points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in
Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the
leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and
the West because they are strong and successful.
16. Words like “self-confidence,” “self-reliance,” “initiative,” “enterprise,”
“optimism,” etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary.
The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to
solve everyone’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs for them, take
care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of
confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own
needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because,
deep inside, he feels like a loser.
17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus on
sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone,
throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing
anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse
oneself in the sensations of the moment.
18. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective
reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true
that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific
knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be
defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply
cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge.
They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality.
They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one
thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it
is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the
leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs
as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e.,
failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he
cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior
and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by
many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ
tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities
or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear
superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit
or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is
“inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been
brought up properly.
19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter,
a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in
himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can
still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his
efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1] But the
leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so
ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and
valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as
a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies
himself.
20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by
lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or
racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many
leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER
masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.
21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by
moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of
the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the
main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of
leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior
is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the
leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that
affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand
affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more
productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at
least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that
affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not
take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.
Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as
an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for
power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’
hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.
22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to
INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making
a fuss.
23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only
a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.
What does his background of wealth have to do with this? At least in the West, you don’t have to start wealthy to become famous, or in his case, infamous
One thing that would help is far more progressive taxation. No one in modern society should have the kind of wealth that enables leveraging politicians and public opinion.
We ALREADY have a more progressive tax system than almost any other country in the world by a large margin.
In reality, that doesn't do a thing. The rich simply make up for you not paying taxes by paying you less. Finally, the rich pay capital gains rates and then only occasionally.
If you want to fix the problem, abolish income tax and add a universal sales tax on everything. Rich people then pay the same amount of taxes as everyone else (or their money just sits there). You can then reduce taxes on things like food staples which disproportionately benefit the poor. In the process, taxing the sale of stocks would immediately reign in the biggest issues in the stock market too.
Your proposed fix would make the 1% completely happy. The poorest people spend 100% of their income and thus 100% of their income would be subject to that tax. Rich people invest and spend only a small portion of their income, and so only a small portion of their income would be subject to a tax.
When rich people invest, that means they are buying something. That thing gets taxed because they bought it. When they want to sell it to get a profit, someone has to buy it and pay taxes (factoring that tax into the equation also lowers selling price which is effectively a tax too).
Poor people spend MOST of their income on their primary residence, food, utilities, and a couple other staples. You could simply eliminate taxes associated withe residences under X amount, taxes on staple foods, residential utility bills under a certain amount, etc. At that point, poor people would be paying few taxes while rich people would be forced to pay for all the things that make it worth being rich.
> You can then reduce taxes on things like food staples
Basic food items (e.g. bread, eggs, flour, milk) are already exempt from sales tax, at least in Texas, which is not exactly known for being progressive about anything.
You believe that an income tax whose max bracket stops at $578,126, and where you stop having to pay medicare and social security taxes stop after $147,000 is progressive?
You think that a flat capital gains tax lower than the top income tax brackets is progressive?
Giving the government more money is not a necessary result of progressive taxation.
It's entirely possible to increase taxes on the wealthy without increasing government tax revenue by giving everyone else a (probably very modest) tax cut.
It's not about giving the government more money. It's about redistributing from the class that buys politicians like I buy a candy bar, to the class that works two jobs to put shitty unhealthy polluted food on the table.
>Even in Communism there is class division (if not more).//
What do you mean by this?
We've never had a completely Capitalist system, AFAIAA, because the logical ends to that are slavery and selling body parts just to survive. Which means rebellion by the proles and it's easier to get people to work endlessly for your ends if you give them a measure of hope.
Similarly, we've never had a completely Communist system because the logical ends to that are redistribution of power from those in control to the people. This means those currently in control lose most of their power; if you empower people to force a change towards communist principles ... well let's just say that has never gone well.
