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  • @gmtom@lemmy.world
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    2310 months ago

    I mean on one hand I agree with you. But on the other I don’t think you need to be a “tax professional” to have a valid opinion on taxes.

    Like I’m sure you express opinions you are not a leafing expert on right?

    • @solstice@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Actually I try to go out of my way to not have opinions on complicated technical subjects I know nothing about. Tend to defer to whatever the experts’ consensus is. It’s shocking to me how few people do that.

      Edit - lol at the downvotes, thanks for proving my point.

      • Primarily0617
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        1310 months ago

        so you don’t vote presumably? since every issue you could decide your vote on is obviously highly technical once you drill down into it

          • Primarily0617
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            10 months ago

            And both sides have their own experts on every single topic. What’s your point?

            • @solstice@lemmy.world
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              310 months ago

              There’s consensus on climate change which I’m not an expert in so I defer to the opinion of the global scientific community. And there’s consensus among doctors and scientists worldwide on vaccines masks etc. That instantly makes it a lot easier to determine which individual or party to vote for.

              Tax is really complicated and technical and most people (including the ~90% of accountants who don’t work in tax) don’t understand it at all. It would be cool if people would be more quiet about their opinions on it since they don’t understand the first thing about it.

              Sidebar: imagine arguing with a doctor about medicine, a biologist about evolution, a lawyer about law. Never ceases to amaze me how many people have the hubris and audacity to argue with an SME about a technical subject in their own field 🙄

              • Primarily0617
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                10 months ago

                There are experts on both sides of climate change. And the ones on the “it’s a hoax” side would obviously beat you in a debate about it. Those ones are likely bought and paid for, but seeing as how you have literally no way of confirming that, by deferring to one side over the other you’re making a personal evaluation of the information presented to you as a non-expert. You know, like ordinary people do when they have opinions on things.

                You don’t need to understand the entire US tax code to have an opinion on tax incentives. Much like you don’t have to be an airline pilot to know that a plane crashing isn’t a good thing.

                • @solstice@lemmy.world
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                  010 months ago

                  No need for debate with the .1% if there’s consensus among the other 99.9%. I’ve never been in space or measured the earth or anything and I’m not Eratosthenes so I can’t really prove the earth is a sphere. I defer to the experts who know such things. I bet a sufficiently skilled flat earth debater would “win” a debate with me. Doesn’t matter though because I would just walk away saying they’re a fucking moron.

                  Most tax threads are like flat earthers arguing cosmologists.

                  • Primarily0617
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                    410 months ago

                    So if somebody asks you if you’d like to be hit in the head by a brick, you’d presumably answer “I don’t know”. Unless you happen to have read a study performed by experts on the exact impact to cranial integrity of various sizes of brick?

                    Or are you a normal person who can synthesise opinions based on existing (but not exhaustive) data?

                    Does 2 and 2 make 4, or can we not be sure until I first cite some leading light in the pure mathematics space who can back my assertion up? Do I also have to provide the proportion (and on a side note, I’m not really sure how you decide which proportion is “correct”, since this problem is entirely recursive) of other mathematicians who agree with them so that you can make a rational judgement on whether to ignore them or not? What’s the threshold where you just throw your hands up in the air and proudly claim ignorance?

                    Similarly, people usually don’t have to understand every line of the 2023 US Tax Code to understand that giving people tax deductions for doing a thing incentivizes that thing.

      • @NBJack@reddthat.com
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        310 months ago

        I HaVe oPiNioNs on tHAt!..

        But seriously, I think while admirable, this would be the death of traditional leadership, where there’s a heavy reliance on abstraction of deep concepts to make informed decisions for larger entities (government, corporations, non profits, etc.). Make of that what you will.