The Guardian is owned by (and I think largely funded by?) a trust that was intentionally set up in a way to ensure no commercial interest could interfere with the paper. How well it achieved that goal is, of course, debatable, but it has survived nearly a century in that form.
You can read more about it here:
The original founder of the guardian, Taylor, ran it like a business. While today journalism struggles to make money, in the 1800s news was lucrative.
In his will, Taylor carved out a sweetheart deal (right of first refusal) to sell the paper to CP Scott, a progressive Liberal politician, and also his nephew.
After running the paper for many years, CP Scott's will named his two sons to inherit. Both of whom worked as editors on the daily.
In a freak turn of events, both CP Scott and one of the sons died within a few months. The remaining son was concerned about paying double for the hefty inheritance tax at the time ("death tax").
The death tax could be so large as to force a sale of the paper, to create liquidity to cover the tax. I guess it was a tax on unrealized gains!
The remaining son, John, cleverly found a workaround to avoid the silly death tax: by renouncing his ownership and transferring the business to a Trust. Since he worked at the paper as editor, giving up ownership was a clever tradoff that actually gave him de facto tenure as editor, by making his day job more stable.
This is all to say: the guardian became a nonprofit-like trust at a point in time it was already a stable business, with capital to self-finance.
This was not a case of a independently wealthy businessman creating a foundation to create a paper from scratch (like many created universities).
The Scott trust was created by journalists for journalists, at a unique point in time where journalists had money to self-finance. Motivated not by some idealistic vision but by a more practical desire to avoid a hefty tax on unrealized gains.
I don't know if you're using the word "silly" sarcastically here, but if not, isn't this an example of this type of tax working exactly as intended? John still greatly benefited from his parents' work, and so did society at large to this very day.
That said, having to pay inheritance tax twice over an organisation like this in a short span of time is rather unusual, and arguably, a bit "silly".
But of course, it is not death and loss that it taxed, it is rather the accumulated wealth being redistributed over both society at large and the heirs, in some kind of ratio. In favor of inheritance tax: the wealth somebody amassed has also been thanks to its participation in society, so it is only fair some portion of it goes back to society. The heirs played no part in it, so why should they get any, let alone all of it? Furthermore, inheriting wealth goes against the idea of meritocracy, and maintains inequality in an unfair way in modern societies. Why should inheritance tax not be 100%?
Children often grow attached to the 'stuff' their parents have collected, be it things or land, houses or money. It seems unfair to take it all away from them, as they feel they already 'own it' merely by being their children. So inheritance tax is some kind of compromise.
However, as each generation these days tend to fully 'break' with their parents, in a way (economically, spiritually), inheritance itself seems more and more like a thing of our tribal pasts. I imagine a future where there is no inheritance tax anymore, because the whole concept of inheritance will go away.
Because that is completely unworkable IMO, for several reasons:
1) Unless you introduce comparable "wealth transfer"/gift taxes, it becomes completely meaningless for the average case.
2) This would be insanely harmful in cases of unexpected deaths; inheritance is a really bad compensation already when someone close dies, this would make it even worse. And dealing with any kind of shared assets would be a nightmare, too (father dies, mother has to pay tax on half the house?)
Could be workable with large allowances though, but I don't hink you would ever get this pushed through in a democracy because it is too easy to put negative spin on it (even if it was in the majorities economical best interest).
I don't think that inheritance tax is a bad concept, but setting it higher than the gift tax rate is actively harmful and would not achieve anything.
My main point is that setting it higher than gift tax rates is effectively pointless, and basically just punishes people for dying unexpectedly (and/or not planning ahead for their own death), and neither is desirable.
All the rest is quibbling about logistics. Yes, we know rich people are very good at hiding their money.
Like US$13M ? That is the current situation in the United States.
I still think this would have mainly negative effects if the gift tax rate is lower than inheritance tax anyway.
It is hard to take this seriously. Are you seriously suggesting that the threshold is set at this level because of unpopularity rather than the power of the extremely wealthy? Have you looked at how the threshold has changed over time, and why?
How does that make sense? In theory only the extremely wealthy have to pay the tax (not that they necessarily do that). In what way would it being so high benefit them?
