Hacker News Reader

Comment by stealthmodeclan | Hacker News Reader

> As a teacher, how do you handle these students?

Many people don't believe in working hard today for having a better life tomorrow.

They think they might as well get stuck by lightening and die. Should we blame them for this kind of thinking?

This why the idea of a weflare state seems to saddle the ones who work with more work at the expense of those who are not willing to do anything.

Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity's need and refuse to contribute.

Maybe best system is one where everyone is left to fend for themselves and receive no help from government or society?

View on HN

> Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity need and refuse to contribute.

Look at the Panama Papers and all of the off shore banks, the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich, etc. As a percentage of income per individual, these are the the folks that benefit the most and contribute the least to society by several orders of magnitude. Subsidies, bailouts, elaborate tax evasion schemes, government guaranteed student loans. This is the real "welfare state". People on food stamps don't even scratch the surface in comparison.

> these are the the folks that benefit the most and contribute the least to society by several orders of magnitude

Let's not assume there are only 2 groups, one rich/evil and other poor/victims.

There are also rich who contribute positively to the soceity at large.

I've no problem with with poor people who contribute their share.

There are also poor people who negatively contribute to the soceity.

Money is not the only way people contribute. Social interactions/behaviour/attitude also matter.

Are rich people shitting on BART escalator?

I absolutely did not classify all rich people. I specifically called out the extra wealthy that go out of their way to avoid taxes via loopholes or accounting tricks. Do you think Apple's billions of dollars in avoided tax is the same as someone shitting on the BART escalator? Do you think it's the same as McDonald's Corp not paying a living wage and as a result its employees being poor enough to need food stamps? (Which means tax payers are effectively subsiding McDonald's.)

It sounds like you're drawing the "extra wealthy" line at "can afford to spend $300 with a CPA"? Nobody wants to pay more taxes than they have to pay.

Of course nobody wants to pay more taxes then they have to pay. I'm not talking about paying extra taxes because you're nice. I'm saying per individual, those that actively avoid taxes by "technically being an Irish company which is actually a shell company and a bank in the Cayman Islands", those people that make immense amounts of money and pay next to no tax on it, per individual they contribute the least to our society. And they use their immense wealth to keep the system that way. And they rarely suffer any meaningful consequences for any of their actions.

Just because a CPA can do it for $300 doesn't change that.

> Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity's need and refuse to contribute.

The ones that benefit the most from the welfare state are the ones that (theoretically) pay the most for it: the wealthy. Imagine if Gates/Jobs/Page/Bezos et al had to invest in 18 years of education and healthcare for every potential hire? They'd never get the employees they needed to strike gold.

Those who benefit most from the welfare state are probably the people who hit a rough patch in life and instead of ending up homeless and desperate get a chance to recover back to contributing meaningfully to society.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com