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Related ongoing thread: Federal Government's letter to Harvard demanding changes [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684386

The aggregate demands of the administration are confusing and contradictory. They seem to be simultaneously asking for:

- an end to diversity initiatives

- a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view

- a new policy of not admitting international students with certain points of view

- ending speech-control policies

- auditing the speech of certain departments and programs

- ending discipline of students who violate policies related to inclusion

- disciplining particular students who violated policies related to inclusion

It is easier to understand their thinking when you combine each pair of demands: what they want is reversals, they've just split each into two steps because they think that will be more palatable. It makes it easier to sell to their own base certainly, because they can concentrate on whichever half has the most emotive effect in any given speech, and easier for their base to parrot: they just repeat the half they want and don't need to think about the other.

The end to current diversity policies and the start of others combined is a demand for u-turn: stop allowing the things we don't like, start allowing the things you were stopping.

Same for speech: stop auditing the speech we want to say, start auditing the speech you were previously allowing.

And so on.

In the minds of the administration it makes sense, because they think of each item separately where there is conflict and together where there is not. Such cognitive dissonance seems to be their natural state of mind, the seem to seek it.

Much like their cries of “but what about tolerance?!”¹ when you mention punching nazis. They want the complete about-turn: LBTQ out, racism/sexism/phobias in. You are supposed to tolerate what they want you to tolerate, and little or nothing else.

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[1] My answer there has often become “you didn't want tolerance, you specifically voted against continued tolerance, what you voted for won, intolerance is your democratically chosen desire, who am I to deny the will of your people?”.

  Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

  [..] The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time [..] was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened -- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?

  [..] It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'

The quotes seem to be from the famous book "1984" by George Orwell. We had it in English literature class in high school.

There are some other famous quotes from that book or one of his other famous books, "Animal Farm".

Writing from memory and googling, so may be wrong:

"Some people are more equal than others."

The society that Winston finds himself in puts forth the slogan, "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength." The meaning of this phrase is to force confusion upon the members of the Party. It is a form of propaganda, or misleading information typically given by a political party.

According to the article, the original version with "2 + 2 = 5" suggests complete submission to the oppressive regime, with the protagonist's mind being irreversibly altered.

Technically part of the Ministry of Love, Room 101 is the most feared place in all of Oceania and Winston learns far too well that it is here that the …

What is the final message of 1984? … a warning about the dangers of totalitarianism and the ability of a repressive regime to manipulate and control individuals to the point where they betray ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

Animal Farm is even more creepy than 1984, going by my memory, which may be wrong, since it is quite some years since I read both those books.

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Could you please cite some examples? This reads like a bunch of strawmen set up by someone aggrieved by trans rights and racial equality.

The first Harvard one that comes to mind is Carole Hooven, an enocrinologist who was pilloried for speaking obvious truths:

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2024/02/15/carole-hooven-wh...

I think a clearly ideological actor leaving by choice after being ostracized for representing blatantly false and unscientific ideological claims is good, actually, and that providing this as an example is shifting your goalposts. For context, Carole Hooven is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing "think-tank," and an associate of notable transphobe Stephen Pinker. The personal costs of her self-created ostracization seem minimal (perhaps negative).

The statements that she made hinge on a supposed "strict sex binary," which relies upon forced ignorance and denial of the existence of intersex people. This is a weaponized claim used to gird the foundations of an ideology which has successfully sought to engage in human rights abuses, initially directed by this administration at denying children social acceptance and access to life-saving medical care as well as directly impugning the moral character of US military service members while attacking their access to life-saving medical care and discharging them from service. Simultaneously, Harvard has come under attack from the administration on a purely ideological and fascist basis. It seems like her critics were right to view her as a threat to science, human dignity, and the institution they mutually-represented.

Sex is binary - for all species that reproduce sexually, including humans - because there is no intermediate gamete between sperm and egg.

What you're referring to with "intersex" is actually a set of disorders of sex development which affect each sex differently. For example, consider 5-alpha reductase deficiency: a mutation in the gene that encodes the enzyme for converting testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, causing loss of enzymatic activity, may be present in anyone of either sex, but will only impair male sexual development.

None of this is controversial amongst biologists. It's fundamental to understanding sexual reproduction.

The dramatic moral harms of this Engineer's-Disease-based reasoning on public policy are already visible and are only expected to dramatically accelerate for the foreseeable future. There's no point in engaging an off-topic and inflammatory line of discourse that attempts to paper over this undeniable reality with smug appeals to authority.

Hold on—we're being a bit taxonomically lazy here, aren't we? You're applying a species-level classification (based on gametes) too rigidly to individual-level variation. If you look at actual developmental outcomes, there's a non-trivial set of cases that don’t map neatly onto a system of just two categories (which is not a lot of categories). Calling all of those 'disorders' assumes the categories are already correct, rather than testing whether they fit what we actually observe.

Ps. The Overton window is such an interesting concept; Imagine arguing our case before the head Eunuch of the Ottoman Court in the 16th century or so.

> None of this is controversial amongst biologists. It's fundamental to understanding sexual reproduction.

True, but nor is it generally controversial amongst the un-indoctronated that sexual reproduction and gender identity are NOT (as claimed a couple of posts above) orthogonal concepts. I don't know about you, but while my biology and mental identity happen to nicely match up, I consider myself to be more than my testicles and can accept that others don't share my cis status.

>None of this is controversial among biologists

Nope, but it is among people who can't tolerate different kind of people.

Wanna guess which books the Nazi's burned first? Yep the ones about transgender research from the Institute for Sexual Research. I'm sure they acted in good faith like they usually did.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

idk if there's much I can do here. Carole is a respected scientist. So is Steven. Carole is a fellow of this institute as a result of having to find new patrons because of her cancellation, not the other way around. Your understanding of the situation re sex and gender is completely incorrect.

>idk if there's much I can do here.

Good? You made a claim and had one point disproven because there's a difference between voluntarily leaving an institution and being kidnapped by the federal government.

No one really asked about your opinions otherwise. We're just establishing 2 very obvious lines in the sand.

You could attempt to provide citation for your initial claims. Carole Hooven does not meet the criteria, providing her is only suggestive of a disingenuous ideological motivation.

Here's a database of cancellations, searching for the word "fired": https://www.thecollegefix.com/cancel-culture-database/?gv_se...

Obviously other words like "terminated" may be appropriate too. Of course, most situations like this don't come to firing--like with Carole, the bureaucracy simply takes away everything you love and makes it clear you will never advance. It's much simpler when people "choose" to leave.

You should probably dig through your right-wing propaganda outlet's database to support your position so you can provide cites to be responded to. I'm certainly not going to read through a hundred reports like "Antifa demands [person] be fired" and "Professor says he was fired for using N-word" to make your argument for you.

Absent providing evidence of your claims, it seems reasonable to conclude that your position is unsupportable.

So your position is -

- Egalitarianism is newspeak/doublethink

- McCarthyism is was an end to egalitarianism, until the 'previous regime' (which I take to mean a regime since 1959, whatever 'regime' that means).

- Stating some people are lesser gets you fired from empirical institutions.

In short, people being equal is soviet style communism, the old regime which included Regan and Nixon is over, and only now you can say what you want because something changed?

This here is a fantastic example of newspeak, doublethink. Thank you for that

I am strongly reminded of my own governments (Sweden) attempts to introduce diversity programs into the school system, only to have each attempt ending in the court system that then finds the programs as discriminatory. In a few examples where they then went and tried to circumvent the anti-discriminatory laws, those attempts tend to favor the wrong demographic and get canceled shortly after. The very concept of favoring or hindering one demographic over an other in terms of grades or admissions are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the basis for those laws. It is somewhat understandable why politicians tries to work around laws that protect human rights, but the rulings of the courts are not surprising in the least. For now it seems that most those initiatives has died off with fewer attempts to challenge the courts on this issue.

Strong fundamental laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights exist for a good reason. It prevents political winds from undermining the very pillars that society is built on. It also forces those that want to create exceptions to design their ideas in general form, which has some nice side effects of illuminating contradictions and false premises. If political demonstration on university grounds are disrupting education, then it doesn't matter what political message they are shouting. Either you allow it all, or none of it. If you want to give women higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority, you got to give men higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority. If the consequences of such general rules are not fitting the political winds then the default is return back to the foundation that is human rights.

Sadly America was founded on principles that too 200 years to try and undo. And given the last year alone, they are still stripping rights as we speak. I don't know which fork we turned on that made us so reliable on racism and sexism to function and band together as a country that much of the EU seems to have navigated better. Maybe reconstruction should have had an actual Nuremburg trial instead of "forgiveness" (aka pushing the can down the street until someone could assassinate the one trying to compromise).

the main thing is that it's acceptable, meritorious even, to resent the privileged white male. But a jewish white male, that's racist. Also most white males in the ivies are jewish - the so-called privileged (non-jewish) white male is in fact underrepresented now vs. the general population.

Hello, 55 day old account that's definitely not a troll

It literally is this way. America has ignored the plight of poor working class whites by grouping them with elite whites and treating them as one privileged group.

Then they focused on elevating nonwhites non Christians and homosexuals to higher social and economic standing not realizing or simply choosing to ignore that most white people really arent that much better off than non whites if you remove elites from the statistics.

So to poor white Americans this seems like a free pass or line jump for everybody else and we are now living through the political reaction to this injustice.

You can't tell 65% of your population to step aside without some repercussions.

Enjoy the madness.

Authoritarian governments are arbitrary governments, all decisions are made arbitrarily. Consistency is unnecessary. That's the trouble with choosing power as a guiding principle over reason or consent.

Consistency is undesirable, because if everyone is breaking a law, you apply the hammer of justice only if they aren't a friend.

It's one of the best ways to look good to certain people as well,because you can claim to be just following the law.

This comment and the parent’s are the best retorts I’ve seen yet to the “these people are just stupid” idea we hear all the time. These “rules” are not calculated and brilliant, and that’s the point. They’re controlling at any angle they want.

No, it's still stupid. High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states). Nepotism looks like winning right until it sinks your company.

Right, this is why fascist governments tend to fail. In the meantime, though, normal folks will be hurt.

And in the meantime, the people in power in these fascist governments tend to make out like (literal) bandits.

This is fine if it ends by being subjected to that convenient device they developed in France somewhere in the 1800s.

Very unlikely in the first place, but second, that way lies far worse chaos.

Similarly, when Julius Caesar turned the republic into an empire, and was subsequently assassinated: it did not mean the empire reverted back to being a republic - rather that centuries of increasingly despotic emperors lay ahead.

Agree that it's unlikely, but while knives in the back still led to centuries of imperialism, the guillotine cleanly ended absolutist monarchy in France once, and then some ships and exile ended the second time, and it generally stayed dead afterwards.

Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.

It's iterative republic development. Release a republic, test it in the field, make improvements. Makes sense to me.

:D I don't know why, but something about this made me giggle.

Nazis again? We did Nazis remember? End of the Third Republic, all of that? Everybody agreed Nazis were a bad idea, why the fuck are there more Nazis?

> Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.

Their last king wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England, and was one of three (or four) kings (Louis XVIII, Charles X, (arguably Henry V), and Louis Phillippe, who reigned between the First Empire (and consequently also after the First Republic) and the Second Republic (and consequently also before the Second Empire.)

Their last monarch was even later, and also wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England. The series of governments after the last monarch includes only the Third through Fifth Republics (and, depending on how you look at it, the Vichy regime between the Third and Fourth Republics.)

And IIRC there wasn't much substantive difference between the Third and Fourth Republic; the latter was basically a restoration of the former after France was freed from German occupation, not a change in governing philosophy by the French people, so you could argue that there were as few as two substantively different French systems of government after the last monarch was deposed.

French model was largely a failure in every way. This is the 5th iteration of their republic now, and it's gripped by internal issues that can quickly approach those US is dealing with.

The important difference that you mentioned in your comment as well is: the French problems lie in the realm of possibilities, while the US problems are in the present. So the comparison doesn't really hold. Maybe it's also helping that the French iterated 5 times, a concept we are all taught in agile 101.

Based on this thread I'm starting to believe that any static governmental system is a failure and it's the iterations that bring about prosperity.

You also have to consider that the guillotine ended up killing more revolutionaries than nobles though.

There are also historical examples of nations where nothing was done to reign in the chaos and that led to far worse long term consequences for the people.

That is a divisive issue.

By “divisive” you mean dividing heads from bodies, right?

Yeah. Also called "air gapping".

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Looks to me like a legitimate and democratically elected regime. There are many unsolved issues in the world, having sympathy for people getting exactly what they want seems like a waste of a finite resource.

It is not a waste.

(1) It is still an interesting topic, because in this case, it has world-wide consequences.

(2) Many of the problems of the world can only be solved if people are convinced that those are important problems. You need to fix people's closest problems first, like their bread and perceived security. Each individual has just one life, I wouldn't say it's selfish to want an OKish life, and only then think about what's best for the human race.

(3) Most of the right voters were convinced (and might still be) that they were doing what is good for them. But it isn't. They voted wrong, they were tricked against their actual will.

(4) This is not a singular event. The same may happen somewhere near or around you maybe sooner than later, so analysig how it happened, which groups exactly voted against their own advantage, and how to make the consequences clear and understandable beforehand, and how to prevent it in general -- all this is important.

Not wasted resources at all. The opposite. We need to remember that this is not a boring news topic.

Until america experiences the full consequences for their stupidity they will continue being stupid. Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, with a responsible person nearby and then never again.

The sooner that happens the better for everyone it is.

OK, burning is happening right now, so mission accomplished, I guess? Are you sure people will learn from it? And who is the responsible person nearby in this reality?

> Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, ...

That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove.

Also, this is not an individual Darwin problem like the stove example -- this has consequences for many bystanders who did know better, and many more bystanders who had no say in this.

> OK, burning is happening right now

Nowhere near it, the hand is hovering near the fire - people are shouting "don't put your hand in the fire" and the kid is saying its nice and warm and see nothing bad has happened, I am going to put my hand right into the fire and it will be great.

Trump term 1 they bailed out the Farmers for 20bn when they messed around on tarrifs and blew it up. They learn't that there are only two outcomes to fucking around 1) you win, 2) you find out and they give you 20bn.

If those are your outcomes the only rational choice is to vote for Trump and cheer him on in fucking around as much as possible.

Let them burn their hand.

12 hours later: White House is considering a tariffs bailout for farmers

beeforpork says >"That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove."<

So you really have no idea! Sad!

I suppose you have also never been hungry and bitten into a wonderful-smelling and -tasting hamburger only to find that a finger (yours, to be clear) is in the bite, and thus you become at one moment both ravenous attacker and fearful prey struggling to escape?

Such experiences are part of life, to be embraced only afterward.

> beeforpork says >"That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove."< > So you really have no idea! Sad!

Is this like "you're not a strong man unless you've been this stupid at least once"?

Strong vs. weak does not seem like a desirable way to structure society. It's no fun. Yes, I also find football competitions really boring.

It isn't strong vs weak. But the lack of such experiences sets you apart from others and marks you as literally inexperienced. It does not mark you as smarter or stronger, but as one who simply "has no idea!" You'll never know (until you do!8-))

I revisited the "stove experience" several weeks ago. While at a convenience store I entered the restroom to find the sink water running full blast. This only increased my urgency and aided the process (as flowing, dripping, or running water often does). Once relieved, I walked over to the sink and plunged both hands into the cold whirling water in the basin. At once I was caught between my (vividly-imagined) thought of cool swirling relief and the sensory reality of boiling hot water - the former wished to enjoy the pleasant ice-cold flowing water in the sink and the latter could not withdraw fast enough.

Life provides you with a sequence of such experiences:

- a pre-adolescent viewing with puzzlement his older siblings as they mature and begin to participate in courtship,

- falling in love,

- making love, etc.

Some people never have certain experiences. We're all different to some degree b/c of that.

Go ahead, put your hand on the stove. But be careful about touching that woman!8-))

P.S. Yes, I turned the sink off, depriving the next poor soul of my worldly experience.

Dismantling the current world hegemony might have a few unanticipated impacts. When little Timmy responds to burning his hand by evaporating the world economy we might not be so smug.

The smug little so-and-so here is the USA. Dismantling their hegemony and releasing the 95% of the world that are not Americans, I am looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm as MAGA chants "lock her up".

The problem is that dismantling their hegemony in too fast of a fashion will cause the rest of the world _a lot_ of trouble.

Normal folks vote for the fascists.

How many Americans despise the liberal universities and their students? How many Americans think the US should be a Christian nation?

Fascism is popular. Many people will fall for it. Time and time again. The US is not special- it happened in Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal. It can happen in America.

...has happen3d. <-FTFY

> No, it's still stupid.

It doesn't serve the goals you think it should, that's not necessarily stupid.

> High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states).

Yes, but the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance" and, to the extent that it related to economic performance, doesn't have any necessary relation to a broad aggregate, its more concerned with very specific aspects of relative distribution.

> It doesn't serve the goals you think it should

I maen, what are their goals? To make more money? Yes, stupid to crash the economy just to insider trade. Power and influence? Yes, it's stupid to overextend too fast. Ask 99% of regines from human history (Rome, Soviet Union, Great Britian). Ideaological warfare? Yes, it's stupid to outright declare constitutional war on day 9x out of 1400.

What are their goals?

> the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance"

well they should have. Again, Bread and circuses. Mess with people's money and they get neither.

Again, stupid move. This could have been an easy, silent, calculated takeover in the course of two years. Instead they just swung a hammer at the house and are frustrated that people are yelling at them.

Who is "others"? Who is "aggregate"? You're being vague because your idea doesn't make any sense.

Let's be clear:

1) Trump very clearly - very obviously - cares a lot about broad US economic performance compared to China.

2) This is at odds with his desire for unlimited power within the US, because corruption and oppression doesn't do very well economically.

That's why it's stupid - it doesn't serve its own goals. One of those two has to give.

He and his voters don't understand "Woke" is great for the modern economy. You want everyone working at their absolute full potential. Slaves don't invent chips, corruption drives away business investment, etc. It's very simple to understand if you're not a racist, but the South has been stuck on this point for generations.

They're not selecting to maximize performance, they're selecting to maximize their own control. Pete Hegseth isn't SecDef because he's good at it. He leaks war plans and can't get through a press conference without being seen with a drink in his hand. He's SecDef because he'll do what Trump tells him to do regardless of whether it's legal or a good idea. The tariffs aren't meant to bring manufacturing back. They'd have gradual and consistent and the money raised would be earmarked for developing that industry at home if they were. They're arbitrary because they're the way the people in charge punish countries and companies that don't bend the knee. Everything they're doing is about removing the institution of government with its pesky rules and procedures and bringing everything under the control of one guy who can reward and punish arbitrarily as he sees fit. Overall economic performance simply isn't a factor.

It's changed my outlook a lot to make an arbitrary decision to stop assuming people are stupid when their stated goals don't line up with their actions, and to start assuming the easily predictable results of their actions are their actual goals regardless of what their stated goals are. Once I did that, I started being able to understand and even predict what these previously inscrutable people would do next.

?

I look forward to your article about Americans obviously being pro-obesity, and finding heart disease super attractive.

their stated goals (avoiding obesity) don't line up with their actions (food choices that promote obesity), so they must have different goals (enjoying food regardless of whether it promotes obesity). not the opposite of their stated goal, just a different one.

Then I can agree with that: short-sighted decision-making on both obesity and Trump's tariffs.

I think you're equivocating between the value of the actual goal itself and the value of the actions they're taking in the context of fulfilling that goal. Blowing up the economy to maximize your personal power is short-sighted, I agree, but once you accept that as Trump's goal you'll see that arbitrary tariffs (and other financial manipulation, look at how he's using federal funding to thought police universities and punish dissident state governors) is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.