That said, sure, you're right. But why are you right? I would suggest it is because we live (in the USA, among other places) in a culture that strongly emphasizes the right to pass along generational wealth. But this is not universally true across time and space, and our culture took a different tack (say, by quoting august Republican figures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries), the popularity or otherwise would likely be entirely different.
A flat 50% rate still extract much more value from the rich, but apply equally to the poor.
My perception is that hereditary wealth transfer is about as universal and it's phenomenon get when it comes to humans. Not 100%, but close to it.
I absolutely think that significant estate tax is an unpopular concept-- significantly more so than income taxation. A big factor is perceived "double-dipping"; there is some additional justification though because it seems very unlikely to me that less wealthy people could avoid this tax with the same effectiveness as 1%ers (who in many cases probably avoid paying it completely).
I fully agree though that the extremely wealthy leverage their power very effectively to prevent legislation that would affect them negatively-- a very clear example would be basically all of Trumps past and present tax policy, which you could IMO summarize as "tax cuts for the rich" without being too disingenuous, but which is absolutely NOT portrayed like that in mass media (and not perceived accordingly by most of his voters, which get diverted with "no more tax on overtime!" instead).
What? That is completely wrong.
If you gave the populace the option of massively lowering their income tax by slightly upping taxes on anyone with assets exceeding.. say.. $15 million, and massively taxing anyone with assets exceeding $100 million, do you think they'll cheer for the status quo or for lowered income taxes?
And media is typically not controlled by people owning <$15M.
If you wrap things nicely in populist rethoric and act in the best interests of media owners (i.e. the rich) then detrimental (for the median voter) changes to tax code are trivial to push through. Just compare the 2017 TCJA act, or the current lunacy-in-progress (essentially replacing progressive tax rates with regressive tariffs).
Sure, it would be easy to make people cheer for additional significant taxes for 1-percenters, but that does not really matter because its not gonna happen.
Inheritance taxes don't sit well for many reasons that are actually interesting to discuss
+ People's desire to support friends, families and personal interests is a core reason for an individual to work beyond individual self sufficiency. This makes it very easy to empathize with the millionaire impacted by gift / inheritance taxes that may never be applied to you.
+ Taxes have already been paid on this money - double dipping is very easy to cast as unfair.
+ Clumsy implementations of these types of taxes create situations where small family owned farms and businesses need to be liquidated to cover taxes causing more pain and disruption for families.
+ The constant slippery slope of taxes initially targeted at 'the rich' but over time effecting more and more people due to combinations of inflation and revenue seeking.
+ The simple fact that if the US just seized all the wealth of 800+ billionaires today - it would only be worth 6.2 trillion dollars [1], which doesn't even cover the 6.8 trillion dollars the government spent in 2024. So what do we do next year?
Do we need more revenue? Are we getting the revenue the right way (aka is everyone paying their fair share)? Maybe... But there is certainly a spending problem too.
1: https://inequality.org/article/billionaire-wealth-keeps-grow...
The fact that the income being taxed is "beyond individual self sufficiency," actually makes it easier to justify taxing. This isn't someone's food budget--it's the extra on top after one's life is fully funded.
> Taxes have already been paid on this money - double dipping is very easy to cast as unfair.
This argument has never made sense. Money gets taxed over and over. It's not like a dollar bill gets taxed once and then you mark it with a pen so it never gets taxed again. Money typically gets taxed when it changes hands: Your company pays you money, it gets taxed. You buy something from a store, that money gets taxed. The store owner issues a dividend to shareholders, it gets taxed. The shareholders get bank interest from that money, it gets taxed. There's nothing unusual about taxing a dollar over and over.
> Clumsy implementations of these types of taxes create situations where small family owned farms and businesses need to be liquidated to cover taxes causing more pain and disruption for families.
This is a sentimental-sounding trope that doesn't really happen in practice. In the USA, inheritance income under $13M doesn't even get taxed at all. This is well outside of the scope of "small farms and businesses." Inheritance, in fact, tends to benefit recipients tax-wise: An heir is allowed to adjust the cost basis of an inherited asset to its market value on the day of the previous owner's death, so that all the previous owner's unrealized capital gains never get taxed. Sitting on $1M of capital gains from your meme stock that you don't want to pay taxes on? Just leave it to your kid in your will--those gains won't be taxed!
The other commenter addressed your other two issues.
