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Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

> Second, you cannot fund the Internal Revenue Service, because if you fund the IRS, they’ll go after tax cheats

Horseshit. They aren't going to "go after the rich". "The rich" own the Congress, lock, stock, and barrel. They're going to go after you and I, and our piddly $600+ transactions. They're also going to destroy what remaining shred of privacy we thought we had.

And of course, as during the Obama years, they are going to go after their political opponents, with vengeance.

Zucks, Bezoses and Musks have nothing to worry about.

> We have clear, explicit, feasible answers to every single crisis that we face.

Also hourseshit. We _think_ we have answers that postpone global warming, but do not fix it entirely. And we don't even really know if they are going to work or not.

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Reduction of IRS budget has coincided with a declining propensity to go after ultra rich clients. How is this horseshit?

You'd think that reduction in IRS budget would actually do the opposite - make them concentrate on high value targets such as the "ultra rich" rather than small time business owners such as myself. If that's not what's happening, then adding more IRS agents won't increase their propensity to go after the "ultra rich".

Thus far they tried to go after me twice in 3 years, both times unsuccessfully because I have a kickass accountant. The largest amount they tried to go after was $16K. Hardly a match for Powell's money printing skills.

No, that wouldn't be the intuition at all. If you don't have a big war chest, then you don't go after big targets.

I'll tell you a secret. Even if they do have a big war chest, they aren't going to go after those targets either. Those targets _write laws_ nowadays, including the _tax laws_.

You're responding to data with feelings. Overfitting that data to your narrative is pretty unconvincing.

If we agree that incalculable, diety-level wealth affords benefits of immunity from the law, that doesn't translate to "reducing or increasing an enforcement budget is pointless."

Are you arguing that enforcement is without merit if it doesn't catch 100%?

Increasing the capabilites of those responsible for enforcement of tax laws does not typically result in more tax evasion. Sure, you can argue the merit of those laws or the effectiveness of them in supporting the State's goals, but it's hard to argue "fewer enforcers benefits the must vulnerable" in the most modern economies, when we have significant and ample data to the contrary.

I'm responding with facts. There's no "data" in the post I responded to.

I reject that premise and think that your mention of that IRS scandal is actually an example of how the IRS has been hobbled in their investigations of the ultra rich, who use BS non-profit schemes to avoid taxation AND use those vehicles to generate more power and lobbying to their advantage.

As an example Koch s were big in that saga. their few tens of millions spent through shady non-profits has generated billions for them from the Trump tax cuts alone. Hell that right wing movement changed the judicial enough so that those once shady hidden politics non-profit schemes became legal.

The IRS used a spreadsheet of keywords to pick out targets for further scrutiny. Both Republican hits like 'tea party' & liberal ones like the at the time liberal 'boogey people' ACORN. [1] Republicans at the time were innovators in those org structures so there were more of them.

Higher ups in Obama admin didn't put out some edict to bureaucrats in the IRS to attack Republicans.

I do agree that IRS and lots of government has too much executive control.

Congress should retake control and attach law to direct IRS to perhaps automatically spend % of budget on .01% earner audits.

or ban 'auto-audit' that contributes to those big unequal IRS stats because they can automatically harass poor people about EITC or child credits.

https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/2017...

You can "reject" it all you like, the facts are not up for debate: 83% of nonprofits targeted by IRS were Republican "tea party" nonprofits. Whether that was ordered by Obama or just done to please Obama and the DNC is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, IRS was used as a political cudgel, which is a disgrace and an indelible stain on its already quite frayed reputation. With the rabid ideologues controlling at least two branches of the US government at the moment, there's no doubt whatsoever it'll happen again.

Check out the report I linked. There were FAR more of those 'non-profits' benefiting republicans than democrats at the time the Koch network pioneered that method.

Plus the keywords were put together based on past infractions. Draw your own conclusions there, but based on your comments I know you'll come to the opposite that I will.

Agreed. This piece is your standard run-of-the-mill, misguided, Pro-China propaganda.

Noam Chomsky is an old-school American academic who has been consistent in his political positions. This "piece" is just quoting him talk at length. Pro-Chinese propaganda?

If you know, you know.

Noam Chomsky is a commie. It's actually quite baffling that he is - I'm sure he understands the inevitable horrors of that ideology better than most people, and knows it can't work, yet he keeps preaching it regardless.

I do enjoy reading some of his work, however. His critique of mass media, for example, is on point, as is his critique of the security state, and the military industrial complex.

But one would have to be absolutely insane to listen to anything Chomsky has to say about economics - dude never held a real job and spent his entire life in academia.

He is not a Communist, as anyone who has read any of his work would know. Perhaps that was not the assertion though, as the term "commie" is an essentially meaningless form of abuse.

He is, according to his own words "anarchist with radical Marxist leanings". That's what Lenin was until Bolsheviks won.

How is this interview pro-china?

I don't like the way Chomsky says stuff, nor do I agree with a good chunk of it. but the only mention of China is his belief that the US is picking a fight with force as if almost 'just because that's who the US is.'

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