https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747650.
I might assume that terrorism wasn't the "us versus them" issue that it used to be, so culture wars were something new to galavanize the in-group tribe of voters.
Or maybe contemporary culture wars came about after Obama was elected, the sense that the majority was loosing it's majority to the minorities.
The occupy movement didn't seem to be picked up by either political party, so was it really a threat to anyone in power?
This iteration of the culture wars is an over active response to that threat, which is ironic because the war on terror was a hyper over response itself.
Ironically enough you're kind of adding to the supposed distraction, since occupy wall street didn't accomplish much of anything.
Unions forming have caused more of the elite to quiver in their boots than protests.
Then COVID happened and people who reticently got the vaccine and then had mild covid said "COVID was no big deal, I hardly felt anything" while conveniently ignoring the fact that the vaccine did something.
What is the name of this cognitive bias or fallacy? It's everywhere.
"Winning at psychological warfare isn’t about convincing people to do things they’d never do. It’s about getting them to give up."
What percentage of income taxes do you think the bottom 50% of tax payers pay? What percentage of income taxes do you think the richest 1% pay?
(Answer key: Q1 - 3%, Q2 - 39%)
We tax the rich.
Tax analysed in absolute dollar terms is misleading. What should be analysed is the tax's effect on a person's quality of life. A person with a million dollar income paying 50% tax still has 500k to burn. A person paying 30% at 50k a year has 35k left. That 30% means a lot more at the lower end, even though the dollar amount pales in comparison.
They also don't get audited.
Do the rich pay taxes? No.
See: rich people asking to be taxed more before 'something bad' happens.
Do rich pay taxes? Yes.
I don't follow this framing. You are saying we should look at taxes as "how much money does the government allow someone to have"?
This seems to assume a government has a right to take an arbitrary amount of money from its citizens. Do you believe this?
1. Your 3% and 39% actually reflect how much more absolute income the rich generate compared to others. For example, if a rich person has $10 million in income and someone from the bottom 50% person has $100k in income, even a 15% income tax (for example) is $1.5 million and $15k respectively. Given our massive wealth inequality, your 39% income tax number tells us that the top 1% are capturing a massive chunk of the total income generated in the US. A quick quote from a 2021 Forbes article: "billionaires collectively hold two-thirds more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of all households in the United States, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies." - more wealth generates more absolute income.
2. By focusing solely on income tax, you're ignoring Total Taxes, which for example include sales tax. Low-income Americans face higher payroll tax rates than rich Americans. There are also many more tax-reducing benefits for the poor in our tax code, for example, Long-term capital gains and qualified dividends overwhelmingly accrue to the rich.
People on both sides of culture war issues really do care about them. I agree that there are a number of more important issues, but the ordering of political priorities is basically subjective and nobody needs share anyone else's.
That's the goal of every diversion. Sports fans really care about their teams too (in some cases to the point of mass hysteria, or beating other people over them).
>but the ordering of political priorities is basically subjective and nobody needs share anyone else's.
Not so subjective, since conveniently almost everybody ends up sharing the ordering of one of the two sides they are conditioned to chose among.
That's like saying "fashion is subjective" and then seeing 90% of the people wearing the same shit for the season, "mysteriously" the very thing promoted in fashion magazines and celebrity videos and advertised to death 24/7.
Also, whenever you see only a "both sides" then that's the MSM circus.
Which aside from entertainment messaging and your educational curriculum, should be obvious by the fact that its largely the marginal social tier that thinks as you do.
To see the edge of the actual discussion: think about the dissonance of a worldview that simultaneously sees the nation's problems to be inherent in enforced hierarchy as mediated by the government, as you state, and the solution to that problem being the same government's enforcement of taxation.
There's only room for one of those views in anyone's mind. They cannot logically exist simultaneously. The government will never be simultaneously a marauder and a beneficent tax collector. And nothing changes its stripes.
Culture war topics aren't intended to distract from any of the things that you mention. Your list is a litany of topics barely adjacent to the culture war.
The culture war is about legal control of people whose natural habits and views would otherwise preclude it. When control has reached its limit working through the channel of temptation, then the only avenue left is the one that legally forces norms that are so distasteful to the natural senses that they oppress most normal people.