The US estate tax specifically got basically bigger exemptions every time it was touched (even adjusting for inflation), and returns have been falling precipitously for basically the last 25 years. If you own less than $13M at death, it does not affect you at all right now.
> The simple fact that if the US just seized all the wealth of 800+ billionaires today - it would only be worth 6.2 trillion dollars
Sure-- but I think this is a bit of a strawman. To me, and a lot of people that argue in favor of wealth/estate taxation, the purpose is not to substitute income taxes (like what Trump wants to achieve with tariffs)-- the goal is to get wealth inequality back under control, not to balance the government budget with those tax returns.
Another perspective on wealth distribution is that the top 1% own a third of the country. In my opinion, if you have enough wealth (and liquid enough wealth) to outright buy an average home at sticker price, then you are part of the problem;
I absolutely don't want to compete with people like that on the housing market, and I don't want them to extract excessive rents from people like me (i.e. not-1%ers) either, but thats exactly what happens right now.
> But there is certainly a spending problem too.
I don't really agree with this. I think (expected) government responsibilities have grown tremendously over the last century (mainly for good reason).
I'm confident in saying the the American-favored approach to healthcare ("everyone takes care of it on their own, and negotiates/pays for it by himself") has completely failed for IMO very clear reasons (demand for healthcare is inelastic and only government can force pricing transparency, prevent collusion and a generally fair provider-market in the first place-- obviously).
I'm also confident that shifting back more pension responsibilities onto citizens themselves is also a bad idea, because it creates extremely bad potential outcomes in case of an economic crash. Government providing a survivable social security baseline is just a very clearly good idea to me.
Those two points (healthcare + social security) account for the vast majority of government budget, I think they are basically a good idea, and cutting costs with foreign aid, research funding, environmental regulation/enforcement etc. has IMO neither the potential to save significantly in the first place, nor is it beneficial to do so by itself (I'd even go so far and call the whole doge initiative a thinly veiled propaganda department for the current administration).
Or get them stuck in a permanent debt cycle.
> the inheritance tax would be the only tax if it was total; there would be no other tax burden in one's entire life.
Wouldn't everyone be incentivized to spend as much as they feasibly can before they die and not accumulate too much wealth?
I guess it depends on the specific implementation but the optimal approach would be to take on as much debt as you can to keep your effective net worth close to 0. So even a 100% tax on that might not result in a lot of revenue...
However, I think the grandparent post refered to Great Britain since the paper in question is english.
"Your view about each generation tending to fully 'break' with their parents, in a way *strikes me as particularly narrow*. "
I then added examples of vast populations where sons don't isolate from their parents.
It’s not only perverse but completely anti-human.
Presumably this 100% tax would also apply to gifts cause otherwise it wouldn't really work but where does it stop? Parents can't pay for college? Buy their children a car? Go on vacation with them? Spend any money on them at all so that they would "stand on their own two feet"? Be banned from giving any financial support to their children when they reach 18?
I mean... it's an obviously not a good idea.
Also the most optimal strategy would be to spend all the money you have in addition to getting a reverse mortgages on any property so that by the time you die your net worth would be as close to 0 as possible. Or just selling everything and buying an annuity.
A lot more volatility, without a (or much smaller one) buffer most economic shocks would have a bigger impact on the economy.
Also there would still be a lot of inequality it would just be intra-generational.
Then again.. all the annuity money has have to go somewhere. So maybe the insurance companies would become the primary sources of investment capital (which wouldn't be great). A lot of uncertainty though i.e. buying a house if you have a family would become much riskier..
I also don't see why buying a house would be much riskier? If you buy a house for your family it's because you either prefer the lifestyle or think it provides economic advantages over renting. Given you only need housing when your alive, I think what happens after you pass is not as major a concern as presented.
A source like what? I don't think there are many studies refuting bizarre not well thought out policies. Also it's pretty hard for me to argue against a suggestion that's so ill defined.
Albeit a massive increase in consumption and a reduction in savings would be the most obvious outcome (with all the implications of that).
> after you pass is not as major a concern as presented
Therefore there is no point for you to own your house. When you get older you either get a reverse mortgage or don't buy property in the first place. There would be no rational reason to own property beyond a certain age.
So what if there is no reason to own property beyond a certain age? Even if we take this claim as true... that doesn't explain if this is a good or bad thing.
