Waitman Gobble shared a comment of this post/conversation

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 13:01:38 -0400 from hubzilla

It's only "disinformation" if the other team does it, I guess.

Harris-sponsored Google ads suggest publishers are on her side

The Harris campaign has been editing news headlines and descriptions within Google search ads that make it appear as if the Guardian, Reuters, CBS News and other major publishers are on her side, Axios has found.

#politics

Haakon Meland Eriksen (Els Mussols)

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:18:22 -0400 from Streams at els Mussols

We noticed both Harris and Trump support the tiping culture rather than decent wages for people working in restaurants, which is no longer an important part of Scandinavian dining (officially that is, people do tip). I guess the two are not that different on fiscal policy?

Marshall Sutherland

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 17:42:12 -0400 from hubzilla

Speaking of that... Apparently, to CBS News, whether a policy is good or bad depends on who proposes it.

Waitman Gobble

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 09:52:08 -0400 from Get Ready To Rumbly

I prefer boring news that just lists the observed facts, but it's hard to find unbiased news amymore. There are plenty on bith sides. Luckily we have the internet to complain, back in olden times people just had to eat it.

Haakon Meland Eriksen (Els Mussols)

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 01:22:12 -0400 from Streams at els Mussols

I remember a former neighbour who was upset because her father, who had worked without paying taxes, got the lowest pensjon from the government he had not paid taxes to.

The tiping culture without taxation trick low paid service people into a lower pension.

Less money in common public coffers is also bad for public services, e.g. maintenance of public schools.

My former headmaster had a very nice maintenance idea. She gathered all the students and said she each year had an amount of money to fix things that got broken. If the students were willling to be careful and not break things, they could have that money for a trip to the amusement park. They loved it, did it, and she kept her promise and we all went. The school looked amazing. Year one.

A school - or any organsation - get new people each year and the old ones leave, i.e. those who knew and made the promise were soon gone. Without anybody paying attention, the deal was off.

Marshall Sutherland

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 08:07:34 -0400 from hubzilla

That is an interesting trade-off. In the US, your Social Security benefit is based on the amount of social security tax you paid during your life (probably a gross simplification), so having less taxable income would impact your future SocSec benefit. On the other hand, given the lackluster return on that money if you were to measure it as an investment, you could be far better off if you put the money that would have gone to SocSec into a retirement account.

I don't know anything about these proposals, so I don't know if they propose exempting them from all taxes on tips (income, social security, medicare). This would impact the above trade-off as well. If you could put away all savings from all those taxes, you could definitely come out ahead. But, let's be realistic, the number of people who would actually put away all those tax savings is probably small. So, as is often the case, whether an individual is better or worse off depends on a lot of factors.

Marshall Sutherland

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 12:19:42 -0400 from hubzilla

I think boring news got driven out of business by click-bait news. News seems to now be another entertainment division of the company that targets whichever political demographic they have decided to support.