The Guardian flourishes without a paywall | Hacker News Reader

The Guardian flourishes without a paywall

nymag.com

623 pointsbookofjoe519 comments

I was hoping this article went deeper into the Guardian's somewhat unusual ownership model, because I find it interesting and would love to learn more.

The Guardian is owned by (and I think largely funded by?) a trust that was intentionally set up in a way to ensure no commercial interest could interfere with the paper. How well it achieved that goal is, of course, debatable, but it has survived nearly a century in that form.

Yes, The Scott Trust.

You can read more about it here:

https://www.theguardian.com/the-scott-trust

And of course, there's always wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited

Bozo could easily establish a similar trust to support the Wash Post in perpetuity. But clearly he has other motives.

Here's how this happened as I understand it.

The original founder of the guardian, Taylor, ran it like a business. While today journalism struggles to make money, in the 1800s news was lucrative.

In his will, Taylor carved out a sweetheart deal (right of first refusal) to sell the paper to CP Scott, a progressive Liberal politician, and also his nephew.

After running the paper for many years, CP Scott's will named his two sons to inherit. Both of whom worked as editors on the daily.

In a freak turn of events, both CP Scott and one of the sons died within a few months. The remaining son was concerned about paying double for the hefty inheritance tax at the time ("death tax").

The death tax could be so large as to force a sale of the paper, to create liquidity to cover the tax. I guess it was a tax on unrealized gains!

The remaining son, John, cleverly found a workaround to avoid the silly death tax: by renouncing his ownership and transferring the business to a Trust. Since he worked at the paper as editor, giving up ownership was a clever tradoff that actually gave him de facto tenure as editor, by making his day job more stable.

This is all to say: the guardian became a nonprofit-like trust at a point in time it was already a stable business, with capital to self-finance.

This was not a case of a independently wealthy businessman creating a foundation to create a paper from scratch (like many created universities).

The Scott trust was created by journalists for journalists, at a unique point in time where journalists had money to self-finance. Motivated not by some idealistic vision but by a more practical desire to avoid a hefty tax on unrealized gains.

>>> The Scott trust was created by journalists for journalists, at a unique point in time where journalists had money to self-finance

Where is the trust created by coders for coders at a time uniquely profitable for coders?

Honestly things like this can also be an argument FOR crazy high death taxes.

Something similar happened in a history podcast I heard about Porche, which is still owned by the original family. At one point, germany told them their tax on ownership gains is 90%. So instead, they decided they would just re-invest into the business R&D to write off the taxes instead. That gave us the invention of Porche's Racing team. source: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/porsche-with-doug-demuro

You can get unintended consequences from this, like forcing the increase of nepotism. If you look at South Korea, for instance, the Chaebol, despite facing some of the highest inheritance taxes in the world, still have a grip on power.

How? You keep the kids in management, you encourage lots of cross holdings between corporations so that even though the kids’ share falls, you enforce power through social contracts in the upper strata of classes that is horrible for shareholders and innovation as a society.

That said Porsche indeed is an exceptional company in many ways in both the innovative end as well as their holdings structure.

Strong negative incentives create weird workarounds.

> you enforce power through social contracts in the upper strata of classes

Do you have any links that explain this?

I'm planning to visit South Korea so understanding some of the politics is interesting...

The following links here are a good place to start.

Elliott's activist letter to Samsung: http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Press-Relea...

Elliott's presentation: http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Presentatio...

Elliott famously disapproved of the Samsung C&T merger, which ultimately went through. The Korean media demonized Elliott for trying to reform the company. It was an eye-opening experience seeing how Samsung effectively captured Korea both politically and through the media.

McKinsey Report (ctrl-f: "korea discount") https://www.mckinsey.com/kr/~/media/mckinsey/locations/asia/...

Bloomberg report on the Korea discount: https://archive.md/eBJdl

FT Report about cross shareholding: https://archive.md/eYXGM

For all claims of Korea's dynamism, it's still seen as investment rat poison and it's telling that it's still considered an "emerging market" by MSCI. Public markets aside, SK's venture capital scene is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

Perfect information! Snippets for other readers:

  Investors have undervalued South Korea's company stocks compared to other countries, leading to the term "the Korea discount."

  This "discount" is in part attributed to corporate governance in South Korea where some companies may have less incentive to grow their share price to pay less tax when gifting or inheriting financial assets.

  with analysts saying poor corporate governance is one factor behind what is known as the “Korea Discount.”

  But investors often price [Korean shares] below their book value

  [Another] explanation is the risk discount because of nuclear-armed North Korea.

  To maintain control across generations despite South Korea’s unusually high 50 per cent inheritance tax, they have resorted to elaborate solutions that depress the country’s stock valuations.

  At Samsung, heir apparent Lee was sold equity at well below fair value to the detriment of other shareholders. Lee's equity value went from ₩9.5 billion to ₩6.7 trillion 

  [The Hyundai family owners syphoned value] largely at the expense of shareholders in other Hyundai companies, according to court and regulatory findings that affiliates unfairly supported a company through noncompetitive contract awards at inflated prices.

I've abridged the above - see links for better details.

They exist? This is called FOSS and some outfits are even able to offer paid employment.

One can imagine trusts devoted to open source. (They probably exist in some form.) But that probably means that modest amounts of money are distributed to a vanishingly small number of coders based on, likely, the preferences of some executive director.

In general, it's fairly clear that jobs for open source developers is generally more effective than charity of various kinds which is subject to change at any time. (OK, jobs are too but that tends to be less related to political, etc. winds.)

FOSS is not a monetary instrument?

A commit bit may not be liquid, but you can earn from it. There’s tons of companies that would pay for prioritization of their desired FOSS work.

There's also the Ethereum foundation, if that's your jive.

Tiny little businesses that you never hear about

We build open-source trust-equivalents (foundations) with valuable intellectual property on the balance sheet instead of crude money.

However, is Mozilla a money oriented coder trust?

If you've had any experience with small trusts, they often get captured by self-interested people. The Scott Trust seems to stand out from others with its outcomes.

Fascinating!

(I do find some irony in the fact that a majority of Guardian readers these days would abhor attempts by rich businessmen to dodge taxes.)

Charitable trusts, depending on the type, often/usually provide shielding from various types of taxes. That's not intended to be a cynical statement--the end result may well still be positive for society--but nonetheless it's one mechanism by which at least relatively affluent people can keep profits out of the hands of the government. It happens at much smaller scale than in this case as well.

As a Guardian reader, the idea of a wealthy person placing their money in a charitable trust - that actually does valuable work, rather than handing it to their children seems entirely reasonable

> ... a wealthy person placing their money in a charitable trust - that actually does valuable work, rather than handing it to their children

Isn’t it money that should have gone to the State here, rather than the children? They didn’t do the trust not to give money to their children, but rather to avoid taxes.

Some portion of Guardian readers might see the state as the main provider of benefits to society, but I very much doubt most would. Guardian is a (in the European sense) liberal paper, with a readership ranging from the centre and toward the left, with a large proportion along that entire range being totally fine with non-state organisations structured for the public benefit. You'll also find plenty who look on the state with suspicion to outright hostility and would actively prefer if more businesses had ownership structured this way, whether or not the handover of wealth that creates them "avoids taxes".

Even with inheritance tax, 60% of the money would go to the children

> While today journalism struggles to make money

It rather depends on what you mean by journalism. I suspect your definition is true to the Guardian's apparent aims, publishing well researched truths to an interested population. What was being published in the 1800s was most certainly not that; instead, being very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today.

> [...] very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today.

They are lucrative, but I don't think exceptionally so.

Lucrative doesn’t always mean monetary terms.

They're exceptionally lucrative for the people who can get their viewers to buy their memecoin and send donations to own the outgroup.

Memecoins are a very, very small part of the overall economy. Much smaller than journalism used to be in its heyday.

Boris Johnson was paid more by the Telegraph (£220k) to write one column a week than he was as Foreign Secretary at the same time. Propaganda is lucrative.

> They are lucrative, but I don't think exceptionally so.

Probably not as lucrative as the despicable academic publisher parasites.

In a post about why it's good thing to have a paper that's not owned by the super wealthy, you insist on using the term "death tax" - a right-wing pejorative - instead of just sticking with inheritance tax.

The incongruity of this never crossed your mind?

He seems to think that the independence of the guardian is a bad thing.

It’s clear from his post that we need higher inheritance tax, and wealth tax in general, especially on unrealised gains.

> especially on unrealised gains.

Right, absolutely brilliant idea. You live prudently, save some money every month and invest it (stocks, bonds, whatever). Due to factors entirely outside your control like a stock market bubble or an interest rate drop, the $50k portfolio you built over 30 years is now worth $70k. Your unrealized $20k gain is taxed at 10% for easier math. You don't have $2k cash on hand and are forced to sell some of your portfolio to pay the tax.

Next year, there is a crash. You now have just $40k in assets. But there is a gradual recovery, and the year after it's back to $50k. You now owe another $1k. Sound good?

The glaring incongruity is that the Guardian exists because someone used trusts as tax avoidance.

> I guess it was a tax on unrealized gains!

Inheritance taxes invariably are. The recent UK controversy around farm land inheritance was the same.

That was definitely a case of people buying up land purely for the IHT value and then doing some toy farming on the corner to get the exemption.

I feel like a lot of these cases could be avoided if people wanted to structure their family business like a business and gradually transfer control to their children, rather than keep it as personal property right until the very last minute.

>found a workaround to avoid the silly death tax

I don't know if you're using the word "silly" sarcastically here, but if not, isn't this an example of this type of tax working exactly as intended? John still greatly benefited from his parents' work, and so did society at large to this very day.

"Death tax" alone is already a very loaded way to describe inheritance tax.

That said, having to pay inheritance tax twice over an organisation like this in a short span of time is rather unusual, and arguably, a bit "silly".

It is very good example of political framing. It evokes the thought of tax as a punishment for dying, and its collection as a kind of harassment of the bereaved. So tax bad, case closed, no discussion.

But of course, it is not death and loss that it taxed, it is rather the accumulated wealth being redistributed over both society at large and the heirs, in some kind of ratio. In favor of inheritance tax: the wealth somebody amassed has also been thanks to its participation in society, so it is only fair some portion of it goes back to society. The heirs played no part in it, so why should they get any, let alone all of it? Furthermore, inheriting wealth goes against the idea of meritocracy, and maintains inequality in an unfair way in modern societies. Why should inheritance tax not be 100%?

Children often grow attached to the 'stuff' their parents have collected, be it things or land, houses or money. It seems unfair to take it all away from them, as they feel they already 'own it' merely by being their children. So inheritance tax is some kind of compromise.

However, as each generation these days tend to fully 'break' with their parents, in a way (economically, spiritually), inheritance itself seems more and more like a thing of our tribal pasts. I imagine a future where there is no inheritance tax anymore, because the whole concept of inheritance will go away.

But wasn't the "society" paid off by all the "living taxes" before the person died?

Imagine having nothing, your parents dying, you, an eg. broke college student inheriting a 2 bedroom apartment, which is somehow worth $1mio, and you owe so much tax (that you can't pay) that you're forced to sell the apartment, the only place you've ever known.

With 100% inheritance tax, i'd literally stop working as soon as i reached enough money to retire. Why work harder if it all vanishes when I die, and my hypothetical kids gain nothig? Or, more realistically, i'd convert stuff to cash and give it to them without the government knowing.

Tax the income, close the loopholes, once the tax for something is paid, the rest should go to the person, the government has got its share, it has enough.

And i'm saying this as someone who already lives in a country without inheritance tax (in most usualy cases).

This leads to what we have today: insane levels of wealth inequality.

Everyone that inherits fortunes from their parents get to live life on easy mode while every one else is poorer, with less assets and barring winning a lottery ticket, no way to ever catch up. Wealth creates a feedback loop that if gone unchecked will hoard all assets from everyone else.

We can't have both meritocracy and inheritance as they are mutually exclusive. If we want to keep telling people there's any modicum of truth to meritocracy, we have to stop all this inheritance bullshit. The particulars of it can be discussed with caps based on amounts, for example, but that's not the point.

There's a reason that most wealthy people from the past are still wealthy today and I can guarantee you it's not through their own merit.

Tax wealth, not work. There should be no billionaires.

> Tax wealth, not work. There should be no billionaires.

NB. This does not mean that Inheritance should be a taxable event! There would be less need to have inheritance tax if we had a consistent wealth tax.

It remains obvious to me that inheritance drives social inequality, and similarly it is obvious that parents are going to resent not giving their children as much help as they can.

Yeah, if we had very effective wealth taxes, I could see it being less relevant. Right now, it kind of works as a very rare wealth tax and is probably dodged quite a lot by transferring ownership beforehand. I'm no expert since but I'm sure it's full of loopholes.

But it's one of the very few wealth taxes we actually have today...

> I'm sure it's full of loopholes.

Yeah, there are a few very well defined loopholes - gifting early, pension wrappers, some trusts, agricultural land, non-dom etc etc - some are being closed. In general the richer you are the more likely you are to be able to minimise and avoid the tax.

Taxing wealth is identical to gradually nationalising all businesses.

> There should be no billionaires.

These moral judgements aren't great ways to make economic decisions. A billionaire can just be someone who owns a lot of shares in a company that's currently valuable. A company's value (in this sense) is just the total number of shares multiplied by the last share sale price.

It doesn't mean they have a billion dollars in cash. The billions don't even exist. They're just a value based on the last transaction value of the company's share dealing.

That they can borrow money from the banks as if they do exist says you're wrong.

Well yes, companies do exist. How would you handle that? Nationalize all large businesses? That... rarely worked out historically.

That is what this is all driving at, yes.

> That they can borrow money from the banks as if they do exist says you're wrong.

I can borrow money for a house even though I don't have money to buy a house.

> These moral judgements aren't great ways to make economic decisions.

In my experience, a lot of people who make these kinds of extreme claims (no billionaires, no inheritance, etc.) do not seek plausible economic solutions, they only want the moral high ground.

In my experience, people that simply attack other people instead of contributing to the discussion are the ones that want the "moral high ground".

That statement is in no way moral. Not sure why GP assumes that. It's simply not beneficial to society for small groups to accumulate disproportionate amounts of power.

But as always, we have some "future billionaires" rushing to defend them.

> It's simply not beneficial to society for small groups to accumulate disproportionate amounts of power.

Power and money aren't the same thing. Someone who can throw you in jail or stop you getting on a flight can be on a very low wage indeed.

> But as always, we have some "future billionaires" rushing to defend them.

This would be considered one of those attacks you just mentioned.

> Power and money aren't the same thing.

Kind of are in a capitalist society. Sure you need extra steps but it's still power. No need to go far... Elon is living proof of that. Other billionaires do the same but they don't need all the attention.

You're arguing you don't necessarily need money to have power but if you have money you absolutely do have power, which is my point.

> This would be considered one of those attacks you just mentioned.

I know... I couldn't help myself to hit back at a useless comment.

A capitalist democratic society is about the only type I know of that tries to separate money and power.

Normally the monarch or the Socialist dictator or the lord of the land controls the money and the power.

IDK if I agree with you, since in theory modern socialism tries to spread power, although it never quite worked like that in history. Maybe that's an utopia.

> A capitalist democratic society is about the only type I know of that tries to separate money and power.

But when I read this I can't help but think the same utopia is under capitalism.

In theory there's a separation. In reality billionaires can purchase politicians, media, etc. and get power through those means. I have never seen an example of this not happening.

If there were any effective ways of stopping money from meddling with power I'd agree with you but reality always smacks theories in the face. You say it tries to separate them but then you have lobbying (or the non-legal version of it) in every government as an example. It's an utopia just the same.

It's not a moral judgement. Morals have nothing to do with how power works. Society does not benefit from small groups owning enormous amounts of power.

Whether they're kings from "divine right", corrupt nepo babies or even legitimate geniuses. Nobody should have that much power.

There's a big difference between money and power, though. A TSA agent can affect your life in a big way without the use of any money. That's power[0].

There's a big difference between money: voluntarily trading value for services and goods, some of which might negatively affect you, and power: trading nothing for direct control of aspects of your life.

[0] Not inappropriate power, or not in theory

> Tax wealth, not work. There should be no billionaires.

But what is wealth? And when should you tax it?

Let's say I take a piece of duct tape and a banana and ducttape the banana to a wall.... how much tax should I pay for that? I mean... how much could a banana cost?

If i sell that "art", for example for $6.2M (yes, it sold for that much), then sure, i did my "work", earned $6.2M, and in the current system i'm taxed for my "work" (well.. income for my work).

So, by your logic, when should I get taxed? And for what value? The net worth of that banana on the wall is $1, so should I be taxed on that value? But if someone wants to pay $6.2M for that, should my tax change, even before it's bought? Do I get my taxes back if he changes his mind?

What if instead I start a small company named Sava (a river nearby) that sells books. Do I get taxed now, when the value of the company is $10k in books in the warehouse? What if someone believes in my company so much, he wats to buy 1 millionth of my company for $1000, should I be taxed on the theoretic value of my company (1B now)? Or should I be taxed only when I actually sell that stock and earn the money?

