@a1ba @atax1a

Lobbying is legalized corruption here. It sucks. Basically, if you (and by "you" I mean business interests) have the money to pay the lobbyists and contribute to campaigns, the will of *actual people* doesn't mean shit.

@atax1a and yet they think their biggest problem is the type of old fart taking up presidential chair

@a1ba Every paycheck, the IRS estimates how much you'll owe at year's end based on how much you made that pay period and takes out a proportional amount to that. At year's end, you then tell them the actual total amount of money you made, factor in various credits or deductions like donations, compare it to how much you paid over the course of the year, and then one side pays the other the difference. It's an insanely stupid and complex system that only really benefits people that can afford accountants on retainer to manage their tax expenses for them. Every time someone offers to "simplify" it, it just gets more complicated and we end up paying more.

If anyone's considering moving here, don't.

@ducksauz @atax1a

@mrsaturday this is unironically stupid

@a1ba The whole damn system needs a do-over

@mrsaturday is that also true that social security number is a thing not created with security in mind that's basically became a second ID/passport?

@a1ba It's an identifier that you use to supplement other forms of identity. It's rarely used on its own anymore. That system has been strictly unchanged since the 1930s. There are only a billion permutations, so we've already had to take numbers from dead people and assign them to others.

It's the consequences of having a two-party system, with one party that's unwilling to change anything in the name of upholding legacies, and another that only wants to destroy the system in the name of enriching corporations and the top 0.01% of the country.

@mrsaturday I'm sorry for asking stupid questions but wow, internets didn't lie. I mean, it matches what I've been told before and I still can't believe how over complicated it is in US.

@a1ba Yeah. It really could be modernized and easier, but any time someone gets the will to improve things, people that profit off of the status quo start bribing our politicians to make it go away. The tax code being overly complex is largely due to tax accounting chains like H&R Block or Jackson Hewitt bribing Congressmen.

The questions aren't stupid. Honestly it takes most Americans until their 30s to figure out how these things work. It's a common complaint that our schools teach you largely useless and specialized knowledge like cellular biology and not practical realities of living in America like how to navigate things like tax and insurance systems or how to write a good resume.

@mrsaturday same here about schools tbh.

Reminds me that we in schools had lessons (for boys specifically because of course) on how to repair and make simple stuff like chairs, tables but nobody cared about them. Basically a remnant of what Soviet Union had.

Meanwhile girls had lessons on cooking and yet they had exact same problem except their teachers were probably a bit less alcoholic.

In theory, that should've taught useful skills for your life in general, no matter the country... but the implementation sucked.