They do where I live.

All companies report salary and tax, all banks report income, debt, and interest cost, stock trades, unions report up to your deductible amount, etc.

Certain stuff you will have to fill yourself, but 50% doesn’t have to do anything. They can check and correct if necessary, but if they don’t do anything it will file automatically.

If you paid too much tax it comes onto your account a month or two later.

Too little and you get an invoice.

It’s not hard to do, but starting in 2023 and catching up is much harder than starting in 2000 and improving incrementally.

I suspect the cash was in the coats, not the gold bars. Although the headline can be creatively interpreted as that there was cash stuffed in gold bars. That would be kinda cool though.

“Small business” are always being peddled out for things like this.

“Ironically” small business thrives better in countries with socialized health care and good social security safety nets.

The solution is to create a system where their political prostitution is both illegal and unnecessary.

That’s the only way you get to shift politicians into working for “the people” and not their backers.

https://youtu.be/PJy8vTu66tE

Obviously not a guarantee, but if they could stop spending 40% of their time worrying about being re-elected and financing their re-election that would probably be a boon. Maybe they could even read some of the legislation they’re passing.

Even after fixing this issue you have the other one where you have a shitload of politicians which seems to be members of a cult, not a political organization and millions of Americans voting for them.

There are rules for you and me, and there are different ones for people of means and influence.

How Trump has managed to remain the prior and, and how on earth he managed to gain the latter still baffles me.

Or you can just add contempt and multiple charges of witness tampering on top?

Sorry if I was unclear; I was trying to say “imagine if you had a system that worked” 🫣

And I don’t mean that in any negative way, other than to say that the current system is visibly broken.

Imagine if we made new laws that evolved with the time and retired old laws that are clearly anachronistic?

If instead of interpreting and discussing unclear text the legislators just said “we believe this is wrong, and thus - now we change it”.

That whole thread reeks of biased short seller.

All cars catch on fire sometimes, but apparently Teslas are death machines (and allegedly do it every time they crash, which is easily verified to be false as long as you actually use real objective sources not randoms on social media).

I’m sure there’s people who believe this crap, but if you actually look at the stats they show something completely different.

High energy crashes kills people regardless of fuel type. High energy crashes are also more likely to cause a fire.

Just like every minute of the Donald’s presidency.

“the right thing to do” is often not politically popular.

The problem is that it’s often really hard to measure what the right thing to do even was. Ie. in retrospect. Even more difficult up front.

Insurance is usually problematic too, in such matters. Your house insurance pays for a new house, in the same location. “Same” house.

Usually needs to be fairly exceptional to get something else.

So, if you wanted to get out of Dodge you’re still stuck with the same house, might not afford selling and relocating.

And even if you did you need a job. So might your spouse.

So far some of the observable effects of climate change is more frequent and stronger hurricanes and tornados.

While it’s obviously not popular, I believe we need to start taking relocating the most vulnerable areas. Some people have already relocated, others will. There are those that never will, but in-between there’s a lot of people who’ll probably suffer greatly if is not arranged before it’s “too late”.

Insurance companies pulling out is like rats leaving a sinking ship. It should be an alarming warning sign when insurance is no longer a viable business.

Obviously they would stay in the market if it was financially viable. Doesn’t matter if the margin is low, 1% of something is more than 100% of nothing.

It might still be on the plus-side today, but a sinking ship is also still floating.

The problem isn’t that things get “permanently” destroyed, but that we let people keep re-building where there is only a matter of time before it gets taken out again.

Some places have higher risks, others have guarantees of outcome, the only unknown is the timeframe.

I recall a case from Norway where someone’s house was taken by what was deemed a “100-year” flood, ie. it’s only that large every 100 years.

The insurance company and the government was happy to have them rebuild in the same location only for it to be taken out by the next event 5-10 years later.

That’s not viable for anyone. Risk to life, and the cost to the society.

The house I grew up in is over 200 years old, and has been where it’s at for more than 130 years now.

It’s survived at least 10 hurricanes, and will likely stand there for another 100 years unless someone decides to tear it down or the water level rises too much. But at least it’s a good 20 meters above sea level.