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I gave you a story. You demanded a reference. I gave you a reference. You rejected the story among other things because it described the IRS acting too much as cartoon villains. This is a rejection based on nothing but priors of a just world.
You asked how someone could owe more in taxes than they ever had. I gave you a scenario. You then demanded examples. I don't know any examples who are famous enough you could verify them. People who are ruined usually aren't ruined quite as famously as Bernie Madoff or even the Wall Street Bets bunch. "Guy gets screwed by the taxman, ends up with his wages heavily garnished for years" is dog-bites-man.
Why would I do that? I could go some effort and no matter what you'd declare it just. You've already demonstrated that. The IRS didn't literally break open the children's piggy banks to pay their parents tax debt, but they did the next best thing, but that's not enough for you to concede there was any injustice done, nor that this is a pretty cartoon-villain thing to do.
No. I did not reject the story because "it described the IRS acting too much as cartoon villains." I expressed skepticism because, among other things, it described the IRS acting too much like cartoon villains. When someone writes a political polemic and includes anecdotes that have his enemies acting as cartoon villains, anecdotes for which the details seem implausible and documentation seems sketchy, it's entirely rational to be skeptical and want more details. You would absolutely do this if the story contradicted your biases, rather than flattering them. So I pointed out that the actions allegedly taken here by the IRS don't make a lot of sense (even if you believe they are cartoon villains), because tax enforcement.... doesn't work like that. If I got the whole story, maybe I could be convinced everything happened exactly as you are assuming. But it looks very much like a political just-so story. Again, you are not naive, you know perfectly well how both sides use stories like this, distorting what actually happened and eliding important details, and you'd suddenly become the most skeptical and fact-focused person here if it were a story about, say, Trump, acting like a cartoon villain in ways that don't appear to make much sense.
Let's go back through my reasoning. Which part of my understanding of the law and taxes do you think was in error?
Yes. "Giving a scenario" doesn't mean much when your scenario is something you made up out of whole cloth and does not make much sense.
You're the one who said it wouldn't happen to an "average guy." Do you have any actual examples? There is a difference between obnoxiously saying "Link?" as a dismissal, and asking you to substantiate something has ever actually happened rather than just taking it on faith that it did because you say so because you heard it happened once.
You're really fixed on "just world fallacy." Being skeptical when someone insists that every story he hears about his enemies acting like irrational Nazis is true and that questioning it just means you're partisan is not clinging to a just world.
No, no, no. Don't skip over a discussion that you declined and then complain about the imaginary response I gave in your head. Once again: what is the actual thing you the IRS did, what do you think was the (claimed) legal basis on which they did it, and why do you think it was a "cartoon-villain" thing to do? And let's say that it all happened - what assertion about the IRS do you think any of your anecdotes has proved? Even if I stipulated that these two incidents you found old clippings about happened in exactly the way you claim? Can you foresee the application of this same logic about, say, the police, or Republicans, or Jews?
Use some reasoning here.
As I said, priors.
There is a large gap between "average guy" and being famous enough to be heard of.
It means that when someone's enemies indeed act like irrational (or even rational) Nazis, you will not believe that they are.
Yes. My priors are that most people, regardless of ideology, act according to plausible, recognizable motives, and that if someone tells me a story about my enemies acting like lizard people, I should perhaps question the details. Your priors are that your enemies are lizard people so any story that presents them as lizard people should be taken at face value, and anyone who questions the details is just pro-lizard people.
Indeed, but you claimed that this was supposedly "common" during the dot bust era. Presumably, even if it happened mostly to rich-but-not-famous people, there would be some examples, and you would be able to explain how it happened (not just handwave vaguely at unrealized capital gains and taxes on unsaleable vested stocks, the problems with which I have already pointed out). Yet you cannot.
I absolutely believe that people can act like Nazis, including the IRS. Indeed, because there are thousands of cases a year, the story of IRS agents holding kids hostage and making their parents sign some strange, probably illegal agreement, strikes me as unlikely but not impossible. I am willing to be persuaded. But you are trying to persuade me of two things:
Whose priors are being flattered here, and who is approaching the issue with more rationality and analysis? I think that fact that you've gone from posting walls of chaff to a bunch of "nuh uh" one-liners is a satisfactory answer.
I think you're right to be sceptical of the story; one of the two sources the book gives (both of which seem inaccessible from the internet unless you have a Washington times archive subscription) is a story from AP entitled 'IRS denies misconduct in Tax Raid at Day Care Centre'. Obviously they would say that even if they had done something wrong, but given that the IRS appear to dispute the story (the title of the WT story is also equivocal 'IRS accused of intimidating families...', and the passage Bovard is qualified with an 'allegedly') and the only actual source we have access to is someone who clearly has an axe to grind I am not really inclined to believe the story as presented.
Do you have any better sources on the incident @The_Nybbler?
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