I don't, because this argument is nonsensical (I mean your point about source specifically). Unless you disagree with some of the core principles of modern economics (not saying that you have to agree with them..) that would be the most obvious outcome.
> So what if there is no reason to own property beyond a certain age?
Well that would mean that the savings rate would go down (for better or for worse).
For example, you are asserting there would be 'no reason to own property beyond a certain age'... which isn't supported, and then jumping to the conclusion that that would lower savigns rates.
None of this is clearly true, just supposition.
I can want my children capable of providing for themselves.
I can also want improve their situation beyond that.
Imagine having nothing, your parents dying, you, an eg. broke college student inheriting a 2 bedroom apartment, which is somehow worth $1mio, and you owe so much tax (that you can't pay) that you're forced to sell the apartment, the only place you've ever known.
With 100% inheritance tax, i'd literally stop working as soon as i reached enough money to retire. Why work harder if it all vanishes when I die, and my hypothetical kids gain nothig? Or, more realistically, i'd convert stuff to cash and give it to them without the government knowing.
Tax the income, close the loopholes, once the tax for something is paid, the rest should go to the person, the government has got its share, it has enough.
And i'm saying this as someone who already lives in a country without inheritance tax (in most usualy cases).
Governments look holistically at their tax revenue. If there is an inheritance tax, and they expect to get a certain amount of revenue from it, then other taxes will be lower to compensate.
And vice versa: if an inheritance tax is producing revenue, eliminating it will result in higher taxes elsewhere. This is one reason such a tax continues to exist. Inheritance taxes tend to have very high exclusions so most people don’t pay them. And getting rid of them looks like charging everyone else more in order to lower taxes on the rich.
I just wish there was as much scrutiny on how the funds are used and as much creativity on getting as much as possible for them as there is scrutiny on how much each of us should pay and creativity around how to tax us more.
Everyone that inherits fortunes from their parents get to live life on easy mode while every one else is poorer, with less assets and barring winning a lottery ticket, no way to ever catch up. Wealth creates a feedback loop that if gone unchecked will hoard all assets from everyone else.
We can't have both meritocracy and inheritance as they are mutually exclusive. If we want to keep telling people there's any modicum of truth to meritocracy, we have to stop all this inheritance bullshit. The particulars of it can be discussed with caps based on amounts, for example, but that's not the point.
There's a reason that most wealthy people from the past are still wealthy today and I can guarantee you it's not through their own merit.
Tax wealth, not work. There should be no billionaires.
These moral judgements aren't great ways to make economic decisions. A billionaire can just be someone who owns a lot of shares in a company that's currently valuable. A company's value (in this sense) is just the total number of shares multiplied by the last share sale price.
It doesn't mean they have a billion dollars in cash. The billions don't even exist. They're just a value based on the last transaction value of the company's share dealing.
Whether they're kings from "divine right", corrupt nepo babies or even legitimate geniuses. Nobody should have that much power.
There's a big difference between money: voluntarily trading value for services and goods, some of which might negatively affect you, and power: trading nothing for direct control of aspects of your life.
[0] Not inappropriate power, or not in theory
I can borrow money for a house even though I don't have money to buy a house.
In my experience, a lot of people who make these kinds of extreme claims (no billionaires, no inheritance, etc.) do not seek plausible economic solutions, they only want the moral high ground.
That statement is in no way moral. Not sure why GP assumes that. It's simply not beneficial to society for small groups to accumulate disproportionate amounts of power.
But as always, we have some "future billionaires" rushing to defend them.
Power and money aren't the same thing. Someone who can throw you in jail or stop you getting on a flight can be on a very low wage indeed.
> But as always, we have some "future billionaires" rushing to defend them.
This would be considered one of those attacks you just mentioned.
Kind of are in a capitalist society. Sure you need extra steps but it's still power. No need to go far... Elon is living proof of that. Other billionaires do the same but they don't need all the attention.
You're arguing you don't necessarily need money to have power but if you have money you absolutely do have power, which is my point.
> This would be considered one of those attacks you just mentioned.
I know... I couldn't help myself to hit back at a useless comment.
Normally the monarch or the Socialist dictator or the lord of the land controls the money and the power.
> A capitalist democratic society is about the only type I know of that tries to separate money and power.
But when I read this I can't help but think the same utopia is under capitalism.
In theory there's a separation. In reality billionaires can purchase politicians, media, etc. and get power through those means. I have never seen an example of this not happening.
