Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
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You do an FEIE deduction on your 1040. If you're earning less than $120,000 in a year and live more than 330 days outside of the US during a tax year, you thus don't need to pay a single dollar to the IRS.
(I agree it's messed up that US citizens have to file taxes, but you don't need to resign your citizenship to avoid paying US taxes - as long as you're a bona fide resident of a foreign country and earn less than $120k.)
You're earning significantly over $120k/year? Then you file a form 1116 to have a credit against foreign-paid taxes. And even then, whatever income was left over after deductions doesn't put you automatically in the highest tax classes.
Where are you living where you're earning so much? I know many US expats, basically no one is earning that much, much less native-born citizens. It's the US that usually pays much more for engineering, not as much in RoW.
Is your cost of living so high that you're unable to save any of your super high income? You don't necessarily need to "extract wealth from other people".
It sucks to need to file taxes to a regime you're not residing in, but you surely understand the purpose of it? Don't you think it's probably a good thing that billionaires can't just make big profits in the US and pretend they're living in Malta?
Sorry, but as someone who has helped several high-earning expats with their US taxes, it really seems like you're either setting hinders for yourself (intentionality or otherwise), or doing some creative writing.
Good, and you understand how the level calculations work, right? If you earn $121k, you're only going to calculate taxes for $1k of income for example.
It sucks to pay even a cent to the US, but probably still cheaper and less risk compared to giving up citizenship -- especially if you have family there that'd you'd like to be able to visit in the future.
That makes it a bit more complicated, but if you're abroad over 330 days, you'd fill form 673 to prevent withholding for example. Have you not retained an accountant to help guide you through this? Based on the information you've shared, it seems like you're paying a lot more into the system than you need to.
That sucks, but it's not responsive to my argument.