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Comment by unicornmama | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if wealthy Bay Area denizens would focus their resources to take care of those around them. Instead they occupy their time with the endless pursuit of vanity, wealth without purpose, and decadence.

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The Bay Area has some of the most generous taxpayers in the country. The issue isn’t the amount of resources.

“most generous taxpayers” is quite the turn of phrase

They could easily save a bundle of taxes by moving somewhere else, or at least moving their money.

Some lower-tax (lower than California) destinations are incredible places to live as well - it’s not a choice between anarcho-capitalism and California.

So there’s at least a tiny bit of generosity there.

I do not think “generosity” of any sort plays in here. They’re not considering leaving for personal reasons but deciding to stay to provide tax dollars to the state. They’re staying because they want to. They like it here, or it works well for their business to be here. I don’t see any reason to believe that generosity plays in to it. California, despite high taxes, is simply a nice place to live.

Living in the Bay Area in spite of the high tax burden is a choice.

Yes. A choice based on the fact that it’s an extremely nice place to live. I have never met or heard of a person who said “I’d like to leave but I don’t want the state of California to lose out on my tax dollars”.

I don't consider paying your taxes generosity, especially when you're in a tax bracket that used to have a marginal tax rate of 80-90%.

Neither is "donating" your income to your own charitable organization, which is a well-established tax avoidance scheme rather than actual humanitarianism.

You do know that you lose more than the deduction, right? If you’re just trying to save money, it’s always better to not donate in the first place.

I think the parent was referencing fake non profit organization, I don't know for USA but in europe it's a 'classical' tax avoidance trick going from 'having a charity which goal is to allow you to particpace in pricey leisure activities (work for mechanical sports for exemple) to the infamous Ikea tax evasion scheme, here is a random article talking about it but you have lot other if the subject interest you : https://www.fastcompany.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and-.... Take care the worl is a little bit darker after ^^.

You mean the landlords and NIMBYs right?

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