Do not, my friends, become addicted to [federal funding]. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.

>is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.

He really screwed up the "people beneath you" part with his "effective strategy" . The people beneath him wanted at best lower prices and at worst stronger deportation. As it is, they are the ones suffering the most from these economic policies (because blue states tend to have more funding to weather this BS) and he decided to go full mask off on the idea of deporting US citizens. These aren't popular actions nor views, outside of the most fringe supporters (who aren't enough to carry such a narrative).

The people beneath him aren't just not part of his plan, they're the lever he's pulling to get the powerful in line behind him.

Ok so you're a fan of aggressive stupidity. That's certainly on-brand American. Not relevant to this discussion though, you do you.

You're taking everything I discuss and projecting my moral approval on it. I've purposely expressed no opinion either way, but you can't fathom the idea that Trump might be good at something. You have to live in a world where he's just a flailing idiot, and I'd caution you to take some time with the fact that that flailing idiot is currently batting a very prescient .666 against those of us who'd like the USA to at least last out their own lifetimes.

lol you think .666 is a lot? The entire South has been stuck on this point for generations. They keep voting for tribalism/racism/nepotism, and the poorer they get the angrier and more aggressive they get.

Voting is just one big popularity contest, and 54% of American adults read at or below 6th grade levels.

I'm just not a good bootlicker. I call stupidity wherever I see it. You can keep your "caution", I'm moving on from this conversation.

It’s not about the economy! They don’t need that anymore. It’s about POWER.

They already have more than everything money can buy, and more than the GDP of most countries.

It’s not about the “company” anymore. They want _everything_. And will do whatever they can do get it, even if we think it looks stupid.

“Whoopsie doopsie we said something contradictory, anyway you’re all wrong and deported - don’t call back ever, and your school doesn’t get your taxes anymore but bombs for killing people in the Middle East does!”

Not stupid, just careless. Trump has fuck-you money, he doesn't care about the rest of the country. He wants means of extortion so people have to lick his boots to get a reprieve.

For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.

Is there any political tool to prevent rampant rule breaking and making the disliked rulebreaker specially vulnerable? Rule breaking is common and apocrypal form of strike involve following the rules to the letter and paralyzing the business. The prevailing principle is "you cant defend yourself by pointing to other rulebreakers" while reality is "its legal if a hundred businessmen do it".

> Is there any political tool

It's a social problem. Smaller democratic political arenas work closer to the ideal. Larger political arenas have more noise and less concise agendas, because of the disparate groups being appealed to. The US is too big. Large societies, across time trend toward authoritarianism (sometimes leading to full-fledged) until revolution and dissolution. Then the remaining states fight amongst themselves within a region, assembling into a singular organization due to practical and political factors, until it starts over again. Eventually you get something like europe and most of southeast asia. States tend to be more stable if they roughly match their regional terrain boundaries and aren't too large.

The whole society functions on a set of agreements. Some get codified in laws, many not. And as soon as some of those rules, laws or habits, get constantly broken, it means the society has changed. Now what? Do you accept the new change, or do you try to change it again? Remember, you can't enact a new rule - if it's not agreed upon it will simply not be applied.

The normative government continues to shrink while the prerogative government grows.

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It makes sense if you understand that they aren't focused on general principles. Diversity is bad when it involves non-whites, women, gay people or research involving these groups. Diversity is good when it involves "race realists." Free speech is bad when students are advocating for divestment initiatives. Free speech is good when a professor calls somebody the n-word online.

The goal is white supremacy and antifeminism.

The goal is power. Suppressing DEI, etc is just a simple way to find a group of people that have different values and eliminate them from the power structure.

An important part about targeting DEI and trans communities is that these two groups stand for immutable properties: I can’t change my race. I can’t stop being my gender identity.

When you “other” people based on immutable properties, it becomes very dangerous. If you can’t force someone to be white and straight, what do you do with them? The government stops funding programs to help these groups, they spread lies and fear about them, and then they sit back. When the people in power tell their supporters that the “other” are the enemy, what recourse is left for one’s safety other than violence. Authoritarian regimes always trend towards genocide, and they always target groups with immutable traits.

When these people use "freedom of speech" all they mean is they want to say their vile Nazi stuff without people complaining.

Also called freedom from consequences. Free speech makes sense in a free society, freedom from consequences does not. Yet that's what they're calling for.

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Defending all speech however deplorable would be consistent and defensible. The administration isn’t doing that. They are targeting speech they don’t like. Don’t speak out against our genocide in Gaza or be deported/expelled. Don’t share your pronouns or lose your job. Etc.

Sure, but is it a good idea for us to abandon that idea and not defend it, while it is under assault from the administration. I personally would argue no, but I am very, very biased.

What I do not understand, and I do mean it, is why on earth would anyone argue to limit their own right to speech? Isn't it clear that you are, at best, undermining your own rights in the long term?

HAMAS is a designated terrorist organization. It is the U.S. government's job to keep out foreigners who overtly do things like support terrorist organizations, do human trafficking, etc.

It's quite simple, IMHO, and not a free speech issue. Americans don't owe entry to everyone who shows up at their borders, nor do they owe them a full suite of rights and legal protections once they're admitted.

Do you really believe that most of the people being deported or imprisoned by ICE this year are truly supporters of terrorism? Since no due process is being followed what gives you any confidence that the accusations against these people are true?

> Do you really believe that most of the people being deported or imprisoned by ICE this year are truly supporters of terrorism?

I don't think that's what's at stake here. I would assume the vast, vast majority of deportations are some version of "You're here illegally because you snuck in / overstayed your visa / lied on some form. Here's a ride back to $COUNTRY"

I think what is at stake is the small, small % of deportations that are because of particular speech or actions that aren't transparently crime (e.g., stealing a car is transparently crime).

And to answer your question, I don't know. While it doesn't appear to me that the Americans are reaching the highest possible standards of due process, "no" due process is pretty obviously false. And I don't think it's an issue of the accusations being true or false, either--my impression is the facts aren't in dispute, it's what happens based on the facts that is.

OK, all of that said: my guess is the people being deported for supporting HAMAS aren't HAMAS supporters in some sort of deep, true, essential way. They're kids or young people who are swept up in a fad.

How does that relates to the parents post ? For sure you can understand Hamas is a terrorist organisation AND any the same time that some wants to talk about the genocide in Gaza.

Also, using a terrorism judgement as an argument is a bit weak because it’s subjective, and because our western gouvernement do trade times to times with terrorist organisations. Heck my own countries is classified as a terrosist and I’m totally free to come visit the USA (which are themselves a terrorist state).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_terrorism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_terrorism

> For sure you can understand Hamas is a terrorist organisation AND any the same time that some wants to talk about the genocide in Gaza.

Totally. The pro-Palestine protesters at U.S. universities are often overtly pro-HAMAS too (or instead).

care to substantiate your claim?

"Protester outside Columbia University seen yelling ‘We’re all Hamas,’ ‘Long live Hamas’"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/protester-outside-colum...

I was one of the people who briefly tried to take right wing “free speech” arguments at face value, eg when Elon Musk bought Twitter. Almost instantly he began allowing white supremacists and actual declared neo-Nazis back onto the platform, while kicking people off for any speech he didn’t like. I don’t think the claim “the recent right wing enthusiasm for ‘free speech’” does, in fact, selectively benefit Nazis and white supremacists” is actually wrong when you evaluate the effects.

Would you argue that the "kicking off" is more or less intense under Elon vs. the other guy?

My impression that the rate of censorship overall has plummeted. Pre-Elon, it was easy to get banned for wrongthing. People would gang up on wrongthinkers, mass-report them, etc.

I wonder what the rates of actual bans have been.

https://fortune.com/2024/09/25/twitter-x-account-suspensions...

tripled.

They just want to protect nazi speech, like I said in the downvoted comment.

I don't care what your vibes are here.

They aren't even against actual anti-semitism. Happy merchant memes, george soros conspiracies, protocols stuff, that's all A-ok because it's nazi stuff.

If you have the wrong opinion on israel palestine, it's the concentration camp for you.

The first group the nazis sent were social democrats, peace activists, journalists ... The famous nazi book burning was at an lgbt institute. I mean they're just doing nazi shit. I don't know why this isn't clear.

Thanks for looking that up.

Without knowing the denominator (# of accounts, # of posts, # of new accounts), I'm not sure what to make of it.

Even then, we want the subset of bans that were for political reasons (i.e., supporting Labour is fine, supporting Reform is hate speech). According to the actual report (which can be found here: https://transparency.x.com/content/dam/transparency-twitter/...), of 5,296,870 account suspensions only 2,361 were for "hateful conduct", while 57,185 were "violent and hateful entities" and 1,102,778 were for "abuse and harassment". Eyeing the categories, those are the only ones that seem plausible for political motivation.

So it's some subset of that 1,162,324 (22% of total) that we're interested in. I would bet the vast, vast majority of those either aren't politically motivated, or are politically motivated but in such a way that virtually everyone would agree (e.g., torturing puppies for fun).

And, of course, among politically-motivated bans, not all will be in support of Red Team / against Blue Team. Some will be bans of Red Team supporters, and for some the valence won't be clear.

> Even then, we want the subset of bans that were for political reasons (i.e., supporting Labour is fine, supporting Reform is hate speech).

Do you have any examples was banned for supporting Reform? I ask because I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard someone say they were banned for their political views and then checked to see that what actually got them banned was something like targeted harassment of a political opponent.

I didn't mean this as a real example, I meant it as illustrative. I've never seen anyone banned for supporting Reform (I've never seen anyone banned at all! I try to limit my internets).

If you're a free speech absolutionist (your argument was simply "kicking off got more intense"), it shouldn't matter what speech was said to get kicked. Politcal or not, it's all speech.

So the only way to retort the bans tripling is if you think Most people banned are not humans. Which is possible, but unlikely given current speculations that Twitter is 80% bots.

> Politcal or not, it's all speech.

This is a fair point. If I concede it, we still need some denominators.

> So the only way to retort the bans tripling is if you think Most people banned are not humans.

Denominators.

That's all speculative. Musk Twitter brought a bunch of far right provocateurs like Alex Jones Back on and increased the bans by 3x. There's more people leaving than coming to the platform.

That's what we do know.

As far as "Red/Blue" that's not current.

Instead we've got an establishment party, the Democrats, a disempowered left, a disempowered conservative party, and a party that does Nazi shit, the Republicans.

That's why a bunch of the Bush era conservatives lined up behind the Democrats, conservative and right wing are Not the same just like liberal and left wing are not

Nothing in my grandparent comment is speculative. I literally type out the data and discuss what additional information we would have to have in order to arrive at something approaching a meaningful estimate of the quantity we are both interested in.

As for Red/Blue not being current, I'm not an expert. The only bone I would pick is the Republicans aren't doing "Nazi shit". Nazi / Fascist used to mean something, you know. It seems like people are starting to use those words to mean "authoritarian" or something along those lines.

They're building concentration camps, sending peace activists to it.

They don't care about birthright or other forms of citizenship and are trying to do a nuremberg law to redefine it.

Also see Civil Service Law (1933) where they purged political opponents from government jobs.

They've tried to strip the power of the purse from Congress and ignore the courts which is how an enabling act would work in the US context.

He's even trying to Lebensraum Greenland.

The famous Nazi book burn was at an LGBT institute. They're demonizing the same group

Hitler even had an Elon Musk named Alfred Hugenberg. I mean it's like they hired historians to do a full reenactment.

I dunno. There's these people that are like "well you see the Nazis demonized Jews while Trump demonizes Muslims! The Nazi Beer Hall Putsch was in November and January 6 was in January! Trump has red hats while the Nazis had red armbands!" Just falls flat

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm going to be very honest with you: this strikes me as unhinged. I don't mean to put you down, I really mean to be honest. Our perceptions of the world are really, really different. I can imagine how you might believe things like this if you spent too much time in online echo chambers. The information environments they make for you are too...much. The bots run by nefarious parties seek only to make you feel the way you feel, make you believe the things you believe.

I can only recommend that you take a step back, and unplug, fellow traveler :-)

"Don't worry, nothing bad can ever happen" while people are sent away to gulags.

To "unplug" as you demand is morally reprehensible.

Is he morally obligated to participate? There are some interesting arguments on both ends, but I am curious what you mean by this.

I spend exactly Zero time on online echo chambers.

I don't use social media anymore and I don't own a television.

Auschwitz being in Germany was convenient because it was extrajudicial and outside of the German constitutional protection.

We're seeing the exact same thing. Trump shrugs that there's nothing he can do to bring the innocent person back AND that he intends to send thousands more regardless.

They've found their Auschwitz where people don't have a right to have rights as Hanna Arendt said. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Confinement_Center it even looks like a Nazi camp.

From the article "Trump further suggested to Bukele that he should "build about five more places" like CECOT"

They're actively trying to redefine citizenship status and send peace activists there.

What you're seeing is what Maurice Bardèche, the 60s French pro-fascist theorist was predicting. He's to fascism was Marshall McLuhan is to social media.

If these are new names to you then maybe the one scrolling through echo chamber memes might be you...

Personally I'm done with this fascist failing shit hole country.. I'm looking to leave. My portfolio is down over a million dollars since these Nazi retards took power.

Seriously, fuck this place

This is a general argument and has nothing to do with Elon Musk. He capitalizes on a weak position some of his political opponents bring forward. Not giving him the opportunity for that would have cost nothing... on the contrary.

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I'm not sure what "agree with the Palestinians" would mean. Like they are not happy with being genocided? I think that would be most people's feeling in that situation, though that doesn't show any proximity in belief, value or principle.

Yeah I guess this is what happens to censored viewpoints. Most people have only heard a caricature of it.

The world is really a lot more interesting if you try to understand everyone’s actual perspective. It also becomes much more coherent. Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.

In what I’ve seen of “race realist” writings online, they tend to be very anti Israel. So to associate the admin with “race realists” for cracking down on anti Israel protests strikes me as lacking an understanding of either the admin or of the “race realists” perspective.

> Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.

If you're arguing a fairy-tale definition of "evil" as an inherent property were people do evil for evil's sake, or simply can't help it, sure - almost nobody is "evil", if having actual, realistic motivations automatically disqualifies "evil".

I think evil can still be a useful, moral concept, if you give up the need for it to be absolute and objective, while accepting the ambiguity that comes with it. Still, it's likely possible for a lot of people to agree what constitutes evil, especially when seeing examples.

I would certainly like to keep considering things, actions and sometimes even people, to be "evil", _especially_ after considering their motivations, views and justifications.

>Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.

If your interest is in killing me on account of how I look and nothing else, I would indeed consider you evil. Your "viewpoints" end where my rights begin.

as for the admin, I don't care about their views. They have a constitution to follow. Which is specifically aobut what the government cannot do to its people. We tolerated KKK and Neonazi rallies under those principles of freedom of speech and assembly. While citizens can counter protest, the government stepping in to quash either of those people is illegal here.

Nobody wants to kill anybody because of how they look. This is an exaggeration and a slander intended to produce an emotional reaction exactly like yours.

"Race realism" is just a meaningless label Neo-Nazis use, because they are still trying to fly under the radar, or they are slightly embarrassed of being what their grand-parents fought. They might try to butter up their standing by (falsely) citing stuff like the Bell Curve, but it is still the same vile and evil ideology it was 80 years ago.

But not all fascists are neo-nazis. Just because a subset of today's fascists describe themselves that way, doesn't mean they are fundamentally different from other fascists. Look at Steven Miller; he's jewish, and quite obviously a white supremacist. He's all about dehumanizing people he thinks of as leser, and he welcomes the new fascist America. AfD, the german far-right party, is both very pro-Israel and loves to play "tread the nazi line and extend it"-game. Anti-semitism is a common, but not necessary prerequesite to fascism.

When I was younger I also thought the opposite of good should be bad, and it is silly to describe things as evil. I disliked the religious connotation, but have changed my mind. There are people committing absolutely horrible things, and calling it anything but evil is underestimating the depravity of those characters. To quote Captain G. M. Gilbert:

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

You say that as if the "admin" is one person. It's a loose collection of interests.

of course "race realists" tend to be anti-Israel; many of them are genuine neo-Nazis. the term arose back in the '90s among white supremacists, who tend to be heavily antisemitic.

the Trump admin aren't (for the most part) "race realists." or antisemitic. or philosemitic. no, the Trump admin is cynically indifferent to the plight of the Jewish people. they're using antisemitism as a cause celebre, a useful cudgel to attack their enemies on the Left. Republicans are using Jews the way the Democrats used trans people - as pawns in a game of identity realpolitik. at least until our political liability outweighs our usefulness, then we get left holding the bag.

you can spot false allies like this because they will amplify the most extreme voices, the most divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, when speaking for their charge. I guarantee you, most trans people didn't want Canadians fined for using the wrong pronouns, and most Jews don't want grad students deported for writing an op-ed. the loudest voices aren't ours.

It's a bit more complex.

Neonazis tend to like the idea of Israel while hating the occupants. They hate sending aide there but love it if Jews move there.

The notion of a Jewish state was an OG Nazi idea (see Madagascar plan). They wanted a place to send their unwanted citizens.

On top of that, core to most fundamentalist Christian belief is that utopia will happen after a strong Israel gets involved in massive wars. That value is why you may see neonazis cheering on Israel as an aggressor because they believe it'll lead to utopia.

This is why mixing support for Israel with whether or not someone is antisemitic is silly. Israel isn't the Jews and Jews aren't Israel.

And it seems to work quite well in the current political landscape and the use of such tactics certainly got more common in recent years. It seems to work better with reactionary groups since they would accept any and all reason for their animosity anyway.

Yeah, Nazi seen themselves as heroes building better future for the Germany. Stalinists seen themselves as heroes too. They just had different interests and viewpoints. And those different viewpoints indeed make them indeed "evil". And dangerous.

Also, seeing people whose goals are cruelty to others or harm to me as neutral is wrong.

"Race realists" tend to be anti-jew but not anti-Israel. Israel provides a few key benefits for their belief system even if they hate jewish people. It means that there is a place for jewish people "over there" and not here. And it provides a starting point for their ethno-nationalist project in other countries ("if Israel can be a country for Jews then why can't Germany be a country for Whites").

Further, the Trump administration is committing violence against people simply advocating for no more bombing in Palestine. Despite the administration's claims that these people are "Hamas supporters" and "anti-semites", the bulk of these people are not actually advocating for violence to be done to jewish people that might put them in concert with far-right anti-semites.

Genocided is certainly the wrong term. It is not on all Palestinians but the government of Gaza did attack Israel. It fired an insane amount of rockets before their latest attack too, but that has already been seen as normalized. Which is ridiculous as well.

If oppression justifies these rocket attacks, a lot more than some rhetoric can be justified as well.

No it’s absolutely the correct term. What are you a BBC anchor?

I am not learned enough on this topic but:

>the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

I don't know how you say that isn't aa textbook definition of genocide.

Israel has security interests after it was attacked by Hamas. It did withdraw from Lebanon, Gaza and quite a few other places that immediately filled with militant terrorists. And this latest escalation only happened because of an attack as well, otherwise Gaza would look quite differently now.

To say their goal is just killing people is way out of context and blind to the facts.

Either these places find peaceful solutions like Egypt or Jordan, or they will face military consequences for their aggression that will also hit innocents, which is what is happening now.

Hamas wanted to start this war, not Israel. There are numerous way for them to get their land back and sue for peace if they take the chance. Of course they don't get land that is Israels, they have lost their war.

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> Diversity is bad when it involves Whites, men, straight people or research involving these groups.

