Your 6 figure salary is about 1% due to your hard work and about 99% due to standing on the shoulders of giants: those who fought and died for your freedoms, those who educated your workers, those who ensured your customers had money to buy your stuff, those who ensure your belongs aren't stolen, those who built the open source software your work is based on, those who designed the free standards your software is based on, those who built the network you distribute on, those who ensure you didn't die in childhood, scientists from Aristotle to Newton to Babbage to Einstein and on up who were the giants you're standing on.
You're lucky your income tax rate is only ~50%. It morally could be much higher.
> You're lucky your income tax rate is only ~50%. It morally could be much higher.
Can you explain the moral reasoning behind this? I don't understand how taxes figure into this. Those taxes aren't used, nor will they be, to improve the lot of those factory workers. If anything, governments are cooperating with China, and are thus definitely not improving the lot of those workers.
Those taxes, where well spent, will go towards attempts to strengthen those "shoulders of giants", that you describe as immoral.
I would think the moral argument of taxes is critically dependent the morality of governments. And when it comes to international politics, that morality is not just lacking, but they often act outright evil.
If you truly want to improve Chinese lives, it seems to me that your best allies are the US and Taiwanese military. The US, who is a clear break on the ability of the Chinese state's control, and those limits are the reason things are advancing in China. And the Taiwanese military who are prepared and "trying" (not able, just trying) to introduce democracy in China, which is the only way real improvement will happen. Give your money to them. Both have donation accounts.
How does a child living in poverty in a backwater country under a repressive dictatorship get access to a computer and an internet connection and a bank account so that they can bootstrap themselves into a remote working web development gig?
I can't tell if your downvotes are due to people being oblivious to dripping sarcasm or due to the HN crowd recognizing this as sarcastic and feeling personally attacked.
>More alarmism, I see. Anyone who has read Steven Pinker knows that this all is patently false.
Anyone who has reas Steven Pinker knows he is a well-fed, of the top 1% richer, cheerleading for the modern era and global capitalism by cherry-picking facts and figures made up to make governments look good, from the comfort of his posh office.
