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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

That's not a proportional share

Without getting into a debate about progressive taxes, Bezos pays far more than his fair share in taxes. The social burden that he creates is microscopic compared to the tax revenue he pays. If he disappeared tomorrow, the national budget would be in worse shape than it is today.

Complain to your senators, then? Congress is who sets the algorithm defining how taxes are owed, not the taxpayers themselves. Have you ever written the IRS a check for more than what you owe them (or declined to accept a tax refund)?

That's the entire point of this conversation, we want higher taxes and more people (voters) need to be convinced of this fact.

I live in DC so I don't have any Senators and barely any say in how my tax dollars get spent.

Congress voted to do that. They could undo it and make everyone a citizen of Virginia if they wanted to undo it.

Oh great let me just lobby my no senators and single non voting house delegate to fix it. How about in the meantime I don’t have to pay federal taxes if I don’t get a day in how they’re spent?

Also: neither VA not DC want retrocession and you can’t force a state to change its borders. So no, the answer is DC statehood, which is something Congress can do. It’s long past time.

I doubt Congress would vote to give the wealthiest people in the country even more power, they would rather it just ctrl-z what was done.

I didn't realize there was an income limit to statehood.

I agree with your other points but isn't it kind of your choice to move to DC, knowing full well that they lack full representation? It isn't like DC is this massive landscape of a bunch of natives who have lived there for generations and are too poor to move 10 miles away.

Voting representation in America is privilege not a right after all. History shows us that time and again.

Also I like DC. Why do I have to choose between living in the American city I like and having a vote in Congress?

I've been trying to get a meeting with my Senators to express my opinion, but they won't have me. They regularly take meetings with corporate lobbyists though. I wonder what it is they're telling my Senators? Sure wish I had $10 million to spend on lobbyists like Amazon.

You elected Senators that don't care about your opinion. Maybe you should be more mad at them and less mad at Amazon who provides millions of people with exactly the goods and services they promise.

Brazen assumption that the senator they voted for is the one in power. It is a democracy after all, they could have been on the wrong side of it

Such a lazy deflection. When corruption happens you can be mad at both the corrupter and the corruptee.

What’s lazy is not holding the people who are supposed to represent your interests accountable.

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