If you think that's what the "other side" is saying, then you've completely misunderstood what the diversity idea is about. You can't compare one idea with the misrepresentation of the opposing idea. That's just making things up.

It even has a name: strawman argument. And it's so popular!

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and yet when fields with a dearth of White Men offer recruiting events tailored to them, the "other side" is up in arms about it. Its clear that no part of DEI wants to include Whites, Men, or the doubly dreaded White & Men combo.

https://journals.rcni.com/nursing-standard/comment/a-focus-o...

The problem is- they are not anti-racist honest. You are either nurture or nature, but if its all nurture, they refuse to discuss that part, compare those parts, work out the problematic parts and compose better societal models. They just idealise, bigott stay quiet and adverse engage only with those who respond civilized. Its all lies and damned lies and statistics.

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Unfortunately, unlike the post above mine, my list is grounded in reality.

Again, both sides play this game, both sides claim to have "reality" on their side.

As loathe as you may be to admit it, there is such a thing as truth. Both sides claiming something doesn’t mean both sides claims are true (or conversely that neither sides claim is true).

You don’t seem to be thinking very well.

Whoosh, my point exactly. This is an r/selfawarewolves-tier comment.

You don't seem to be thinking very well.

Come on man this isn’t Reddit.

The demands of the administration are the demands of a bully who doesn't want your lunch money, he just wants you to know he can take it away at any time.

"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."

Any organization is probably in violation of any number of rules and regulations due to the sheer number of them.

Just wait till the sniffling Marc Andreessen shows up to explain why this will save his small town brethren.

It’s a good strategy. Even if Harvard had attempted to satisfy every bullet point, the govt could still retort that their demands were not satisfied.

Like the whole initial excuse for the tariffs on imports from Canada "because of fentanyl" despite <1% of fentanyl coming into the US arriving via the Canadian border https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5283957/fentanyl-trump-...

If you don't measure you can just assume all valies are 0.

But assuming it's a large number is not possible, of course.

I assume it's a large number because the fentanyl superlative the Canadian police raided had literal tons of precursors.

so you understand how much "tons" is with regards to a population of 330m Americans? Now consider that China probably has gigatons and is where all of NA gets most of its supply.

Hmmm, is this akin to what Russia means, when it says "we do not negotiate with terrorists"?

Typical mafia technique ensuring perpetual extorsion.

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They want to have the old system (deliberate bias and vehement denials of there being any "bias,") but working for them, and the way to demand that without describing it is to require all of the results and "forbid," by name only, the necessary methods.

It all makes sense with a fascist power logic. The goal isn't to implement consistent policy to reach rational targets. The goal is to wield power and slowly errode any opposition with divisive actions that support anybody that is loyal to you. Importantly being loyal doesn't guarantee you will be spared. In these goals consistency is irrelevant, in fact being inconsistent and acting with arbitrary despotism is a feature since it produces more fear.

If you ever find any fascist critique of their enemies you will quickly realize that all of which they accuse their enemies of doing, they will do themselves. Decry freedom of speech as no one is "allowed" to say sexist/racist things anymore? Be sure they will go in and ban books, political thoughts and literal words. Hillarys emails? We literally operate our foreign policy in signal groups.

Quite frankly I am a bit puzzled by the neutrality with which some Americans try to analyze this absolutely crazy political situation. It is like pondering over the gas mixture in the smoke while your house is on fire, absolutely unhinged.

I’d like to get out while I can, but to what country? Any suggestions?

By the way the answer to your question is simple: the American people are fascists, not just the president.

First I think people who recognize there are problems is what is needed now. You leaving makes things worse.

Then again, it is understandable not everybody has the luxury to be in circumstances that allow adequate forms of resistance.

If you ask about which country, I'd say it depends. It depends on who youaare, what your skills are, which climate zones and cultures you prefer, whether you're willing to learn a new language and so on.

Canada.

Nothing they do makes sense until you accept that hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug, for them and their base. They know that what they're asking for is impossible to meaningfully comply with...

because they can use as excuse to stop the funding nonetheless, it's impossible to 100% comply with contradictory requests

It could be a feature not a bug. Inventible violations can be used as leverage for future requests/mandates.

What the demand is, is institutional fealty to Donald Trump. Trying to interpret it as anything else is going to lead these institutions into poor decision making. Harvard is doing the right thing.

You see the establishment of separate, unwritten classes of things here, right? It will be a case-by-case basis which of these rules is invoked, that way no matter what happens they're "just following the rules we all agreed to" but they get to hand-select which thoughts are compulsory and which are forbidden.

and the irony at the beginning of the demanding government letter:

"But an investment is not an entitlement."

>>- a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view

I'm sure we both know what this one means though. Forcing the university to hire people who think the earth is flat and that climate change isn't real - for the sake of diversity of course.

But also diversity is banned.

On that point they mean anyone who isn't white, male, cis, straight, and currently able-bodied.

I don't think it's confusing. It's classic "my way or the highway" stance. "Free speech for everyone! (except for things I don't like...)".

It makes sense when you realize that their true position is "free speech for me but not for thee". The contradictions are about censoring speech they disagree with and promoting speech they like.

They go after their enemies (liberals, trans, pro palestinians, brown migrants) and help their friends (right wing white people).

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To the fascist regime, "diversity" means "hiring black or gay people". Likewise "diverse points of view" means "viewpoints that think it's okay for black and gay people to be hired and for transgender people to pee". And "speech control" means "kicking out people who shout Hitler did nothing wrong in the middle of the library". And "inclusion" means "letting black or gay people study". It's all newspeak.

The demands only seem inconsistent if you don't look at the actual principle underlying them. Political discourse tends to present opposing ideologies as being about principles like "free speech" or "free markets" - it's really all about power, who has it, and who wants it.

In this case its strengthening particular social and economic hierarchies - america vs the rest of the world, and white christians over non-whites or non-christian.

What's interesting is that this is not necessarily a struggle between the top of a hierarchy vs the bottom of one, but between two different hierarchies. The democrats support cultural non racial and economic hierarchies, while the republicans support racial international and the same economic hierarchies. So while they both support the rich over the working class, there is a struggle over whether to support racial and international hierarchies. Democrats tend to support globalization, i.e unifying of the power of the top of the economic hierarchy across international boundaries, while eliminating racial and sexual hierarchies as they are seen as "inefficient" from a neoliberal perspective. Republicans are more focused on the "national elite", the rich people that depend on america being a global hegemon specifically, energy industry, military industira-complex, etc..

Plenty of Democratic voters are on board with taxing the rich and flattening those economic hierarchies.

The problem has been that the Democratic party is the neoliberal wing of the establishment. Its purpose has been to create the illusion that economic progress is possible while working hard to maintain the economic status quo. Cultural diversity was the distraction and consolation prize.

Now the establishment wants full, unquestioned, totalitarian control now and no longer cares about maintaining the illusion of choice.

Ultimately it wants a country run on plantation lines with voting rights restricted to wealthy white male property owners, a "Christian" moral narrative (really just racism, greed, supremacism, and sexual opportunism dressed up in bible rags) and no independent sources of intellectual dissent.

Which means the bare minimum of public education, no science, no difficult or non-commercial art, no free thought in universities or academia, and as little free travel and contact with the outside world as possible.

The most comparable country is North Korea. So the likely end will be a heavily militarised and even more heavily propagandised country, run as a pampered inherited monarchy which tolerates a certain amount of education when it's useful, but is violently hostile to all dissent.

It's quite hard to get there from here. The shock-and-awe of the last few months were supposed to establish dominance, but it's not going to happen without resistance. Harvard is one example. There will be more.

Ultimately the military will be used to force compliance, and - absent a not entirely unexpected medical event - they'll decide which way this goes.

Cowards are now saying it was a mistake: "Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard" - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/business/trump-harvard-le...

it's pretty clear. it's twitter's policy. neo-Nazi rhetoric must be allowed, empathy must be banned.

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They're so "accepting of diverging viewpoints" they mandated Harvard to devote effort to monitoring the viewpoints of foreign students so they can be deported for wrongthink...

Weird how many people with "diverging viewpoints" are getting grabbed off the street by masked ICE agents then.

Zero? I’m a visa holder in the US and I’m aware that supporting terrorists and celebrating violence against Jewish people is probably not going to make the country keep me here.

Weird how wide the definition of "supporting terrorists" seems to be. Especially given that State has now said that people's "expected future beliefs" can be used to disqualify them.

Have you no hesitation, even at this late juncture? Read everyone elses comment above, and try to stretch your critical thinking ability just a bit.

Trump is our Caesar, we have ceased to be a constitutional republic, and you defend this with blithely pretending that 2 months of pure power-madness have not been occurring in plain view of the entire world?

I suspect that such discourse as we have will not be "permitted" indefinitely.

No, I have no hesitation. How are you not finding it obvious that the government are trying to end racially based admittance programs?

Because I read the letter from the government to Harvard. Did you? Racially-based admittance is only one bullet out of ten. The government isn't demanding specific policy changes, they are demanding cultural and ideological control of the university.

Did you? As you can read, they tackle racial bias immediately and follow up with preventing advocacy for terrorism and racism, then viewpoint divergence. At no point are they arguing for a single viewpoint to exist, they are CONSISTENTLY doing the exact opposite:

https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...

The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.

> The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.

I'm all for pluralism. I have no objection at all to the existence of as many conservative academics as you please or whole (private) universities explicitly committed to conservative ideology. But there is no legal basis for the government to tell a private university who it should hire, fire, promote, or admit on ideological grounds. And it's also a super-ultra-clear first amendment violation to compel the speech of a private institution.

Finally, I'd like to point out the rank hypocrisy of calling for "merit-based" hiring and admissions in one breath, and then in the next demanding a quota system for ideology: "Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity." The government, as conservatives are so fond of saying, shouldn't "pick winners."

If there are a "critical mass" of "viewpoint diverse" Harvard-caliber professors out there looking for a position they should start their own university and admit that critical mass of "viewpoint diverse" Harvard-caliber students.

"By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse."

They are calling for Republican commissars in universities and accusing you of being the one who wants to enforce a single viewpoint and call you the enemy of pluralism. Not surprised, but I continue to be infuriated to witness such shameless insincerity from Republicans.

Yes, because universities have shown they want to enforce a single viewpoint on students, the government is using its funding contributions to encourage viewpoint diversity. There is certainly some shameless insincerity going on, as well as a disgusting disregard for logic.

Typical conservative doublespeak - speak as though there are commissars suppressing political dissidence so you can actually have an excuse to install commissars to suppress political dissidence. Conservatives have long disdained education for decades and abandoned its institutions, and now that they aren't bowing down, you want to use the government to force them to do so. The disgusting disregard for logic here is on you.

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I imagine you would sign a different tune if Biden admin hypothetically forced your employer via federal funding to make you say "Trans Rights!", for plurality of thought of course.

Your logical fallacy is false equivalence. Nobody is asking for compelled speech here.

And yes, after being forced to start business meetings with a brief mention of whether anyone is transgender for the last few years, nearly everyone hates that. That’s why democrat approval is so low.

> Nobody is asking for compelled speech here.

It's implicit, you just don't want to see it. It's literally political commissars.

> And yes, after being forced to start business meetings with a brief mention of whether anyone is transgender for the last few years, nearly everyone hates that.

What are you talking about? I never seen that or do you mean that people present themselves in a business meeting? Is this compelled speech to you? Hearing "Hi my name is Mark, call me he" is such a earth shattering trauma that you'll allow party officials in your universities?

> It's implicit

Cool, you have no evidence.

> What are you talking about? > Hearing "Hi my name is Mark, call me he"

So you know.

So if I tell you to call me by my foreign middle name I'm forcing you to know I'm not white? Will you shit and cry if a woman talks about her wife during a coffee break?

The obvious fact is that what makes you mad is not the mention, it's the presence. Now you will say something of the lines "you are slandering me without evidence" because in bizarro land one cannot read beyond the strictly literal.

It's the same (intentional) blindness that can read this:

> [...] the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse. This audit shall begin no later than the summer of 2025 and shall proceed on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching unit-by-teaching-unit basis as appropriate. [...]

> [...] Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity. If the review finds that the existing faculty in the relevant department or field are not capable of hiring for viewpoint diversity, or that the relevant teaching unit is not capable of admitting a critical mass of students with diverse viewpoints, hiring or admissions within that department, field, or teaching unit shall be transferred to the closest cognate department, field, or teaching unit that is capable of achieving viewpoint diversity. [...]

And not get that "viewpoint diversity" is literally whatever the federal government wants. You don't succumb in some lite-Maoist struggle session? Fired. Your department grows a spine? Fired and subsumed to an already captured department. Posted anti-Trump sentiment in social media? Sorry, we reached the quota for liberals.

If I did find/replaced all the indications that this is a Trump initiative and gave you this during the Biden presidency you would be foaming at the mouth. Be honest with yourself.

> We have established

No, you have accused without basis, because you know you have no defense of installing conservative Republican commissars in schools, and to privilege the Republican students and workers present, so your only hope is to gaslight and imply that your opposition is the same—again, typical of authoritarian conservative Republicans. You can keep accusing and gaslighting, but I will never submit to your dishonest narratives to justify the Trump regime's actions.

There is absolutely basis to say that you prefer an ideologically uniform college campus and are campaigning against plurality of thought. For example, your comments in this thread arguing against efforts to support a diverse range of viewpoints in higher education.

Accusing people that support diversity of thought as being authoritarian is more projection and also quite funny.

There are no Republican commissars. That is the conspiracy theory you made up.

There is no privilege for Republican students or workers. That is a conspiracy theory you made up.

The Trump administration is not a regime (in the traditional sense this word is used, ie for dictatorships) because you dislike it winning an election.

I am not a republican. I would desperately like the Democrats to become electable again. Advocating for admissions racism and brainwashing children into racist conspiracy theories about Jewish people doesn’t seem to be a good way to do that.

I accuse you of gaslighting because you speak well enough that you are probably not stupid, but rather completely aware of what you are saying is false. I suspect you think your righteous anger makes what you say true. It does not.

That is a circular argument. Your basis that I'm arguing against plurality of thought is that you have labeled my comments as having done so.

Yes, I'm calling Republican commissars authoritarian.

I'm literally quoting the letter saying that they demand an external party to audit the student body, the leadership, the staff, and their teaching units for sufficient "viewpoint diversity," which reports directly to the federal government. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to see that this is a euphemism for instilling conservative Republican thought in the student body and in the classes they take. And yes, this will privilege conservative students and staff, because non-conservative staff will be fired and students will be denied admission as a result of this.

Do you think dictatorships have never been elected? Trump will not be held accountable for the laws he breaks, because his party would never betray him as their leader. He will not leave office. He will send and has sent people illegally and without due process to a confinement center in El Salvador in co-operation with Bukele, another authoritarian. I doubt there will be fair elections in red states - they'll probably claim mass fraud and throw out allegedly fraudulent votes. They already tried to send fraudulent electors to make Trump president in 2020, and a violent mob to the Capitol after that, as well as pressured election officials in swing states to find votes.

You may not call yourself a Republican, but I make no distinction among those who defend the regime so wholeheartedly. Keep playing the fool; it will not justify your authoritarian apologetics.

> But there is no legal basis for the government to tell a private university who it should hire, fire, promote, or admit on ideological grounds.

That's true. Harvard can absolutely continue to hire for, advocate for, and grade for a single political viewpoint, provided it does not take federal funding.

They can also continue to racially discriminate as title IX only applies to organizations that take federal funding.

Harvard should also lose their current non-profit status per Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983) if they continue to racially discriminate.

So long as they're their viewpoints.

You don't see letters going out to conservative institutions demanding they hire gender ideology professors or communists.

I’m not sure the government is funding many conservative institutions.

You'd be hilariously incorrect about that.

[flagged]

> I asked an LLM

A half step from "I asked a magic 8-ball" on this type of question.

> it's fairly clear they mean

"It's fairly clear that Herr Hitler only means to instill properly virtuous German educational values."

No, we've seen more than enough to know exactly what kind of administration this is, and how it lies.

FFS it's just 3 months in and already they're kidnapping people from America into concentration camps for the rest of their lives (however short that might be) with no trial nor even the pretense of charges.

Come to think of it, what's The Hacker News policy on storing user information? Is it time for people who aren't fans of the current administration to make new accounts?

[flagged]

I was brought up as an American to believe that most important American value inscribed in the constitution was that the government cannot control your speech. So regardless of what Harvard does or does not do that quote, coming from the government especially, is simply unAmerican on its face.

[flagged]

Whether or not they should is irrelevant. What is relevant is the government cannot infringe on Harvard’s speech.

Also this has nothing to do with immigration. It would be the same situation if everyone at Harvard were 10th generation Americans.

Harvard's admittance policy should not be up to the government outside of preventing discrimination along protected classes. If Harvard admits students that are bad consistently, and they turn out to be bad hires/professional connections, then Harvard the institution will lose its competitiveness with other schools for the best talent and previous alumni will pressure/complain that recent admittance policies are devaluing their degrees.

> Do you think Harvard should admit students that are, "hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence

I'm not sure you thought this through—if Harvard stopped accepting Republicans like you're suggesting, I'm not sure how many people would be left.

> Do you think Harvard should admit students that are, "hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence

Sure, why not? Everything should be open to criticism at our institutions of higher learning. If not there, where? That which is above criticism is dogma.

> including students supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism

In Trump administration code, this means "has ever said anything positive about the Palestinian people." So yes, them too.

There are 2 issues here. The first is that it's not consistent with ending speech control policies.

The second is that hostility to American values is actually pretty subjective. For instance, the January 6 insurrectionists were very hostile to American values and used violent terroristic tactics to try to destroy the constitutionally mandated transfer of power. But Trump pardoned them all because it improves his ability to wield violence against America in the future.

It's impossible to take any of this document seriously in that light.

1. First off, yes they should.

2. We both know and understand that's not what's actually happening. When you have people peacefully protesting for the genocide in Palestine to end and they get disappeared by the state, then the situation is different. Please, at least try to be honest.

that's an odd take, given how the orangefuhrer treats the C constitution.

The demands are simple and not confusing at all.

- Stop promoting Democrats' agendas as the ultimate truth; stop bullying people for non-Democratic views - Allow Republicans' agendas to be equally represented

Is it really so difficult to understand?

Out of many bad things Trump has done, this isn't really bad for anyone except core Democrats voters.

The US academia has become hostile to anyone except one particular culture. This should stop.

Conservatives should start their own universities, if they aren't happy with the existing ones. The federal government has no business enforcing conformity to certain ideological demands in private institutions. It's right there in the very first amendment.

If the university was founded by the government, it should represent Americans. All of them. Half of Americans are conservative. Approx. half of academia should be conservative.

Harvard is older than both parties. There is no good reason why it should cater to only one half of Americans.

It was founded by a government, not the federal government, let alone this government. It was founded before this government existed.

And it's been a private institution for hundreds of years.

Why should any university go out of its way to "cater to" conservatives and liberals in equal measure if those ideologies don't equally value things like reason and truth? The mission should be providing education and facilitating research, not keeping political partisans happy.

So, we should have merit-based hiring with respect to race and gender, but then have a quota-based system for political affiliation? How do you even measure this? Who counts as a "conservative"? MAGA-only, or do we get to count RINOs? Won't people just lie about their political beliefs to get a job? Do you detect any irony in the way your agenda exactly parallels that of structural racists who see racism in any job where the racial distribution doesn't match that of the general population?

The reason that academia is overwhelming left-leaning is that those are the people that choose to go to grad school and pursue academic careers. For whatever reason (whether ability or inclination) conservatives do so in much smaller numbers. You want conservatives in academia, go get a Ph.D.