Yes, life is not fair, kids of rich parents start with a lot of money. My parents were not rich, but believed in the future of computing and bought me (a kid back then) a computer in the time when you had to take out a loan to get one. My friends parents bought him a motorcycle. I'm an above-average paid 'developer' now and he works minimum wage in a factory. So, should i lose something or have to pay something back, because my parents made better decisions than his?

Instead of focusing on taking away stuff where the taxes were already paid, lets rather focus on people like bezos paying the same amount of taxes as other businesses do, like mom and pop book stores (i'm talking percentages, not net values), and to stop the abuse of every goddamn tax loophole they abuse now.

You're basically describing one way the rich dodge wealth taxes and saying we can't do it because it's hard to figure the value of some things out.

I don't deny it's very tricky and people will absolutely do their best to dodge as much as possible, but that doesn't invalidate the purpose they serve. You can't claim those hundreds of properties you have are worth $1.

I'm by no means an expert but my idea would be to tax rich people yearly after a cap. We don't want to tax workers but the whole swath of parasites that simply extract from society.

Your company example is odd. Can you lend based on your theoretical valuation of $1B? Then perhaps we tax if you do. I don't know all the answers off the top of my head and neither should I.

That doesn't mean we let people accumulate wealth infinitely. It's a problem and there's no way to ignore it. The more wealth is accumulated, the more they accumulate and for a lot of assets it is literally a zero sum game. If they own everything, we own nothing.

Posing edge cases and possible dodge scenarios like you did is exactly what a politician should be spending their time on when proposing these.

> I'm an above-average paid 'developer' now and he works minimum wage in a factory. So, should i lose something or have to pay something back, because my parents made better decisions than his?

Not more than what's fair. Unless you're secretly a multi-millionaire, this wouldn't ever affect you. I don't understand people's fears of taxation on the super rich when they aren't even close to that.

These taxes are not for working people. If you don't live off a trust fund from daddy you probably don't have to worry. Well, if we're being honest, this will never happen because they own the politicians too... but a man can dream.

> Tax wealth,

Perhaps. However an extremely high inheritance tax is an irrational way to do that. It would incentivize everyone to spend all their money/wealth before they die e.g. directly or just by selling all their property and buying an annuity.

A massive increase in consumption wouldn't necessarily be the best outcome. Though I do see some benefits.

> we have to stop all this inheritance bullshit.

That would only work if you ban parents from giving any gifts or financial support to their children. Which is a very slippery slope...

Tax consumption, not work or wealth.

So - this is quite a good idea, but worked example: what if I work for a UK/US business, but live in a low cost of living country? Is that just fine, because I'm still consuming resources where I'm working? Or is it a bit of a loophole (can't tell)?

> But wasn't the "society" paid off by all the "living taxes" before the person died?

Governments look holistically at their tax revenue. If there is an inheritance tax, and they expect to get a certain amount of revenue from it, then other taxes will be lower to compensate.

And vice versa: if an inheritance tax is producing revenue, eliminating it will result in higher taxes elsewhere. This is one reason such a tax continues to exist. Inheritance taxes tend to have very high exclusions so most people don’t pay them. And getting rid of them looks like charging everyone else more in order to lower taxes on the rich.

Some would say: governments look holistically at it - if there is a way to get away with extracting more taxes, they will.

With that said, I'd like to say that I enjoy living in Norway and I enjoy our tax model and the health care and education system it funds.

I just wish there was as much scrutiny on how the funds are used and as much creativity on getting as much as possible for them as there is scrutiny on how much each of us should pay and creativity around how to tax us more.

I like how you suggest that other taxes will be lower to compensate. That hasn't been my experience in general. I'm sure it's happened occasionally but I don't think it's the rule.

A 100% inheritance tax is quite silly imho and very unfair for the parents. One of the reasons many people strive for success is to secure some well-being to their children... well at least myself and many people i know.

Exactly. It creates perverse incentives. One of the main drivers for millions of humans to work harder is to leave a better economic situation for their children and grandchildren. You remove that incentive and the economy will tank immediately.

It’s not only perverse but completely anti-human.

... the perverse incentive to raise your children to stand on their own two feet?

The potentially perverse incentive to spend every single $ you have before you die? If everything you have goes to the government after you're dead and you have more money than you personally need you can still spend it all on your children before you die.

Presumably this 100% tax would also apply to gifts cause otherwise it wouldn't really work but where does it stop? Parents can't pay for college? Buy their children a car? Go on vacation with them? Spend any money on them at all so that they would "stand on their own two feet"? Be banned from giving any financial support to their children when they reach 18?

I mean... it's an obviously not a good idea.

Also the most optimal strategy would be to spend all the money you have in addition to getting a reverse mortgages on any property so that by the time you die your net worth would be as close to 0 as possible. Or just selling everything and buying an annuity.

Why is spending everything before you die a perverse incentive?

Lower savings rate, higher inflation, higher interest rates, less capital available for investment. So most capital intensive sectors wouldn't do well.

A lot more volatility, without a (or much smaller one) buffer most economic shocks would have a bigger impact on the economy.

Also there would still be a lot of inequality it would just be intra-generational.

Then again.. all the annuity money has have to go somewhere. So maybe the insurance companies would become the primary sources of investment capital (which wouldn't be great). A lot of uncertainty though i.e. buying a house if you have a family would become much riskier..

I'd need a source to back up those claims, as you note it's not trivial to understand how economy would react.

I also don't see why buying a house would be much riskier? If you buy a house for your family it's because you either prefer the lifestyle or think it provides economic advantages over renting. Given you only need housing when your alive, I think what happens after you pass is not as major a concern as presented.

> I'd need a source to back up those claims

A source like what? I don't think there are many studies refuting bizarre not well thought out policies. Also it's pretty hard for me to argue against a suggestion that's so ill defined.

Albeit a massive increase in consumption and a reduction in savings would be the most obvious outcome (with all the implications of that).

> after you pass is not as major a concern as presented

Therefore there is no point for you to own your house. When you get older you either get a reverse mortgage or don't buy property in the first place. There would be no rational reason to own property beyond a certain age.

If no sources exist, then you must accept making claims such as this would 'lower savings rates' are simply not backed up. Maybe it will... maybe it won't.

So what if there is no reason to own property beyond a certain age? Even if we take this claim as true... that doesn't explain if this is a good or bad thing.

> then you must accept

I don't, because this argument is nonsensical (I mean your point about source specifically). Unless you disagree with some of the core principles of modern economics (not saying that you have to agree with them..) that would be the most obvious outcome.

> So what if there is no reason to own property beyond a certain age?

Well that would mean that the savings rate would go down (for better or for worse).

You've not established that your suggestions are core principles of modern economics or derived from them.

For example, you are asserting there would be 'no reason to own property beyond a certain age'... which isn't supported, and then jumping to the conclusion that that would lower savigns rates.

None of this is clearly true, just supposition.

> which isn't supported

The general consensus amongst most economists is that humans behave in a rational way? Not spending all the wealth you before you die would be irrational if your children won't inherit it.

Of course in reality that's often not the case especially these days so it might not be sufficient enough.

> clearly true, just supposition.

Well by such standards every discussion on any policy that hasn't been tried is meaningless because there isn't any empirical evidence.

> Not spending all the wealth you before you die would be irrational if your children won't inherit it.

Sure, but that's only one small aspect of the economy.

Maybe younger generations would earn more with all the spending and save more knowing there is no inheritance coming.

You only look at one aspect, claim you know what would happen, and the proclaim yourself right.

The goal are in no way mutually exclusive.

I can want my children capable of providing for themselves.

I can also want improve their situation beyond that.

Are you actually advocating for an inheritance tax close to 100%?

Because that is completely unworkable IMO, for several reasons:

1) Unless you introduce comparable "wealth transfer"/gift taxes, it becomes completely meaningless for the average case.

2) This would be insanely harmful in cases of unexpected deaths; inheritance is a really bad compensation already when someone close dies, this would make it even worse. And dealing with any kind of shared assets would be a nightmare, too (father dies, mother has to pay tax on half the house?)

Could be workable with large allowances though, but I don't hink you would ever get this pushed through in a democracy because it is too easy to put negative spin on it (even if it was in the majorities economical best interest).

I don't think that inheritance tax is a bad concept, but setting it higher than the gift tax rate is actively harmful and would not achieve anything.

You don't normally pay inheritance taxes for spousally shared assets. Is that not the case where you are, or did you purposefully give this the worst framing?

No, I'm not purposefully giving this the worst framing.

My main point is that setting it higher than gift tax rates is effectively pointless, and basically just punishes people for dying unexpectedly (and/or not planning ahead for their own death), and neither is desirable.

It’s not pointless. It may be counterproductive but kicking rich people when they’re down is popular among certain sections of society since it’s a subset of kicking rich people, which they like generally.

A purpose of death taxes is to even out the effect of not being born into wealth. I'd rather make it easier for living people by 'punishing' dead people than make it harder for living people by punishing them for not being born into the right family.

I absolutely see your point, but if you set inheritance tax higher than gift tax rate, then that rate difference does nothing for wealth inequality (because people are just gonna gift things in their 80's at the latest, or set things up legally to avoid the tax), while the inheritance tax is highly punishing for families of the unepxectedly deceased.

> Could be workable with large allowances though,

Like US$13M ? That is the current situation in the United States.

Absolutely-- but if you have to exempt like 99% of your population from a law then its probably not too popular a concept (compare income tax, which a lot more people are actually fine with paying).

I still think this would have mainly negative effects if the gift tax rate is lower than inheritance tax anyway.

> but if you have to exempt like 99% of your population from a law then its probably not too popular a concept

It is hard to take this seriously. Are you seriously suggesting that the threshold is set at this level because of unpopularity rather than the power of the extremely wealthy? Have you looked at how the threshold has changed over time, and why?

> than the power of the extremely wealthy?

How does that make sense? In theory only the extremely wealthy have to pay the tax (not that they necessarily do that). In what way would it being so high benefit them?

absolutely. If you removed the limit and applied to the 99%, it would be the most unpopular tax in the country.

I don't believe there's ever been a situation (at least in the USA) where there was no threshold at all. So the argument is over its value, not its existence.

That said, sure, you're right. But why are you right? I would suggest it is because we live (in the USA, among other places) in a culture that strongly emphasizes the right to pass along generational wealth. But this is not universally true across time and space, and our culture took a different tack (say, by quoting august Republican figures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries), the popularity or otherwise would likely be entirely different.

The argument is about the exclusion threshold because that determines who it is applied to. People generally support taking from other people but not from themselves.

A flat 50% rate still extract much more value from the rich, but apply equally to the poor.

My perception is that hereditary wealth transfer is about as universal and it's phenomenon get when it comes to humans. Not 100%, but close to it.

> Are you seriously suggesting that the threshold is set at this level because of unpopularity rather than the power of the extremely wealthy?

I absolutely think that significant estate tax is an unpopular concept-- significantly more so than income taxation. A big factor is perceived "double-dipping"; there is some additional justification though because it seems very unlikely to me that less wealthy people could avoid this tax with the same effectiveness as 1%ers (who in many cases probably avoid paying it completely).

I fully agree though that the extremely wealthy leverage their power very effectively to prevent legislation that would affect them negatively-- a very clear example would be basically all of Trumps past and present tax policy, which you could IMO summarize as "tax cuts for the rich" without being too disingenuous, but which is absolutely NOT portrayed like that in mass media (and not perceived accordingly by most of his voters, which get diverted with "no more tax on overtime!" instead).

> Absolutely-- but if you have to exempt like 99% of your population from a law then its probably not too popular a concept (compare income tax, which a lot more people are actually fine with paying).

What? That is completely wrong.

If you gave the populace the option of massively lowering their income tax by slightly upping taxes on anyone with assets exceeding.. say.. $15 million, and massively taxing anyone with assets exceeding $100 million, do you think they'll cheer for the status quo or for lowered income taxes?

A huge number of people see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" and oppose taxes on the ultrawealthy because they think they might one day be ultrawealthy themselves.

The temporarily embarrassed millionaire meme is a punchline to a joke (look at those stupid greedy people they don't know how stupid they are).

Inheritance taxes don't sit well for many reasons that are actually interesting to discuss

+ People's desire to support friends, families and personal interests is a core reason for an individual to work beyond individual self sufficiency. This makes it very easy to empathize with the millionaire impacted by gift / inheritance taxes that may never be applied to you.

+ Taxes have already been paid on this money - double dipping is very easy to cast as unfair.

+ Clumsy implementations of these types of taxes create situations where small family owned farms and businesses need to be liquidated to cover taxes causing more pain and disruption for families.

+ The constant slippery slope of taxes initially targeted at 'the rich' but over time effecting more and more people due to combinations of inflation and revenue seeking.

+ The simple fact that if the US just seized all the wealth of 800+ billionaires today - it would only be worth 6.2 trillion dollars [1], which doesn't even cover the 6.8 trillion dollars the government spent in 2024. So what do we do next year?

Do we need more revenue? Are we getting the revenue the right way (aka is everyone paying their fair share)? Maybe... But there is certainly a spending problem too.

1: https://inequality.org/article/billionaire-wealth-keeps-grow...

I agree with almost all your points, except two:

The US estate tax specifically got basically bigger exemptions every time it was touched (even adjusting for inflation), and returns have been falling precipitously for basically the last 25 years. If you own less than $13M at death, it does not affect you at all right now.

> The simple fact that if the US just seized all the wealth of 800+ billionaires today - it would only be worth 6.2 trillion dollars

Sure-- but I think this is a bit of a strawman. To me, and a lot of people that argue in favor of wealth/estate taxation, the purpose is not to substitute income taxes (like what Trump wants to achieve with tariffs)-- the goal is to get wealth inequality back under control, not to balance the government budget with those tax returns.

Another perspective on wealth distribution is that the top 1% own a third of the country. In my opinion, if you have enough wealth (and liquid enough wealth) to outright buy an average home at sticker price, then you are part of the problem;

I absolutely don't want to compete with people like that on the housing market, and I don't want them to extract excessive rents from people like me (i.e. not-1%ers) either, but thats exactly what happens right now.

> But there is certainly a spending problem too.

I don't really agree with this. I think (expected) government responsibilities have grown tremendously over the last century (mainly for good reason).

I'm confident in saying the the American-favored approach to healthcare ("everyone takes care of it on their own, and negotiates/pays for it by himself") has completely failed for IMO very clear reasons (demand for healthcare is inelastic and only government can force pricing transparency, prevent collusion and a generally fair provider-market in the first place-- obviously).

I'm also confident that shifting back more pension responsibilities onto citizens themselves is also a bad idea, because it creates extremely bad potential outcomes in case of an economic crash. Government providing a survivable social security baseline is just a very clearly good idea to me.

Those two points (healthcare + social security) account for the vast majority of government budget, I think they are basically a good idea, and cutting costs with foreign aid, research funding, environmental regulation/enforcement etc. has IMO neither the potential to save significantly in the first place, nor is it beneficial to do so by itself (I'd even go so far and call the whole doge initiative a thinly veiled propaganda department for the current administration).

> People's desire to support friends, families and personal interests is a core reason for an individual to work beyond individual self sufficiency.

The fact that the income being taxed is "beyond individual self sufficiency," actually makes it easier to justify taxing. This isn't someone's food budget--it's the extra on top after one's life is fully funded.

> Taxes have already been paid on this money - double dipping is very easy to cast as unfair.

This argument has never made sense. Money gets taxed over and over. It's not like a dollar bill gets taxed once and then you mark it with a pen so it never gets taxed again. Money typically gets taxed when it changes hands: Your company pays you money, it gets taxed. You buy something from a store, that money gets taxed. The store owner issues a dividend to shareholders, it gets taxed. The shareholders get bank interest from that money, it gets taxed. There's nothing unusual about taxing a dollar over and over.

> Clumsy implementations of these types of taxes create situations where small family owned farms and businesses need to be liquidated to cover taxes causing more pain and disruption for families.

This is a sentimental-sounding trope that doesn't really happen in practice. In the USA, inheritance income under $13M doesn't even get taxed at all. This is well outside of the scope of "small farms and businesses." Inheritance, in fact, tends to benefit recipients tax-wise: An heir is allowed to adjust the cost basis of an inherited asset to its market value on the day of the previous owner's death, so that all the previous owner's unrealized capital gains never get taxed. Sitting on $1M of capital gains from your meme stock that you don't want to pay taxes on? Just leave it to your kid in your will--those gains won't be taxed!

The other commenter addressed your other two issues.

I think people will cheer for anything, given consistent positive reporting in mass media.

And media is typically not controlled by people owning <$15M.

If you wrap things nicely in populist rethoric and act in the best interests of media owners (i.e. the rich) then detrimental (for the median voter) changes to tax code are trivial to push through. Just compare the 2017 TCJA act, or the current lunacy-in-progress (essentially replacing progressive tax rates with regressive tariffs).