We can squash the wealth gap, and we can redistribute political power back to the demos ... but it's a very long road and means structuring society to combat individual greed, ultimately giving up the "American dream" of having others work at your minions to give you a millionaire life-style. Honestly, the greed we humans have for that is so powerful it acts as an almost insurmountable barrier to a fairer society/World.
In anarchistic France when someone started acting like they were better than someone else a coworker would go on a smoke break with them and shoot them in the head. At least that's what I read...
Not saying that's a successful model, but there are a lot of shades of grey between and surrounding our current system and the classic bogeyman "communism".
The problem with term limits is that they discourage the lower classes from getting involved in politics. Only the wealthy can afford to just take a 4-6 year break from their career.
> The problem with term limits is that they discourage the lower classes from getting involved in politics.
I think that ship has sailed.
> Only the wealthy can afford to just take a 4-6 year break from their career.
Many elected political offices get paid a reasonably good salary, higher than median wages. Many people change careers after 5 or 10 years too. Even the commoners. So I'm don't buy this assertion.
This seems like the type of thing that feels good, but I don't buy that it is good without more justification. I've never read any compelling support for the idea, it is almost always presented as obviously a good idea with little justification. It's proponents rarely seem to feel like it needs justifying and I greatly disagree.
The "revolving door" seems problematic. The politician -> industry bribery pathway seems like it would be strengthened by policy such as this.
The root problem is corruption, not experience. Corruption is a force that is happy to work on any system and I see no reason to believe that term limits would do anything to reduce corruption, only modulate it.
If the positions themselves are limited, it just pushes power and seniority into supporting positions such as staffers or the party apparatus itself, potentially even the think tanks/lobbyist groups that are often the entities that write the laws anyway.
The greater issue is that you are describing an idea of how to reduce corruption in terms of what politicians need to do. An iron law of reality is that you cannot control other people, at best you can influence them.
If you want to solve political problems you must ask "what can I do?" because talking about what politicians should do is glorified masturbation.
The answers are at least:
Get directly involved and run for a position of power and don't be corrupt when provided the opportunity to be
Never choose loyalty to a person over loyalty to ideas. Loyalty is the unit of corruption.
Get directly involved in the bureaucracy and use your position to do good and stifle bad
Use your position at work to practice professional ethics
Get involved with a union to provide consequences via striking, show solidarity
Get involved with investigative journalism to uncover corruption and speak truth to power
Get involved with campaigns to get candidates you don't believe are corrupt into positions of power
Get a good grasp on what fighting authoritarianism with force requires and meditate deeply on the use of guillotines or analogues
When someone else puts themselves at risk or sacrifices themselves to fight power, venerate them
Understand that "If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny."
Educate yourself on the history of revolutionary movements and try to make complex ideas simple and viral
Understand that cynicism is coerced consent and that cynicism does not change anything
I think tying politician salary to median income (or even some weighted average of median and the lower percentiles) could be very good for politics. Along with remaking the system for lobbying (buying influence), which should be done in a very careful setting (maybe a public or semi-public forum), to bring legitimate concerns to politicians and not buy influence... (cost should not be a significant barrier to reaching congress members as much as legitimacy!)
For the FBI to spy on elected officials and public figures, and use their secrets to blackmail them into doing what the FBI wants, is more than a realistic concern: it's a historical fact that government power-brokers ran that kind of racket on a large scale, spanning decades. Hoover's technical capabilities were a fraction of the digital era's. These are incredibly dangerous powers to have concentrated in one place.
Is someone has a history of doing something, and there is not punishment or corrective action, the most rational assumption is that they are still doing it.
The uni-party keeps them all rich. They are corrupt politicians who know the corrupt FBI people very well. Both keep each other in check as a kind of mutually assured destruction.
This means they can keep the money and power pipeline to themselves by using that to kick out anyone who does the wrong thing. Want to argue about gender or abortion? They fundamentally don't care either way. Want to deal with insider trading or stop our wars? You get your dirt dumped and the entire machine turns against you.