If there were any effective ways of stopping money from meddling with power I'd agree with you but reality always smacks theories in the face. You say it tries to separate them but then you have lobbying (or the non-legal version of it) in every government as an example. It's an utopia just the same.
But what is wealth? And when should you tax it?
Let's say I take a piece of duct tape and a banana and ducttape the banana to a wall.... how much tax should I pay for that? I mean... how much could a banana cost?
If i sell that "art", for example for $6.2M (yes, it sold for that much), then sure, i did my "work", earned $6.2M, and in the current system i'm taxed for my "work" (well.. income for my work).
So, by your logic, when should I get taxed? And for what value? The net worth of that banana on the wall is $1, so should I be taxed on that value? But if someone wants to pay $6.2M for that, should my tax change, even before it's bought? Do I get my taxes back if he changes his mind?
What if instead I start a small company named Sava (a river nearby) that sells books. Do I get taxed now, when the value of the company is $10k in books in the warehouse? What if someone believes in my company so much, he wats to buy 1 millionth of my company for $1000, should I be taxed on the theoretic value of my company (1B now)? Or should I be taxed only when I actually sell that stock and earn the money?
Yes, life is not fair, kids of rich parents start with a lot of money. My parents were not rich, but believed in the future of computing and bought me (a kid back then) a computer in the time when you had to take out a loan to get one. My friends parents bought him a motorcycle. I'm an above-average paid 'developer' now and he works minimum wage in a factory. So, should i lose something or have to pay something back, because my parents made better decisions than his?
Instead of focusing on taking away stuff where the taxes were already paid, lets rather focus on people like bezos paying the same amount of taxes as other businesses do, like mom and pop book stores (i'm talking percentages, not net values), and to stop the abuse of every goddamn tax loophole they abuse now.
I don't deny it's very tricky and people will absolutely do their best to dodge as much as possible, but that doesn't invalidate the purpose they serve. You can't claim those hundreds of properties you have are worth $1.
I'm by no means an expert but my idea would be to tax rich people yearly after a cap. We don't want to tax workers but the whole swath of parasites that simply extract from society.
Your company example is odd. Can you lend based on your theoretical valuation of $1B? Then perhaps we tax if you do. I don't know all the answers off the top of my head and neither should I.
That doesn't mean we let people accumulate wealth infinitely. It's a problem and there's no way to ignore it. The more wealth is accumulated, the more they accumulate and for a lot of assets it is literally a zero sum game. If they own everything, we own nothing.
Posing edge cases and possible dodge scenarios like you did is exactly what a politician should be spending their time on when proposing these.
> I'm an above-average paid 'developer' now and he works minimum wage in a factory. So, should i lose something or have to pay something back, because my parents made better decisions than his?
Not more than what's fair. Unless you're secretly a multi-millionaire, this wouldn't ever affect you. I don't understand people's fears of taxation on the super rich when they aren't even close to that.
These taxes are not for working people. If you don't live off a trust fund from daddy you probably don't have to worry. Well, if we're being honest, this will never happen because they own the politicians too... but a man can dream.
Perhaps. However an extremely high inheritance tax is an irrational way to do that. It would incentivize everyone to spend all their money/wealth before they die e.g. directly or just by selling all their property and buying an annuity.
A massive increase in consumption wouldn't necessarily be the best outcome. Though I do see some benefits.
> we have to stop all this inheritance bullshit.
That would only work if you ban parents from giving any gifts or financial support to their children. Which is a very slippery slope...
NB. This does not mean that Inheritance should be a taxable event! There would be less need to have inheritance tax if we had a consistent wealth tax.
It remains obvious to me that inheritance drives social inequality, and similarly it is obvious that parents are going to resent not giving their children as much help as they can.
But it's one of the very few wealth taxes we actually have today...
Yeah, there are a few very well defined loopholes - gifting early, pension wrappers, some trusts, agricultural land, non-dom etc etc - some are being closed. In general the richer you are the more likely you are to be able to minimise and avoid the tax.
That's fair in principle. Yet in this case but his brother didn't really have enough time to accumulate that much additional wealth after inhering it from his father so it's a bit of a lottery.