Sure, it would be easy to make people cheer for additional significant taxes for 1-percenters, but that does not really matter because its not gonna happen.

A 100% inheritance tax would encourage entrepreneurial behavior and force young people to take risks that they wouldn't otherwise. Capital would operate more efficiently if everyone was on the market in that way. In fact, the inheritance tax would be the only tax if it was total; there would be no other tax burden in one's entire life.

> entrepreneurial behaviour and force young people to take risks that they wouldn't otherwise

Or get them stuck in a permanent debt cycle.

> the inheritance tax would be the only tax if it was total; there would be no other tax burden in one's entire life.

Wouldn't everyone be incentivized to spend as much as they feasibly can before they die and not accumulate too much wealth?

I guess it depends on the specific implementation but the optimal approach would be to take on as much debt as you can to keep your effective net worth close to 0. So even a 100% tax on that might not result in a lot of revenue...

I'd advocate for that. The dead have no property rights. Survivors have no automatic right to get rich when uncle pennybags kicks the bucket.

All the rest is quibbling about logistics. Yes, we know rich people are very good at hiding their money.

Your view about each generation tending to fully 'break' with their parents, in a way (economically, spiritually) strikes me as particularly narrow. Perhaps it is so where you live, but this is simply not true for vast populations all over the world.

Most populations in the world: Latin America, China, India, Japan, Koreas, the muslims and the jews, and more.

However, I think the grandparent post refered to Great Britain since the paper in question is english.

You've just named three of the top global cultures for transfer of intergenerational wealth down the patriarchal line.

:/ Yes, I was agreeing with the parent post, which disagreed with the grandparent post:

"Your view about each generation tending to fully 'break' with their parents, in a way *strikes me as particularly narrow*. "

I then added examples of vast populations where sons don't isolate from their parents.

What happens is gifts are given out before death and names put on houses so the tax is paid by the poor or those who died unexpectedly.

> the accumulated wealth being redistributed over both society

That's fair in principle. Yet in this case but his brother didn't really have enough time to accumulate that much additional wealth after inhering it from his father so it's a bit of a lottery.

Also inheritance taxes are quite tricky to enforce and it's very hard to close all the loopholes (also the revenue isn't exactly reliable). IMHO a wealth tax seems like a better idea (then again there are quite a few complications as well as Norway's recent attempt has shown...).

> because the whole concept of inheritance will go away.

I fear the opposite. As property prices continue increasing and middle and lower class incomes stagnate inheritance might again become one of the few ways that are left for the majority of the population to attain and any significant wealth (I mean middle class level i.e. a hour or two). Birth rates also being so low might make it even more significant.

Let me introduce you to the concept of "property rights." What right do you have to tell someone who they can pass their property on to at their death? Your definition of "fair" is utterly irrelevant.

Property rights are meaningless without a social order that protects them. Aka a government and a civilized society with high trust.

The value of that property increases when others in the society prosper. Government programs funded by “taking people’s money” (aka taxes) very often make “private” property more valuable.

People with the “f*ck you, got mine” mindset either don’t get this or selfishly don’t care (sometimes for understandable reasons, e.g. they come from a low trust area).

Of course, there are lots of nuances and complex implementation details. Like how much exactly does a specific program affect different groups and on what time scales. But the fundamental principle is straightforward and essential to a healthy society.

Saying "you don't have a right to pass on your property to your family" is the opposite of high trust. I'll grant that the moral answer beyond a certain point is to limit your children's inheritance to what will give them a comfortable life, and then engage in philanthropy a la people like Andrew Carnegie.

But claiming the government has to force people into this is low-trust to the extreme. It's saying "we're going to take these things we already taxed you on, because you can't be trusted to use them responsibly and we can."

You can't regulate your way into everything. Good government can only exist alongside the unwritten rules that made people like Carnegie decide that the right answer was to give their wealth away to the public.

I was responding to your suggestion that property rights are supreme over all other moral and societal considerations.

>Property rights are meaningless without a social order that protects them.

Where do you delineate this worldview from a simple extortion shakedown? e.g. your house is more valuable when it isnt on fire and your family isn't dead.

It still leaves the question of what is an appropriate tax to pay for social order? is it 100%?

The worldview I outlined just suggests there is some amount of obligation that we all owe to society for enabling our basic rights and prosperity (with varying degrees of effectiveness, unfortunately).

And it also argues that some sort of governance structure is always present — official and explicit or implicit and unintentional - so we might as well try to make it a good one.

The details can and should be debated and discussed. The project is never over.

Ofc they grow "attached", because it's free shit - I'd say it's got 99% nothing to do with nostalgia or attachment to their parents and more a huge boon to their wallets. The number of people that whine about inheritance taxes is ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the number of people (on here especially) that think that owning a second/holiday home is practically a human right (for them).

"Inheritance tax, is broadly speaking a voluntary levy paid by those who distrust their Heirs more than they dislike the Inland Revenue"

- Roy Jenkins MP

Silly is actually too nice a word for such extortion scheme. As you see if rich enough/business big enough, it could be easily circumvented. The little people without access to great lawyers and accountants got absolutely hammered when it got applied to them. But victorian England wasn't setup for little people in mind, it was all lords and wealthy businessmen ruling it all.

So similar to current situation in many places - if you are rich enough, you basically exist outside of tax system, be it capital gains, investments, inheritance etc. Obscure tax structures spanning whole globe as ie Panama papers showed. Its the middle class that gets hammered out of existence, ie in France its around 40% for inheritance tax, and trusts are AFAIK forbidden / treated very punitively. Very rich still bypass this and everybody knows this, everybody below not so much. Its not even effective there, the amount extracted yearly in such way is minuscule, but it pleases crowds with 'social justice' so they don't protest so much and burn more cars on streets.

Most jurisdictions have a tax-free allowance or threshold. If you're affected by an inheritance tax, you're not poor.

As I said in the comment you're responding to, this seems like an example of how this type of tax worked correctly for a very rich person, so the thread you're responding to is already a counterexample to your argument.

I agree that inheritance taxes can be implemented poorly. Still, the concept of an inheritance tax is good, and poorly implemented inheritance taxes should be fixed by improving them, not removing them.

Recently proposed changes to the UK system to include business property (and farms) are going to further the take over of productive property (including farms) in the UK by private equity and large and multi-national companies who have shown to be pretty poor actors in furthering the public good. In my opinion, this is a particularly bad change to inheritance tax.

Insightful comment. Good example of the law of unintended consequences there.

I don't think this has been fully enacted yet - but is being done because it had increasingly become a way to avoid tax - ie. buy dormant/hobby farmland and pass it on to your children tax free

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-are-the-changes-to-a...

Except the farming changes is far more nuanced than that.

The reason farms are worth so much at present, despite low margins, is because of the inheritance tax loophole that was introduced in the 80's, at the behest of the landed backers of the Conservative Party. This turned farmland into a prime investment vehicle as a way to shelter assets from inheritance tax.

Is the proposed change (and thresholds, plus half rate with interest free payments spread over 10 years) perfect? No - it'll still catch some small family farms - but it's telling that the highest level of opposition has come from some very wealthy landowners, such as those using their "farmland" for grouse hunting, rather than making food.

The tax break in the 80's was a textbook market distortion, if we believe in the power of free markets, the value of the farmland will now fall, which means fewer family farmers will need to pay inheritance tax.

Totally agree this is a problem, but I'm very much minded to think that a proper farming policy would include such distortions in the planning. The current government seem to think that putting the boot into farmers at every opportunity is just fine (classically, they are very conservative), the latest being the sudden ending of SFI. Let's sit down and have a grown up conversation about it all, including food security, sustainability and the best ownership models, rather than pissing around with inheritance tax.

In truth, my concerns are primarily around business property relief, since I think it is there that the damage will be both more significant and less visible. Many businesses carefully built up over years will have no option but to sell off a chunk to private equity to pay the tax liability. Is it a surprise that the gov come up with such policies when Rachel Reeves thinks that the finance industry is going to fire up growth [1], when they are the rent seeking parasites that are suppressing it. The fox has been invited into the hen house and getting to dictate policy.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chancellor-backs-britains...

There are numerous ways of avoiding inheritance tax, and therefore not having to deal with business property relief.

If the business is going to be a going concern for many years, then proper estate planning should be part of any careful running of a business. Passing it on 7 years before death is the most obvious play; yes, actuarially there will be some people who die before the 7 years have passed, so doing it early is important if continuity of the business is important.

Of course, which is why it's all so silly. It proves to be a headache that gets in the way of actually productive activity, and I know this from first hand experience.

In France the inheritance tax is only applied above 100 000€, so it's really not 40% flat. What's more, it's possible to make donations before the death, 100 000€ every 15 years, without taxes, meaning most of the time no taxes are payed at all below 200 000€ or even 300 000€.

These amounts are per-child, which means you can double them up if there are two children.

Median patrimony in France is 175 000€ per household, so your typical middle class family with two children ends up paying no inheritance tax, without having done donations in advance.

For starters, 100.000 EUR is nothing. Also, in many jurisdictions that threshold only applies to direct (eg father-son) inheritance but not eg between siblings.

I have an unmarried aunt with no kids. Most of her estate is land (that has passed through centuries in the family and is almost illiquid because the European Union has killed agriculture) and some stock (that cannot be used to pay the taxes because it's not yours until you pay the taxes). I just checked and when she dies, my mom (her only sister) will have to pay 45% of that in death tax. We may need to turn down the estate when she dies because we cannot pay the tax. And you think that's fair? Grow up.

The whole point of inheritance tax is to redistribute some of the accumulated family wealth across society. You think that's unfair? Grow up.

I think it's unfair, you work your entire life paying tax on every single euro you make(a lot of tax in fact!) and then when you want to leave that to your child it's taxed again? What complete nonsense. I'm very glad the country where I'm from(Poland) doesn't have that.

People could equally argue that it is unfair that some children are born with all the advantages while others have none. I don't think "fairness" is a strong argument here because it is entirely subjective. What seems fair to you looks like a huge injustice to somebody else.

My parents are upper-middle class, and I've profited from their wealth all my life. My inheritance will be taxed, and I don't find that unfair at all. I was born on second base and had an advantage over others at every stage of my life; it would be fatuous to complain about an inheritance tax.

Suppose you've inherited genes which contribute in varying degrees to brains, beauty, longevity and charm. These are arguably advantages rather more significant in life than money. If there was a choice who wouldn't choose these? So should you be taxed given how you will undoubtedly profit from it? Or is it just the guy who's dumb, ugly, always ill with something and destined for a short life who's hammered if he or she happens to make some real cash?

https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/how-genes-shape-perso... https://human-intelligence.org/intelligence-is-genetic/ https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/news/beauty-may-... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23925498/

>is it just the guy who's dumb, ugly, always ill with something and destined for a short life who's hammered if he or she happens to make some real cash

I'm sorry, I don't think I understand the exact point you're making.

I follow the premise of your argument. You're saying genes are a birth advantage, just like money is. I absolutely agree with that. But I don't understand how this ends in "just the guy who's dumb, ugly, always ill" being "hammered if he or she happens to make some real cash."

FWIW, in many Western countries, healthy people are already functionally "taxed" (although it's often not technically a tax) more than unhealthy people because both pay similar amounts into healthcare but derive different benefits from it.

I also think that's good, just like taxing inheritance is.

Those unearned traits might make you more money, and you might also bequeath these traits to your kids. It would compound the injustice if you could furthermore bequeath all the money to your kids, while it would ameliorate the injustice if the inheritance were largely taxed away.

It's taxed above a pretty reasonable threshold. You have the option of gifting your money tax-free to your children, or to public-good organisations. Hell, you have the option to spend some of the money you made in your lifetime! You earned it, spend it! See the world! Eat the finest cheeses for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Have a masseur on retainer! The kids sound pretty entitled anyway!

Read my comment: your brother passes away without children and the Tax Agency steals 45% of his estate (and that's after the "discount" for the threshold, the actual tax rate over the threshold is higher than 45%). That's not reasonable at all.

Why should one be entitled to the property of their brother? What's special about a brother that should be unavailable with leaving property to, say, one's best friend?

Communism never ends up well. Remember that when your wishes become reality.

I don't see what this has to do with communism, and frankly I don't think you do either. And I do agree with you that taxing inheritance is unacceptable.

Not only that's not communism, but, by the looks of it, greed-capitalism isn't turning out so well either, now, is it?

I'm still getting 55% of the wealth my brother built for himself without putting any effort into it. It would be different if this were a spouse, but surviving spouses are not subject to these taxes.

Also, taxation isn't stealing. But if you genuinely feel that it is, you have the option of moving to a country with no functioning government. The Somali government, for example, has effectively no ability to collect taxes in most regions.

The fact that you call taxes theft is enough to disqualify your opinion.

The fact that you think 45% tax is fair is enough to disqualify your opinion.

The fact that you think getting 55% of something you did not earn is unfair is enough to disqualify your opinion.

Parents everywhere in (almost?) every country of the world are allowed to give tax-free gifts to their children without limit. That's generally not objected to in any way, but suddenly people think it's fair when the exact same money or houses get taxed at inheritance time.

Also - at the end of the day, someone is still getting something that they "didn't earn" - why allow it at all? Tax everything at 100% on death - why give people who didn't "earn it" something?

Obviously I'm being fascicious about this now, but if the argument that it's "unfair" for people who "didn't earn it" to get something, why allow this at all?

And also, personally - I think the argument is flipped on its head. It's not about people getting the inheritance - it's about people "giving" it - I paid taxes on my money throughout my entire life, why should the state take any more just because I'm leaving it to my children?

Limiting the snowball effect of the wealthy getting wealthier generation after generation through no contribution of their own is considered a societal good. Whether it is can be debated, but Europe seems to be in a happier position regarding that than the US, at the moment. Why is it always the rugged individualists, the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps proponents who are in favour of receiving unearned money? It feels less like a considered philosophical viewpoint than naked greed.

(and, on a side note, where do you get that you can give unlimited tax-free money to your children in almost every country of the world? I checked the US, France, UK, Spain, Morocco, South Africa and Brazil, and all have limits after which tax apply. China and the Philippines don't, but neither do they have inheritance tax.)

>>Whether it is can be debated, but Europe seems to be in a happier position regarding that than the US, at the moment

I'm Polish and Poland doesn't have any inheritance tax for children, not sure what US has to do with this.

>>I checked the US, France, UK, Spain, Morocco, South Africa and Brazil

Did you really? Here a UK page about this, there is no limitation on how much you can give your children tax free, tax only applies if you die within 7 years after gifting it:

https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax/gifts

And

Raisin UK https://www.raisin.co.uk Gifting money to children explained (2025)

>>Limiting the snowball effect of the wealthy getting wealthier generation after generation through no contribution of their own is considered a societal good

Again, so please tell me why you don't think we should be taxing it at 100%, to maximise the societal good?

I already pay effective rate of 40% of tax on all my earnings - am I not doing enough for "societal good"?

You're making a good point. You've convinced me that the inheritance tax should be 100%.

Great - now at least you're being consistent about it.

Considered good by whom? By socialist teenagers? Work hard and build a family, then re-read your comments in a few years. You'll think different.

Also, again, the thresholds are ridiculously low. They don't even cover the cost of the deceased's house. Stop the theory, start the reality.

Stop the communist brainwashing "redistribution of wealth" and start thinking: 45%, that you saved after paying taxes, is pure robbery.

I would much rather pay less tax while I’m alive and the majority of it when I’m dead and will no longer give a shit.

You don't give a shit about your offspring? But even so, aren't you at least able to understand that other people do care about their progeny?

Distributing wealth in society on the basis of parental success seems like it would be a terrible idea.

There is a name for a system where people pass on their wealth (and titles) to their progeny, by birthright.

I am sure the average 99%-er American would love to be back in medieval Europe, where kings and queens, and lords and dukes cared so much for their offspring! Wealth by birthright, that's so progressive!

Money is not the most important thing I can give my kids. Love, education, support and encouragement ...

Nobody claimed otherwise however making sure your loved ones are taken care of in the best possible position involves love and support otherwise why bother you are already dead.

Stop the tsarist/oligarch propaganda then /s.

If you don't want to pay taxes, don't be a part of society, don't use public roads, public schools, public hospitals, and public education.

If you do want to be a part of society, accept that it's a give-and-take situation, and move on. Some people give more than they take, and some people do take more than they have given, and that's alright with me.

Side rant:

It's no wonder that a show like Breaking Bad, where a teacher gets cancer and has to become a drug kingpin to finance his healthcare, has to be situated in the US. The plot simply wouldn't hold in any other civilized country.

It's no also wonder that the name Luigi is no longer only the name of Mario's brother but synonymous with something else, and again something that happened in the US.

Nobody said "no" to taxes. Fair taxes are necessary. FAIR TAXES. Not 45% taxes on something that already paid taxes several times (income, property, VAT, etc). That's robbery.

> FAIR TAXES

Agreed with you! A progressive tax (the more you earn, the higher % you get taxed) makes sense as a fair thing to me.

