So you’re just doubling down on what if this and that.
No. I pointed out many things that are unambiguous with the information that was actually reported on the sign.
Or to use your level of speech: So you’re just doubling down on projecting your own narrative that is contradicted by the only actual information that sign communicates?
No, that’s how American K-12 schools are funded.
Partially true, but not absolutely. K-12 in many places in the USA are funded through property taxes. I’m in the USA and my public school system is funded via income tax. No property taxes go to school.
That and infrastructure.
True in some places. False in others. Some places derive income from high property taxes. Other places choose high sales taxes. Yet others do it on income tax.
Which is why poor areas have worse schools and roads; and police from outside their tax area. Which is both a great way to punish the poor in the old school protestant fashion and force them out the second the wealthy want their land.
Again, partially true. Some states have state taxes that fund various projects at the municipal level irrespective of the wealth of the locality.
I don’t disagree that a more equitble system for funding schools should be designed and implemented, but you know know that because I’m trying to have that discussion with you in another thread and you’re weak as water on that and won’t discuss any specifics except “someone else should pay”.
And you know exactly what I mean by paying in his entire life.
I know your words on that don’t match reality, and you’re skipping a really important part of that reality. I’ll admit I was wrong one part of that. I said he likely started “paying into the system at age 18”. We know thats wrong. His sign tells us he built his house at age 25. Age 25 is when he would be first paying the property taxes he’s complaining about. So he’s spent even less time paying into the system and already wants to be except from it for the society benefits he still gets.
Finally, paying half your income on property taxes is not financially sustainable. It’s ridiculous to me that you would even pretend it is.
Again, you’re making stuff up from nothing. What are his expenses? He owns his house. He’s retired so his healthcare is covered by Medicare. If he’s living on just social security he’s likely not even paying income tax because his income is low. What are his other expenses? Food? Clothing? Electricity? Water? He might have a well and not even have that bill. Are you saying half his income can’t cover those things? Further, we have no idea what he earned in life. Did he spend it on stupid stuff? We don’t know. I’m certainly not claiming any of my assumptions of him as fact, but that isn’t stopping you from doing so.
“Tax property” has finely enumerated rules completely spelled out in the letter of the law in hundreds of different variations across many states and cities. You can certainly disagree with it, but its a fully formed and executed system that is funding many schools today.
What you’ve got so far in this discussion is “stop what is currently in place and make someone else pay somehow”. Thats not even fully formed thought much less an argument that can be defended. Your first statement, and now this follow up tell me you’re really interested (capable?) of proposing a better alternative.
The fact that schools are funded by the surrounding area is crap and needs to change. It’s a system by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
Unless there is an article or background on the guy in the picture you’re projecting a HUGE amount of stuff you just made up on that guy.
He’s retired with a social security income.
That’s what his sign says. I take him at his word on that one.
He paid into the system his entire life already.
Well, no he didn’t. He didn’t start paying into it until he started earning money. Likely for the first 18 years of his life, he lived of what other people put into the system. Many of those people that paid for him are in the situation he’s in right now, except now he sees it as unfair.
Telling him he must sell and move out
No one is telling him to move out. He certainly isn’t saying he will be forced to move if he has to continue to pay property taxes. You just made that up.
because he’s not wealthy enough is exactly what we should be working against.
He’s not saying he is not wealthy enough. You just made that up. In fact, his sign is indicating he does have he wealth to cover the property taxes via his Social Security. He’s saying he doesn’t’ believe he should have to pay anything one something he bought decades ago while he continues to enjoy the services of the city and society the tax dollars pay for.
If you’re actually serious, you have to do better than that for an answer. How are you going to tax them? What are you going to tax them on? Who is considered rich?
Here in Canada, primary education is paid for by the province, and school funding is based on student enrollment numbers.
So the source is the provincial government, but in that system where is the province deriving the revenue to pay for schools? What is being taxed by the province to bring in the money it uses to fund schools?