Also inheritance taxes are quite tricky to enforce and it's very hard to close all the loopholes (also the revenue isn't exactly reliable). IMHO a wealth tax seems like a better idea (then again there are quite a few complications as well as Norway's recent attempt has shown...).
> because the whole concept of inheritance will go away.
I fear the opposite. As property prices continue increasing and middle and lower class incomes stagnate inheritance might again become one of the few ways that are left for the majority of the population to attain and any significant wealth (I mean middle class level i.e. a hour or two). Birth rates also being so low might make it even more significant.
The value of that property increases when others in the society prosper. Government programs funded by “taking people’s money” (aka taxes) very often make “private” property more valuable.
People with the “f*ck you, got mine” mindset either don’t get this or selfishly don’t care (sometimes for understandable reasons, e.g. they come from a low trust area).
Of course, there are lots of nuances and complex implementation details. Like how much exactly does a specific program affect different groups and on what time scales. But the fundamental principle is straightforward and essential to a healthy society.
But claiming the government has to force people into this is low-trust to the extreme. It's saying "we're going to take these things we already taxed you on, because you can't be trusted to use them responsibly and we can."
You can't regulate your way into everything. Good government can only exist alongside the unwritten rules that made people like Carnegie decide that the right answer was to give their wealth away to the public.
Where do you delineate this worldview from a simple extortion shakedown? e.g. your house is more valuable when it isnt on fire and your family isn't dead.
It still leaves the question of what is an appropriate tax to pay for social order? is it 100%?
And it also argues that some sort of governance structure is always present — official and explicit or implicit and unintentional - so we might as well try to make it a good one.
The details can and should be debated and discussed. The project is never over.
- Roy Jenkins MP
So similar to current situation in many places - if you are rich enough, you basically exist outside of tax system, be it capital gains, investments, inheritance etc. Obscure tax structures spanning whole globe as ie Panama papers showed. Its the middle class that gets hammered out of existence, ie in France its around 40% for inheritance tax, and trusts are AFAIK forbidden / treated very punitively. Very rich still bypass this and everybody knows this, everybody below not so much. Its not even effective there, the amount extracted yearly in such way is minuscule, but it pleases crowds with 'social justice' so they don't protest so much and burn more cars on streets.
In the tax year 2021 to 2022, 4.39% of UK deaths resulted in an Inheritance Tax
Inheritance tax only kicks in above £325K of assets. If inheriting your parents home the threshold increases to £500K (and increases again to £1M if both parents die).
That's hardly hammering the little people.
https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/inheritance-tax-lia...
Agree. It hits the (upper) middle, as with most of the tax code afaict.
I rarely resent paying tax until I see how little people earning multiples of me get away with paying.
In the case of inheritance tax, it has resulted in a lot of British cultural treasures being shipped to the US to be auctioned.
As I said in the comment you're responding to, this seems like an example of how this type of tax worked correctly for a very rich person, so the thread you're responding to is already a counterexample to your argument.
I agree that inheritance taxes can be implemented poorly. Still, the concept of an inheritance tax is good, and poorly implemented inheritance taxes should be fixed by improving them, not removing them.
The reason farms are worth so much at present, despite low margins, is because of the inheritance tax loophole that was introduced in the 80's, at the behest of the landed backers of the Conservative Party. This turned farmland into a prime investment vehicle as a way to shelter assets from inheritance tax.
Is the proposed change (and thresholds, plus half rate with interest free payments spread over 10 years) perfect? No - it'll still catch some small family farms - but it's telling that the highest level of opposition has come from some very wealthy landowners, such as those using their "farmland" for grouse hunting, rather than making food.
The tax break in the 80's was a textbook market distortion, if we believe in the power of free markets, the value of the farmland will now fall, which means fewer family farmers will need to pay inheritance tax.
In truth, my concerns are primarily around business property relief, since I think it is there that the damage will be both more significant and less visible. Many businesses carefully built up over years will have no option but to sell off a chunk to private equity to pay the tax liability. Is it a surprise that the gov come up with such policies when Rachel Reeves thinks that the finance industry is going to fire up growth [1], when they are the rent seeking parasites that are suppressing it. The fox has been invited into the hen house and getting to dictate policy.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chancellor-backs-britains...
If the business is going to be a going concern for many years, then proper estate planning should be part of any careful running of a business. Passing it on 7 years before death is the most obvious play; yes, actuarially there will be some people who die before the 7 years have passed, so doing it early is important if continuity of the business is important.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-are-the-changes-to-a...