Where I am from, it's 52%, and that's a reasonable price to pay for having bike paths, greening, parks, good roads, affordable public transport, great public schools, and paid time off and maternity/paternity leave.

Once there was a strike of the public sanitation workers in my city due to their low wages. You know what happened? In 2 weeks it changed from a beautiful place to live to a cesspool. Don't know about you but I was happy to spend some of my $$ so I didn't have to fight rats, rabid dogs and mountains of garbage to take my kids from school.

As a matter of fact, once somebody reaches a certain amount of wealth, I'd be very much in favor that it should be 70%, 80%, 90% and 99%. And, of course, then you get the prize "you won capitalism, now relax".

52% is not fair but pure robbery. Not so long ago, people paid the tithe (10%) and if any lord, governor or king dared to go just a little further, they'd be killed, usually by hanging. There's many countries in the world with smaller taxes and still great services. Public money is just wasted by politicians trying to buy votes for the next election.

> Public money is just wasted by politicians trying to buy votes for the next election.

No, that's not how any of this works.

https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/voting-elections/...

Politicians' campaigns are usually funded by large corporations and individual donors, not by public money.

> Not so long ago, people paid the tithe (10%) and if any lord,

The current right wing governments are trying to bring us to that time, it seems.

> There's many countries in the world with smaller taxes and still great service

Name a couple.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-...

Luxembourg - 42%

Netherlands - 49%

Denmark - 42%

Should I go on?

But is the point not that the person who needs to pay this tax, if they accept the free gift of land etc, still gets to keep 55%?

There are cases that can be imagined (a child inheriting an old house in a high-COL location) where it feels unfair, but in this case it sounds like free money. Surely the government is not asking for more money than the land is worth, or something like that?

The government already got their share during the accumulation period. They have no claim on it anymore. If people want the government to spread their wealth around to help society they can specify that in their will.

On what basis? Is there a law that says they can't tax estates?

It's not nothing - with 1.8 children the tax-free allowance covers 60-70% of the population (outstanding mortgages and loans are not counted in the 170K figure). And why should anyone be entitled to a relative's property? How does it benefit society? Why not friends', then?

"Benefit society"??? Pal, stop with the communist propaganda and start thinking for yourself.

One thing I can assure you: the moment you get a job, a house, a family, that's the moment you'll realize you are being systematically robbed by taxes that end up eating 70% of your income. If you are not socialist when you are young, you haven't got a heart; if you are not conservative when you grow up, you haven't got a brain.

I'm probably older than you, pal, and I'm happy to pay taxes as long as they help make society better. This is a considered, rational, and ethical decision. Just because I'm a highly-paid engineer doesn't mean I work harder or am a more deserving human being than a nurse or a Bangladeshi immigrant working two shifts a day at a fast-food. I'm not so selfless I want to give all my good luck away, but not so selfish I don't want life to be easier for others too, don't want the kids to get a good education, don't want the sick to get treated, don't want interesting art in the streets. I love dystopias, but only in books. I also am not so deluded as to think everything is reducible to money, and that what I achieved did not depend on having a society around me that made it possible.

>"Benefit society"??? Pal, stop with the communist propaganda and start thinking for yourself.

It's funny to me that you both think that "benefitting society" is "communist propaganda" and that others need to start thinking for themselves. Who are these communists spreading this duplicitous propaganda of considering the well-being of others and the betterment of our community? I need to find them to thank them for their service and also scold them for being bad at communism.

>One thing I can assure you: the moment you get a job, a house, a family, that's the moment you'll realize you are being systematically robbed by taxes

I have all that, and I still care for people other than myself and my family.

> you'll realize you are being systematically robbed by taxes that end up eating 70% of your income

Where does the water from your tap come from?

Where did you or your children go to study?

Did you make your own road, that you use to go to work?

Do you have a pension built up?

Do you fight your own fires and fight your own crime?

To be fair most of the taxes do not even go to what you describe and there is massive waste happening in the administrations.

There is, unfortunately, in every large and small organisation. I can't say I've noticed any particular qualitative difference between the efficiencies of government departments and corps of equivalent size when I was working for them; if anything, the government employees were always conscious of the fact they were spending taxpayers' money that was not theirs, although I can't talk of the practical results.

If these organisations were private, waste would be equivalent, but they would lose the mentality of acting in the public interest, and there would be a profit margin taken off. I'm pretty sure it would not be an improvement overall, purely from a viewpoint of efficiency.

Better some waste happening in the public sector and a still a public road being built than a crypto bro buying a lambo from a windfall they made on a rug-pull from a meme coin.

If you don't artificially curb wealth accumulation with laws, taxes and wealth limits, you will always and inevitably end up having an accumulation of wealth that allows the rich to stay rich forever, and keep the rest perpetually in poverty. I have consistently been in the highest taxable bracket in my country, and am happy to contribute even a bigger % of my wealth towards the betterment of the living conditions of my country and city.

Sauce:

- https://ifs.org.uk/articles/inherited-wealth-course-be-much-...

- https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/08/moving-up-the-income...

> The gap was most pronounced in the US: less than 10% of sons with low-earning fathers made it into the richest 25% of the population, while almost 50% of those with top-earning fathers grew up to become high earners themselves

Talk about "self-made". History has shown again and again that this can only go on as long until the poor and oppressed rise up, seize the wealth, and in the process, harm their "oppressors".

Because giving it to Amazon is making society better?

I was right-leaning when I was young and then I saw where the policies of the last three decades have taken us and I do not like it. I have earned a top-percentile salary in a rich western country and paid lots in income tax, and I would happily give more away to make sure people who make different life choices are taken care of and get more chances in life. The rich need no more money.

Also, what good is it to have a great house, an expensive car, and private tutored kids, if the outside of your house is a slum, the roads are too bad for your car, and your kids risk being kidnapped for ransom any time they go to play outside?

The rich through times always have had the delusion that their wealth will protect them and isolate them from society, with their private armies, private healthcare, private tutors and expensive villas. But if anyone looks at history, it always ends up the same way. Based on that knowledge, it's the rich that should be actively supporting equality and progress in society as if their lives depend on it.

"I just want everything to be the same it is now, except with no government that helps anyone else because I don't want to pay taxes, and I already have everything I need" is a pretty comfortable position. Until, inevitably, people run out of bread, and the guillotines come out.

I'm more than happy to pay my taxes and ensure everybody else has a good life, too. I don't want to find out first-hand how long a head survives without its body still attached to it.

The death tax more or less ended the UK aristocracy, apart from the absolute top echeolon of the very richest and the special case of the Royal family.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cavendish,_11th_Duke_of... "Devonshire inherited the estate but also an inheritance tax bill of £7 million (£303 million in 2023), nearly 80 per cent of the value of the estate. To meet this, the Duke had to sell off many art objects and antiques, including several Rembrandts, Van Dycks and Raffaello Santis, as well as thousands of acres of land"

For perspective, the family - currently headed by the 12th duke, were estimated to be worth £910 million in 2024. They are not out of the top echelon, and are now structured much better for avoiding inheritance tax, which is also at a lower rate now.

> Silly is actually too nice a word for such extortion scheme. As you see if rich enough/business big enough, it could be easily circumvented.

Maybe it could have been easily circumvented, but it wasn't circumvented in this case. It obstructed direct inheritance, thus, worked as intended for the rich.

> The little people without access to great lawyers and accountants got absolutely hammered when it got applied to them.

In the tax year 2021 to 2022, 4.39% of UK deaths resulted in an Inheritance Tax

Inheritance tax only kicks in above £325K of assets. If inheriting your parents home the threshold increases to £500K (and increases again to £1M if both parents die).

That's hardly hammering the little people.

https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/inheritance-tax-lia...

> That's hardly hammering the little people.

Agree. It hits the (upper) middle, as with most of the tax code afaict.

I rarely resent paying tax until I see how little people earning multiples of me get away with paying.

There are always unintended consequences. (This isn't an argument for not having an inheritance tax, it's an argument for being clear-eyed about the trade offs).

In the case of inheritance tax, it has resulted in a lot of British cultural treasures being shipped to the US to be auctioned.

A death tax is a tax on death. It's not that. It's a birth windfall wealth tax.

> A death tax is a tax on death. It's not that. It's a birth windfall wealth tax.

weasel words if ever there was.

Quite the opposite, thank you very much. "Death tax" sounds like cruelty compounded. And a birth windfall? It's all over the culture. Stupid people with inherited money and inherited power.

Sure, and income tax is just a labor windfall wealth tax.

To the extent that it reflects actual work, income is hardly a windfall.

OTOH... Elon and Donald had gobs of cash drop in their laps, what's not to like about reasonable taxes on it ? Split it (say) 50-50 with society. Unless you have found an infant with a track record of accomplishment - and an investment strategy to match.

> This is all to say: the guardian became a nonprofit-like trust at a point in time it was already a stable business, with capital to self-finance.

The same kind of logic was applied to two french newspapers:

- Le canard enchaîné, created in 1915, specific status preventing sale of capital made in 1958. Motive was foiling an attempted takeover by another company.

- Mediapart, created in 2004, trust made in 2019. They made the change deliberately in order to protect the newspaper's future.

Both newspapers are doing well today, so I'm not sure this kind of thing is a product of its time and impossible to copy nowadays. However, both newspapers are producing quality investigative journalism, which most news media don't these days.

"Death Tax"? What the heck are you on about? The dead aren't taxed, they can't, they are dead. What are you going to do to them as punishment if they fail to comply? Shoot the corpse?

It's a tax levied on those who get a completely free/undeserved sudden windfall; in the sense that they did not do anything to obtain it and didn't even have to expose risk or pay for a chance.

Most nations put pretty serious taxes on earnings from lotteries, and an inheritance is like a lottery where you didn't even have to pay for a ticket.

There's no obvious objective truth about the idea of taxing inheritance. But calling it "silly death tax" is, oof. Idiotic. Cut it out.

Now my advice for those who die

Declare the pennies on your eyes

One of the punchier Beatles songs, good riff.

Ah... Several other comments were complaining about "death tax", but until I read your post I didn't really get what their fuss was about.

The inheritance will often have been arranged before the person dies, no? So they wanted to direct their assets (which were already taxed in myriad ways) but you decide that you have more of a right to direct those assets for them.

I pay sales tax when I buy something with money I have. That was already taxed.

Huffing and Puffing about paying taxes when you do a thing _just_ because the thing you are doing, you do with money you already paid taxes on - is a crazy idea. So crazy, nobody does it even though that happens all the time. Except, apparently, inheritance tax.

You must really hate taxes on fuel or cigarettes too, and sales tax of course.

Similarly, this:

> but you decide that you have more of a right to direct those assets for them.

Is quite the statement. That is what governments do all the time. You want to do a thing, they tell you: No, you cannot do that. If you fail to comply, we will punish you. For some countries, all the way up to and including murdering you.

Government dictates and you agree. That whole 'monopoly on violence' thing.

In this case, government has some thoughts on how you should spend your money as you are shuffling off your mortal coil. It suggests you spend some of that on general things the country as a whole wants funded. It very strongly suggests it. Insists, really. Kinda like how it insists you wear a seatbelt.

> You must really hate taxes on fuel or cigarettes too, and sales tax of course.

Yes. I'm not against taxes in general, but I think our tax system is a monstrosity. No, I don't have some kind of alternative, I just grab my ankles and grit my teeth like everyone else.

> That is what governments do all the time

Oh, well I guess it must be fine then. Is this supposed to be an argument?

For more on how this model might have changed journalism for the better, this is a great old article from the former CIO of the Yale Endowment: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28swensen.html

Yes, partially created to save taxes or a forced sale.

> to ensure no commercial interest could interfere with the paper.

How do they explain their taking ads, then? https://advertising.theguardian.com

There's zero assurance that they could provide that would convince me this doesn't come with influence over editorial matters. It's the same problem NPR has (shoutout to the 'old "National Petroleum Radio" moniker from the invasions of the oughts).

EDIT: you -> they

Well theres not going to be shareholder direction to conform to advertisers wishes.

And assuming the trust is well funded, they may not feel compelled to do so.

That said, its very possible for not for profit entities to go very wrong so you cant rule it out absolutely.

Fair enough, the trust is certainly a stronger demonstration of commitment than most can offer.

Universities with large endowments still charge tuition. The available proceeds from appreciation of the trust may not be enough to cover their operating expenses.

Universities aren't exactly a great model of freedom from private interests. And it's not clear why many of them do still charge tuition—i just assumed it was some effort to emphasize classism in a world where they also want to look gracious for paying for poor people.

And believe me, for the colleges I examined this at, tuition was a rounding error compared to the return on the endowment. It is just for aesthetics of charging students in a uniquely american show of stupidity.

The paper is required to operate on a commercial basis, but the trust ensures that they can always afford to say "no" to anyone trying to influence editorial matters, and indeed The Guardian has operated at significant losses at times.

I’m not sure that it’s ownership is the reason for The Guardians success. NYT has also been successful with a more traditional ownership model.

Their success, I suspect, is due to being early to shift from addressing a particular geographic market, to addressing an ideological market, after the internet destroyed the geographical barriers to entry.

I suspect this internet driven incentive to focus on ideological markets is a big part of why politics in most countries has become so partisan. When newspapers focused on a particular geography, but had limited completion, they had an incentive to avoid becoming partisan because that would only serve to limit their addressable market.

The guardian always addressed a left of centre audience even before the internet. The Telegraph a right of centre one. The print advert market used to sustain that.

UK press has basically always been partisan, which was why the Daily Mail was publishing pro-Hitler articles on behalf of its owner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Harmsworth,_1st_Viscoun...

Or The Guardian supporting the Confederacy[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#History

I think a big part of it is that the internet made the existing leaders into massive winners, a bit like how the teams at the top if the first division managed to cement themselves in the premiership when that happened.

If you were to name some important newspapers in 1995, you'd probably also have the Guardian, NYT, WaPo, on your list. They just pulled away from the pack due to the was reputation works in the internet age.

And yet the LA Times and the (London) Times and the Chicago Tribune did not, so however true this is, it took some extra magic sauce to "pull away from the pack". It wasn't just "being an important newspaper in 1995".

I think of it as a necessary, not sufficient condition. Same as with the football analogy. Everton and Spurs were in the premier league when it started, but they're not considered the cream of the crop.

Checking the other side of this, what media properties did not exist in 1995 but are a world class now? Not too obvious to me.

I never really looked into the details but i believe Le Monde Diplomatique is built a similar way with their foundation Les Amis du Monde Diplomatique

Not journalism but I think Ikea and Rolex are owned by some trusts, too.

Ikea trust is more of a shell game to keep the family in charge while avoiding tax and general scrutiny and liability.

And Bosch.

Edit: Scratch that. Bosch is owned by a foundation.

In Denmark it is not too uncommon for the larger companies, JP/Politikens Hus which publishes two of the largest Danish newspapers is trust owned. Novo Nordisk and Mærsk which are the two largest danish companies are trust owned as well.

The Ikea Trust is for the benefit of the family that controls it.

The Scott Trust model is fascinating and doesn't get nearly enough attention, especially given how rare that kind of structure is in modern media

yes it's a bit dodgy. the guardian operates as a sort of propaganda magazine although it tends to have fairly high quality stuff scattered in there.

A propaganda machine? It's an openly center-left newspaper.

It's rarely "center-left", more clearly left-wing.

Anyway, the very clear ideological orientation, even openly so, is what makes it a "propaganda magazine" of sort (like all ideologically orientated newspapers). I find it very similar to the Daily Mail on the other side of the spectrum, actually. I think the readership is more educated on average so it is more "intellectual" but overall it is the same type of highly orientated take on things.

Interesting that articles from The Guardian appear so often here ;)

Edit: It's saddening that this apparently cannot be said or discussed. Or is it a superiority complex because I compared it to the Daily Mail? (Oh dear, what have I done ;) )

Terms like “left” and “centre” lose all meaning internationally.

It’s clear to everyone in the ripe that the democrats are on the right leaning side of “centre right”, but half of America thinks they are “far left”. A party that can’t even implement a national health service.

I am not talking "internationally". Within the UK and European context, The Guardian is left-wing and has many very left-wing columnists. Do read the public comments on articles, and you'll see this is the readership, too (at least the "vocal" ones, perhaps).

Sure overall it is not as left-wing as, say, Le Monde Diplomatique in France (someone mentioned it in another comment) but still.

Overall, Wikipedia is quite accurate: "The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and the term "Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of a person with modern progressive, left-wing or "politically correct" views." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian

I live in the UK and this is simply not true. The Guardian is left-wing, for sure, in the sense that it is left of center. But it is not generally regarded as "very left-wing", nor are many of its columnists.

Public comments on newspaper sites are a very poor judge of the newspaper's political position. Sometimes, even Daily Mail comment threads skew left!

I am not sure what is your disagreement, then? It is left-wing, you agree.

They do have very left-wing columnists, too, quite a few of them, most famous being Owen Jones.