Are you arguing that _all_ universities that receive government funding should cater equally to conservatives and liberals? Given that Texas Christian University receives funding from the government, would you argue that it too should stop receiving federal funding until represents America equally?

If they receive federal funding, they should represent Americans. If 100% of Americans will be Democrats, then it can be this monoculture. If more people shift to Green politics, or Libertarian, it should represent those more too.

If there is a Christian university, it should either be sponsored by Christians only, or similar funding should go to other universities representing other major American groups (for example Jews).

Discrimination based on political views should be treated the same as discrimination based on sexual orientation or race.

So you do think that Texas Christian University should lose all federal funding until it proportionally represents all Americans' political beliefs?

I have answered that already.

Either lose funding, or comparable other universities should be funded so all relevant spectrum is covered.

Federally funded institutions should cater for all Americans. The army, police, schools, hospitals... shouldn't be there only for one half of people.

Conservatives have started their own Universities. No one likes going to those schools, and they end up bankrupt, with students who are functionally uneducated.

So, there you go, the market has spoken.

So the existing ones don't need government money, then, right?

Stanford for example.

> Conservatives should start their own universities

They did. Remember Trump University? It got shut down for fraud.

I don't think Trump University was ever indented to be a real university. Wasn't it basically the Trump-branded version of those late night infomercials promising to teach you how to get rich in real estate? You know, the ones where ultimately they basically just sell you a bunch of tapes for $5000?

If you're looking for an actual conservative university, a better example would be a place like Liberty University. I think the problem is starting an institution is hard, it'll only really hit its stride like 100 years after being founded, and it's hard to keep an ideological project on track for such a long period of time.

With their endowment above $50 billion, combined with Federal plus Non-Federal sponsored revenue at 16% of operating budget, it makes sense to me they just forgo Federal funds and operate independently.

If all 16% is canceled, then they'd need to draw an additional $1 billion per year from endowment at current budget levels.

That would put them above 7% draw so potentially unsustainable for perpetuity, historically they've averaged 11% returns though, so if past performance is a predictor of future, they can cover 100% of Federal gap and still grow the endowment annually with no new donations.

Republicans Are Floating Plans To Raise the Endowment Tax. Here’s What You Need To Know : https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/11/increasing-endo...

Proposed College Endowment Tax Hike: What to Know : https://thecollegeinvestor.com/52851/proposed-college-endowm...

  College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities. A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14%

  proposing an 8.6 percent tax hike

>A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14%

That would be great that Harvard pays %14 on investment income on its 50 billion fund, considering I pay a minimum of 20% on my 'way less than $50 billion' in taxable investments, which was funded by my already taxed earnings, where as Harvard gets much of its endowment funds gifted to it.

But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.

Same goes for religious organizations, but it would be extremely hard to enforce, as they might say "government is interfering us practicing our religion", as practicing religions helps to not pay taxes and protected by the Constitution.

>But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.

Taxing donations is really thorny. If people realize that the government is taking money they want to give away... they stop giving away money. It's a self-terminating cliche in action. So you either leave it alone if you want to encourage people stimulating charities, or you make the tax very small.

>Same goes for religious organizations,

I don't fully know. Some attempt at separattion of church and state. The government tries to maintain that except when other boundaries are crossed.

It does sort of fall into the same umbrella though, when regarding tithes.

There are several proposed bills, including one that raises the tax to 21 percent.

https://nehls.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/nehls.house.gov/f...

because then those churches and schools will just leave the US! /s

if your argument is "but they're not getting screwed equally" then its a completely flawed argument benefiting the government

you should be questioning why you are getting screwed at all. it doesn't solve the government's revenue problems or even make a dent.

People already paid their taxes on all of the principal before they donated it to fund education. You and I are not chartered as an educational endowment; things like Roth IRAs exist for us.

> People already paid their taxes on all of the principal before they donated it to fund education

That's not true, the donations are tax exempt (deductible).

I think the point is that money for many was taxed before the paycheck ever came in. And you have no control over it. Part of your W-2 goes to fund social security, part of it to fund the federal, part of it to fund the state.

Taxing donations is just double dipping on your money. That's how you discourage donating.

holy shit dog, you make over $533,000???

Expletive aside, I think they’re talking about their total investment rather than their income.

"funded by my already taxed earnings"

Why did you even try that? Blew your whole argument.

why do you disagree? Most people working a job do have taxes taken out. That's why you get a "return" when the IRS realizes they took too much or you provide other means to deduct your taxes.

The comment attempts to suggest that something is being taxed twice. It is not. The original income that funds some investment is taxed. After that, only further income is taxed. The existing principle is not.

Nothing that was taxed was "already taxed".

Eh, colleges were originally religious institutions. (Harvard was founded to train clergy [1].)

Converting the Corporation to Harvard Church is about the least shenanigany thing I could think of in this tale.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Harvard_University

This is genius. Next up, Apple could easily convert into a church with its many disciples.

And this is why I believe governments should tax nonprofit organizations!

In France, we ran an NGO whose music festival got a bit big… a million or two of beer sales. Tax office came in and put that part of the NGO under the business rules, ie we paid and received VAT, paid the corporate tax at the normal rate, etc. We ended up putting the entire charity under the business rule because it was more profitable (saving VAT on all providers, while our donations were exempt of VAT).

I’m surprised USA doesn’t have a rule that industrial/commercial sections of any org is liable to all corporate tax laws.

we "sorta" do. It's an all in or all out matter with 501c3's. You declare a non-profit and essentially all your money needs to be funneled back to the company. There's many other regulations to prevent the most obvious means of fraud.

Well, a nonprofit cannot have owners. Apple has owners.

OpenApple, a privately owned public benefit corporation.

Public benefit corporations have to pay tax.

If they become a church they will have to buy private jets for the faculty.

No skin in the game, but curious to know why any Republican would want to raise taxes. Is this some sort of power play like the tariffs? Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz.

They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.

> They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.

A very large portion of the country vote Republican, and I would be surprised if they are by and large the most well-off part of the American public.

The voters are not the party and the party is not the party leadership. The actual policies that end up being supported have little-to-nothing to do with the stuff that gets talked about while campaigning, and this only gets more true the further away from the actual voter the position is.

Yeah. You can implement any policy you want if you can always blame the other party for it (and have your voters eat it up).

These voters were scammed. Many still don't realize or believe this, and they avoid real news for the purpose of keeping faith in the easter bunny they voted for.

And you are right... that's why "The Party" instead appeals to "the party" with various single issues (you know all the hot topics) and implement (or perhaps, pretend to implement) those while the real bills "The Party" want are passed under their nosess. "The Party" spends a dollar on "the party" while grabbing hundreds from the vault they all pitched into.

Worked for decades. Not so well when Trump so publicly tanked the economy and snatched one of the 3 untouchable things.

It's about punishing their enemies.

> Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz

Yes. The abstract of "the economy" doesn't matter. The priorities are "owning the libs" on Twitter and other media, and their own personal bank accounts which can benefit from insider trading the tariffs, state-sponsored memecoins and so on.

Easy, Harvard is essentially a training center for their ideological enemies on top of providing an actual education. They're just putting the boot down and saying stick to teaching instead of implementing and advancing a specific ideology. If taxes are the tools, so be it.

Harvard is a private instutution. If they want to teach underwater basket weaving, there's not much you can do to stop that. Anymore than Trump can raid apple and tell them to start making Androids. I thought a billionaire businessman would understand that much; imagine if Clinton back in the day tried to seize Trump Towers.

And while we long forgotten: don't forget that all of this is illegal. to retract congressionally appropriated funds that were already budgeted. The time to yoink this stuff legally was a month ago.

LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.

The current admin is openly anti-intellectual.

Edit:

"We need to attack the universities in this country"

"The professors are the enemy"

Specific clip https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1ichg58/ya...

If you want the full speech it's on YT so if you reply with "context" you should back that up

I'd agree with you that the current admin is anti-intellectual, but this speech is not a smoking gun.

For those who need spoonfed, here is the full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FR65Cifnhw

It's JD Vance's keynote speech at the 2021 National Conservatism conference. The speech, which I've just skimread, is mostly well-worn US conservative complaints about US higher education. He also talks about red-pilling because he's down with the kids, and he adds Jesus sprinkles in case you forgot he's Christian.

The speech is dull but it's bookended with two spicy statements, both of which you mostly quoted. The latter statement is not his words but a quote from Nixon.

Opening statement: «So much of what we want to accomplish, so much of what we want to do in this movement in this country, I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities which control the knowledge in our society, which control what we call truth and what we call falsity, that provides research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in our country and so I'm excited to close this conference with this particular set of remarks, because I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country, and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.»

Closing statement: «I really want to end this on an inspirational note [...] and the person whose quote I ultimately had to land on was the great prophet and statesman Richard Milhous Nixon [...] there is a season for everything in this country and I think in this movement of National Conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is we need wisdom, and there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40-50 years ago. He said, and I quote: "the professors are the enemy".»

EDIT: And for the context of the Nixon quote, it comes from a private conversation Nixon had with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on December 14, 1972, recordings of which were released in 2008: «Henry remember... we're gonna be around and outlive our enemies. And also, never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.». It's worth noting that Nixon was already keeping an "enemies list": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon%27s_Enemies_List

It doesn't matter what Nixon's context was Vance was quoting him literally by proclaiming it a piece of wisdom.

Posting the entire speech only bolsters my view. For example

"[To accomplish goals].. I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities..."

I'm confused about your argument. I don't consider it a smoking gun just a concise example of what Vance and MAGA Republicans belive. There's no context confusion, it's on video, and it being dull only shows how comfortable he is exposing insane views.

The spicy soundbites on their own are scary and do suggest the state wants to destroy intellectuals.

The speech they're from doesn't.

The speech defends and praises universities and their role in society. Vance even claims some academics prefer to ignore evidence that refutes their positions, and he's against that; that would be a valid pro-intellectual position if true (but it's completely nebulous and unsourced)

The thesis of his speech was he doesn't like the content of what academics profess and he thinks they ought to teach his political views (and his audience's political views) instead. That's not anti-intellectualism, i.e. "don't trust those book-learning types, look to the common man for answers". This guy still wants ivory towers provided his cronies are in them.

Also it's interesting to see where his quote came from. He clearly picked an on-theme Nixon quote just to appeal to his audience, and he seems to miss the context of the Nixon quote in that Nixon is a paranoid nutter saying it, not coming from a rational place like Vance thought he just did.

>The speech defends and praises universities and their role in society

Which part ?

Current universities are openly anti intellectual.

What evidence do you have of this?

What evidence does the parent comment provide?

Just edited my comment. How many quotes do you need? I can supply many

[flagged]

>You are simply defining intellectual as “whatever universities do and say

Definition of anti-intellectual

"a person who scorns intellectuals and their views and methods" from oxford

Intellectual

"of or relating to the intellect or its use", "given to study, reflection, and speculation", and ": engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect" from MW.

I didn't define anything. If I said the administration was anti-education would that be better?

> the University must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership.

> the University must adopt and implement merit-based admissions policies and cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof, throughout its undergraduate program, each graduate program individually, each of its professional schools, and other programs.

In what way is hiring faculty and and admitting students based on merit instead of their identity anti-education? Is your position that you get a better education from a professor who was hired because of their race instead of the quality of their scholarly work?

>In what way is hiring faculty and and admitting students based on merit instead of their identity anti-education?

It's not. Calling universities and professors the enemy is. The government taking away funding because you want international students to adhere to an ideology is wrong.

>is your position that you get a better education from a professor who was hired because of their race instead of the quality of their scholarly work?

How do you rank the quality of scholarly work?

You ask other scholars in the field to read it and give their opinion on it. It’s this thing called “peer review” that is kind of the basis of all modern academic inquiry.

In the case of hiring, typically a committee of other professors in the department would evaluate candidates, not a bunch of DEI bureaucrats. They would read what the candidates have published and see if the arguments they make are sound, and look at things like # of citations that indicate how prominent the work is in the field.

I don’t know if you’ve ever met any academics, but I promise you they have no problems forming opinions about the quality of work of other people in their field.

Could different scholars from different universities rank people differently?

Sure. Research by definition deals with areas that are not settled, so different people can have different theories, and they might disregard scholars who don't like their preferred theory. On the other hand, some academics welcome debate and differing viewpoints more than most people.

Like, if you were a physics professor and you were applying to a department where everyone was a string theorist, and your position was that string theory is a bunch of bullshit, you might not get that job. Or you might, if your work is otherwise solid, you never know.

But that's a disagreement about physics, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to evaluate a physics professor on. It's not about how enthusiastically they endorse some ideological dogma that has nothing to do with physics.

If people can be ranked differently as candidates by different universities and the people at them how can you ever be sure that a person who got the job because of DEI was the worse candidate?

There are objective measures like quantity of publications, quality of the journals published in, # of citations, awards won, books published, things like that. Every academic could tell you the top 5 journals in their field that are the most competitive to get published in and are the most respected, someone with a lot of publications in those journals would be objectively better than someone with no publications or with publications in crappy no-name journals that claim they are "peer-reviewed" but basically publish anything that gets submitted.

We're not talking about roughly equal candidates with similar qualifications and one getting the edge because of race. I'm telling you there are cases where PhD candidates with zero publications, people who have not even finished and defended their dissertation yet, are hired for tenure-track positions over other candidates who have had their degree for several years, published in top journals, won highly competitive fellowships, etc, because universities want someone of a particular race. It's not subtle.

You may not be able to say that one candidate is the unequivocal best when there are many qualified candidates, but you can definitely say that a particular candidate is unqualified or not even close to other candidates when, for example, they have not published at all.

>There are objective measures like quantity of publications, quality of the journals published in, # of citations, awards won, books published, things like that

None of these are objective measures of quality.

1. The more papers you write the more likely you'll be published more. This is connected to time and desire.

2. Judging yhe quality of a journal is subjective therefore can't be used as an objective measurement for something else

3. If you write a paper that more people have access to, is about a more popular subject, is the only paper for a subject, or is published in more popular journals it would increase your citations outside of the paper quality.

4. Awards are a subjective judgement

Of course all of these increase the probability of quality but it's not a guarantee.

> for example, they have not published at all.

I don't think anyone going for a position as a professor hasn't published since most PHds require it. This point probably adds more weight but I think it would be rare between candidates for job.

Reading more carefully, you're just making nonsensical statements that have no connection to reality. Yes, many of these absolutely are objective.

> The more papers you write the more likely you'll be published more. This is connected to time and desire.

Yes, someone who writes more and spends more time doing research and has more desire to do research is objectively better at research than someone who produces less. There is a possibility that one person writes lots of low quality papers and another person writes a few high quality papers, but in asserting this you are admitting that there is some objective measure of the quality of a paper (which there is). Since the reviewers would be reading the papers, they could also objectively assess the quality of the papers too.

> 2. Judging yhe quality of a journal is subjective therefore can't be used as an objective measurement for something else

No, the quality of the journal is not subjective. If journal A publishes anything they are sent without review and journal B rigorously reviews everything by sending it to other experts in the field, then journal B is objectively higher quality than journal A.

> If you write a paper that more people have access to, is about a more popular subject, is the only paper for a subject, or is published in more popular journals it would increase your citations outside of the paper quality.

If you write the only published paper on a subject, then you are objectively the world's leading expert on that subject. If the university wants someone who knows that subject, the only person in the world who has published on it is objectively the best choice.

Part of a professor's job might be to communicate about their research and bring it to a wider audience, and convince e.g. grant committees that it is important and deserves funding. Someone savvy enough to get published in popular journal is objectively more qualified to do this than someone who hasn't been able to accomplish that.

> Awards are a subjective judgement

The awards can be subjective, but whether you have won an award or not is an objective fact. If the job involves doing the kinds of thing that impress the people who give the award, then someone who has achieved that is objectively better than someone who has not.

Sure, it’s not infallible, but having other experts in the field read and judge a candidate’s work is at least an honest attempt at assessing merit.

Whereas going by who can write the most enthusiastic essay about diversity, as judged by the blue-haired gender studies major in the diversity center, is a system that will only select for rabid ideologues and disingenuous bullshitters.

> blue-haired

Why does this matter?

What does gender studies have to do with this situation or DEI ?

> is a system that will only select for rabid ideologues and disingenuous bullshitters.

Why?

> Why?

Pretend you are an investment banker. You've spent the last 10 years living and breathing investment banking. You've worked 100 hour weeks. You can point to a long list of successful deals you've done. You have glowing references from every client and colleague that has ever worked with you.

Now, you're applying for a job at a major investment bank, but before your resume is reviewed by any of the investment bankers, you have to write an essay about how much you love baseball. This essay will be reviewed by a panel of baseball superfans. They will judge it on how much you know about baseball and how much you love baseball. If they feel you know enough about baseball and you sufficiently express your love for it, they will then pass your resume on to be reviewed by the investment bankers.

Now, maybe you like baseball, maybe you don't. Maybe you have no particular strong feelings about it. Mostly, you didn't have time to think much about baseball because you have spent your time obsessed with investment banking.

Do you think this is a good system to hire investment bankers? If someone said "hey, we should hire investment bankers based on their track record in investment banking and not how much they love baseball or if they are baseball players", would you call them "anti-investment banking"?

>I'm telling you there are cases where PhD candidates with zero publications, people who have not even finished and defended their dissertation yet, are hired for tenure-track positions over other candidates who have had their degree for several years, published in top journals, won highly competitive fellowships, etc, because universities want someone of a particular race. It's not subtle.

Give me examples then because how could you know this?

I've worked in academic publishing for a long while, and I can tell you from experience that:

- "quantity of publications" is a problem and directly leads to bad science, so is on aggregate a measure of anti-quality

- "quality of the journals published in" is all in the mind; prestigious journals with high impact factor have been repeatedly found not to have the best research. The rigour of the editing process is more important, but few researchers know that, and importantly they are heavily incentivised by funders to go for high impact factor, completely muddying the waters of who's a good researcher by that metric.

- number of citations would be a better measure, but unfortunately is directly linked to impact factor, in practice and in perception.

- awards won, books published - too niche and random to matter much.

- "every academic could tell you the top 5 journals in their field" haha, no, you'd be as surprised as I was when doing that research.

Academic publishers have been considering the measuring problem for decades, and no one has found a solution yet.

There is no good measure of the quality of a paper until many years after publication. It's easy to identify some true positives (high impact, no retraction), it's quasi-impossible by definition to identify false negatives (unfairly ignored papers), and most importantly this emphasis on prestige research is terribly harmful to Science. Science needs researchers who are happy to replicate studies, people who publish disappointing results, and people who study otherwise unglamorous topics, otherwise Science fails.

TLDR: measuring how 'good' a researcher is by their prestige is extremely destructive to Science. You can't do that.

I'm not saying it's only prestige, but to a first approximation, a researcher who has an article published in Nature is highly likely to be better than one who has only published in no-name garbage journal that publishes whatever they are sent. Of course, nothing is certain, but we're talking about probabilities here.

And, as I'm saying, prestige, or probable future prestige, isn't a good proxy for a researcher's value or future value, even if it could be fairly guessed, which it can't. Nature is exhibit A, B and C, as it's the most prestigious journal, but not the most rigorous in any field, and its very existence damages Science by overvaluing the research it publishes, reducing the impact of better journals and the research they publish, and wasting the time, quality of life, and quality of research of scientists who feel like they must do anything they have to to publish in it, or are pressured by funders and/or academic institutions to do so.

But you are talking certainty when you claim DEI hires means that it's possible the lesser person is hired. If you have no objective system to measure merit then it's possible to ever know this

How does anyone know anything? Why even vet candidates at all? Let’s just assign professorships completely randomly then. We’ll have high school dropouts who can’t explain the quadratic formula teach differential equations at Harvard.

