Hacker News Reader

Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

The modern version of the American dream is an extremely toxic ideology. It promotes such an extreme version of individualism that it's threatening to tear apart all the social safety nets still existent in the US while also glorifying excessive wealth hoarding.

It is absolutely bonkers that we've gotten to the point where cheating on your taxes can be viewed as a virtue.

View on HN

Can you please not post in the ideological flamewar style? It leads to lower-quality threads and we're trying to avoid that. We want curious conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ah, my apologies. I'll be more careful in the future.

The US got its start at least partially due to a tax revolt, so that last bit isn’t terribly surprising.

I would not characterize protesting taxes due to unfair tax policy the same as cheating taxes to lower how much you contribute to society relative to how much you take.

It wasn't a revolt against taxation, the issue was that the colonies had no say in how their taxes were collected and spent.

The slogan was, "No taxation without representation."

But people forget we're getting taxed more now than the colonies did

I suggest that the 'modern toxic version of the American Dream' is defined mostly by people who want to define it as toxic. So you could say that maybe Zuckerburg represents that, which would make it kind of toxic, but I don't think most Americans would ever think he represents the dream. Though I suppose there are fewer visible local community members who are representative of it as role models.

As someone born in the mid-eighties I'd like to say that your statement probably was pretty accurate in the 70s or 80s - but that by the 90s, and especially by the tech bubble, it went fully mainstream. This cultural identity was definitely embraced and promoted by people for selfish reasons, being able to keep people separated and distrustful prevents union formation and social programs... however it was my impression growing up on the east coast that it's the common opinion now.

We're not getting this message from Marlboro ads or magazine articles alone - your boss, your coworkers, your friends - a decent number of these folks will reinforce the message.

Extreme individualism does not explain in any way high taxes and redistribution (benefits, food stamps, high tax returns to low income families). Extreme individualism would be low taxes and zero social benefits.

Loneliness and individualism are not the same. Loneliness has other causes, like eroding the idea of family, court system that punishes marriage (at 50% divorce rate), promiscuity (most apps like Tinder are used for non-committal flings), the gender wars (a lot of gas was poured in the last 10 years on that fire), unrealistic expectations of people from partners, moral decay reducing trust in friends, etc.

US taxes are actually currently extremely low - in the 90's the top marginal tax rate dipped below 50% for the first time in five decades and now it's gotten all the way down to 37%[1]. That's just for income and a lot of wealthy individuals end up paying the majority of their taxes as capital gains but the other change that's harder to quantify is that our tax code has slowly become a swiss cheese mess of loopholes and exemptions that drastically lowered the effective tax rate.

The causes of loneliness in particular are more hard to trace - culture definitely drive a fair amount of that but we're also dealing with far more isolating technological factors - I don't feel particularly qualified to comment on that portion so I'll just leave it at that.

1. https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/60868250060...

US taxes used to be zero most of the existence of US. Compared to most countries, US taxes are high. California has total taxes higher than a few European countries, so when we talk about high taxes this is the context(perspective) for me.

As for loneliness, my generation and part of the world (Eastern Europe) does not encounter it. I see it in the newer generations, for example people around 20 years old are extremely lonely even here compared to my generation or my parents' generation, but the decline started with my parents, it was fairly small in mine and jumped dramatically in the past 10 years. Looking at the causes, I found the list that I enumerated earlier.

Then in the US you add health care costs on top of taxes, and the overall burden is pretty high.

It probably started with shareholder value when companies they declared that their only responsibility is to make as much money as possible. This ideology is very appealing to sociopaths so now they dominate.

You are saying this started 3-400 years ago? Then why is it visible just now?

I mean the 1980s.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com