Nobody said "very" left-wing. Nobody seems to disagree that it is left-wing.

From the GP:

> The Guardian is left-wing and has many very left-wing columnists.

Sure there's some subtle distinction between the paper itself being one thing but still having "many very left-wing columnists", but not a lot.

Ah, missed that. Sorry.

Is this what it has come to? Trying to twist every single word as much as possible against their author in the least honest way possible?

I stand with what you quoted. This was a honest and rather matter-of-fact statement... But I obviously deserver to be shot for it by the "progressists" it has somehow managed to offend.

The author of what I quoted seems to have reacted to it differently than you are doing. Or perhaps even very differently ...

Yes, clearly I would not have survived the Red Guards.

Could you please name one of these "very left-wing columnists" ? Or maybe two, since you claim it has "many" of them?

Owen Jones is perhaps as close as they come to "very left-wing", and while he is a bona fide socialist, he's certainly not a revolutionary.

> that the democrats are on the right leaning side of “centre right”

This is repeated frequently, but, no, just no.

Name one position by the Democrats that is to the right of typical center to center-right parties such as CDU/CSU, La République En Marche, PP, CDA, ÖVP.

Immigration, abortion, environmental regulations?

Healthcare, welfare, labor rights, public services, hawkish foreign policy.

Public healthcare, tuition-free higher education, gun regulation, unions, social security, taxation, business regulation, criminal penalties.

On some/many social issues (minorities, abortion, drug policy) Democrats are relatively liberal even by European standards.

Interestingly until very recently even the republicans are way to the left of European countries on immigration.

All of these parties are equivalent to the dems. They're rightwing, not center.

There's been a trend recently to call them center-right to make the distinction with far right parties which were anecdotal 50 years ago, but make no mistake, when a party is called center-right, it's a rightwing party, not a center party that could align either with the left or the right depending on the topic.

I can't comment on the others but "La Republique en Marche" in France (Macron's party) is not rightwing. It goes from centre right to the centre left. From a British perspective it pretty much covers the right of Labour, the Lib Dems, and the left of the Tories.

Macron himself is very centrist to centre left. He started in government in Hollande's cabinet, which was a Socialist Party (= Labour) government. Many top figures in Macron's party now are former Socialist Party.

The rightwing party in France now is effectively the RN (although it is still referred to as "far-right" for historical and tactical reasons).

From a french perspective, it is definitely rightwing.

You would have trouble finding which major policy they made that aligns with the left, while many of their policies effectively dismantled workers’ rights.

Also the former socialists were from the PS’ right wing, which was (in a classic sense) liberal economically as well as on societal issues. That wing was happy supporting rightwing laissez-faire policies. That was the reason Hollande’s PS destroyed itself.

This is quite surreal... especially after I've just described the French perspective.

This reminds me of Maoist China where just suggesting a milder approach was enough to get you labeled "rightwinger"! Similarly, the views of the French far-left are not the "French perspective".

> From a British perspective [...]

> especially after I've just described the French perspective.

Make up your mind.

> Similarly, the views of the French far-left are not the "French perspective".

No one in France is seriously challenging the idea that Macron is rightwing. He's been pursuing the classic rightwing agenda, and has years of political alliance with the other rightwing parties in France.

But then again, considering your talking point is that RN is the only rightwing party, I'm not sure we're having a honest discussion here.

Certainly on culture war issues they are far left.

This is (deliberate) moving of the Overton window. The Guardian was e.g. heavily against Jeremy Corbyn and was actively involved in purging the left wing of Labour. Left-wing/far-left in UK is something like the Morning Star.

Don't assume bad faith when someone expresses their opinion (see rules). When even Wikipedia describes The Guardian's readership as "generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion" (as I quoted in another comment) there is nothing wrong, disingenuous, or inaccurate in saying that The Guardian is left-wing.

When the person starts out by describing a mainstream paper as left-wing propaganda, I think its fair to be sceptical about the degree of good faith, no?

I think it is your reply that is not in good faith at this point because either you haven't read my comments or you have chosen to ignore them.

Anyway it is getting excessively tiring not to be able to discuss or say anything so have a nice day.

You're right, I should have talked about the Overton window more generally. But public usage of terminology is part of moving/spreading the window. It's quite apparent in the US discourse when very moderate politicians like US mainstream democrats are characterized as "radical left-wing extremists". Granted, there's a lot of hyperbolical "fascists" and "nazis" thrown around from the other side.

I find mainstream left of UK to be quite clearly center left. The current Labour government policy could be characterized even as center right.

Yes, they are generally over the centre line. They are, however, still firmly centre-left, in that The Guardian has opposed every major push towards even mild social democracy. Most of the UK left would find The Guardian's editorial line well to their right.

> Edit: It's saddening that this apparently cannot be said or discussed.

The sad part is that you can't make the distinction between a paper being opinionated and it being propaganda. Plenty of newspapers have historically had a very strong bias but also a strong commitment to journalism ethics and standards.

propaganda, noun: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.

Well if it is "opiniated" and has a "very strong bias" I call it propaganda. Again, they are not the only ones and I am not singling them out.

I used a blunt term that seems to ruffle some feathers but it is better to be aware than to take everything we read at face value.

There's a difference between a journalist and an information or an article.

Any journalist or newspaper carries a bias when looking at information. Their ethics and process is what allows them to still publish information that is verified, relevant and to treat topics which they would personally not want to hear about.

If a journalist with a strong bias doesn't check their information and write only what they would like to hear, that's propaganda. But that's not a necessary outcome of having a bias.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

None of what you mention contradicts your previous statement, and mine, that they are "opiniated" and "very biased" or that it isn't propaganda according to the dictionary definition I quoted...

Perhaps the issue is that people associate propaganda with false information (which is what you imply). That is not the case.

By European and UK standards, it's a centre-left liberal (as in classical liberalism) paper. In Europe, liberalism is firmly centrist. The Guardian was firmly far to the right of Labour under Corbyn, for example, when Labour was mildly social-democratic, and somewhat more aligned with Labour now when Labour is at its most right wing since Blair - arguably more so. Often to the great frustration of the UK left, where The Guardian is a haven of last resort due to the lack of any major left-wing UK newspapers.

> Labour under Corbyn, for example, when Labour was mildly social-democratic

Corbyn and McDonnell were hardcore socialists and Marxists so if that's what you call "mildly social-democratic" then The Guardian might be Conservative...

It seems that younger people have no references and understanding of political concepts. Corbyn had full-on socialist policies in the Labour manifesto of the time but simply because he used terms like "coop" they seem to have been missed by some...

Blair was centre-left. He didn't try to destroy private schools so that still makes Starmer's government more on the left.

> It seems that younger people have no references and understanding of political concepts. Corbyn had full-on socialist policies in the Labour manifesto of the time but simply because he used terms like "coop" they seem to have been missed by some...

Social democratic and labour parties are, at least were openly socialist at least until the 1990s. UK Labour party is part of the Party of European Socialists and an observing member of Socialist International. Most social democratic parties were "Bernsteinian" with the explicit goal of democratic transition into socialism. Coops have been promoted by both left and right.

At least with a bit longer reference span democratic socialism is not radical or far-left in the European context.

Yes back to the socialist roots, indeed.

> Coops have been promoted by both left and right.

The "coop" in Corbyn's Labour manifesto were effectively "soviets" as the proposal was to nationalise companies and hand control to the workers by turning them into "coops". This was not "mildly social-democratic"...

The proposal was to (re)nationalize some infrastructure sectors like energy grid, water, rail and mail. Nationalizing these is a very popular policy. There was also proposals for multiple stakeholder boards in these companies, including some worker representation. Worker representation in company boards, including large private companies, is mandatory in e.g. Germany. Calling this as establishing effectively soviets is quite a take.

The separate "right to own" proposal was an option for workers to buy the company in case of it being sold or dissolved. Similar laws exist in e.g. Italy and in some US states. There was also a proposal for public financing for worker coops, which is also in place in many countries.

He argued for some national control of some infrastructure, going nowhere as far as the most successful social democratic parties in Europe, and even not as far as some conservative parties.

E.g in Norway, the conservatives, about 4 parties to the right of the Norwegian Labour Party, not that many years ago argued a blocking minority stake of over 1/3 of the largest bank was a strategic goal for the state.

I that light, the Corbyn labour manifestos were only mildly left wing.

State ownership of some key infrastructure is popular even by a majority conservative voters.

Their manifesto promises were to the right of the main social democratic parties in Europe, and even to the right of conservatives in places like Norway. Their personal preferences might well be further left, but their manifestos were not remotely radical by European standards.

I'm happy that turning 50 this month I'm still lumped in with "younger people", but I find this rather comical.

Someone is annoyed their school fees went up. Maybe try harder and get a raise?

Disagree. The Guardian has employed identity politics that are very in line with current left-wing politics, but quite at odds with classical liberalism.

Classical liberalism (Bentham, Mill etc.) is (in today's terms) a center-right philosophy.

One of the key critiques of The Guardian from the UK left is that they are seen as enabling or allowing quite regressive views on some social issues. It's the area where the left is perhaps most negative to them, with it not being unusual to criticise them for allowing e.g. transphobic views, so it's an odd thing to say. They are very much not in line with UK left-wing politics.

I don't think you can be classically liberal and also not be in favour of free speech.

Which aspects of free speech is it you consider The Guardian to oppose and classical liberal thinkers to support?

I would say one area of vulnerability would be the request that mis/disinformation (broadly defined as stuff they disagree with) be suppressed.

Where have they argued for suppression of "disinformation" "broadly defined as stuff they disagree with" should "be suppressed"?

That further is actually published as the view of the paper as opposed to opinion pieces, that often are "stuff they disagree with" yet still are happy to publish.

The closest I've come to seeing an official statement arguing for some degree of regulation have been mild and vague. Even one stating that the cost of fake campaign videos is real, and pointing out genuine concern over implications to democracy, only called for "paying attention" and "developing suitable responses".

My impression is that The Guardian is about as firm as a wet blanket when it comes to taking a stance against movements leveraging misinformation.

The classical liberals support regulating speech on the basis of the harm principle. The quibbling comes down to what you count as "harm".

They appear so often here because they tend to be good articles.

> It's rarely "center-left", more clearly left-wing.

To give you some perspective: I'm a leftist, the guardian represents the polar opposite of very fundamental beliefs all leftists share, they actively undermine and oppose what we believe in. Just because you disagree with both liberal and left-wing views doesn't make them the same. Leftists aren't allied with liberals, we despise them, sometimes we hate them even more than conservatives.

Just a few examples: [1] They were smearing Corbyn constantly as antisemitic (which we leftists view as a smear-campaign by liberals to purge the labor party of it's left-wing, which they successfully did btw.), [2] they did partner with the gates foundation on global development (leftists view the foundation as neoliberal and their development of the global south as part of neocolonialism, we think those are all bad things btw.) and finally [3] they push Israeli/Zionist framing of the genocide in Gaza.

[1] https://mondoweiss.net/2020/08/how-the-guardian-betrayed-not...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/guardian-launch...

[3] https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2025/03/17/guardian-israel...

This is the same as the Irish Times:

https://www.irishtimes.com/about-us/the-irish-times-trust/

Yup; it's a different legal structure (the IT one is a CLG), but same intent. I think there are a few other similar things around.

The Guardian is fairly protected from commercial influence but its not that well protected against elitism, which unfortunately still means a lot in the UK today.

This is why the Guardian is simultaneously "progressive", yet also at times openly hostile to the working class. Its "progressive but not working class" stance promotes identity politics, and probably does more to pit left-wing voters against each other than any other UK-publication.

That said, I am a subscribe to the Guardian Weekly which I supplement with the Spectator, a traditionally conservative publication, in order to get a decent balance of UK news.

I believe I am right in saying that every editor of the Guardian has been privately educated, apart from the last one.

Yes, and private education is a prime example of an area where the Guardian "inexplicably" pulls their punches.

ok ya'll talked me into it, I'll setup a recurring donation

Yeah right. And pigs just flew past my window. Because billionaires definitely don't pre-hide their fingerprints in some shady 'independent trust' while we all pretend the article just wrote itself out of the goodness of corporate hearts.

I love The Guardian! It is one of my two ongoing donations, along with the Internet Archive.

Back when it was The Manchester Guardian, they produced one of the most remarkable TV commercials in history, "Points of View":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsccRkLLzU

I first saw this commercial when Will Hearst (yes, of that Hearst family) screened it at a Software Development Forum meeting in the late 1980s.

I wish this were a better transfer, but it is what we have. Does anyone have a link to a higher resolution transfer?

Simple but effective, I like it. Journalism in the best form is exactly this: trying to give you the whole picture with all the context you need to contextualize the information.

Sadly a lot of what calls itself jouranlism today is the exact opposite: Not showing the whole picture, serving prexisting world views, overly emotional and out to entertain.

> Sadly a lot of what calls itself jouranlism today is the exact opposite

I don’t think this is something new, I feel that most of "journalism" has always been like this with few medias making the effort to show the whole picture.

Not from before 1959 when the paper was renamed. 'The Guardian' name actually appears in the ad.

It is one of the better UK papers but the bar there is extremely low. They're often still painfully "both sides" on things, they're slow on the uptake and they're often quite credulous. Wonderful example that I had scrolled past shortly before I switched tabs and read your comment: https://x.com/Obseyxx/status/1906396387031368067

As I said, they're the best of a bad bunch but that's damning with faint praise.

They've gone downhill in the last few years in my opinion, they've become more overtly partisan and got substantially downgraded on factual reporting by MediaBias Fact check: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/

They've always been left of centre, but they're lazy and jump more into the predictable culture war pandering.

The FT is streets ahead of anyone else, they've become more centrist and less dry in recent years. I don't know what their revenues are like but I'd wager that they're doing better as they're one of the only ones with a business model that allows them to pay for good journalism.

If they were "left of centre" that would be fine there are few if any major left-wing newspapers in the UK. The pandering from my perspective has been to those on the right. They seem to be doing the "well if both sides hate us we must be doing something correctly!" except the right want rivers of blood and the left want public transport, healthcare and to ensure the more vulnerable among us are treated with dignity and compassion.

The "culture war" people refer to is not "woke ideology" being pushed everywhere as is so often the accusation, but an enormous, orchestrated push against an otherwise fairly organic process where the world had otherwise become more naturally more accepting of immigrants and LGBTQ+ minorities.

If you think the Guardian panders to those on the right you need your head examined. I would love nothing more than a left leaning socialist government and even I shake my head at some of the nonsense the Guardian publishes, especially in their opinion section. It's an effort to get clicks and cause outrage and some of it is no better than the tabloids.

I also disagree that there has been a "fairly organic process where the world had otherwise become more naturally more accepting of immigrants and LGBTQ+ minorities". That's a rewriting of history. Equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community were incredibly hard fought for over many years. It's been anything but organic. It's important not to forget how recently most of the civil rights we take for granted in many areas of life were rights that were denied by a majority.

The Guardian feels like the last good normal newspaper at this point. Great book and movie reviews, normal detailed circa 2005 coverage, and none of the NYT’s wierd if we didn’t break the story we won’t talk about it.

Yes the Guardian hits all the bases, and without sounding too self-satisfied about it.

self-satisfied is pretty much the official editorial style of the guardian

Isn't it the norm for online media ? But i meant, their general reportage does not feel like claims to be a Single Source of Truth.

The reporting is good. It's more the opinion pieces that are notorious for giving off "smug leftie liberal intellectual" vibes.

I'd argue somewhat less so recently. my gripe with the guardian is that like many left-wing publications and sources recently, they've been far too willing to engage in nothing-y culture nonsense and nowhere near willing enough to engage in the class and wealth inequality issues that are plaguing us nowadays. it has felt a little bit too aimed at the comfortable upper middle classes for a good while now (if it ever wasn't)

Do you mean that the reporting is less good recently? Or that the opinion pieces have been less smug leftie intellectual recently?

Either way I take your point. There's been a lot of fodder for right-wing figures to attack the guardian for ignoring or alienating the white working class.

Are you saying a focus on racial politics and feminism, and less on socialism/class politics? I think that is a wider Leftist trend in the last 10-15 years.

The Guardian has decent reporting but it also has some terribly embarrassing content. To wit:

"In Dark Laboratory, her groundbreaking new book, Goffe argues that it was the colonisation of the Americas by Christopher Columbus that set off the chain of events that has led us to where we stand today, on the precipice of global catastrophe.

Climate breakdown, she says, is the mutant offspring of European scientific racism and colonialism, conceived in the suffering millions of Africans, Asians and Indigenous Americans endured at the altar of capital accumulation.

The climate crisis is, put simply, also a racial crisis, and it is only once we come to terms with this, Goffe says, and what it means for the ways we relate to the world and each other today, that we can hope to find a solution." From https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/mar/28/dark-laboratory...

I don't like the language and method of phrasing that she's chosen here, and I think trying to lead it back to Columbus is a bit ridiculous, but she's not really wrong about the climate crisis also somewhat being a racial crisis. it's not the white West that's going to bear the brunt of the damage from climate change, is it?