I’m sure they would do just as good of a job. Because nobody could ever possibly objectively tell whether someone with a PhD in math is going to be better at teaching and researching math than a high school dropout, right?

Just want to note that I didn't downvote (I can't yet) or flag your comments. I don't think your comments should be flagged either.

Could you perhaps spell out your definition of anti-intellectual for us then?

> Current universities are openly anti intellectual.

The administration is saying “hire and promote faculty and admit students based on scholarly merit, not ideology and activism”. Universities are saying “no, we want to keep doing the ideology stuff”. That is anti-intellectual.

The people in the administration were not admitted to their universities based on merits, they paid to get in and they paid for their degree. This is especially true for POTUS who holds an entirely fake degree bought and paid for by his father.

And you’re taking words of this administration at face value, correct?

Unless you have evidence Vance is lying why wouldn't I?

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What words? What university? Who at the university?

Edit: My comment was that the admin is anti intellectual and I provided quotes from JD Vance on all universities and professors.

Gosh, I don't know. If only there were a link to a statement by a university somewhere here.

But the Trump administration wants to punish students who don't conform to pro Israel views/ideology.

The administration wants to revoke visas for non-US citizens who come here under the pretense of education and then instead advocate for terrorist groups that are hostile to the interests of the US and its allies. No, that isn't the same. Why is the US government expected to fund people who want to destroy the US government? Should you be required to pay people who want to kill you?

>The administration wants to revoke visas for non-US citizens who come here under the pretense of education and instead advocate for terrorist groups.

1. You can get an education while advocating for causes

2. The letter doesn't only say advocating for a terrorist group.

From the gov demand letter:

"International Admissions Reform. By August 2025, the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism."

>Why is the US government expected to fund people who want to destroy the US government?

1. They aren't, Harvard does

2. Federal grants aren't targeted to specific students so revoking them isn't a targetted punishment

3. Harvard can still operate without these grants, including bringing in international students who the current admin might disagree with.

4. The US government gives money to people who want to destroy it all the time. Welfare, social security, etc is given to anti-gov US citizens with no restrictions based on those views.

5. Although only proposed Trump wanted to set up a fund for January 6th protestors who he pardoned. Some of whom attacked the US capital to disrupt a Democratic election process.

>Should you be required to pay people who want to kill you?

No. How is that related to this? You just overly generalized the entire situation in order to produce a question where I'd mostly likely to say "no" as a argument manipulation tactic.

> 1. They aren't, Harvard does

> 2. Federal grants aren't targeted to specific students so revoking them isn't a targetted punishment

> 3. Harvard can still operate without these grants, including bringing in international students who the current admin might disagree with.

Harvard funds them with the money it gets from grants. If Harvard wants to fund activist students with their own money out of their endowment, nobody is stopping them from doing that.

No, they can't unilaterally import foreign students though, the government has to grant them a visa to come here, and it really doesn't seem prudent to grant visas to people who hate our country and everything it stands for. If they believe the US is so evil and awful, they should be quite relieved that they won't need to come here. Maybe Harvard can open a satellite campus in Gaza if they really feel that these are the best students who are most deserving of a Harvard education.

>Harvard funds them with the money it gets from grants.

The grants fund students regardless of views. Yes they can use their endowment (I think) it's quite massive but the point is the government attacking universities for what a small amount of students say which is wrong.

It's also quite hypocritical considering views on free speech and "big government"

"Shutting down free speech will destroy our civilization." - JD Vance

>it really doesn't seem prudent to grant visas to people who hate our country and everything it stands for.

Why? In the case of attacking Israel that's not even our country? What if they hate the current government?

What is "our country" to you because most probably hate the government, a very common attitude for many inside the country.

If they hate our values of freedom then punishing them only says that those freedoms aren't that dear to us because we're willing to compromise.

The rest of your comment is Facebook level of like "If you don't like it leave". I do think your other comments are professional so I hope we can move back

>they should be quite relieved that they won't need to come here

> If they hate our values of freedom then punishing them only says that those freedoms aren't that dear to us because we're willing to compromise.

How is it a punishment to send someone away from a place they hate?

For all the people chanting “from the river to the sea” and then crying about their free speech when their visas are revoked, where is their passion for free speech when someone draws a cartoon of Mohammad?

These are not people who care about the ideals of freedom. They only want to use our indulgence as a wedge to promulgate their own, much less free ideology.

Or to put things in maybe more HN-friendly terms - suppose you have a public facing service that you intend to be very liberal and accepting of any inputs. Does that mean you need to allow SQL injection attacks? Cross-site scripting? Spam? Not all actors are acting in good faith. Some are deliberately trying to harm you.

>How is it a punishment to send someone away from a place they hate

Name a student who was deported that hated America and provide evidence.

They are the ones asking to live in a different country. The burden is on them to demonstrate why they should be allowed to live here, not on us to prove why they shouldn’t.

Let’s say I want to come live in your house. Do you need to prove to me why I shouldn’t be allowed to do that, or do I need to prove to you why I should? If I make speeches and write articles about how you’re an evil person and we should burn your house down, does that make you think it’s a good idea for me to live with you?

No, that's a lie and you know it's a lie. The administration specifically demanded that Harvard must submit to viewpoint diversity audits, hiring faculty and admitting students as necessary to make sure that every department has a balance of viewpoints the government finds acceptable.

So they need to have a department to ensure a diversity of views are included?

No, that wasn't sufficient. The government specifically demanded that Harvard must commission a government-approved external party to audit viewpoint diversity, and must promise in advance to follow its recommendations, for each of the next three years.

So a government run DEI department? You're aren't the original person but that's my gotcha

No, it's not a lie that the administration said universities should hire and admit students based on merit. The administration's letter is linked from the university's statement. You can go read it. It's the very first two points.

It's true they also said they want viewpoint diversity quotas and audits. I agree that goes too far. I think they would probably give that up if the university pushed back. This is what Trump does every time - make outlandish demands so you have something to give up in negotiation. He even wrote an entire book telling you exactly that's what he does, yet somehow the "intellectual elite" cannot wrap their heads around a very simple negotiating tactic. Every plumber, electrician, and carpenter that ever worked with Trump figured this out decades ago.

> somehow the "intellectual elite" cannot wrap their heads around a very simple negotiating tactic

This is extremely disingenous. Throughout this thread you've been arguing on the basis that hiring people simply to fit a political viewoint is wrong, but when it's pointed out that that's exactly what your team wants as well you fall back to name-calling.

What they want is to hire people based on merit, first and foremost. They say that explicitly several times.

That's not the only demand in the letter.

>This is what Trump does every time - make outlandish demands so you have something to give up in negotiation

Harvard rejected the demands and Trump pulled funding. What negotiation happened?

Also, if everyone knows you're just demanding more than you'd accept what's the value of the negotiation tactic? Everyone would just reject demands initially knowing this

Yes, you reject the first offer and make a counter offer. That is how negotiating works. You ask for more than you expect to get to find out what the limit is that the other party will go up to. How else would you find the limit? You don't know what the other party is thinking or what all of their priorities are. You can't just magically intuit it a priori.

If that's how negotiating works, and Trump cancelled the funding instead of delivering a counteroffer, shouldn't we conclude that Trump is not in fact negotiating? It seems like your vision of negotiation is that Trump does whatever he wants and everyone else politely begs him to be gracious in victory.

Trump made the initial offer. It was up to the university to make a counteroffer and try to meet in the middle. Instead they flatly refused everything. When one party rejects an offer in a negotiation, the other party often walks away. That’s what Trump did. If you aren’t willing and able to walk away, you’re begging, not negotiating.

>Instead they flatly refused everything

No, they had issues with some of the demands and wanted to open a dialog.

Harvard's response says they changed policies to protect Jewish students, made other changes to related to the protests, etc.

It also states

"It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms ..."

#----------------------------- Finally they said:

"Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community. But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration. "

I find I'm willing and able to walk away from this discussion. I'll keep your strategic advice in mind the next time a Trump supporter tries to explain why I should not shun them or organize a boycott of their business.

What he explained in his book is that he's an evil, dishonest person, who routinely lies and harms people in negotiations in order to get his way. I agree that being evil and dishonest is often quite effective - if you came up to me with a knife and an outlandish demand that I should give you my wallet, I'd probably concede the negotiation. But I don't at all understand the idea that I have to respect this as some kind of clever negotiating strategy. The innocent researchers whose grants he's cancelled are real people suffering real harm, and they don't become transmuted to a mere negotiating tactic just because Donald Trump doesn't care about them.

If a dishonest person tells you he's dishonest, doesn't that mean he's actually honest?

No because a person isn't "honest" because they make one honest statement.

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>no, we want to keep doing the ideology stuff

How is this anti-intellectual?

Applicants for faculty positions are required to submit "diversity statements" expressing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This statement is evaluated before any of their other qualifications, like their standing in the field, number and quality of publications, teaching experience, you know, the intellectual quality of their work. If they are judged to be insufficiently committed to the DEI ideology, then their application is rejected without further review, regardless of how qualified they might otherwise be. That is anti-intellectual.

That is before we even get into the explicitly racist hiring and admissions policies.

>If they are judged to be insufficiently committed to the DEI ideology, then their application is rejected without further review,

Evidence

> growing number of states and schools have also begun eliminating requirements that job applicants furnish “diversity statements” — written commitments to particular ideas about diversity and how to achieve it that, at some institutions, have functionally served as litmus tests in hiring.

https://archive.is/UeZ2A#selection-5289.442-5297.27

> Chavous and her colleagues did not collect demographic information from applicants. Instead, they were asked to submit statements addressing how they would advance D.E.I. goals, whether through research into “race, gender, diversity, equity and inclusion,” “significant academic achievement in the face of barriers” or “commitment to allyhood through learning about structural inequities.” Departments were invited to nominate candidates from an application pool created by the diversity center, which then oversaw further vetting.

https://archive.is/i6Gv9#selection-1183.358-1187.413

Ohio State Reports: DEI Litmus Test

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/ohio-state-reports-dei-lit...

Thank you for providing a source.

I don't agree with Ohio's diversity statements being used as part of the selection criteria. It's wrong.

What about every other university though? JD Vance's statement called universities the enemy. Most universities aren't connected to each other, they aren't a single organization and aren't responsible for what each does.

1. If only a few were using diversity statements as a part of the hiring process, which is wrong, what's the justification in calling all of them the enemy?

2. What about the professors? Most aren't responsible for setting hiring practices. Why are they the enemy?

> That is before we even get into the explicitly racist hiring and admissions policies. [ from your original comment ]

Same as the above for this. A University is a large insinuation of students, teachers, researchers, and various employees. Harvard employs 19k people and has 23k students.

#----------------

My opinion is that Vance is attacking universities not because he cares about merit based hiring or the quality of students but for selfish political reasons.

Why I think this:

1. As previously stated not all universities are doing what you claimed. Ohio for one, and the first link says "some" but there are thousands.

2. There are private schools that receive public money but discriminate against LGBQT [1] However nothing has been said or done about this by Trump in the past or now. These religious schools are more conservative and attacks would likely anger the base.

3. Republicans perform better with non-college educated voters [2] 2024 election:

No college 36% D , 62% R

Some college or 2yr degree: ~44% D, ~53% R

4-year degree: 53% D, 45% R

Graduate school+: 59% D , 38% R

Therefore reducing the number of people who go to higher education could benefit Republicans in elections.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-09-01/when-p... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls

> 1. As previously stated not all universities are doing what you claimed. Ohio for one, and the first link says "some" but there are thousands.

Not all, but most. It may have decreased as some universities have started to abandon it now that it is falling out of fashion, but it was a large percentage, I'd estimate 90% offhand, but it's not like there's a lot of sources on this. It is a movement led by an aggressive and militant minority who silences and drives out anyone who disagrees. Most professors, who just want to do their research on 19th century French poetry or the mating habits of dung beetles or whatever they care about just shut up and try to keep their heads down so they don't get denied tenure or have students protesting at their office because they said the wrong pronoun. If you know people in academia and they trust you they will tell you off the record that it is nearly universal and so, so much worse than what is publicly reported. Sorry, I can't provide sources for this. You can trust me or not, but I know what I've seen and what people have told me.

> There are private schools that receive public money but discriminate against LGBQT [1] However nothing has been said or done about this by Trump in the past or now. These religious schools are more conservative and attacks would likely anger the base.

There is a religious freedom issue, because religion is also a protected class. I don't know, religious schools are not that many and they are not a big factor in academia. If you really care about that religion, then you go there, if not there are lots of other places. I don't know why an LGBQT person would want to force their way into going to a school where everyone thinks they're sinful and destined for hell. Seems like masochism to me.

> My opinion is that Vance is attacking universities not because he cares about merit based hiring or the quality of students but for selfish political reasons.

Well, neither of us can read his mind, but he benefited from a system that espoused meritocracy and used it to improve his life from growing up very poor to becoming vice president of the United States. I think it's reasonable that he would want to preserve that so other people could also have that opportunity and not get denied because they were the wrong race.

>Not all, but most.

>I'd estimate 90% offhand, but it's not like there's a lot of sources on this.

What is your estimate based on and what is your basis for claiming "most"?

It would be pretty bad to hire someone who doesn't respect their colleagues, without even knowing them.

Yes, universities have hired a lot of DEI ideologues who don’t respect their colleagues without even knowing them and it is indeed very bad.

Well, if that's the case one of the parties didn't meet the inclusivity criteria, seemingly the DEI ideologues.

>Yes, universities have hired a lot of DEI ideologues who don’t respect their colleagues

How do you know this happens?

The administration defines what ideology is and given the current administration claims it’s based on merit and given the nonsense they do economically, scientifically and militarily they are the ideological activists. Not to mention that they are clearly hired based on gender and skin color.

RFK jr., really?

if you hate universities it makes obvious sense

[flagged]

Do you cut off your head when you have a headache?

You think this is a good analogy?

Pretty good metaphor for the current happenings, yes.

Why not?

Chronic migraines do lead to suicide in extreme cases.

Do you consider that a cure for migraines or is it just a strawman?

I’m not half the country, but I can explain it to you. Billionaires already pay tax on investment income. Universities are exempt but now the proposal is that they pay as well, just like individuals (including billionaires) and other profit-making groups.

… or churches

Politics of resentment where elite colleges and universities are unjust scams and billionaires are just the pinnacle of self actualization.

Doesn't this tax only apply to "net investment income"/realized gains? Billionaires technically already have to pay it at a higher rate. And well they generally do? I mean when they personally actually sell stock and or receive dividends and interest.

Most of the wealth being in stock is really tricky. You can't really tax stock ownership, but at the same time stock can be leveraged against business deals (Musk for example bought Twitter with largely stock, without having to sell it first and therefore being subject to tax), and you can take out loans with stock as collateral.

It's not that tricky. All you have to do is make it a taxable event to collateralize stock.

Should we similarly tax collateralizing real estate as in home equity loans?

Sure, if you exclude primary residence. We aren't trying to fuck with the middle class, just the uberwealthy. I'd be fine with only taxing collateralized stock on people with over $20M in net worth too. We just don't need to provide tax breaks to the rich to make them more rich.

Now, rigorously define "net worth".

It's such an odd argument - the wealthy always seem to know what their net worth is. We could just make them declare it. If they lie, straight to jail.

Do they? I think exactly the opposite is true - if you ask any sufficiently wealthy person, they’d need a team of people working for a bit to arrive at a very hazy net worth number. Private stock is extremely illiquid and doesn’t usually have a good mark to market, ditto most artwork. My impression is that even most public stock doesn’t generally have the depth of liquidity to absorb a founder selling any significant fraction in a short timeframe without cratering in value.

> If they lie, straight to jail.

How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?

I'm not defending billionaires and I believe they should be heavily taxed, and huge inheritances should be outlawed, but what's Elon Musk's net worth, for example? He surely doesn't have $369 billion in cash. Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year? It's tricky.

> How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?

They get to tell us what they are worth. Generally speaking, if you want to lie about your net worth you are choosing between tax fraud and insurance fraud. There are some areas that are tricky, like pre-market startups, but we have things like 409A valuations that help with that. Penalties should have no statute of limitations - if you lie about it, you get to look over your shoulder forever. It's not perfect, but as you have clearly recognized, there is no perfect system that allows for a reasonable degree of freedom.

> Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year?

Not really tricky! He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2. If the value goes down 99%, you pay way less tax (or none if he's no longer wealthy enough to qualify). He can sell his shares to pay it, and I honestly do not care if he is not liquid enough to do that - that's a situation he put himself into. No he doesn't get a tax break on the loss - the rich have a sense of entitlement that their wealth belongs to them free of charge, and I think they should have to pay maintenance. Without public utilities (roads, electricity, air and sea traffic control, etc) and social stability, most of these billionaires would lose their wealth to warlords very quickly.

> He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2.

That doesn't make any sense. If I have $8B worth of shares and I have $2B in cash, and if the wealth tax is 20% I will have to pay all my cash this year. If my shares goes down to zero next year I'm broke. I couldn't just sell $2B worth of shares in the first year either because that would have affected the value of the shares. This is not how taxes should work.

Everyone agrees on income tax or capital gains tax because they are both cash, and the tax is also in the same currency. If we can find a way to tax wealth in the same "currency" (for example 20% of your share portfolio, plus 20% of your cash) then it might work. Obviously the state may not always be able to use shares to fund infrastructure, and cashing out those shares would diminish the value. Also it's still hard to do that for, say, real estate investments.

What doesn't make sense? He'd owe $1.6B the first year, and then he'd be shit out of luck because he drove the stock to 0. Not my problem. And you should stop putting yourself in his shoes - you will never be a billionaire, and you probably won't be a mega-millionaire either. Start worrying about your own situation.

In any case, the whole thread about "net worth" is really besides my original point, which is that collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event. The only reason we got into net worth was because I said I'd only apply it to high net worth individuals, since they have almost exclusively benefitted from the economy over the last 10-20 years. This is also super achievable because to get the bank to loan you money, you have to declare the value of the assets and the bank has to agree with the valuation - super easy to determine tax on that number.

I don't feel that strongly about it if he is just sitting on the assets, but if he's leveraging them to buy Twitter, OpenAI or to donate money toward overthrowing the Democratic order, then yes, he should absolutely pay taxes for the privilege.

I'm not worrying about billionaires. I'm discussing about hypothetical ways we can tax them. They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.

> collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event

I fully agree with this.

> They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.

Disagree. We've been negotiating from the middle. We got the New Deal because the alternative for the wealthy was facing a socialist revolution.

I'm all for threatining them with a socialist revolution if possible. However, I'm afraid they are better prepared this time. In today's world a (metaphorical) guerilla war that targets one small win at a time might be more prudent. The wealthy is not necessarily smart. Not all will see it coming.

> Generally speaking, if you want to lie about your net worth you are choosing between tax fraud and insurance fraud.

Funnily enough there is (was?) legal activity about exactly this with our current POTUS.

Real estate assets when being accounted for tax purposes: "Worth: $x"

Same real estate assets when being accounted for loan collateral: "Worth: $10x".

But of course like most legal activity against POTUS, it's just been "abandoned".

When the amount of equity pulled out from the loan exceeds the cost basis, why not?

How? That makes little sense to me from an implementation standpoint.

When I bought my home I had to sell $XXX,XXX of stock to make the down payment. If Jeff Bezos wants to buy the same house, he would use a line of credit from the bank, collateralized by his Amazon shares (or whatever source of wealth) and pay with that. I paid 15% in long-term capital gains, he pays 0%. Under my plan, he would pay 15% LTCG for collateralizing his stock,. If I had to pay it, then it's entirely fair and reasonable that we expect him to pay his fair share too.

