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Comment by sambazi | Hacker News Reader

yes, most of the economy actually works by privatizing gains and externalizing losses.

in your example it would probably be you abusing the court system for something that it is not intended for yet obligated to handle

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> yes, most of the economy actually works by privatizing gains and externalizing losses.

This is a recent trope; it's not really true. Gains are the only things that are taxed. Financially, we tax gains and let investors absorb losses.

This is really confident nonsense. Taxes are very much involved with gains and losses, whether they’re direct costs or things like depreciating assets, companies extract a great deal of tax value off of their losses. Entire industries are built upon the very notion that with a little engineered accounting of strategic losses, companies can get away with paying egregiously little in taxes. On the other side of that, they also extract value from tax dollars with things like nutritional assistance, Medicaid, financial aid, and other means-tested social programs that contribute towards the social safety gap that their poor compensation of hourly employees is partly responsible for. I’m not sure why, but your comments about this seem to be very contrarian, to the point of obtuse in places. Even if the framing device isn’t 100% literally consistent, the cause/effect it’s describing should be pretty clear from context. Some of the present rhetoric surrounding this kind of thing have been exaggerated or misrepresented, for example that stores that collect donations from rounding up customers’ totals are then using those donations for tax write-offs (they aren’t, it’s yours to write off). But the problem of the working poor in the United States receiving significant amounts of government assistance while their employers lobby for right-to-work labor laws and fight union efforts and minimum wage increases is a longstanding and well documented situation. Couple that with the deference given to their interests at every level and branch of government, as well as the grossly disproportionate distribution of wealth, and it’s a glaring symptom of a larger, deep-seated disease that is horribly corrosive to the fabric of a productive, free society.

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