Good sports coverage as well.

> the last good normal newspaper at this point

I guess "in English" was implied.

>The Guardian US expects to hit $44 million in voluntary reader donations in the U.S. and Canada this year, up 33 percent over last year

>"We’re now at a place where our audience is actually bigger in the U.S. than The Wall Street Journal’s audience in the U.S."

That feels like not that much money considering the readership, right? The WSJ has somewhere around 3 million subscribers; they would need to be making only 14 dollars per subscription per year to do that sort of revenue.

Not to say that's necessarily a bad thing, but more that you need a pretty substantial readership to get there.

Put another way, that revenue is like 200k subscribers at 20 bucks a month. That would put you at the level of a newspaper like the Minnesota Star Tribune as far as subscription revenue.

>that revenue is like 200k subscribers at 20 bucks a month

I suspect donors (as opposed to subscribers) pay much less than $240/year.

That's my point. This is a website with readership comparable to the WSJ that is pulling in reader revenue closer to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

It's just something that I feel should be in the conversation. The Guardian's business model is clearly successful for them, but IMO it's not something that can apply to most other newspapers.

Based on my napkin math for the WSJ compared to the Guardian, the WSJ would only expect to get ~5% of their revenue replaced if they switched business models. Even if I'm off by a factor of 5, you'd still be looking at a 75% reduction.

I don't say this to be critical of the Guardian. I love their work and I'm happy they've chosen the model they have, because it enables access to high-quality journalism for free. It is also a great case study proving that this business model works and can be sustainable. But I don't want people drawing the conclusion that every newspaper could survive like this.

The Guardian is simply a truly great paper with excellent writers. Maybe that's their secret?

It’s “great” if you believe in their ideology.

Conservative leaning newspapers weren't always total dogshit and good reporting is good reporting, regardless of ideology. This is a belief that you don't seem to share, given you make out ideology to be the problem as opposed to the quality of the journalism itself. Very shallow thinking and it's a perfect exemplification of poor media literacy.

Good reporting is not skewed by ideology.

Good reporting is presenting facts about all sides.

Good reporting is not about demonizing your perceived enemies while excessively praising your idols.

"Good reporting is presenting facts about all sides."

Nonsense. Good reporting is about carefully filtering the evidence and reporting the essential stuff. Sometimes that's heavily skewed to one "side" or the other. What's suspicious is when it's always the same side.

This is more precise but you probably mean the same thing. Just that discussion has degraded toward the idea that there are always political sides to every fact, the "everything is political" crowd.

Unfortunately, in today‘s world facts are interpreted as ideology. Take climate change: with the given scientific consensus you don’t need to „present all sides.“ A factually correct report will present the consensus. And still, some people will take this as „ideological.“

There is no "scientific consensus" on things like the Israel-Palestine war. It's incredibly difficult to be impartial on some of this type of issues.

You could say humanism is the absolute variable good journalists could stick to, but the Guardian seems to be going beyond that, deeper into the left ideology.

I'm still a big fan, regular reader and supporter of the Guardian, but I do at times skip over some of their more openly leftist pieces.

Journalism isn’t getting one person to say it’s raining and one person to say it’s not raining. It’s to look out the window and report reality.

You look out the window and see rain. I see light drizzle. A journalist writes about meeting a subject of his article in a "raging autumn storm".

"Reality" is subjective and not always so easy to observe. What about political debates, economy, social issues? I don’t want to read a journal that tell me "this politician said that", but one that tells me _why_ they said it, in which context, if this is "right" or wrong, why, what does the other side says, etc.

(all of this thread resonates well with my last HN submission btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538847 )

If reality is subjective it must be objective too.

With all due respect, this strikes me as a middle school opinion on how media should work.

> Good reporting is not skewed by ideology.

You can't not have a perspective. You can be upfront about what your perspective is, while giving reasonable time to other perspectives.

> Good reporting is presenting facts about all sides.

Here I think the school-age lessons about what is fact and what is opinion does us all a massive disservice.

> Good reporting is not about demonizing your perceived enemies while excessively praising your idols.

If you can make a good argument supporting your demonization or praise, why not?

I believe you are wrong about what quality reporting is about. Journalism degraded because of the economic situation they find themselves in, but also because the school of journalism degraded. Maybe as a reaction to economic woes, but it certainly didn't not revolutionize the craft and instead did away with some quality aspects.

> school-age lessons

You could elaborate on this "argument", but we would probably disagree about the problems of modern journalism.

> If you can make a good argument supporting your demonization or praise, why not?

Because this is a more or less proof you didn't write an article to inform the reader and that you had other aspirations. You also lose the trust of your readers, but of course you always can work from the minima some papers find themselves in. Boulevard can be economically viable.

Be that as it may, to be a successful journalist is difficult today. And if you are too successful, you probably have a lot of enemies in your own trade.

I'd put the Telegraph as the right wing equivalent of the Guardian. Biased in the opposite direction but relatively reliable too.

The telegraph is split brained where the reportage is excellent and the comment and opinion is the worst, shrill, reactionary.

The Guardian can have that tendency as well.

It _used_ to be, possibly, but it really went off the rails a bit during Brexit.

and what they do have in common (although the guardian has become less so recently) is that they both do publish some opinions that greatly dissent from their editorial line.

The Telegraph pumps out a lot of culture war trash now. You could argue the guardian pumps out a lot of socially liberal stuff, but I'm not sure it actively engages in culture war stoking.

The Telegraph has long been compromised: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/peter-ob...

Having James Delingpole as climate change denial columnnist also is really unimpressive.

The Telegraph has become only one rung better than a tabloid... The Financial Times has taken the mantle for reliable, centre-right information, even if their focus is a bit narrower.

You neglected to state what their "ideology" is.

It's a fairly left wing paper, but not crazy-left. Very middle class. "Guardian reader" is pretty much a social class. They even had a dating service for a long time!

I'm not criticising; I think they're a little too indignant at times - woke even - but overall they're probably the least objectionable newspaper in the UK, maybe the world.

Kind of like the left wing mirror of The Times.

Watching them throw Sanders and then Corbyn under the bus was a wake up call for me. It's not the leftist paper it makes out to be, but strongly establishment.

The Scott Trust established its editorial line as "liberal" (in the UK, not the US sense) and it's generally hewed to that. Despite occasional flashes of appearing radical it's an establishment, social liberal paper that believes in slow reform.

I also wish it were more of a leftist paper but it is what it is.

it's sad but I would imagine that it probably wouldn't exist as it does today if it genuinely rocked the boat. at some point--probably in the 70s and 80s when the establishment was really reasserting itself--there would have been some kind of hostile takeover or other method of silencing it. maybe that did happen in fact, I do not know

Yes, and they threw Assange under the bus too, after being one of the papers working with Wikileaks on the original cablegate revelations. It was one of their own journalists, Luke Harding, that originally exposed the unredacted cables from Afghanistan and Iraq by publishing the password to the encrypted file containing them as a chapter heading of a book he wrote on the episode. That's what forced Assange to publish the unredacted cables in the first place, so that the informants mentioned in there would know what information about them was insecure. (Apparently the file had been shared around a bit, but the information was secure as long as the password wasn't public)

The Guardian (and Luke Harding especially) have never really come clean about this, which is grating since publishing the unredacted cables is the ostensible reason for Assange's decade-long persecution and imprisonment, and the Guardian essentially followed the establishment line over this period, arguably then being complicit in the persecution of Assange for something which Harding was really responsible for.

Of course, the primary reason for Assange's persecution wasn't the release of the material per se, but to discourage him and others from further exposing govt crimes.

It's also pretty much a safe space for TERFs too.

I don't disagree, but I will point out that Sanders writes for them occasionally

I wouldn't call the writers excellent. The guardian is famous for its typos.

(Separately the writing style is mostly not to my taste, but that's subjective)

That’s a failure of editing, not writing. Though it’s mostly a historic thing in any case; its heyday was about a century ago.

It’s not called the Grauaniad for nothing. Private Eye have mocked it for years.

Private eye, who famously backed Wakefield and led to thousands being unvaccinated.

Still haven’t seen an apology. Maybe they like rfk.

I have seen Ian Hislop list that as one of his greatest failures in an interview. I don't know if they printed an apology and obviously they were dead wrong here, but they (or at least, Hislop) have recognised it as such.

From Wikipedia:

In a review article published in 2010, after Wakefield was disciplined by the General Medical Council, regular columnist Phil Hammond, who contributes to the "Medicine Balls" column under the pseudonym "MD", stated that: "Private Eye got it wrong in its coverage of MMR" in maintaining its support for Wakefield's position long after shortcomings in his work had emerged.

Meh; it's mostly little more than a meme. And also something from the age of printed papers and typesetting errors.

I'm surprised at all the love for the Guardian... It's better than nearly all the rest, sure, but it's still often outrage-bait or inaccurate information. Media bias / Fact check give them a rating of 'Mixed' on accuracy: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/

I had a free subscription to the Financial Times through a weird cookie misshap, and I was impressed by the quality of the reporting and the fact they were happy to shoot down corporations behaving unethically, which I hadn't a priori expected.

Lindsay Anderson the left wing film maker always read the telegraph to be able to see the lies more clearly. A centrist these days might want to read both that and the guardian to steer a true course!

that is my method, but I have to remind myself that the telegraph is evil every time I open it because otherwise it can start to get to you

In my view, both the FT and The Economist are better, more balanced, more centrist, and less conservative/neoliberal than many people give them credit for.

The economist used to be that. Its unfortunately degraded a lot over the last decade.

The FT is definitely the best UK paper. Expensive.

Mediabiasfactcheck is run by someone on the Council of Foreign Relations fwiw. While their Foreign Affairs publishes stuff critical of US policy, they are heavily America biased.

I didn't know that, thanks

The other day they forced me to give full consent to all advertising cookies in order to read without a subscription. I found this surprising, I do read them a great deal, it might only happen for heavy users.

Yeah weird, it's never done that to me. I'm in the EU though. Maybe that is a difference.

Nope, I'm in the EU and I've gotten it.

Yes, I had the same. After that I decided to put them in separate firefox container.

Apparently the ICO in the UK has decided that "consent or pay" can be compliant with the UK GDPR, the post-brexit version of the GDPR that's in UK law.

It feels wrong to me, but there we are.

Personally I use an ad-blocker, but I also subscribe for a few bucks a month.

I have no issue with "consent or pay".

They have to pay the bills somehow. The alternative to "consent or pay" is "pay". I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong.

I am actually having difficulty writing this, as "consent to share your data" is ultimately a way to track and collect data on you. But what can you do? They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data.

Isn't this choice better than companies just always tracking you, and also trying to get you to buy something?

Deep down I know most people don't understand the amount of data and other information companies collect on them nor what they do with it. But at a certain point we have autonomy. I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying. There is always the third option of not consuming the content. The choices we make.

> I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...

On the same page that the ICO gives guidance that "consent or pay" is legal, "take it or leave it", in which you are invited to pay with your data or go elsewhere, is not.

This seems very weird to me. Either data is a form of payment or it isn't, and I had laboured under the (mis?)apprehension that the GDPR removed it from this sort of situation - that one had a right to say "no" to invasive tracking and that shouldn't affect the service provided one way or another. This muddies the water over true consent to track and it seems the ICO agrees -

"When the only alternative to consent is paying a single price which combines access to the core product with a fee for avoiding sharing personal data for the purposes of personalised advertising, it can be difficult to demonstrate freely given consent."

> They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data.

In this case I do pay for it with money

> I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying.

Personally I'd rather government legislate away the tracking unless it can be genuinely demonstrated that someone opted in, with no form of coercion at all, and those who wanted to be paid to host advertising switch to a more context-sensitive rather than audience-sensitive model. And I had thought that was where we were going. This feels a bit like backsliding on that.

(I'm not going to argue this is black and white "OMG so wrong!", I can definitely see there's room for differing opinions here, and I am aware I carry an anti-advertising, anti-tracking bias.)

I do agree with you. This is an issue that I need to think more on before I decide my stance. My initial comment was my immediate reaction but I do agree this is a difficult and nuanced decision. Even reading the quotes you provided gave me a feeling of the amount of time and decision making that went into the law and the various guidelines.

On one hand, content creators need to be paid. On the other, users should be able to protect their privacy. In the case of news, all should be welcome to participate in their society.

Is there a limit in where providing data in compensation opposed to money makes sense? I wouldn't trade my data for the weather, they can get a zip code. On the other hand, I do trade my data to my financial institutions so they can do fraud checks. So we do exist on a spectrum of data intrusion and getting our needs met.

Is trading data for news closer to checking the weather or doing banking? In todays world, I would say access to news is important and if you can't pay with money, its okay to pay with data in order to be informed about the news.

> They have to pay the bills somehow. The alternative to "consent or pay" is "pay".

There was plenty of ad funded media before tracking.

Tracking inevitably involves shovelling money from the rest of the world to America. It’s unpatriotic to allow it.

Agreed. The advertisement oligopolies Alphabet and Meta basically destroyed special interest journalism, and regional journalism. These kinds of papers (special interest, regional) had an interest in long-term relationships with their readers, and at least somewhat of an incentive for honest and fair reporting. That's gone out of the window, leading to the SEO and algorithmic engagement wars of today.

> I have no issue with "consent or pay".

I have an issue with control over my browser. If you are sending me bytes, I am and should be free to render it as I see fit. If you send me bytes containing your product, you should understand this. If you want me to pay for your product, then place it behind an actual paywall. Don't offer the product together with some instructions that show commercials. I won't look at them, and no reasonable argument will make me.

I have no issue with paywalls and paying. I have an issue with attempting to control how I render what your webserver sends me.

There was the third option. "consent or pay or go away."

If you want to continue benefiting off others work for free, that's on you. The server didn't just send bytes to your browser, you asked your browser to do so.

I've seen it in some Spanish newspapers and those are subject to the regular GDPR.

You get tracked when you subcribe as well. The Guardian is far from perfect, and that bothers me more when I'm paying a subscription.

Fair enough - I don't think the laws have diverged much in this area in the last several years, and while there was always a difference in national legislation and how the actual enforcement bodies would act, there's generally more commonality than difference.

And yes, that sucks. I object very much to the "you subscribe and we still track/advertise" model, just as I object to ads creeping into paid tv streaming services now. And yes, I would expect the guardian to hold itself to a higher standard :/

Yeah that's what the ICO thinks and it's clearly wrong, since you don't consent if the alternative is paying.

NoScript resolved this issue for me.

I haven't seen that - but I recently saw them do a self-advertising segment before one of their videos on their site.

As a long-standing Guardian reader, I couldn't disagree more. It might be financially solvent, but the business model of the paper under the leadership of Katherine Viner has shifted to high throughput, low quality content vying for clicks in the attention economy. They have gone all-in on volume.

Compare that to the Financial Times, which has a low throughput of very high quality content, enabled by a discerning and high paying subscriber base. I read the Guardian for the lifestyle / cooking sections these days, but the FT is an incomparably better and more serious publication, whatever your politics (mine are the diametric opposite of the financial class).

Yeah, me too. I'm definitely more on the side of the Guardian politics wise, but the FT is SO MUCH BETTER.

To be fair though, the FT is both really expensive, sells market data for a large price, and has a tier of subscription that can only be bought by organisations (they didn't even show me a price).

The Guardian has been going downhill massively over the last few years. I think the point at which I lost faith in them was when they trumpeted that 50% of carbon emissions were caused by 10 companies (i.e. the oil majors).

They approach environmental reporting like a campaign organisation, it's just not serious. Politically, I will never forgive the Guardian for the mendacious editorial campaign they waged against the Corbyn project. In general, the Guardian leads with cultural issues geared towards the liberal professional managerial class, which only compounds the logic and superficiality of its clickbait business model. It is incredibly hard to learn anything by reading the Guardian. This quote from the nymag piece is telling: “The reason I think that it works for us is we cover so much breaking news and it drives a lot of traffic, and we have the scale to make it work,” Reed said. “Even if we only monetize one percent, it’s still a lot.”

> Politically, I will never forgive the Guardian for the mendacious editorial campaign they waged against the Corbyn project.

Yup. As Harold Wilson is reputed to have said, with friends like the guardian who needs enemies?

I agree as well: the Grauniad's UK political reporting is often shameful at the way it covers internal Labour Party warring with anonymous "internal party sources" that often toe the center-right line, and what are often briefed pre-speech announcements for centrist Labour up-and-comers that read like press releases. (Let alone how they'll breathlessly report anything remotely related to "gender confusion" regardless or not of its actual impact.) Sure, the "quality" UK press is often in hock with one party or another, but it still rankles.

Betsy Reed runs the American side with a lot more quality and a lot less political baggage, which is to her credit. I do think that her tenure at The Intercept, and and in particular The Intercept's inadvertent leak of Reality Winner's identity the feds, has made her more thoughtful.

It's interesting that The Guardian's name itself reflects one of the UK's enduring problems: the extreme dominance of the South East and London in particular.