You could have done the same thing with a margin-enabled brokerage account, e.g. Interactive Brokers or Fidelity.

It's not particularly hard. Just have enough collateral to not get margin called. And, like the margin interest rate better than the tax hit. Shop around for rates. Notice, you don't have to pay the entire down payment this way.

If you have amassed 6 figures of stock and are buying a house, you're qualified to educate yourself on these topics. It's usually worth reading up anytime you incur that sizable a taxable event.

I am not saying this is a great idea, BTW. Just, it's an idea within many people's reach.

If it's a bad idea, it's a bad faith argument - why would you suggest it? The tax laws shouldn't favor the gross accumulation of wealth, nor the starvation of the treasury, so the laws need to change to force the rich to pay their fair share.

> If it's a bad idea, it's a bad faith argument

I believe the GP is just cautioning rando HN readers that they should not rush out and make their down payment in the manner described, as opposed to liquidating some of their stock options for "real cash" like the GGP had to do.

They are just explaining a reasonable method that the (above) average HN reader could use to be in the same situation as Bezos of having a 0% tax on their down payment.

In the US, there's a pretty massive exemption (well, deferral) for capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence, so once you have one home to work with, the down payment is (kind of?) tax-free anyway.

They definitely shouldn't. It's absurd to suggest that because a middle-class homebuyer can get a margin loan through iBroker means that we should let the richest people in history dodge taxes in this way. If no one would actually do that, then it really doesn't matter that they technically can. The obvious solution is to take away the privilege from the wealthy and make them abide the same rules as the rest of us.

> They definitely shouldn't.

Never give absolute financial advice to anyone who's situation you don't fully understand.

Nah, I’m pretty comfortable that 99.99999% of people should not take a margin loan to buy a house. Close enough for me.

A fair number of people do use margin for down payments until they can sell assets to cover the margin.

It's not uncommon when people buy deals while traveling or in hot markets.

See also Mr Money Mustache's articles on this topic. He assuredly is not Bezosesque.

Here's the Mr. Money Mustache article I referenced: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/01/29/margin-loan-ibkr-...

Another very rational reason for such a margin loan for a home down payment is if the stock you wanted to sell hadn't been held for a year and therefore its sale would not yet qualify for long-term capital gains rates.

You might choose to pay margin interest for up to a year so that the stock sales become taxed at the much lower long-term capital gains rates instead of like income.

That might make sense for someone in the 24% federal bracket which ends at just under $200K of annual income, depending upon how much longer one needs to hold the position to achieve the more favorable taxation. Certainly far below the yacht-owning bracket.

Bezos gets a much better margin rate than you or I would ever get on IBKR. And IBKR doesn't margin call, they straight up auto liquidate. Bezos's lender would never do that to him.

And withdrawals from margin accounts should cause taxable events too. Honestly it is up to the industry to justify and propose a workable tax scheme that makes margin accounts feasible. Withdrawals triggering taxable events seems fair to me, though.

If I get something of worth, non-related to the stock/ownership, for the current value on my stock/ownership, I should pay taxes on that amount. I am using the stocks value to gain something. If I take out a loan for businesses needs, that is in the interest of the thing I own. If I take out a loan to buy a separate thing, I have leveraged the current value and have therefor realized the current value and should pay accordingly.

Lenders would have to report loan origination for secured loans where some specific asset classes are acting as the collateral.

Why does it matter? It eventually gets taxed through estate tax and at a higher rate than income. This obsession with taxing them _now_ only makes sense if the point is to punish the the rich.

Agreed. For the revenue tax activists want from billionaires, it would necessitate a wealth tax, which I believe is unconstitutional. The non-profit tax exemption fight is about "income taxes" which billionaires already have to pay (but avoid). So it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

> it would necessitate a wealth tax, which I believe is unconstitutional

I take it you haven't heard of property taxes.

I'm not a lawyer but I do not consider a property tax to be the same thing as a wealth tax.

If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city. The house structure is an improvement on leased land; this ties the property tax calculation to the value of the structure. The property tax is the rent on the land/space. I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes (no opposition from me).

> If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city.

It's interesting to me that medieval European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today.

> I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes

It isn't. The constitutional justification for property taxes is that they're assessed by the states, not by the federal government.

The federal government is free to assess property taxes too, except that it must apportion them between the states: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C4-1/...

> An 1861 federal tax on real property illustrates how the rule of apportionment operates. Congress enacted a direct tax of $20 million. After apportioning the direct tax among the states, territories, and the District of Columbia, the State of New York was liable for the largest portion of the tax [...]

What this meant was that the federal government delegated tax quotas to the states and the states were responsible for collecting them as they saw fit.

Recommend James C. Scott's "Seeing like a State" to learn more about the evolution of property valuation and rights. The systems of land rights in up to the 1500s-1800s were quite complex. The modern state imposed a uniform system of free-hold tenure which shifted the complexity to the downstream consequences.

https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

I was making a comment about radical change in the meaning of "renting" and "ownership". Did you have anything specific in mind?

(I've read the book; it didn't strike me as related to this topic.)

The concept of freehold tenure is pretty central to the book. Not sure you could get any more on-point for the general reader looking for a book recommendation.

But since you ask: the peasant's rights to land were exquisitely bespoke. No tax collector could figure out how much one family owed versus another in another county. The rules in one prefecture of one county may have been completely unresolvable with the rules of a county a hundred miles north. Everything was negotiated family to family over generations, with rights in one place having no corollary whatsoever with the rights in another area, making the tax man's duty a fool's errand.

So, I don't your first statement "European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today." is really meaningful. Because no generalization can be made about the rights of a European peasant. That problem is the whole reason for the systems of freehold tenure that prevail today: making the territory "seeable" by the state.

You're talking about something entirely different. The typical case for the renting medieval peasant is that the rent on a given plot of land is set by custom, the nominal amount has been the same for centuries, and it can never be changed for any reason. No administrative task could ever be simpler than collecting the rent.

Landowners responded to that by adjusting the size of the units in which land rents were due, which is why a major demand of peasant movements was for standardized units.

The fact that rents were absolutely nonnegotiable led to other developments, such as the lord being so indifferent as to exactly who was renting from him that the renter was free to leave his status to whoever he chose in his will.

> amount has been the same for centuries, and it can never be changed for any reason

That's only true in a narrow and a relatively obtuse way. For starters that varied to a huge degree between regions and types of contracts.

e.g. in England freeholds were indeterminate and or more or less worked the way you are saying.

However most peasants didn't have those, before the plague the overwhelming majority of peasants were villeins (i.e. serfs), inheritance was customary and lords were not legally obliged to pass it to the serf's descendants (also there were all kinds of fees, fines and stuff besides the fact that they weren't legally free and there was no legal system to protect your rights).

Leaseholds and copyholds became much more common due to labour shortages after the plague. leaseholds were not inherited and market price based. Copyholds were inherited and rents customary fixes (but again lords could and would impose all kinds of arbitrary fees to get their cut).

Then you had the enclosures starting the 1400s (a lot of the land peasants relied on was common)

Again, you're generalizing. To say that doesn't work in medieval Europe is probably itself a generalization. But if you read the book, I don't think this would be a point you'd be arguing.

The Supreme Court explicitly allowed property taxes in Pollock decision. They haven’t for wealth taxes (they still might allow it but they also might not).

A federal property tax is also unconstitutional.

what is unconstitutional about a wealth tax?

>> what is unconstitutional about a wealth tax?

Article I, Section 9, Clause 4:

"No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken"

A wealth tax is generally considered to be a direct tax. If you wanted to enact one at the federal level, my understanding is that it would have to be done in proportion to the census. So, given that Mississippi is around 1% of the total US population, Mississippi would have to pay 1% of the wealth tax. Mississippi is the poorest US state, so that would be a very regressive tax.

An income tax is also considered to be a direct tax, that's why it took an amendment to the Constitution to enact one.

The Constitution applies to taxes at the federal level, not state. States could enact a wealth tax the same way they enact property taxes now (depending on their state Constitutions). The problem for them is that wealth is a bit more mobile than property.

And yes there are arguments about what a direct tax really meant in the language at the time the Constitution was written, there are arguments that the income tax should have been legal without an amendment. But that's not how it went down.

It’s not totally clear if it would be but here’s a summary: https://city-countyobserver.com/the-constitutionality-of-a-w...

I'm not a lawyer but my reasoning is this:

- as far as I know, double taxation by any given entity (Federal Gov) is unconstitutional

- a given dollar is taxed once as income. A federal wealth tax on the remainder of that dollar would be double taxation.

That does not prohibit the Federal Gov from taxing once, and your residential state from taxing you a second time.

There are other arguments about "direct taxation" I don't fully understand.

"Double taxation" is absolutely constitutional. Tons of things are double, triple, quadruple and more taxed.

I make a W2 salary. I pay federal income taxes on it. I pay FICA taxes on it. My employer pays payroll taxes on it. I might pay state income taxes on it. One event, tons of taxes. I take that quadruple taxed money and buy a dinner with a beer. Sales taxes on the overall sale, additional taxes on the alcohol, additional sales tax riders because I bought it in the touristy night life area. Triple taxes on my quadruple taxes, good lord! Unconstitutional!

Worthless phrase, "double taxation".

> That does not prohibit the Federal Gov from taxing once, and your residential state from taxing you a second time.

Once again, the several different taxes applied to my salary income. Then on that I go buy a gallon of gasoline, uh oh, federal gas taxes on that. Or I buy a plane ticket and that gets Federal Excise Tax (7.5% of the base fare), the Federal Segment Fee (currently $5.20 per segment), the TSA Security Fee ($5.60 per passenger), and more. Oof, "double taxation"! Even at the federal level!

Why do you expect a billionaire to steal from billionaires? a portion of non-essential stealing comes from respct, and of course these billionaires are all a part of the same club.

The other lens is simple as well: big fish don't go after the other big fish. That just ends in two hurt fish and no food. Trump thought he was going after a small fry and underestimated the response. just because Columbia folded doesn't mean all universities will.

lens #3: this clip explains it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLbWnJGlyMU

He's a bully but if everyone realizes they outnumber (and outmatch him) he loses his power).

Billionaires do pay income tax on investment income.

If they sell and incur capital gains. But they have so many better alternatives than you or me. And if they do incur capital gains they pay the same tax rate (or maybe 5 basis points higher, depending on your income) as you or me.

What alternatives are those, that enable realizing income without incurring income tax?

Borrowing against assets. Wealthy people get low, low rates, much lower than the hoi polloi would get on a HELOC or brokerage account margin loan. Banks like having them as clients.

Not only they get low rates, but if they have friends in the palace, they tend to be beneficiaries of large governmental contracts; during times of economic upset, they are the beneficiaries of large “monetary injections” that later cause inflation and prices to rise for all of us. During 2008, COVID, and the Mango recession the wealthy got much much wealthier, and all we got was expensive eggs and higher costs of living.

And how do you pay back the loan without realising a gain?

You don't pay back the loan. You die, your assets pass to your heirs, and their cost basis is stepped up. The heirs sell some of the assets to pay the loan back. They don't have capital gains because of the stepped-up cost basis.

That's the gist I got from reading https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...

There are finer points I don't understand such as:

1. Is the stepped-up cost basis available to the estate or only to the heirs? If it's to the estate, it's easier for the bank to trust they'll be paid back.

2. If the heir gets the stepped up cost basis, what legal guarantees does the bank have that the heir will pay the loan back?

And probably a lot else. I assume there's expensive lawyering and accounting involved in setting it up, so it isn't cost-effective unless you have a certain amount to shield from taxes in the first place.

Really? They're not going to get below prime. Nobody loans out money with a guaranteed prospect of below market returns. It's going to be above prime.

Usually about the lowest rate you can get is a mortgage on your house.

Of course, if your credit is bad, you're not going to get a good rate.

First of all, prime can be pretty good vs being taxed. Secondly, who knows what kind of sweetheart deal can be pulled for a small (in the big scheme of things) "loan" when banking of billions is at stake.

> Nobody loans out money with a guaranteed prospect of below market returns

Not to you or me. Giving powerful people who can send more business the bank's way a freebie on their personal accounts might make sense as a loss leader.

An ELOC for a HNWI can be significantly lower interest than a mortgage. They can often get "fed funds rate/LIBOR + 0.5%" or so. This is because they can accept a floating rate, while mortgage rates get locked in for 10-30 years.

Adam Neumann and several others in that era famously got very large zero interest personal loans because the bank wanted their corporate business.

Only short term gains are taxed as income. Long term capital gains tax caps at 20%, wildly lower than the top income tax bracket of 37%. And it's always possible to defer short term gains (e.g. put your trading money in an IRA).

IRA contributions are drastically limited to a $7000 cap per year under 50. Whether they should be is another question, and one worth exploring.

Long-term investment is rightly seen as something to be encouraged hence the lower tax rates. You can make the argument that the rate should be more like 0% since the money invested and risked was already taxed most likely...20% is a reasonable value for the market regulating infrastructure provided by gov't entities.

IRA caps are low, but loads of people earning enough that they'd reasonably save more than 7k annually have access to 401ks or similar accounts that raise the annual cap to >30k, vastly more than the typical person is saving.

The middle class isn't taking advantage of low capital gains rates to earn more from their taxable brokerage accounts because they haven't even filled up their tax-advantaged accounts.

There are loopholes to roll all sorts of nonsense into an IRA though. There was a whole news cycle in the 2012 election about Mitt Romney's $4M "IRA" or somesuch. And IRAs are hardly the only shelter from income tax, they're just the most obvious.

The simple truth is that wealth beyond the ~$10M level in the US pays essentially zero "income tax". It just doesn't happen, no one does it. Short term gains are only taxed for small investors who don't know any better.

According to Google:

"Entrepreneur Elon Musk announced on social networks that this year he will pay 11 billion dollars, thus becoming the largest taxpayer in the history of the USA."

Certainly someone we can take at his word, which is why my self driving Roadster flies me to work every day

That was on a sale of Tesla stock that he'd held for much longer than the long term rate threshold. He paid 20% on it, or plausibly less. I, personally pay a higher rate than that. Big numbers notwithstanding, Elon Musk shouldn't be paying less tax than I do, sorry.

If you hold stock long term, you will pay the same or less tax.

From Google: "For the 2025 tax year, individual filers won't pay any capital gains tax if their total taxable income is $48,350 or less"

If you've got a smart phone and a credit card, you can buy stock. See robinhood.com

You're dodging, and I know you're smart enough to know how this goes. I don't make money with long term stock, I make salary. I pay >>20% tax on that salary. Billionaries make, statistically, zero salary. All their income is on long term gains. All of it. So billionaires pay 20%, and that only if they're dumb enough not to find other shelters.

You're just saying "Well, that's the way the tax code works". I'm saying "The tax code sucks", and your point is non-responsive.

You can invest in stocks, too. Over time, it will pay more than your salary.

If you bought a house, and it goes up in value, that increase will be a capital gain taxed at capital gains rates.

So how "over time" do I need to wait until I start paying the same tax rate as a billionaire? Seems like your solution to "the rich pay less tax" is "well, everyone should just be rich then"?

"Let them eat cake" makes for extremely poor federal revenue policy.

Not at rates anywhere near tax rates on wages of a middle class worker.

Because investment income is not the same as wage income. Nor should they be.

Why not? Money is fungible. A dollar is a dollar. Why should investment dollars be taxed less than those earned through the sweat of one's brow?

Mainly to encourage people to save their money. You know, "work smarter, not harder"...

Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money though - that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists. Spending and borrowing is heavily encouraged at all levels, while investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income to prevent the poor from being able to "work smarter".

> investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income

Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.

> Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money

No, it isn't. People who save money are terrified of risk. There's nothing stopping anyone from investing the money.

> that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists

That's the excuse the government makes to inflate the money. You'll never see a politician point out the real reason for inflation. It's so they can spend it without raising taxes, but it does cause inflation, and inflation has to be blamed on something else. Anything but the truth.

> Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.

Buying a few stocks on an app is not anywhere near the same thing as being an accredited investor. Access to the most lucrative investment opportunities are not available to the average person, and that's almost entirely due to rules intentionally created to block anyone but the already wealthy.

The methods that institutional investors have, like market making or delta one strategies, aren't available because of the rules, it's because individual investors literally don't have the scale, flow and networks to do it.

Second of all, at the end of the day it's other people money's they're using, and are entrusted to manage. You can't demand people to just lend money to anyone, any sort of free market of loans will quickly coalesce into a few capital allocators.

Please, this thread is about the average wage-grade worker (money earned via the "sweat of one's brow"), not an "accredited investor". In this example, almost anyone in the US can open up a Robin Hood, Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity, etc account with probably $25. You don't need access to the most lucrative investment opportunities to make money; simply buy a standard S&P 500 ETF and call it a day. Over time, the chances of you making money with your investments are high, and the tax burden is lower, meaning you get to make and keep more money in your pocket. That is a win for everyone - not just the magical "billionaire".

The average worker in the US needs these sorts of opportunities to be self reliant. You don't need to be a billionaire to make money on the market, you just need a few dollars, some time, and the will to take a little risk. Stop hating on the average worker...

To say nothing of insider trading for those connected to folks setting policies that affect the economy

Right, because the average worker has insider connections that set policies that affect the economy. /s

What are the examples?

Sorry, nothing prevents the poor from working smarter. Just because you are poor does not mean you are uneducated. And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income. Literally anyone in the US can open an investment account and get started. The lack of desire is the real issue.

> And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income.

What? There is literally a class of people considered accredited or sophisticated investors.

To be considered an accredited investor by the SEC you must have a net worth of over $1M -not including- your primary residence, and you must have an annual household income of over $300K.

It is quite literally a wealth and income gate.

We have tax-advantaged retirement accounts to enable the middle class to save a reasonable amount in order to retire without being a burden on society. A typical saver doesn't have additional extra money leftover for a taxable brokerage account that exposes them to capital gains taxes.

Low capital gains taxes aren't meaningfully encouraging somebody making 75k and saving 10k annually to continue with their saving plan.

So you tax the person extra who needs to eat their money, and let the person who is swimming in money keep more of it?

And you earnestly can't understand why the poor want to increase taxes on the rich?

So we can tax it at a higher rate? Couldn't agree more.

Short term dividend income is taxed at the same rates as wage income.

Thanks, I should have been more clear.

When i needed money for a house, without a good security i had to pay 1.6 and with 0.8.

Rich get richer, poor never see this advantage.

Billionaires do not get a tax exemption

No but their earnings are mainly in their companies, and those can hire fleets of tax attorneys and accountants to crush their tax burden.

Once the money is in stocks, it doesn't get taxed unless you draw on it, but the billionaires can use strategies like buy, borrow, die (which last I checked only really works if you're north of ~ $300M) to avoid personal taxes.

Billionaires benefit most from the largest tax exceptions. No tricky accounting needed it’s baked blatantly into the tax code. Long term capital gains are specifically lower than short term capital gains. Further gains are only taxed on sale allowing a lifetime of growth to pass to the next generation tax free.

They also operate at a scale where many tax breaks become viable. CEO owners aren’t paying themselves nominal salaries because they are actually working for free. Creating a shell company to own your 50k car isn’t useful but it’s damn well worth it if you’re buying a 50+m dollar yacht for personal use. Turning depreciation into a nominal loss offsetting capital gains etc.

Meanwhile people of lesser means get stuck with all kinds of crap like a 10% early withdrawal penalty on 401k plans.

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If only governments weren’t so damn useful we could all avoid taxes.

Instead it’s mostly a question around who pays what share, and there’s some massive winners and losers.

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I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

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>> College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities.

> LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.

Because they already do it for billionaires: unlike university endowments, billionaire investment income is not tax-exempt by default, it's already subject to income tax [1].

[1] At least theoretically, ignoring the loopholes and tax-dodges billionaires can take advantage of with literal armies of accountants.

Billionaires pay 37% or 20% on their investment gains, can't really explain it to a 5 year old because congress and the IRS make it complex.

They don't pay anywhere close to that, there are tons of tricks to avoid paying that % on gains and the more money you have the more leeway for loopholes.

Very relevant in startup ecosystem as well (look up exchange funds, opportunity zones etc.)

40% of Federal income tax revenue comes from the top 1%.

Imagine how much federal revenue would increase if that 1% paid the same effective rate as say a typical plumber, rather than the <10% they currently pay. That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt.

shrug

I hear that sentiment a lot, but it doesn't seem right to me. My salary is pretty close to the median plumber's income, and my family's effective tax rate last year came in at... 1.6%. And that's with all retirement account contributions going toward Roth accounts. If we'd chosen to contribute to traditional IRA/401k accounts instead, the EITC and child tax credit would easily turn our tax bill negative.

A quick search tells me the median plumber salary is ~$60k. Your telling me your entire tax burden is ~1k? I find that hard to believe, and if true is pretty darn atypical. That's closer to what I was paying when I was making ~10/hr.

Yes. We had $50k of taxable W2 income ($63k including pre-tax insurance premiums and HSA contributions), $13k of taxable family leave benefits, $4k of interest/dividends (mostly qualified dividends, taxed at 0%), and $9k of long-term capital gains (taxed at 0%), making our pre-tax gross income about $89k. Only $66k of that is subject to taxes; the standard deduction brings that down to $37k, on which the tax is $4k. With a $2,000 child tax credit, $400 saver's credit, and $200 foreign tax credit, our tax liability is reduced to $1400, which is 1.6% of $89k.

"That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt."

It might also result in even more spending. I don't think that there is any "natural ceiling" when it comes to willingness of politicians to spend other people's money. The only ceiling is external - how much will the system bear.

> rather than the <10% they currently pay

I suspect you're using a different definition of "income" than the IRS. What is it?

The amount they report on their tax returns.

There's no case where that's true.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-...

For one thing, many plumbers do make it to the 1%: Trades are a profitable line of work for the industrious.

But the median 1%’er is paying 3-4X the effective rate of the overall median earner.

So if they're earning 50x as much, why are they only paying 3-4x the tax?

>> is paying 3-4X the effective rate > why are they only paying 3-4x the tax?

You have conflated the tax rate with the tax amount.

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They did! Then someone decided that was waste and installed incompetent people over it.

What percent of all income do they make?

Edit: it's an honest question. Maybe the top 1% paying 40% of all income taxes is too much tax. Maybe it's not enough. Without knowing how much of all the income they make it's a meaningless number.

According to the Tax Foundation[1], for tax year 2021, the top 1% of U.S. earners—those with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $682,577 or more—accounted for 26.3% of total AGI and paid 45.8% of all federal income taxes.

My personal opinion is that income tax should be more progressive, but I know that plenty of smart people disagree on that.

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...

Your source leans right-center, so probably good reason to suspect their reported top 1% AGI is low and their reported federal income tax estimate is high.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/tax-foundation/

It’s IRS data. You can download it from the IRS website and replicate the analysis and prove them wrong if you’d like.

https://fee.org/articles/5-reasons-to-avoid-ad-hominem-argum...

1. Does not follow. Just because you don't like someone's politics doesn't mean they're dishonest.

2. Your own link contradicts you. It says explicitly that that site hasn't failed any of their fact checks and doesn't use loaded words that they say are typical of that category. It says the categorization is because the site promotes libertarian policies.

There are a lot more taxes than the federal income tax. It happens to be one of the most progressive taxes. Anyone focusing on that and ignoring all the others is trying to scam you.

This is true for ultra high net worth individuals. They can do schemes like borrowing against equities and using the tax-free cash for expenses or purchasing other assets.

It is also true for many “normal” one percenters. For example there is a service for incorporated anesthesiologists where you tell them where you plan to go on vacation and what dates, and they create a bullshit anesthesiology conference, including the brochure and other artifacts, that meet the letter of the law IRS definitions for a valid business expense. None of this stuff ever hits AGI.

A simpler example: social security taxes hit a cap at a bit under $200,000/year. Somebody working fast food at minimum wage is paying 6.2% on every dollar they earn, while with my fancy tech job I’m paying a substantially lower percentage.

The social security "tax" should really be conceptualized as an investment, not a tax. The typical fast food worker has probably not passed the first bend point in the Social Security PIA formula, meaning that social security is giving them 90 cents on the dollar*. You, with your fancy tech job, are likely well past the second bend point: social security is only giving you 15 cents on the dollar* (and nothing, obviously, for earnings beyond the payroll tax ceiling).

It's a progressive system overall - but it wasn't designed for the purpose of wealth redistribution, hence the payroll tax ceiling.

* More precisely, their monthly benefit at full retirement age increases by 90 cents for each additional dollar of pre-retirement average monthly earnings, whereas yours only increases by 15 cents.

That's wild. I searched, though, and this is the closest I found: https://www.cerebraltaxadvisors.com/blog/vacation-business-t.... Is there a link you could share for the actual fake conference approach?

> This is true for ultra high net worth individuals.

Anyone can borrow money against their stocks, house, or credit card. It's tax-free as well.

> They can do schemes like borrowing against equities and using the tax-free cash for expenses or purchasing other assets.

Um, borrowing money is not "income". You have to pay it back, with interest.

If the asset appreciates faster than the interest rate there's never a need to sell. If the interest rate is lower than the capital gains tax rate, paying the interest is cheaper than paying taxes.

UHNW individuals can borrow until they die. Their assets pass to their heirs with a stepped up cost basis. The heirs can liquidate whatever's needed to pay off the loan and incur no tax.

Normal people can't do this. If I die owing money, my creditors will take it out of my estate before it passes to my heirs. UHNW estates can be structured differently and creditors can accommodate different payment terms (get paid second) because they know the money's there, and it saves taxes.

You can also read: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...

I might have gotten some things wrong. Or maybe the poster has.

> Their assets pass to their heirs with a stepped up cost basis

LOL, the stepped up basis gets hit with the inheritance tax.

> The heirs can liquidate whatever's needed to pay off the loan and incur no tax.

The loan and the interest payments and dont forget the inheritance tax.

> Normal people can't do this.

Yes, they can borrow money, die, the inheritors pay off the loan with the stocks, and then pay estate tax.

> LOL,

I assumed you asked a question to learn something. If you're not interested in learning, please continue believing that everyone gets the same tax system. Otherwise keep reading.

> the stepped up basis gets hit with the inheritance tax.

There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.

If you read the link I posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...

it has a fairly detailed explanation of how it's a completely different ballgame above a net worth of $300m. Grantor trusts allow sidestepping estate tax and...

> The loan and the interest payments

"The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was. Income that would normally have been derived by selling assets. Obviously it has to be paid back. No one said it's free money. Only that it's (largely) tax-free money.

The interest payments are lower than the income tax would've been on the same amount of income.

> and dont forget the inheritance tax.

You mean estate tax. Explained above.

> Yes, they can borrow money, die, the inheritors pay off the loan with the stocks, and then pay estate tax.

Not in the same way, and not nearly as effectively.

If there are specific inaccuracies with https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26... I'm open to learning.

> There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.

They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.

> "The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was

Borrowed money is not "income" in any sense of the word. When I was on summer vacation, I decided to take a class in accounting. One of the most productive uses of my time. I recommend it. P.S. if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income", that's called fraud.

> If you read the link I posted

I rely on my CPA for tax advice, not the internet, nor do I care much for misusing accounting terms. I've read too many articles that confuse income with revenue, wealth with income, and so on.

> They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.

The estate's value is reduced by what it owes.

> if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income"

sigh C'mon man, engage in good faith here. Stop saying things I didn't say.

If you can borrow cash against assets, don't have to pay principle until you die, and only pay low interest payments then it's functionally the same as selling those assets at a low tax rate. That's the principle.

And if you can use trusts to avoid estate taxes then there are no (or very low) taxes due ever.

> I rely on my CPA for tax advice

Ok ask your CPA what they know about using trusts to avoid estate taxes. Maybe it's BS but maybe it's true. Without some curiosity, how will you ever know?

> not the internet

More reputable sources than Reddit indicate it may be possible to use trusts to greatly reduce or eliminate estate tax:

https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/nam/en/insights/wealth-plan...

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grat.asp

https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/wh...

I don't think anyone is arguing that a loan is income in a legal sense. I am going to generously assume you misunderstood.

20%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-top-1-before...

The top 1% of people make 20.7% of the country's income. Given progressive tax rates, they should be paying a lot more than 40% of Federal income tax revenue, but rates don't scale enough, and aren't lax enough on other classes.

Can you explain your reasoning behind "they should be paying a lot more"? I kept hearing that they didn't pay their "fair share" when in fact it appears they pay double. It just seems like whatever they actually pay, measured in dollars or as a percentage, will always be widely regarded as not enough.

There are a couple of key phrases in politics that get used because there is no actual justification. "Fair" is one of them. It is impossible to achieve fairness in the tax system under any circumstances, it is always taking from someone who - from the fact that it isn't voluntary - we can assume quite likely disagrees with how the money is about to be used. Taxes are fundamentally arbitrary.

So in practice, if "fair" is used in politics the appropriate reading is often as a euphemism for "I think we have the numbers to push this interpretation of the world on people; it'll be good for us".

Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two? At what point would you accept that someone has more money than they'd reasonably need? And if you just thought of a maximum amount, then, wouldn't the acceptable tax rate over that amount, be 100%?

> Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two?

Sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687828

Not sure any of these companies have really appreciably made the lives of people better. Sure seem to have funnelled more money to Elon though.

No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.

As for making lives better, Starlink was provided free to disaster victims in N Carolina and the LA fires. Something the government failed at. Enabled by cheap reusable SpaceX rockets, another thing the government failed at. Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.

> No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.

Money was funnelled to Elon, he has a knack for getting government contracts. My memory is Tesla was powered by many grants for whoever was willing to work on electrification of society. The issue with that is that people want to put more money under the control of the government, despite it being the entity that funnelled money to Elon. I don't really understand that perspective, it seems a bit crazy - it'll end up with Elon getting more and more power and wealth. If we assume de-powering and de-wealthing Elon is a good, why push more money into the system that is wealthing and powering him? One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.

Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.

Government contracts where they buy something is not "funneling" money any more than you "funnel" money to Safeway when you buy tomatoes there. And if Musk had failed to deliver working rockets, NASA wouldn't have paid a dime. Musk bet his entire fortune on it.

Musk also sold those rockets to NASA for 10% of what NASA would otherwise have to pay.

> One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.

Tell us how that works.

> Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.

Are you suggesting that Musk is doing what's right for the country rather than what's right for his fortune?

> No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.

No he didn't.

> Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.

So is meth.

So every enterprise becomes state owned? Ilya Sutkever's new company is already worth 32B so 31/32 of it should be owned by the government in your world? Who makes the decisions for it?

I am alarmed by how quickly Americans leap from the suggestion that we tax the super-wealthy more, to this idea of full communism.

Assume you think the government is in a better position to spend that billion than the billionaire is to figure out what to buy or invest their money in?

I know he's out of favor with a lot of people, but would Elon have created SpaceX or The Boring Co or Neuralink, or helped start OpenAI if he hadn't had the spare billions to do so?

I'd much rather have multi-billionaires investing in the economy, and in the future, than giving additional money to the government.

So you'd rather have someone unelected with that money. Don't y'all live in a democracy?

We live in a Constitutional republic, with a Bill of Rights and the right to own property.

So, no?

Correct. Look up "Constitutional republic".

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/lesson-pl...

> when in fact it appears they pay double

They very obviously don't make only twice as much money as the bottom 80%, so how is that equal in the slightest?

You've mis-read the comment. This logic is not strictly related but it might help you understand what he was saying:

There are ~300 million people in the US who are not billionaires. If they earn, on average, $4 each that balances out a billionaire by income [0]. Since there are <1,000 US billionaires, the average american income would need to drop back to something around the $4,000 range for billionaires to be out-earning them.

This is why taxes tend to land heavily on the middle class, the billionaires don't control most of the money. If politicians want access to money, the biggest pot isn't the billionaires.

[0] And billionaires don't generally make billions in income because it is a wealth measure.

The top 1% aren't the billionaires. It's also not most of the millionaires. It's people earning a tiny bit less than 700k a year.

The suggestion is simply that the top 0.1% pay more - as they will be little affected by it.

It's important to distinguish between wealth and income. Like, I would say that a lot of HN readers are in the top decile of income in whatever country they live in, but far, far fewer are in the top decile of wealth.

Personally, I think that we should tax wealth more in general, and probably make the income tax a bit more progressive (I currently pay 52% which sucks, but if I had to pay a few pp more to get rid of homelessness and poverty in my country then I'd be ok with it).

> as they will be little affected by it

Everything you tax away from wealthy people is removed from their investments.

For example, if all of Musk's income above $1m were taxed away, the following companies would never have existed:

1. Tesla

2. SpaceX

3. Starlink

4. Neuralink

You didn't have to sweeten the pot, I was already on board

Its still less than the fines most of those companies have incurred in the space of a year.

Do you think they were arguing for taxing away all wealth over $1 million?

If they were taxed $1, that's $1 taken away from investments.

Ok, but how does that prevent the existence of what you mentioned?

Do you think they weren't? What about that logic doesn't apply to millionaires?

Or to put it another way, if I make the same claim about millionaires; how do you expect to argue that they will be greatly affected by being taxed more? A 1% tax increase on someone's gross income is never going to "greatly" affect them unless, but if it happens 100 times they will be pennyless.

If you take money away from someone, they will have less money and do less because they have less resources.

I'm not sure what the disagreement is? None of the stuff you said is wrong, but I don't see how it is a response to my comment. Nor do I see how it is particularly relevant in a conversation where I assume the idea is a different progressive taxation rate.

There isn't a disagreement, it is a question (technically, several questions). The hint is in the "?". Your 1 sentence comment isn't long enough to respond to directly without more information, even if I wanted to.

I am going to abstract from the hard 1 million number which is obviously low in 2025, and just base my arguments on maybe a few million as a reasonable limit. Make it ten or twenty if that fits your mental model better. You have no way of knowing that those companies would never have existed. They could very well have existed, just no billionaire would have been the majority owner. The money is not removed from their investments, but they are required to divest them to other owners. Funding mechanisms for the companies now self-funded by billionaires would be quite different if the ultra-wealthy were never allowed to exist. It would require more cooperation, but it would not therefore be impossible.

If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not. If some people would be less motivated and do less than they do now, it would be a lesser evil that creating oligarchs thirsty to dominate whenever they get the chance. As long as people can live a good and comfortable life, they do not have rights to more than that.

People who argue against progressive taxes tend to ignore the fact that modern capitalism is basically a game, one where the rules greatly favor the richest, who have virtually unlimited leverage compared to the average person. They make money exponentially more easily than others. It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes. Every once in a while an adult needs to step in to keep the game fun for everybody, and not just let the best player dominate others and make everybody else miserable. Maybe if we did this, the price gouging and constant turning of the screws would give way to a society where fair trade was the default cultural and economic norm.

Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.

> If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not

If you tax their money away, they have that much less capital to invest.

> It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes.

Only if you don't like electric cars, cheap space rockets, cheap global communications, and enabling people with spinal injuries to need a lot less help.

> Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.

Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.

I suggest you check out what happened under communism in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc., under communism where people came before wealth and power. Your ideas sound good in a textbook and in the classroom, but they just don't work in the real world.

How come the system rewards someone like Musk with so much but doesn't do the same for people like Norman Borlaug (green revolution), Frederick Banting (insulin), Karl Landsteiner (ABO blood groups) or Katalin Karikó (mRNA vaccines)?

What sort of things can our society do to ensure that the people who dedicate their lives to eliminating the suffering of so many are compensated for what I'm sure we can agree are absolutely amazing accomplishments?

> Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.

There are, unfortunately. [0] Though Putin's gold palace did have to be stripped for fungal problems, later.

Musk does go around with a large amount of debt, such as the 13bil he currently owes. So he's less likely to have a prepper vault. That does not mean that human greed doesn't turn to cartoons for inspiration, at times.

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI

Musk's companies are hype stocks. Today's many successful tech companies run because of the commodification of x86 hardware, allowing them to build massive data centers, run cheap ad platforms, provide things like YouTube, etc, for free. All of this was because of Linux, which Linus Torvalds created. Before Linux and commodity x86 made it reliable and useful, every company had to pay Sun/IBM exorbitant amounts. In no conceivable universe has Musk created more value than Linus. Yet, Linus is not a billionaire.

Most businesses are funded by taxpayers, either directly or indirectly. Elon Musk is a billionaire because of DOE funding, or there would have been no Tesla today.

By January 2009, Tesla had raised $187 million and delivered 147 cars. Musk had contributed $70 million of his money to the company.

In June 2009, Tesla was approved to receive $465 million in interest-bearing loans from the United States Department of Energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.

What is the right percentage for the 1% to pay? State a percent.

I keep here this “the rich should pay more”, but rarely do I hear a number.

Whatever it takes to restore 1960s level of inequity.

By whatever measure works, eg old school gini coefficient or something more modern.

You're right though: food fights over decimal points and gaming the rules nicely obfuscates any constructive debate about what kind of society we want.

Your answer begs the question - why is the 1960’s the right target?

And if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax and pre-benefit distribution, it’s not going to change with high taxes and high redistribution (and yes you mentioned it may not be the right measure).

And if the Gini coefficient is calculated based on income data from the US, do we know if the better Gini from 1960’s wasn’t just due to income not being reported to the IRS?

> why is the 1960’s the right target?

Realpolitik. Proper Nordic levels of (lesser) inequity is not likely in the USA. But selling the nostalgia of our '60s era prosperity might fly.

> if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax

Firstly, then pick a different different metric. Gini coefficient is merely the most familiar.

Secondly, you asked about proper income tax rate. In my pithy reply, I implied outcomes are more important than implementation details, but slap fights (like this one) about those details are used to distract. (I think the kids today call that "bike shedding".)

Also, I did not explicitly state that measures of wealth distribution is the central issue. I regret the omission.

--

While I have your attention: How do you think our tax regime should be structured?

Feel free to link to any prior explanations (posts) I may have missed, so you don't have to repeat yourself.

Tax every dollar over $999,000,000 at 100%.

50% tax.

For perspective: UK tax rate bands are 40% between £50k-£125k, 45% above that. So 50% tax for the 1% isn't wild at all in absolute (although it's a big departure from the american approach to taxes, of course)

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1...

That seems excessive.

Corporations are persons, right? Why is their tax rate just half that of real people?

Why aren't all persons taxed equally?

The top 1% own 39% of everything in the U.S. You are not in the top 1%. Why are you complaining again?

The city claims to own my house, as they charge me rent every year, and have a long list of things I'm not allowed to do with it.

That rent went up over 10% last year. For contrast, the rent control people want to cap rent increases to 7%.

My heart bleeds for you.

I appreciate your concern.

If they don't wanna pay so much in taxes, they should stop having so much money. Taxes function to raise revenue and thus have to go where the money is.

This conversation is about billionaires, not the top 1%.

There are no loopholes for investment gains. If you are talking about offsetting losses and delaying gains, those options would likely be available to endowment funds.

I think the 9 billion is very misleading. More than half goes to hospitals affiliated with Harvard. I am not sure but I don't think they get anything from the endowment. The impact of loosing this money would be very uneven across different parts of the university and hospitals affiliated with it.