Feel free to name one for discussion.
Until we do, we can’t stop the current funding source. Feel free to present your argument on your proposed alternate method.
If you want to get reductive, you never truly own it even if you live in a society where there is no tax.
The rule of law that allows the concept of private ownership to be upheld in society runs on tax dollars. If you take away all of the tax dollars, the mechanisms that define and enforce the rule of law go with it.
In a completely tax free society someone can just kick in your door of your house and shoot you, and now they own your house. Who will stop the thief/murderer? There’s no police, no courts, no judges, no jails. If instead of an individual its a foreign nation, there’s no military to defend your nation’s borders. All of that comes from tax dollars. So even then you never really own your own house because someone can take it (and your life) away from you.
For many states property taxes are the majority of funding for public schools. If that’s the case for the pictured person, the sign could also read:
“I got my public education for free from age 5-18 funded from others paying property taxes including learning how to read and write to make this sign you’re reading. Now that I’ve received that free public education and benefited from it, I’m not interested in paying for any kids to be educated using my dollars. F you, I got mine.”
I appreciate alternate methods of business, but some of your statements here are worrying.
there is the temporary furlough route,
but you also said earlier…
and you’d have to try pretty hard to become unemployed at a coop. there are generally no “layoffs” since there is no greedy billionaire at “the top” needing a second yacht.
Furlough sounds like another name for layoff here.
but ideally there is savings for such eventualities. savings and / or loans can be used to ride out dry spells.
Ideally sounds like wishful thinking. They’re already limiting their work because they only work with NGOs or non-profits, which are usually cash strapped. Further, the lower pay to tech workers mean that the workers have less of a financial cushion should the work dry up for a time. This goes back to my first post that tech workers that don’t live a country with strong social safety nets may find tech co-ops a risky employer.
more stable than typical corporate businesses simply due to the lack of a billionaire class extracting profits and making big decisions on their whims
Yeah yeah fuck the rich, but billionaires are a small fraction of the owners of IT consulting companies. The majority of them are small boutique firms rather than giant fortune 500 companies.
One answer could be that the organization maintains a large fund to act as a buffer to maintain salaries between contracts instead of operating “paycheck-to-paycheck.”
Thats great in concept, but keep in mind they’re already taking customers that likely have small or limited budgets. Where does this extra buffer come from? The only income stream is delivering on limited contracts to cash strapped NGOs and non-profits. Remember, they took corporate work at one point, but hated it. Corporate work is where the bigger bill rates for delivery of contract service come from.
An even simpler answer could be that the co-op chooses to take on a large number of small contracts instead of a small number of large ones, such that the revenue is relatively consistent to begin with.
Its amazing if your org can get so much contract work that there’s jobs available to turn down. This usually requires a dedicated sales and marketing staff, which don’t generate any revenue for the co-op, only delivery of services to. So the sales and marketing arm are yet another drain on the already meager amounts earned from contract awards.
If there was surplus money to be made large for-profit contracting companies would be in here already doing some or all of this work.
Random American here agreeing with Random Canadian brother or sister. I stand on guard for thee!
the difference in salary they’re talking about is more along the lines of small business vs venture capital-backed startup or established huge corporation.
That would make sense if the organization is revenue generating with its own business efforts instead of enabling other organizations, which is what it sounds like is the case for this tech co-op. The co-op doesn’t seem to generate anything of their own. It sounds like they get contract work from NGOs and non-profits. If there is no work, or not enough, what happens to the co-op workers?
and you’d have to try pretty hard to become unemployed at a coop. there are generally no “layoffs” since there is no greedy billionaire
So when the NGO and non-profit contract work declines or dries up entirely for a time and there is less or no money coming in, how do salaries get paid at 100%? Does each tech co-op worker simply get a small percentage of the remaining income? How long do workers actively working contracts for NGOs/non-profits in the co-op continue to subsidize those that don’t/can’t get placed on work?