Killers of the Flower Moon has a young Hoover in its cast of characters, and it does a pretty good job of describing his rise. It's also a fantastic book in its own right, which should be read before the incoming movie spoils it forever.
I really don't like the part of me which eagerly leaps at confirmation bias. It doesn't help me, it doesn't help my "allies", it doesn't help the world.
Reminder: FAA702 is used for warrantless spying. No probable cause is required.
Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others have tools available for FBI/DHS to access data in/on their servers in realtime in response to Section 702 orders from the state.
The federal police can read anything in your gmail, your google docs, your complete iMessage history, your complete iCloud photo library, etc, without a warrant, at any time, 24/7/365. No probable cause or reasonable suspicion is needed. They just get to download it.
If you are not an American and not in the US and your data is suspected to have specific types of foreign intelligence information after the company receiving the request approves it and configures account data forwarding to DITU.
Ah well they suspected it so it's fine :). And yeah sure, they drone striked American citizens without any judicial process but spying on them would never, ever! Happen. That's just too far.
The Constitution doesn't require judicial process. It requires due process. Warmaking and national defense powers lie with the executive and legislative branches, and there is precedent that the courts should not interfere with the military chain of command. The executive informed the congressional oversight committees more than a year before the assassination.
Spying on Americans without a court order is illegal. The US government can still spy on Americans with a warrant.
It does not. This article is about data collected from specific foreigners outside the US who were under surveillance. The FBI searched that data for any mentions of a US senator.
your comment may have triggered a sentiment analysis model causing your accounts here and elsewhere to be flagged just in case they need to be 702ed in the future :)
Hard to read this without knowing more details. It just said the senator was targeted because they were a target of foreign spies, but crossed lines in doing so. No names or specifics.
I guess in another sense it may be better that the public doesn't know, because that information could sway voters unjustly.
In this instance, doesn't the FBI have the power to make it illegal to know more details? That was always one of the major weaknesses of the unhinged post-9/11 reforms. Easily abused powers with insufficient checks and no effective channels to uncover abuse. If someone is capable of believing that reform is necessary they'll have to come up with an opinion on the subject without concrete details. James Clapper has a proud record of literally lying to Congress in order to cover up the spy program and the consequences are a plum job at CNN. Which could be spun as a punishment I suppose, but realistically he probably doesn't think so. That isn't an outcome from a system that is going to provide concrete details.
I'm not sure if anyone spied on Obama, but both subsequent presidents have been spied on by their political opponents. A trend likely to continue given the partisan groundwork that has been laid since 2016. There will be rampant nonpartisan corruption in the intelligence agencies targeting US politicians of all stripes.
However, how does one run a successful spy operation where everything's done in the open?
The fundamental problem is the main adversaries the US faces (China, Russia, Iran & co) are not bound by open society rules. Since at least WW2, in trying to fight back against these dictatorial and at times totalitarian regimes, the US has itself become a bit like them. If you gaze long into an abyss...
More democratic oversight of US spy agencies is Xi's dream, it would mean they won't even have to do much spying because the US themselves would lay open all their intelligence agency work in plain sight in committees and public hearings.
So how do you balance the two, how to preserve freedom while fighting an enemy that feeds on this weakness? That is rarely ever discussed and democracies don't seem to have found good solutions to this dilemma at all. That is part of the reason why we're seeing ever more surveillance and overreach. Unless ways are found to build open societies more resilient to attacks, things are not going to change.
>There will be rampant nonpartisan corruption in the intelligence agencies targeting US politicians of all stripes.
That's never been the case in the history of unchecked power. We can argue if it's already the case or not but the loss of neutrality of these agencies is only a matter of time. There is no mechanism in place that would prevent it.
> However, how does one run a successful spy operation where everything's done in the open?
The obvious answer is you don't? It is punching at phantom enemies - the FBI turned out to be the bigger source of disinformation than the Russians.
US politicians are for sale (see Joe Biden's recent scandals, but there isn't much evidence he is unusual in the halls of Congress). The US intelligence service doesn't do anything about that. The spy program is a much more fit-for-purpose tool for internal corruption than fighting external forces.