The faculty of arts and science would be fine. Yes, some cuts, a hiring freeze etc. The med school and public health school would feel a big impact. They employ so many people on "soft money" through grants including many faculty members.

The hospitals are a different story and I am not sure why they are even lumped together.

Yeah this isn't purely a question of Harvard's P&L being dependent on subsidies. The money in question is grants attached to specific practices or research. The money isn't just gratuity for Harvard being so great, it's awarded for specific objectives that Harvard was deemed capable of delivering. Cutting off the money isn't going to hurt Harvard, it's going to stop all the programs the grants were funding.

Stopping those research programs is a choice. They could also choose to pay for them out of the endowment.

People here have little idea about how Harvard works. Harvard is financially vulnerable. It is currently running on a deficiency considering the endowment. And Harvard can't freely use most endowment for personnels anyway. If the government takes away funding, Harvard will have a financial crisis. I guess the leadership made the decision in hope someone could stop the government before bad things happen but when bad things do happen, you will probably see mass layoffs of researchers in particular in life sciences and biomedical research.

I mean, we literally just saw what happened at JHU when their USAID funding vanished. Everybody on that soft money got laid off.

That’s what makes stands like this hard for admin: you’re risking massive layoffs in the programs that are often the least political to defend the academic freedom of the programs that are often the most political. Columbia made one decision. Harvard is making another. You could make Lord Farquaad jokes here, but if it alone loses its federal funding in these expensive research areas, it will lose its preeminence in those areas for a long time.

I guess Harvard saw the decision at Columbia made the situation worse [1], so they decided to make a different one.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-all-rese...

Some universities should make sacrifices for academic freedom, yes. That's what they are there for!

I wouldn't say this easily if I were the sacrifice, especially as a visa holder.

With $50B in the endowment, how are they financially vulnerable? Honest question.

Much of the endowment is earmarked towards specific ends. It is not a slush fund for discretionary spending.

Earmarked implies discretionary so it is discretionary

That's not what discretionary means in this context. The funds having been originally earmarked at the discretion of the originator, means they are no longer available for any purpose at the discretion of the trustee, meaning they are no longer discretionary. You are confusing the funds having once been earmarked at someone's discretion for their being discretionary, which they haven't been since the point when they were earmarked at the originator's discretion.

Most of it is not discretionary, no matter what words random Internet commenters use to describe it.

I am replying to the GP. GP must be mistaken. It was Harvard’s choice to operate this way financially

I understand. I am saying they are correct that much of Harvard's endowment is not discretionary, even if they accidentally used a term that implies that it is.

This might be true for Harvard, but I don’t think free speech should only be for those who can afford it. I know my school couldn’t if the government came knocking.

Harvard is free to say whatever it wants and operate without government funds. A shocking idea may be for a school to actually use the tuition paid by students to educate them.

This is forced speech for all those of us who disagree with Harvard's politics and yet have our tax dollars sent to support it anyways.

That’s a very odd perspective.

Could you explain how government research funding constitutes forced speech?

If an individual who receives a government tax credit (say EITC) speaks out contrary to your politics, is the government allowed to withhold that credit too?

My money is taken from me at gunpoint by government forces I cannot resist without facing life in prison. I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with. The government should be far smaller or we cannot have rights as the government will intrude on us more and more.

> I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with.

There certainly is _no_ government spending supported by _all_ Americans, so your position isn't a very practical approach to governance.

Lots of government spending is supported by the vast majority of Americans. Police, courts, fire, ambulance, and military (though size is up for debate).

1st Amendment is more important than you not liking a specific spending of government funds.

[flagged]

> My first amendment right not to be forced to support causes I disagree with is being harmed. I don't want my tax dollars going to support discrimination against Asians and others.

This is absolutely NOT what the 1st amendment is about, you are confusing tax and speech but they are treated separately in the Constitution.

The reason for that is simple, if every taxpayer could deny the funding of everything they didn't agree with, we'd have a very different Constitution. The ability to FULLY defund something YOU don't agree with requires the powers of a king... If you scale that ambition back a little and ask only for the power to decide where YOUR own money goes, you'd be speaking of something other than a tax because this isn't the way taxes work.

I'm not explaining this because I see much good coming out of Harvard, in fact I don't, but that's a different conversation. Both political parties, as well as certain private organizations have their hands deep in students' brains - it's the ultimate cookie jar after all. The real problem is the attempt to legitimize overt government meddling in the "cookie jar" instead of focusing on transparency and examination of the current forces involved in that process.

BTW can you elaborate on your assertion about "discrimination against Asians"? Neither the government letter nor Harvard's response mention Asians! Were you trying to comment on another post? Maybe something about the tariffs?

  > The ability to FULLY defund something YOU don't agree with requires the powers of a king...

You have a very strange idea of how government works.

You don’t get a veto on all speech from anyone who receives funds from the public purse, and it’s not a First Amendment issue that you don’t.

That’s such an incredibly odd premise; where do you get that idea from?

It's conservative doublespeak in regards to free speech and small government we've been seeing for the past 10 years.

By free speech, they mean the lack thereof. By small government, they mean a monarch.

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past"

- Jean-Paul Sartre

You don't need the whole bloated government if you just have one guy at the top making all the decisions /s

> My first amendment right not to be forced to support causes I disagree with is being harmed.

Fascinating. Do I have a similar right to stop paying taxes, because I don’t support the things the President is saying, or the causes Mike Johnston is adding to the budget?

[dead]

Somehow I doubt you would apply these same principles to someone who doesn't believe in police and objects to their taxes being used to fund them.

Republicans won the presidency and both branches of the legislature. The people voted for their money to no longer be spent foolishly.

So you support impinging on free speech as long as the majority of voters is against something? That's exactly the kind of thing the Constitution is meant to prevent.

Or do you agree that it is not a violation of free speech to fund police when there are citizens who disagree with it? You can't have it both ways.

I posted this deep in another part of this discussion - but the majority of the money being discussed here isn’t really for Harvard or educating its students - the largest portion are for NIH grants funding to Boston area hospitals, most of which have affiliations with Harvard Medical School.

> The Crimson analyzed the proposed Trump administration funding cuts and estimated that the five hospitals’ multi-year commitment from the NIH is over $6.2 billion and the University’s multi-year federal research funding exceeds $2.7 billion.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...

I’m sure that you have legitimate issues with politics at Harvard, but penalizing a number of independent non-profits that serve the community because they associate with a University that the administration disagrees with also seems to be forcing speech.

I don't want the government to fund any of that. The government should be far far smaller. The bigger the government is, the less rights you have.

Just watch what happens when they exercise their Constiutional right to "say whatever it wants."

Stephen Miller made it clear this morning: "Under this country, under this administration, under President Trump, people who hate America, who threaten our citizens, who rape, who murder, and who support those who rape and murder are going to be ejected from this country."

If the government decides you "hate America" or your business supports some hypothetical rapist/murderer they imagined, you're going to end up ejected from this country without due process.

They're absolutely teeing up to be able to deport whoever they want. Reasonable people should be (and are) very afraid.

Irrelevant and without basis.

Basis: words of the president on various different occasions, for example Trump wants to send U.S. citizens with criminal records to be imprisoned in EL Salvador.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-citizens-prison-el-salvador...

Relevance is subjective.

That's just how government works, buddy. I disagree with my tax dollars being spent to shoot wild horses and fund Lockheed-Martin, but here we are. It's not forced speech, because you have representatives who (in a working system) you could ask to fight against tax dollars being spent on something you dislike. You have a voice, you just don't get to have the only voice.

The majority of Americans elected Republicans specifically based on their platform of eliminating waste and corruption like these funds that go to Harvard and directly fund anti Asian discrimination. The President is simply following through on his mandate. Why do you oppose democracy?

Democracy doesn't mean that a plurality of voters in a single presidential election gets to overturn the Constitution and established law.

Communicating to elected officials that you will not vote for them if they continue their current behaviour is not anti-democracy, it's the main feature of democracy. You are actively participating in the democratic process by doing so.

i disagree with you but i still think you should be allowed to drive on public roads and access publicly-funded health care that are funded by my tax dollars.

Okay, disband all of CBP and then we can talk.

They could also possibly fire some administrators. Not every vice-provost out there is strictly necessary.

Just a few years ago, Harvard Crimson carried an op-ed complaining about the bloat:

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-burea...

Cannot edit my original comment, because I wrote it 16 hours ago, but I am somewhat surprised by the fluctuating up/downvote count, going from 0 to 6 and back.

It seems that the very idea that some employees in academia might be superfluous is very disagreeable for some HNers.

Why? Institutional bloat is a well known problem, it happens in private sector, public sector, churches, military, wherever you can think of. It probably already happened in Ur and Nineveh. Why should academia be somehow immune from this problem?

And if it is not immune, shouldn't it try to do something with it?

There was a massive increase in tuition in the last generation or so. How much of that extra money goes to the core mission of the universities, and how much is spent on "nice to have extras", starting with opulent campuses and ending with "Standing Committees on Visual Culture and Signage"?

Everyone has to trim the fat down a bit from time to time. Even Google and Meta. Why not Harvard.

People are reflexive. In a different context, driven by someone else, many of the people currently defending Harvard would instead be pointing out that Harvard and the other elite institutions are part of "the problem". In general this year, it's been interesting to me to see Republicans become protectionists and Democrats become neoliberal free traders, both parties flipping their talking points to either align or disagree with Trump.

People in HN have been complaining about university admin bloat for many years. In this thread, the problem is it’s political and people struggle with the cognitive dissonance about that stuff.

This article lists out why it's not good of an idea as you think.

>Universities’ endowments are not as much help as their billion-dollar valuations would suggest. For a start, much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose, funding a specific professorship or research centre, say. Legal covenants often prevent it from being diverted for other purposes. In any case, the income from an endowment is typically used to fund a big share of a university’s operating costs. Eat into the principal and you eat into that revenue stream.

>What is more, eating into the principal is difficult. Many endowments, in search of higher income, have invested heavily in illiquid assets, such as private equity, property and venture capital. That is a reasonable strategy for institutions that plan to be around for centuries, but makes it far harder to sell assets to cover a sudden budgetary shortfall. And with markets in turmoil, prices of liquid assets such as stocks and government bonds have gyrated in recent days. Endowments that “decapitalise” now would risk crystallising big losses.

More worrying is the fact that the federal government can inflict even more harm aside from cutting off federal funding:

>the Trump administration has many other ways to inflict financial pain on universities apart from withholding research funding. It could make it harder for students to tap the government’s financial-aid programmes. It could issue fewer visas to foreign students, who tend to pay full tuition. With Congress’s help, it could amend tax laws in ways that would hurt universities.

https://archive.is/siUqm

if a $50,000,000,000 endowment can not be used to smooth things over in times of need or turbulence then the endowment managers need to make changes.

You can not possibly convince me that Harvard’s endowment doesn’t trivially have one year of liquidity in it.

I’m sure it’s not structured to handle a 7% annual draw down for the next 30 years. But it’s got plenty of time to restructure if needed.

The point is, it's eating your seed corn.

Spending a billion of it is not just spending a billion. It's spending the many billions it was meant to provide, in interest, over the next decades.

It's extraordinarily expensive to spend it directly, as opposed to spending the income it generates.

You can certainly do it, in a true emergency. But you certainly don't want to make a habit of it.

> The point is, it's eating your seed corn.

I've seen arguments of this general shape and form many times about this, and yes, this is true. In general, Harvard should not spend down it's endowment when it has other sources of revenue.

I think the issue here is that this _is_ an emergency. Harvard should consider that Federal money gone for the near future and spend and plan to spend as if they will not have it. There is no point in them continuing to exist as an institution if they accede to these absurd demands.

> You can certainly do it, in a true emergency.

This seems to qualify for many people though. Less pain than complying in many minds I am sure.

>You can certainly do it, in a true emergency. But you certainly don't want to make a habit of it.

Harvard's endowment returned 9.6% last year, growing the total by $2.5 billion. In the previous year, the endowment returned 2.9%, though the total endowment decreased as the gain was offset by contributions to operating expenses. [0]

In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.

[0] https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/10/financial-report-fis...

>In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.

The argument isn't that Harvard should never draw from its endowment, like it's saving for retirement or something. The argument is that they shouldn't raid endowments by doing additional withdraws to fund the current shortfall.

>The argument isn't that Harvard should never draw from its endowment, like it's saving for retirement or something

The argument I was replying to was actually of exactly this form.

That argument also implied that any endowment spending to cover shortfalls would necessarily be of the principal, but that is also incorrect.

In fact, the White House just responded with a $2.2B funding freeze—an amount that would have been covered by last year's endowment return.

> the many billions it was meant to provide, in interest

THATS WHAT WHAT THE FIFTY BILLION IS

It’s a war chest that has been carefully cultivated over decades. The fifty billion is the result of a hundred years of investment and management.

If it can’t be spent now then when the fuck exactly can it be spent? In 200 years you’d still be saying “this is the seed corn for tomorrow!!”

I’m not saying burn it down to zero. But the whole fucking point of an endowment is to provide stability during trying times. If you can’t use the interest that has been accumulated now then when the fuck can you??

No. You misunderstand endowments.

Their principal is not intended to be spent, ever. The point of an endowment is not to "provide stability during trying times".

The point is to spend the interest that it generates, in normal times, in perpetuity. Which Harvard already does and has always done. Interest from their endowment is already a large part of their revenue. That's what the endowment is for.

How much is the principle? Because I bet you $3.50 it’s multiple billion less than the current balance.

Returns fluctuate wildly, while expenses are roughly constant. So obviously expenses are drawn conservatively. And if investment works well, you can grow the endowment too. Obviously it is up to the university to strike the right balance.

The more it grows, the less risk there is in the future. But if you start spending it more than the levels of its average returns, that's high risk. And the point is it's supposed to last forever.

You also need to grow it simply to account for inflation and other rising costs.

Sounds like they have significant buffer to scratch the surface of their dragon hoard for one, perhaps even two, years.

They’d probably want to reduce spending and hit up donors if they felt they need to power through a four year stretch.

> The point is to spend the interest that it generates, in normal times, in perpetuity.

Yes, but these are not normal times.

> The point is, it's eating your seed corn.

How much is “enough” money to hoard in an endowment though? We hear lots of arguments about how the concept of a billionaire is itself obscene, why can’t we apply to same logic to institutions? E.g. much like people say “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, perhaps endowments over some similarly arbitrary value shouldn’t exist either.

Well, it's proportional to their spending to some degree. It takes a world-class endowment to fund a world-class university. And it's all from private donations.

Harvard doesn't make a profit. It educates students and does research. It sounds like you're arguing Harvard should be broken up or something? But based on what? Is it abusing its power or something?

> it's eating your seed corn

Paraphrasing J. P. Morgan, the man, in the midst of the Panic of 1907 reassuring a banker concerned about dipping into reserves to pay out depositors: "what are reserves for if not times like these."

Eat the seed corn. Fight. Then raise unencumbered donations from the billionaires whose balls haven't fallen off. If Harvard plays this correctly, they could become one of the flag bearers of the legal and financial resistance to Trump.

To some degree it already has been. After the economic genius Larry Summers paid for the Allston campus expansion with some dodgy loans that blew up in their faces during the 2008-9 financial crisis, there was some attempt to reform the endowment, back off some risky investments, and build up more of a free-cash emergency fund. This actually paid off during the Covid lockdowns, which the university was able to weather without too much disruption.

The other oddity of Harvard's endowment is that each school at the university basically has it's own fund--so that for instance, the Business school and the Law school don't have to worry about money the same way that FAS (the main undergraduate school) does.

Not to mention all those legal covenants have another party to them - they're not written in stone. I'm sure a good number of them would be willing to considering loosening legal restrictions if it would really help.

Endowments have come from people over the entire history of the institution. The vast majority of the endowers are likely deceased and won't be able to agree to change the terms of their endowment.

And yet some trust, estate, or descendant somewhere ultimately has the authority to change those agreements. These things are not immutable facts of the universe, they can be changed.

As for the minority where that is not the case, it also means nobody will have standing to sue if the school decides to stop letting someone who died 200 years ago decide exactly how Harvard's money will be spent.

They made a big fuss a few years ago about what I read imo as over investing in foreign farm land, esp south America and Africa. Which seems to have completely flopped, if not yet realized.

At this point, you really do have to question whether each university hire was merit based or not, including the fund managers.

I don't know that making a bad investment makes them terrible fund managers, just as making a good one would not make them brilliant. Don't you need a string of data points?

If you are going to claim that they were not hired on merit, and that they are bad investment managers, you'll need to provide a lot more evidence on both points, rather than a "just asking questions" post on HN. Otherwise, it's just snark and not in keeping with HN's ethos.

>...much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose

I would assume that a tax on an endowment would be like a capital gains tax, i.e., taxed on the investment growth. Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?

It's reserved because the donation was earmarked for a specific purpose (eg. a business program or whatever), not because they reserved 30% on tax owing.

>Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?

It's probably safe to assume donors are competent enough that such glaring loopholes don't exist. After all, the concept of endowments being used as long term savings, rather than spent immediately, isn't exactly a new concept. Failing to take this into account would mean any earmarks are void after a few decades.

It’s never a guarantee when it comes to government funding. It can come and go at any time. Take the politics out of it, Harvard has been operating at risk with this funding source for some time.

He's not gonna be happy they can operate financially without his assent

He still controls the congress, the white house and the supreme court. So he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts. Since rule of law seems on fairly shaky ground right now in any case.

He may issue an EO against them similar to the ones he's successfully used to bring major law firms he doesn't like to heel: ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs, revoke clearances held by anyone employed by Harvard, and ban them from Federal property. Maybe with some other creative terms thrown in to mess with universities in particular.

> ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs

Oh, those federal jobs he’s been DOGEing for the past weeks in an attempt to demotivate folks out of them?

This administration’s incoherence comes back to bite it in the ass again.

That is always a risk of working for the government. Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.

>Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.

Perhaps in theory, but not in practice as a historical norm. And, certainly not for "standard" non-appointed, bureaucratic roles.

It's important that we don't normalize what we're seeing here, in terms of quality or degree.

No, this is not the case. This is a recent and never before seen phenomenon. Please, do not try to downplay it. And, if you do, do not do it dishonestly.

That has essentially never been a risk for a non-appointed government employee in the United States of America, at least for the past century or so. We Don't Politicize the Bureaucracy. And that was at least in part the secret sauce to our generational success, that we could immunize the workings of the government from the pique and emotion of its leadership.

Or we didn't. Now we do. Kinda sucks.

Since ~1885 and the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Refo...

Submitted some historical breadcrumbs here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43686221

Well this was advice my father (an academic and lifelong straight ticket Democrat) gave me decades ago. So it was nothing specific to the current administration.

The difference is that the people affected by whim were, by design, only supposed to be the political appointees, not the civil service rank and file. Those jobs existed for as long as Congress decided that they produced useful results for the American people. Positions could be eliminated by virtue of Congress deciding that a shift in policy was needed, eg fewer Kremlinologists after 1989, but that is not a whim, that is a result of debate.

The current administration is making all positions political, and in doing so, performing an end run around the legislative branch.

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> You want to argue that Joe Biden didn't weaponize every branch of the bureaucracy against Republicans?

He didn't. I don't know why you guys think he did. A lot of those agencies, like the Justice Department, act independently.

It's not like any Republicans were jailed. This is starting to seem less like a legitimate take, and more like a strange fetish for persecution.

For the record, if people like President Trump want to no longer be under the eye of Justice, they should stop doing illegal things. It seems every other American citizen has figured that out. It is shameful our own president has not.