Posting like this account has been doing will eventually get your main account banned too, so please don't create accounts to do this.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14608078 and marked it off-topic.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
This doesn't mean you can't comment on divisive topics. It means that as the topic gets more divisive, comments need to become more thoughtful and more substantive, not less.
All money means is that you convinced someone else to give you money at some point in life.
Efficient allocation of resources to property development. Although that's just a technical distinction, you can get rid of it by separating out the improved vs unimproved value of land (the former is much less problematic than the latter).
>All money means is that you convinced someone else to give you money at some point in life.
Presumably, the convincing is because giving you money is better than the alternatives.
(compare a pleasant and profitable development to a development designed to exploit government incentives...the latter may well be more "efficient" in terms of economy)
Unfortunately, that's also more than you can expect from humans who know they can charge more and find tenants.
If you want to be technically pedantic, exclude the value of improvements on the property. You don't really want to tax the act of replacing an empty lot with a $10MM factory. You do want to tax the right to use land within the catchment of the various services the state provides. Land isn't produced, so you can't disincentivize producing it.
Effective asset management is valuable, just as ineffective asset management destroys value.
^ Except in the case of inherited assets (and titles). There is a reason the term is "land lord" after all...
This is not true. Anyone can claim that in a certain venture profits are not coupled to the contribution to society, as long as the person refuses to acknowledge or define "contribution to society".
For instance, do you consider T Bone Pickens to have contributed to society via his profits? If no, then what about Warren Buffet?
If you have 2 people, one which will contribute >30K a year in taxes, and another that will contribute 10k a year in taxes, that is free money on the table that we are losing out on, if we don't accept person 1.
Why shouldn't the government optimize for letting people into the country that are going to give it a lot of tax dollars? We could then use those extra tax dollars to do things that society wants.
Absolutely not true for everyone. It depends heavily on how they make their money.
Many very wealthy people are also able to abuse loopholes and decrease their tax bills. Do you remember when people thought Trump didn't want to release his tax returns because they showed he paid zero taxes? Yes, that's a real thing. Billionaires making millions in a given year are able to pay nothing, if they organize their finances correctly.
Also, people have value to the economy outside of tax dollars. They also spend money, fill jobs that aren't filled by domestic workers, and produce babies (which wealthier people produce at a lower rate and which are necessary to fund things like Social Security).
Was this ever the case? I mean, look at the Victorian era and what amounted to forced labor camps in the coal mines of West Virginia – seems like profits are almost always sucked up to the top.
Letting people in for a brick of hard cash seems much less likely to foster the sort of values that would result in visa holders not wanting to loot the country for a quick profit.
Earning a lot of money is a good proxy for contributing to society, except not everyone makes good money all the time.
I'm an immigrant and if you were to judge me based on my first few years in America, then clearly you shouldn't let me in to America. Now, at a later stage in my life, I would qualify for "startup visa" but if I wasn't already living in America for past 10 years, then I might not wanna come here (might not even be eligible for this visa to be fare).
* First, intelligence is mostly cultural, not genetic. I know that's not a popular view in the US, but it's true nonetheless. There are multiple adoption studies that show how intelligence of kids rise as much as 20 points on the IQ scale, once they have a nurturing social environment. It's also pretty obvious once you think about the fact that european immigrants in the US were almost all analphabetic subsitance farmers, yet nowadays descendents of those people design neural nets and self driving cars.
* Intelligence (the difference between g and IQ is irrelevant, as both are pretty much defined by the same thing: an intelligence test) is not a good predictor for future work performance. Other personality traits like conscientiousness and neuroticism are, in combination, more important.
* Despite decades of research, there still are no language independent intelligence tests of comparable reliability to the language-dependent variants, so the actual measuring is not possible.
Oh, you're that guy.
>Who do you think pays for the unintelligent people in the welfare society the left envisions?
If there is one thing that is almost absolutely uncorrelated with IQ is income, so that twisted and repulsive worldview is immedeately shattered by contact with reality.
> I do find it rather amusing the left complains that the only reason they don’t win is because of stupid people
Show me where voting right-wing is correlated with low IQ test scores.
> bringing in the least intelligent immigrants possible
Ditto. (Because immigrants are dumb simpletons, the lot of them)
Frankly disgusting.
Also, Democrat policy making going back to Ted Kennedy has favored poorly educated immigrants from Southeast Asia, Africa and South America in particular. This is a fact and worth researching if you're at all confused about it. Also, these immigrants have been shown to vote roughly 4 to 1 in favor of Democrats.
"The left" doesn't do that, a small minority of the people on the left do.
> and then insists on bringing in the least intelligent immigrants possible
Even fewer (like zero) people on the left advocate specifically for “bringing in the least intelligent immigrants possible.”
Also, the left is just about as good as one person. How could so many people with disparate views that are often in conflict vote as a unified block with such great ease?
Sure, IQ is not a valid measure of a human being, certainly not one with which to decide to exclude those seeking a home.
> As a patriot
Equally disgusting, patriotism is just another form of tribalism and bigotry. Patriotism, aka nationalism, isn't a thing to be proud of, it's a thing that causes hate and conflict in the world. You don't choose the country of your birth, it isn't an accomplishment to be proud of, you had nothing to do with it.
Excuse me for saying, but this alone suffices to reveal your character. IQ is an unscientific measure, full of holes, doesn't correlate in any meaningful way to success, let alone worth to society. IQ testing, really? Not success, not merit, not services to society, f*cking IQ testing. I mean, I take it you would rather have a 170 IQ shut-in doing nothing productive with his talents than a hardworking labourer or a celebrated NGO founder in your country?
I would venture further. If I had to wager I would say you got praised a lot for being smart when you were a child, maybe even got a good score in IQ testing at some point in your life. It skewed your view of things and now you reduce everything to that. But maybe I'm wrong.
Sorry the science doesn't agree with what you think it should be, I will be sure to let the scientists know.
https://www.iq-tests.eu/iq-test-IQ-and-general-intelligence-...
Anyway, Wikipedia has a good overview of the main gripes with IQ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Criticis...
https://www.amazon.com/Spurious-Correlations-Tyler-Vigen/dp/...
I think it'd make a lovely coffee table book.
What a weird reality tunnel you inhabit.
Fortunately you've mostly fixed this on HN, though not entirely. Please make the adjustments needed to correct this so I don't have to starting pleading with you not to get banned all over again.
(Also, please don't feed trolls. The thing to do with accounts like that is to flag their comments so we can ban them—not pour fuel onto the flamewar.)