Certainly, but this is a different animal. What you’re describing is non-profit organization that retains employees doing IT. Like a for-profit, the employee has the expectation of a job irrespective of the level of project work the organization has. The non-profit will have a similar reporting structure and expectations on the IT worker, with the upside that the IT worker is deriving not only benefit from their salary, but from the good the non-profit is doing.
Contrast that with the IT contracting world were rates for IT work are much higher than a standard retained IT worker. The reason the pay is higher is because of the risk to the worker they may be unemployed with the work dries up. So from what I gather from the article this tech co-op is the worst of both worlds: low pay, low job security.
I’d love to be corrected if anyone has IT co-op knowledge/experience.
You also don’t have to make redundancies once the contract’s finished. It’s a universal fact that being a co-op is a tick in your favor.
I’m interested in specifics on this. If the co-op is purely doing contract work and the contract ends, how are they able to continue to pay workers on the bench? How long are workers allowed to be on the bench if they can’t be place on contract work?
We did some work with a couple of corporates and our developers hated it. So, we said we’d focus on charities and NGOs, the public sector and education.
There are a limited number of charities and NGOs, and many times these customers are the most squeezed for budget, meaning lower amounts of income to the co-op.
Another significant hurdle is salary competitiveness. Generally, programmers can secure higher wages outside the tech worker co-operative sector in both countries.
I think this is the buried lede. How much is income reduced to tech workers vs traditional employers? Without strong social safety nets in the country a co-op with a much lower salary may not be a viable option because unemployment would leave the former workers without resources to live on.
If anyone has any experience with tech co-ops and can fill in the gaps of my understanding, I’d be interested to hear it.
Remember 2015? A Tesla parked in your driveway told your neighbours that you valued innovation, that you possessed an environmental conscience, that you had a stake in the future of the planet. The cars weren’t perfect, but they meant something. They represented hope - for clean energy, EVs, and a world beyond fossil fuels.
This was me years go. I knew climate change was real and an imminent threat. I wanted to vote with my wallet for a cleaner future. I also wanted to strike a blow against the National Automotive Dealers Association for their regressive practices that hurt consumers and drive prices for cars higher for everyone. Buying a Tesla did those things. I charge the car on sunlight from my house. I don’t have to support the petroleum industry’s damage to environment and people around the world. I was proud to be doing something rather than just talking about needs for changes against climate change.
Musk doesn’t get any of my money from this car. I don’t pay for any of the Tesla monthly services. I’m don’t want to be seen driving with a Tesla logo on the car. I’m ashamed that my good intentions funded a fascist.
A quick internet search shows 15% or food imported and 1% or electricity.
Your search was too quick, or you didn’t think deep enough on your query. Those percentages are against the entire country. Specific areas of the country have much higher. At the extreme, there are small communities on the border that have zero connection to the US energy grid and instead are tied to the Canadian grid. Lots of produce has faster spoilage so its imported from Canada or Mexico to border regions where its consumed fast enough. Now those supplies are gone and food would have to be shipped in from farther away, increasing spoilage and straining logistics.
Lastly, how does the USA generate the majority of its electricity domestically today? Natural Gas. Where does a lot of that Natural Gas come from? Canada.
Is it?
It is. If you have the choice to act, and you choose not to act. You have made a choice.
Aren’t we always talking about voter suppression?
Voter suppression is if there is no choice to vote. I haven’t seen anyone suggest those are people we’re talking about. Those would be referenced by language such as “those that couldn’t vote” not “those that didn’t vote” who we are referring to in this thread.
I didn’t ask you to. I asked you to add some actual substance to what you’re proposing instead of simply hand waving “someone should do something somehow” which is useless and ineffectual. Your stance will mean the status quo is maintained, and I personally don’t want that.
How about even just one part of your propose solution? You’ve given absolutely nothing except “rich people”. You’ve offered nothing that can be acted on. If you want change, you have to be able to talk about what change you want. If you can’t talk in reality, then yes, you are not serious.