I don't know how I can be restating a comment that was written after mine.
I did not say anything partisan there. I even said there could be a problem with more disclosure because it could be used electorally and that may be inappropriate.
Really we don't know anything specific so we can't judge. It's a weird thing. The FISA courts have been said to be unusual for decades, and I think this story shows some of why that is.
How do you bring an out of control bureaucracy under control, especially when they wield law enforcement powers and use them against political enemies and whistleblowers?
"we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural manure."
There has only even been one way that succeeds, violence. I hope it doesn’t go that way, but the idea that those with absolute power will simply grow a conscious and give it up… I don’t see that happening
Bureaucracies are reformed by building a parallel bureaucracy with overlapping responsibilities, funneling new talent to the new bureau, and letting the old bureau age out.
I love how no one here can have a proper conversation about this, or anything political really, because they have to figure out whether the commenter is red or blue before replying.
Reminds me of the Macklemore lyrics in his song "A Wake".
> I grew up during Reaganomics
> When Ice T was out there on his killing-cops shit
> Or Rodney King was getting beat on
> And they let off every single officer
> And Los Angeles went and lost it
> Now every month there's a new Rodney on YouTube
> It's just something our generation is used to
Edit: forgot anything to do with woke or being aware of a situation will trigger the anti-wokes. Apparently the fact that Rodney King was beaten on camera and all of the officers were let go with no consequences is very upsetting to some folk who think police can do no wrong.
The problem is, when they've divided the country so completely, they have 50% of the population cheering them on no matter who they are "getting back at". Sad.
Hopefully overreaches like this let lawmakers know why privacy is important, the executive branch has a few too many tools, and secret courts can be abused.
We are communicating as much as we can to build that level of confidence so that they understand how we are using the tool and how we are holding people accountable for when they are not using the tool correctly.
Well? What percentage of inappropriate queries lead to someone being terminated?
“The FBI on Friday sent a letter to House and Senate leaders noting that several different reviews found agents have complied with FISA guidelines at least 98 percent of the time.”
When politicians strive for ever greater surveillance powers they seem to always forget they are also potentially being watched. People always say this could never happen to them!
I no longer trust the FBI and see them as a partisan political paramilitary organization. They are more like storm troopers than police. Joe Biden in is by far the worst President in American history, I’m not sure our Republic can recover from the horrors. I’m not sure we would want to if we could, it’s gone too far now to go back to how things were.
This comes from an oversight report. The FBI itself reformed its procedures earlier this year, resulting in far fewer such cases after, and people are pushing for more reforms in the law itself before reauthorization. Every single time, people do something, making it better over time.
Fewer cases or fewer cases that can be discovered? Who's going to verify actual change to a better, less corrupt FBI?
From the very first, the FBI spied on politicians using that information to control them and protect itself from investigations. They have never been reigned in and have never been given a reason to stop these practices (and asking them to regulate themselves is self-evidently a crazy proposal).
> They have never been reigned in and have never been given a reason to stop these practices
The Church Committee led to the creation of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Believing that the FBI is unstoppable demonstrates both a fundamental misunderstanding of checks and balances and democratic government as well as an unfamiliarity with history.
Canada (legally) abused its judicial reach on finance institutions during the pandemic.
The US Congress is pretty much openly using insider knowledge to win big on stocks.
The Democrats launched FBI investigations against their political opponents without sufficient legal backing.
The Republicans tried to bully their way into countering the will of the people by blocking the presidential election results.
France passed through unconstitutional reforms without the votes. The UK's Conservative party misled the public about the EU to get the Brexit vote.
All of this without a care in the world about the effects it has on its citizens. All they care about is themselves and their fights. They have completely lost track of serving the people, and are fully comfortable in serving themselves at the expense of the people.
[Disclaimer: Am Canadian, voted Liberal x2, and I disagree with the protests that happened, but I don't approve of that specific measure.]