Originally founded, written, published and printed in Manchester and bearing the name 'The Manchester Guardian' it's now abandoned all of these in favour of London with just a handful of Manchester based journalists.

The contrast with the US and Germany say is stark.

till the UK finally admits London is its fifth country. the UK won't devolve and diversity development.

till London finally admits that there's a country outside of itself, the UK won't evolve and diversify development

fair point

If you are on iOS you can also use the app via TestFlight (in beta). It's free of banners and you get to contribute to its development if you spot a bug.

Their focus on their mission of informing the public, not just a few, is impressive and heartening:

> "... there is a real crisis of access to reliable information for people who don’t want or have the means to subscribe to the New York Times. That is a real problem that we have an answer to.”

I send The Guardian $3 a month and have never logged in. I permanently bypass their "please give us money" banner.

It's a bit of a unicorn model - you need massive scale, a global brand, and a steady stream of high-stakes stories to make reader donations work at this level. Smaller outlets probably can't replicate this

True, yet above all: integer instigative journalism.

I discovered through the Guardian that a guy I was suing was a known criminal from another country. That's when I donated.

Wow! That's an incredible real-world impact

I also got him kicked out of the U.S. (back to the UK) for violating his visa. Cost him his marriage too, although I doubt he cares because the guy is essentially a bum. So is his ex.

One day I got a call from a private detective hired by a couple whose home they were squatting in. I went to court on their behalf too. One victim of his exploits in the UK periodically contacts me to follow up on whether I have had any news.

All in all a pretty interesting episode.

The Scott Trust (owner of the Guardian Media Group) made 25m GBP profit in the year to March 2024. The previous year it made a loss of 60m GBP.

My vague understanding is that the Trust has enough interest on its treasury/endowment to keep the paper independent and free from shareholder profit-maximization pressures, but not enough money to fully fund the paper off interest on it's endowment. Hence why they can afford to forgo a paywall, but still have to ask for your subscription/donations.

Guardian Media Group plc's accounts for the same periods show 18m profit (2024) and 2m profit (2023).

Their success in my opinion is having great content in a world where peers have degraded.

I recently went back to the guardian after 10yrs as NYT and even WSJ just got crappier in every way.

The Guardian podcast ‘long reads’ is so good. I hope they continue to thrive

And third-party trackers? They do DoubleClick (Google).

(This is better than most US news organizations I've checked, who seem to sell out the news-reading behavior to numerous third-party trackers.)

Does The Guardian do any investigative reporting? Like the Washington Post at least used to do, and I think the New York Times still does.

They revealed the existence of PRISM and afterwards published lots of analysis on the Snowden leaks. I believe they were also involved in the Panama Papers and I believe they broke the news about a UK/US black site and some war crimes after the invasion of Iraq

And Spy Cops: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/09/undercover-office...

The BAe bribery scandal: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/11/bae.freedomofi...

And before that the downfall of Jonathan Aitken and Neil Hamilton in the 1990s.

They have a search tag for it, although it's also used for articles about investigative journalism so you have to scroll a few pages.

If you just want examples, the articles about various journalism awards often list topics from that year.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/investigative-journalism

If you combine it with the 'tone/news' tag, it narrows the field quite a bit:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/investigative-journalism+t...

Thanks for these replies, I may "buy" a subscription!

I subscribe to the guardian specifically because it is not paywalled - I get to feel like my subscription helps keep it free for everyone to read, which is genuine value for money.

Exactly this. Paywalled news is by definition elitist and works against the democratic principle that the free press exists to inform the public. The way I see it, my choice to subscribe to The Guardian is a choice to invest in society more broadly.

> Paywalled news is by definition elitist and works against the democratic principle that the free press exists to inform the public

You had to pay for a newspaper. Was that elitism?

From my perspective, yes, however newspapers are not really comparable to websites.

Printing a newspaper costs more money than serving a static pageview. But cost of reproduction aside, people could read the newspaper for free at their public library, or down at the local diner, coffee shop or bar. There were newspapers in the break room at work. Teachers got stacks of yesterday's newspaper for free to use in class. Friends and family members could clip articles to share with friends. You could even fish one out of the trash or pick up an abandoned copy from a park bench or public transport seat. And if you really could not find any other way to read it, you could simply buy a single copy - no subscription required, no need to trade PII for access, no cookie popups, no tracking pixels. It's quite a different product.

It's different, but even if distribution were free you still need to pay people to investigate and write the news. It has a cost, and it's not free. It not being free isn't elitist; it's what you do in a society that banned slavery a long time ago.

Yeah, me too and I have never made an account. I don't pay them for me, I pay them for everyone else.

I may have donated to them before - it feels much better to pay for public good than for someone’s personal profit.

The Guardian is published in an Orwellian country that arrests people for social media wrongthink. Most of its articles are poorly researched clickbait. I think the Guardian is far from a model to follow.

Maybe because it's a good newspaper?

A number of things can be simultaneously true.

You need funding sources (subscribers, ads, in this case a trust) but it doesn't really matter if you don't have quality content.

I recently cancelled my Washington Post subscription and would love to replace it with something better. Unfortunately, my impression of The Guardian US so far is that it is still very much a UK paper. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t yet have an inside view of US news.

May I suggest that you look at The Economist and the FT. Still an outside view, though.

And don’t be fooled by the messaging, you can get dark mode on the web: https://www.theguardian.com/help/accessibility-help

The Guardian used to be considered a serious paper, then a few years ago the quality declined dramatically. Now it's not much better than most tabloids.

Political polarization increases as traditional "newspapers" shift to the Web and get ever more specialized, and don't have to appeal to a broad political audience anymore.

From the way they keep asking for donations, I thought they were constantly about to go out of business. Props to them though, good journalism is important

Hilarious I couldn't read that article because of a paywall.

The Guardian flourishes because it has a huge trust fund to spend:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited

I'm reading Nagourney's The Times now and a point it makes is that the owner's (Sulzberger) decision to institute a paywall, over the objections of his team, made the NYTimes the profitable digital success story it is today.

It sounds like there have been some changes to the Guardian and Observer lately, such as the sale of the Observer to Tortoise Media. [0] Journalists were concerned enough to strike. [1]

[0] https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/who-is-the-money-behind-t... [1] (PDF) https://www.nuj.org.uk/asset/18CD4D84-FD26-4CDB-AF43E11F6A6C...

Never donated to the guardian, because I only go there occasionally when an agregator punts me there. I do give annually to AP News which also does good work at aren't beholden to billionaires like Musk and Bezos

It's the internet.

The default has always been no friction, especially no paywall.

Anything less is supposed to raise an eyebrow.

If you've got significant visitors to your website, the default is flourishing also.

Paywalls or other obstacles are just a sign that you're not flourishing as well as others in the same environment.

I am vaguely left, but I find the Guardian's hatred of men so offputting that I cannot bring myself to read it any more.

Similar to how Trump made CNN unwatchable. I mean, I hate the man, but I want an independent, factual slant on the news, not to be continually told how bad Trump is.

I never felt it. Could you link me the most extreme men hating article you remember, I want to test how fragile I am.

You could have tried googling "guardian manhate" yourself?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/02/whyiha...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/10/french-writer-...

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-The-Guardian-so-increasingly-mi...

Quora is useless and so is Google, but the other two are hate because of trauma.

The people whose villages were pillaged by the Red Army, who raped all women there and stole everything of value will likely hate Russians.

Women who experience a lot of violence from men, even second hand, will likely hate men. It’s normal, hate is a natural response to harm.

Doesn’t mean all Russians are bad, or all men. I don’t feel personally attacked.

People who experience violence from <race> might well feel hatred for <race>. That doesn't mean that when they state "I hate <race>" they are not being racist.

You can make up all sorts of excuses for racism and sexism and all the other -isms. They don't make it right.

TL;DR: The Guardian is misandrist.

Yes, if you apply this logic, you'll reach this conclusion. I don't think this is equivalent to racism though. The latter is rooted in violence against the hated, not the violence of the hated.

The problematic racism is when people hate <race> despite <race> never harming them in any way, usually because that helps them justify systemically disadvantaging <race>.

You don't make the distinction, and draw equivalence between the two, so for you it's equally bad, I understand that.

2 articles in 20 years definitely proves your point.

I picked articles far apart in time to make the point that it hasn't changed.

I didn't spend much time on it. Let them stew in their manhate.

I've often wondered what impact the fact that major prominent liberal media outlets are often paywalled while conservatives one are not, has on public discourse. I have to imagine this translates to conservative media dominating online spaces, no?

"This story is free for a limited time. Subscribe to enjoy uninterrupted access."

Not going to lie, I was really hoping that this would be much more like the 99% of articles on NYMag that is fully paywalled, for irony's sake.

An article .. about paywalls not being needed.. behind a pay wall.

I know, writers and editors not deciding on the business model of the publication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_(magazine)

Websites with novel content get more views without a paywall.

Breaking news whenever it feels like breaking.

I really wish the web would have adopted micropayments at the HTTP level as has been talked about since the late 1990s. I would be far more willing to toss a website a dime or quarter to read a single article than I am to buy a full subscription to your stupid regional newspaper I've never heard of before or since. Paywalls as they exist now are just dumb and kind of geo-lock news.

Beyond that, I personally take issue with Google not SEO banishing news companies for providing different results to Google than the average user. It's been over a decade since I've worked in the SEO industry but at the time that was a mortal SEO sin.

The Guardian is extremely-polarized ragebait. I don't mean that as an attack or dismissal-- they do have good reporting sometimes-- but you have to keep that in mind when talking about their business model and what it implies for the broader industry. Any doofus on Substack or YouTube can make a living posting ragebait because it keeps engagement high. The question is whether the same business model (no paywall, unobtrusive ads) can work for sober and honest journalism, and IMO the answer sadly appears to be no, because not enough people value that to pay for it.

It's been a long time since I've been a regular reader of any newspaper, but when I was (admittedly at least 20 years ago!) I don't remember it being that way at all. Can you suggest a good example of a recent Guardian article that's ragebait?

What do you think about this one, from 2017?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/08/ashamed-t...

I remember this one in particular for random reasons. But these kinds of articles aren’t particularly rare in the guardian. The guardian’s editorial policy appears to be to generate a steady stream of random human interest stories with the common agenda of finding fault with everything that isn’t British.

If you consider that rage bait, it might be time for a little counselling.

The article is typical Guardian rage bait hit piece. It took the opinions of a handful of engineers and tried to paint a picture of an industry wide trend in an effort to show moral superiority. It was patently false. There was no industry trend like this, as was obvious to anyone in the industry a the time. And as we all know today, Facebook had no problem growing by leaps and bounds since.

You need counseling for your sad hostility.

> common agenda of finding fault with everything that isn’t British.

Believe me they find fault in everything that is British as well!

They are most definitely at the forefront of the "everything here is shit and we are all dreadful" mindset that infects a lot of the centre-left of the UK. For all that I like them better than most other news sources, the repeated refrain that we are all awful and should be ashamed of ourselves does get tiresome.

They find fault with lots of British things, but you'll need to look at the UK section.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news

The article you linked has some sources, though maybe a survey would help (if one exists). It might be applying a British viewpoint on America, in Britain the "shameful" jobs are in banking.

AI Slop. s/The Guardian/The Telegraph/ and the result is the same.

Uh no. They are radically different newspapers.

> extremely-polarized ragebait.

From all the newspapers the Guardian isn't exactly what comes to mind here. Their opinion section might have some content that is very liberal or left from an American perspective but their news reporting is factual and pretty good while succinct in my experience.

It's not just the opinion section. While I don't regularly read The Guardian, I do read some articles from it that show up here, and the donation nag at the end of every article is always specifically anti-Trump. Not trying to say that's right or wrong, but definitely doesn't give them a "unpolarized" look.

Being a bit polarised (and really most newspapers have a political leaning and this is part of the reason subscribers pick them!) is a very different thing from 'ragebait'.

And really Trump is doing enough to warrant rage, all the guardian needs to do is report on it :)

Relevant paragraph from the linked story:

> Despite The Guardian’s strident anti-Trump fundraising pushes, its broader audience is less partisan, as is the tone of its news coverage. It’s a weird line to straddle. “The appeals that you see at the bottom of articles are really framed around issues of press freedom and our identity and our structure of ownership,” Reed said. “They are not appeals that say, ‘Trump is bad, you need to support The Guardian, we are against Trump.’” Maybe not explicitly. But they are clearly benefitting from this moment and using the new money to hire, with expectations to continue growing its staff in the U.S. this year.

> as is the tone of its news coverage

I read the Guardian for 20 years, it's not less partisan in its output, it's incredibly partisan - just like all the other big papers. Thinking a news source doesn't have a slant is incredibly naive, in my view, but since this is coming from another newspaper or journalist with their own biases and slant, it's at best false and at worst a lie.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/

I'm not sure that site is fair.

The Guardian has some statistical errors (600 vs 30), a couple serious and the others less serious (9% vs 3%).

It seems to be being held to a higher standard than media known to be less trustworthy.

Does seem odd to have Fox News, which they describe as exhibiting "promotion of propaganda, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, the use of poor sources, and numerous false claims and failed fact checks", ranked above the guardian for factual reporting, when it describes the guardian as having "numerous failed fact checks over the last five years."

Neither is desirable, but one seems quite definitely worse than the other, and I wouldn't say the one making mistakes is worse than the one they call out as "PANTS ON FIRE"...

I thought Fox News had declared themselves to be entertainment television only and not the news for legal purposes.

But yes, The Avengers is riddled with inaccuracies and may not reflect yesterdays actual events in New York, London and Wakanda.

They're both ranked mixed which sits below the next level. Maybe fox is at the bottom of that bucket while the Guardian is not?

Also it would depend on the ratio of fact check issues to stories. Maybe Fox News runs a lot more news?

Either way, the analysis seems not crazy, and the Guardian seems biased and not 100% factual.

They have a numeric scale as well, which scores fox at 6.1 and the guardian at 5.7 (I think, I looked yesterday)

The guardian’s editorial is politically biased, it wears that on its sleeve, their opinion pieces come from a moderate-left viewpoint. But its reporting is generally factual, even if they make mistakes sometimes, as reported on that site.

Whereas they literally label some fox links as “PANTS ON FIRE”, I.e deliberate falsehoods. And we all know the story around, say, Dominion, where Fox knew they were lying but carried on. And the site gives them a higher score?

This is enough for me to doubt the site is anywhere near a reliable comparator.

Do you have a better source?

I don't see how that's relevant to my comment? I've been using that site for many years for media I'm unfamiliar with and it's only somewhat helpful, and its current ranking of the Graun says nothing about its partisanship (or bias, which in their usage is a misnomer, in my view).

I can pick certain topics and check the Graun to see whether they ever deviate from positive or negative on those topics. That's partisanship, wholly different from where they land on the political spectrum.

I was chiming in to the broader thread not just your comment but I think it adds to your observation about the political bias.

I'd love to get a higher quality source of data on media bias and accuracy. Both of these matter because even reporting facts but emphasizing a certain perspective distorts reality. Inaccuracy or straight out making stuff up is another form of reality distortion.

Fair enough. I'm hopeful that with AI we can get better metrics (although it'll probably add another layer of bias!)

As to the distortions, the only defence against that appears to be to read a wide array of sources. I stopped reading the Guardian after one too many straight up lies but I certainly can't say they're the only ones.

> the donation nag at the end of every article is always specifically anti-Trump

It’s not really surprising, or even controversial, for a European newspaper to be mostly anti-Trump. They are also anti-fascism and pro-democracy. All perfectly logical.

The Daily Mail was very pro Hitler in the 1930s

Even they, and the rest of the right wing press in the U.K, seem to at most indifferent to Trump at the moment.

Quite odd really. Hitler in the 30s was threatening to invade neighbouring countries, saying Germany needed places like Austria, Czechoslovakia, for national security reasons

> Even they, and the rest of the right wing press in the U.K, seem to at most indifferent to Trump at the moment.

I must admit that I don’t go out of my way to read the Daily Mail. Maybe I should. I wonder which way they are going now, with the conservatives missing in action, Reform intent on sabotaging itself and Trump quite hostile and not very sensitive to the “special relationship” argument. Same for the Telegraph, actually.

> Hitler in the 30s was threatening to invade neighbouring countries, saying Germany needed places like Austria, Czechoslovakia, for national security reasons

The history of British international policies is fascinating. It has always been a combination of splendid isolation and playing continental countries against each other. I can see how there could be a tendency to support anybody just to annoy the French, or to have a strong right-wing government to eliminate the Communists. There is some kind of internal consistency, if you assume that no problem will cross the Channel.

> always specifically anti-Trump

A lot of newspapers in Europe are also explicitly pro-Ukraine for instance. How is that different?

And politically being anti Trump is an extremely moderate position.

Disliking Trump isn’t really a polarising issue in the UK.

The ones I see aren't explicitly anti-Trump, but rather pro-press freedom. The one I just saw said "It’s clear that in 2025 rigorously fact-checked journalism will be more vital than ever".

That said, being anti-Trump is not a partisan position for a UK newspaper. Since the Zelenskyy/Oval Office events, he's unpopular even among much of the right. Nowhere near as unpopular as Vance and Musk though.

It is in no way "extremely polarized ragebait".

It has a mild bent to its reporting, and that's about it. The world isn't "ragebait" just because you happen to disagree.

> The Guardian is extremely-polarized ragebait.

Doesn't that describe your comment? I don't meant that as an attack or dismissal.

IMO it’s telling to view something as innocuous as The Guardian as “ragebait”. Yes, it leans mildly left but that’s only notable because so few other outlets do. Most major news outlets lean center to center-right, they just look left wing because they get compared to Murdoch tabloids and FOX News.

Just because it makes you angry doesn’t make it “ragebait”.

(Disclosure: I used to work at the Guardian, a million years ago, and helped with their early entry onto the web, including decisions about not having a paywall.)

What the Guardian has, throughout its editorial, is a political position. This is something that UK national newspapers naturally evolved over time as a differentiator, and is common (but not universal) in many countries. There are various political stable-ish ecological niches -- left, center-left, center-right, upper class, business, popularist right, and various news media that have staked out their territory. That means that they can attract with "ragebait", and also build a reasonably consistent (or self-consistent, at least) factual reportage. Someone who leans right-wing but wishes to be informed might buy the Guardian regardless, because they can disregard and triangulate. You have a core audience, and as long as that audience is loyal -- and needs some connection to reality, you can fund greater than just ragebait.

Ragebait isn't the only business model for supporting honest journalism, and one of the lessons I learned at the Guardian is that the actual business models can be surprising and frequently unrelated to news reporting. For many years, the Guardian was kept solvent through used car sales via Autocar, the most profitable asset in the Scott Trust. (One of the reasons why the Guardian was so early going online is that its editors, in particular Alan Rusbridger, recognised presciently that the Web was going to absolutely gut Autocar's profits, and so they needed to get ahead of the game.) You will be surprised about how many booms and busts in UK media industry have been determined by audience-pullers like crosswords, bingo, photos of naked models, and sudoku.

Pre-Trump, I had a paid online subscription to Guardian for a time, because it was so well written and informative.

After 2016, however, they seemed to adopt a firm anti-MAGA stance which I found to be biased and off-putting. Their highly critical stance against Israel after the Hamas attacks of October 2023 was the last straw.

Then, they withdrew from the X platform and now they might as well not exist, as far as I'm concerned. I think that was a mistake, given their significant following on X, but I guess they felt they don't need it.

Their stance regarding Israel and Palestine is well within the mainstream in Europe, including the UK.

How has the NY Times reported this?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/israel-killed-...

Why wouldn't they be critical of Israel? They killed over 200 children in one day just last week.

Funny, I started following the Guardian around then as it was the only paper that had a common sense takes on Israel instead of the highly compromised ones like the NY Times.

> For many years, the Guardian was kept solvent through used car sales via Autocar, the most profitable asset in the Scott Trust.

Wasn't that Auto Trader, not Autocar?

You're right!

Most US newspapers will financed to a great extent by classified ads, until the Internet destroyed that model - very many never recovered. The NY Times is financied in part by people who will pay for crosswords, cooking, games, and other non-news products.

I was a fan of the Guardian back during the Snowden leaks. Ive had to dodge them in recent months for what you described. Since people are doubting you, let's look at the headlines on the front page of a newspaper they is mostly factual despite having some bias. Here we go:

Musk is evil, most scientists warning about Trump, Trump takes over Chips Act, and Trump is a "dictator."

Then, Trump cuts Planned Parenthood, Trump reviews Harvard for antisemitism claims, and Trump pardons "Jan 6 loyalist."

Also, Israel are killers and woke people were right per someone on TV. Then, a few, normal pieces of news if the articles themselves had no slant.

Most of the front page would make those considering source integrity wonder if the paper was funded by a top opponent of Trump or Musk specifically to attack them. I'm not saying there's any data for that. I'm saying that, as a former liberal who used to want high-quality news with a range of views, I'd have thought the Guardian today was as extremely polarized as CNN or Fox.

Then, a popup that billionaires control the media with only two, right-wing ones mentioned. No mention that richest oligarchs funding or controlling education, media, and political campaigns are leftist:

https://youtu.be/fwZPrgcSRaw

Such papers are highly misleading with much drama following the games they play.

It's unfortunate given that the Guardian's ownership model might let it be a politically neutral paper with a range of views. They could be independent with quality, non-extreme writing from many sides. We could see a range of views. If one side, reporting with data representing many perspectives where we know they aren't cherry picking.

I want more news like that. Even the reliable sources that write in endless attacks or pour gas on the fire are draining to read. I'd rather it just be a little work or even pleasant. I dread reading the news these days.

Sometimes things are just bad, reporting on them at that point is a duty. Do you dispute that Trump has started talking about a third term? Or that those other actions are actually taking place?

> was as extremely polarized as CNN or Fox.

The guardian is an openly left-leaning publication, that's what it is, that's more or less what it's for.

If you're in the US I understand that you may not understand such a thing, or it may seem extreme to you because there is effectively no political left wing in America, and news is generally captured by oligarchs with a right-leaning slant. In the other geographies where the Guardian has a presence (UK, Australia) its reporting doesn't feel particularly extreme, probably because the ideas and viewpoints of the moderate left are a normal part of our political landscape, and we also have national broadcasters that are (generally, in intent) pretty neutral.

They're not in any way a Fox equivalent - the Guardian doesn't just make shit up or shit-stir for the sake of it, or try to pass itself off as an 'entertainment network' rather than news...

"If you're in the US I understand that you may not understand such a thing, or it may seem extreme to you because there is effectively no political left wing in America"

In America, almost all corporate outlets are Progressive left, most universities are, their politics were pushed into many big firms, and most of the government was liberal. They force their views on others in most places they control, too, with dissent not allowed.

A newer trend we saw during elections was them saying the same things in sync like they had a script. Recently, they all said positive things about Biden and Harris while saying negative things about Trump. They were willing to lie together many times. Like how liberal media reported Harris was the border czar in the past but all said it was a myth when Trump pointed it out. They also constantly misquote and lie about Trump which annoys me because I hate wasting time on lies or doing retractions.

The total, leftist control of major institutions and media... along with their games and lies... is the largest cause of the rise of Trump. It's why we now have kore accurate, but biased, reporting like The Daily Wire. Many people have left the Democrat party as a result of these things. Liberal news is lower rated by liberals than in the past.

Their control of media is proven by the fact that whatever you watch led you to believe they weren't in control of the media and country for a long time.

The point being made by Nursie above is simply that what you are calling "Progressive left" in the USofA is a position largely seen as centralist in other parts of the world.

By stating tht there is "effectively no political left wing in America" they are asserting that the furtherest political left position held in the USofA is a centralist one called "Progressive left" there in the US.

So to avoid being polarising, the guardian should stop reporting on the things that Trump is actually doing? What curious logic that is.

> The Guardian is extremely-polarized ragebait.

Errr, nah. It's mostly very high quality, sober and honest journalism.

Yes, a lot of the opinion and editorial is very obviously politically biased, and they do publish some absolute lefty tripe occasionally, but the news coverage is generally high quality and the longer form stuff thought provoking.

For ragebait in a British publication see "The Daily Mail".

At one point I began to suspect that, but realized it was just the events themselves, reported in a straightforward fashion, were making me outraged.

Since then, I have a personal filter that I apply to all journalism, which is to avoid articles of the form: "X is outraged by Y" (or horrified, shocked, etc). I don't need meta-outrage. With my filter turned on, I'm quite satisfied with the G's journalism.

> extremely-polarized ragebait

What’s not then? I’m genuinely curious since Guardian seems to be one of the most balanced major newspapers in their reporting that there is.

Sure it’s slightly left leaning overall and there are some quite unhinged editorials now and then but they are mostly isolated from the rest of the paper.

> sober and honest journalism

Well again.. can you give examples of more sober and honest journalism (besides just fact reporting news services like Reuters)

No, it isn’t. Compared to any of the Murdoch news sources it’s even handed and thorough. If anybody feels rage reading it perhaps some introspection is required.

I agree, don’t really see as much quality journalism on the guardian as the thread implies.

I donated for the longest time until they succumbed to rage bait journalism.

For a while I started avoiding it entirely, especially during the worst of the Trump and C19 years sanity and objective information seemed to have left everyone.

Also HN remember this is NOT reddit, downvote only if the comment brings nothing to the discussion. The above comment is simply disgreeing with the current blind guardian admiration.

They do not deserve all that praise, and those who point it out are not breaking HN rules and thus should not be removed from the discussion with mindless downvotes.

Read the rules ppl !!!

( wish reddit users could just stay in their own ruined toxic echo chamber and leave the still relatively healthy forums alone. Dont you people have a Tesla somewhere to scratch??)

They have an Ad-lite option. Literally give us money monthly and we’ll still show you ads (just not personalised)

Quite possibly the most obnoxious route to take

True. Give us money and we will show you less ads (which is what they literally say for the supporter plan) is really annoying. There doesn't seem to be a truly adfree option.

For me this is very counterproductive. If I still need to use my adblocker why bother to sign up?

I have the same thing with YouTube. Even if I pay for premium I'll still need to mess around with the sponsorblock plugin to get a truly adfree experience. In that case I'll just go the full way and just block everything. Especially on the TV as it means I'll still need to use smarttubenext. Because the official YouTube app doesn't support sponsorblock.

If they offered sponsor free videos to premium subscribers I probably would subscribe.

> I have the same thing with YouTube. Even if I pay for premium I'll still need to mess around with the sponsorblock plugin to get a truly adfree experience.

I wouldn't say this is the same thing at all. The sponsors are something that the individual video creator chose to do, and which youtube doesn't really have power over. If you pay for premium and you don't get ads injected by youtube, then they are holding up their end of the bargain in a way which "ad-lite" deals aren't.

They do have power over it. They can force the creators to make sponsor-free versions for premium users. It can simply be part of their T & Cs just like they don't allow porn etc.

Don't forget the creators already get a lot more money for a premium view than an adsponsored one. And nothing for an adblocked view.

Besides, I deal with YouTube. Not the creators.

While I agree overall, for me it's not as clear cut with sponsors as I do genuinely find some sponsored content very interesting and informative.

A creator might not have the means to buy the equipment, so not being sponsored would mean not making that content, which would be a net loss in these cases in my view.

That said, sponsored segments for BetterHelp, NordVPN and similar can f right off.

> and which youtube doesn't really have power over.

I can’t be certain but I remember sponsorships and other monetization methods being against the rules from 2005 to around 2010. Everything had to be done through the official affiliate program (YouTube Partners, I think they called it), which required an application and a large number of views and subscribers. I don’t remember seeing sponsored segments regularly until well after 2013. Sponsorblock already crowdsources this information. It wouldn’t be a technical hurdle to require uploaders to demarcate sponsored segments.

Sponsorships (unless demarcated "includes paid promotion") and IRs are still against the rules today.

> Sponsorships (unless demarcated "includes paid promotion")

I believe this policy came about due to FTC legislation that came into effect some time in the late 2010s or early 2020s. There was definitely a period in the 2010s when YouTube allowed sponsorships without the need to disclose them, or at least wasn't enforcing any policies they had against it.

> IRs are still against the rules today.

What does IR stand for?

interaction reminder

Ahh but literally everone does that? Even ethical youtubers do it "Ring the bell, subscribe and like".

The people that are most likely to pay are (in most cases) the most loyal users, who visit the site regularly. If those loyal users who push up ad views then move to an "ad free" plan, ad views go down, ad sales team gets sad.

Don't get me wrong, everything about this model sucks -- it's just not as straight forward as it might seem.

So what if the ad sales team gets sad? The subscription sales team would be very happy. You just got a regular recurring income stream. You could even shift employees from one to the other team.

And by being unethical and double dipping you're setting a great example for your customers who won't feel bad about being unethical themselves and just blocking and bypassing all your monetisation. If a site is being honest and fair I'm also much more motivated to play fair with them. I used to with Amazon and Netflix and paid my subscription until they started charging extra to remove ads. Now I pirate again.

Ps by 'you' I mean the companies that choose to do this, not you the poster.

> And by being unethical and double dipping you're setting a great example for your customers who won't feel bad about being unethical themselves and just blocking and bypassing all your monetisation.

I don’t disagree with the message wholesale, but blocking ads is not unethical. It’s a vital defense mechanism against outright malicious actors or the excesses of the attention economy. There is no opt-out or alternative, and there is no consent.

> There doesn't seem to be a truly adfree option.

We're still talking about The Guardian?

They advertise a $20 (AUD) per month "All Access Digital" plan here - https://support.theguardian.com/au/contribute?pre-auth-ref=h... - which they say gives you access to "Ad-free reading on all your devices"

But that might be through their app rather than the browser. Hard to tell.

Oops. You're right.

I was confused with the "far fewer asks for support" that put me off. I mean if you're already supporting them, why?

> If I still need to use my adblocker why bother to sign up?

Personally I don’t disable my ad blocker, ever. Regardless of whether I subscribe or not, or whether the website is ad free with a subscription. I give them (a bit of) money because I support them, not to avoid ads. The ad infestation is a battle we lost a while ago, now we can only make do.

> I have the same thing with YouTube.

Same, except that I am not giving (willingly) a cent to Google, ever. They mine me enough already.

That seems to be the approach most UK newspapers are taking. Consent or pay.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...

> “Consent or pay” models differ from a “take it or leave it” model, as the presence of a “pay” option means that accessing the service is not solely conditional on people providing consent.

I feel like this is ... slimy.

I suppose it does at least make things explicit - your data is very obviously a form of payment at that point.

So, like a traditional print newspaper then.

maybe also the major paper you can rely on for the truth. yeah it's left leaning but it won't spew lies and spread propaganda like the NYT / Washington Post.

How much government money are they taking?

Revenue is broken down in the fourth paragraph of the article.

That does not seem to account for all their revenue, it does not say what percentage of all revenue comes from tax money.

  The Guardian US expects to hit $44 million in voluntary reader donations in the U.S. and Canada this year, up 33 percent over last year [..].

  These contributions account for more than 60 percent of the American operation’s total revenue, which last year exceeded costs by $16 million

  (the rest of its revenue comes from advertising and philanthropic support from foundations).

By my reckoning "more than 60 percent of the American operation’s total revenue" + "the rest of its revenue comes from" adds up to 100 percent.

Can you expand on what it is that you feel is not accounted for?

… Wait, what makes you think the Guardian is government funded? Which government?

I think you are thinking of other businesses here? A certain electronic car manufacturer for example.

In France the figures are public and funilly enough, two of the three receiving the most public funding are conservative titles. With one of them (Le Figaro) being famous for complaining about how much help the progressives/left titles are getting.

https://www.culture.gouv.fr/thematiques/presse-ecrite/tablea...

Guardian is a drop in the ocean. Printed press died and website journalism will follow soon.

Social media is the new journalism.

Maybe, but the opposite might also be true. There is value in aggregating sources and filtering signal from noise. The value of such should increase with the growth of social media. Maybe you won’t reach everyone with such a business (see the decline in newspaper) but some will always pay for this

Social media is not journalism. It’s an algorithm driven click-bait echo chamber full of 5s long “hot takes”.

Anyone who builds their model of the world primarily from social media without grounding it in actual journalism is doing themselves (but mostly the wider society) a huge disservice.

Who on social media, and paid to do investigations how? And with whose algorithm recommending it with what incentives?

It's not journalism to only read the primary sources you have time to read. That's not proper research, it's narrow and limited. By definition nobody has time to do their own journalism, any more than they have time to write their phones operating system themselves.

In the Netherlands newspapers have traditionally been funded by subscribers. Running a newspaper is not that expensive- most of the news is after all happening in the third world were a few thousand euro can get you far. Have your journalists fly economy- or worse Southwest lol.

People who cannot afford your product are not your audience, it is okay to be elitist.

Not exactly they've always been co-funded by ads too. We've even had free newspapers in the Netherlands that were given it for free purely funded by ads. They tended to be light though. Like the spits and metro papers that are handed out at train stations. I don't think either exists anymore, I don't live there anymore but I didn't see them last time. Probably because everyone now has a smartphone.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Neth... it looks like the newspaper industry in the Netherlands is having similar problems to that industry in other countries:

> The number of national daily newspapers in the Netherlands was 108 in 1950, 38 in 1965, 10 in the 2010s, 9 since March 2020, and 8 since March 2021.

Yes this is basically the result of two pretty terrible Belgian media conglomerates buying everything up and combining it into one pulpy slop. The government let it all happen.

Are you sure they’ve always been funded by subscribers? Things like classified ads used to be a core money maker for newspapers and the internet destroyed that market. Then the ad market got turned upside down by the internet too (though interestingly paper ads still attract higher rates!). Very few newspapers have actually thrived directly from subscriber revenue.

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