These amounts are per-child, which means you can double them up if there are two children.
Median patrimony in France is 175 000€ per household, so your typical middle class family with two children ends up paying no inheritance tax, without having done donations in advance.
I have an unmarried aunt with no kids. Most of her estate is land (that has passed through centuries in the family and is almost illiquid because the European Union has killed agriculture) and some stock (that cannot be used to pay the taxes because it's not yours until you pay the taxes). I just checked and when she dies, my mom (her only sister) will have to pay 45% of that in death tax. We may need to turn down the estate when she dies because we cannot pay the tax. And you think that's fair? Grow up.
My parents are upper-middle class, and I've profited from their wealth all my life. My inheritance will be taxed, and I don't find that unfair at all. I was born on second base and had an advantage over others at every stage of my life; it would be fatuous to complain about an inheritance tax.
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/how-genes-shape-perso... https://human-intelligence.org/intelligence-is-genetic/ https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/news/beauty-may-... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23925498/
I'm sorry, I don't think I understand the exact point you're making.
I follow the premise of your argument. You're saying genes are a birth advantage, just like money is. I absolutely agree with that. But I don't understand how this ends in "just the guy who's dumb, ugly, always ill" being "hammered if he or she happens to make some real cash."
FWIW, in many Western countries, healthy people are already functionally "taxed" (although it's often not technically a tax) more than unhealthy people because both pay similar amounts into healthcare but derive different benefits from it.
I also think that's good, just like taxing inheritance is.
Also, taxation isn't stealing. But if you genuinely feel that it is, you have the option of moving to a country with no functioning government. The Somali government, for example, has effectively no ability to collect taxes in most regions.
Also - at the end of the day, someone is still getting something that they "didn't earn" - why allow it at all? Tax everything at 100% on death - why give people who didn't "earn it" something?
Obviously I'm being fascicious about this now, but if the argument that it's "unfair" for people who "didn't earn it" to get something, why allow this at all?
And also, personally - I think the argument is flipped on its head. It's not about people getting the inheritance - it's about people "giving" it - I paid taxes on my money throughout my entire life, why should the state take any more just because I'm leaving it to my children?
(and, on a side note, where do you get that you can give unlimited tax-free money to your children in almost every country of the world? I checked the US, France, UK, Spain, Morocco, South Africa and Brazil, and all have limits after which tax apply. China and the Philippines don't, but neither do they have inheritance tax.)
I'm Polish and Poland doesn't have any inheritance tax for children, not sure what US has to do with this.
>>I checked the US, France, UK, Spain, Morocco, South Africa and Brazil
Did you really? Here a UK page about this, there is no limitation on how much you can give your children tax free, tax only applies if you die within 7 years after gifting it:
https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax/gifts
And
Raisin UK https://www.raisin.co.uk Gifting money to children explained (2025)
>>Limiting the snowball effect of the wealthy getting wealthier generation after generation through no contribution of their own is considered a societal good
Again, so please tell me why you don't think we should be taxing it at 100%, to maximise the societal good?
I already pay effective rate of 40% of tax on all my earnings - am I not doing enough for "societal good"?
Also, again, the thresholds are ridiculously low. They don't even cover the cost of the deceased's house. Stop the theory, start the reality.
There are cases that can be imagined (a child inheriting an old house in a high-COL location) where it feels unfair, but in this case it sounds like free money. Surely the government is not asking for more money than the land is worth, or something like that?
I am sure the average 99%-er American would love to be back in medieval Europe, where kings and queens, and lords and dukes cared so much for their offspring! Wealth by birthright, that's so progressive!
If you don't want to pay taxes, don't be a part of society, don't use public roads, public schools, public hospitals, and public education.
If you do want to be a part of society, accept that it's a give-and-take situation, and move on. Some people give more than they take, and some people do take more than they have given, and that's alright with me.
Side rant:
It's no wonder that a show like Breaking Bad, where a teacher gets cancer and has to become a drug kingpin to finance his healthcare, has to be situated in the US. The plot simply wouldn't hold in any other civilized country.
It's no also wonder that the name Luigi is no longer only the name of Mario's brother but synonymous with something else, and again something that happened in the US.
Agreed with you! A progressive tax (the more you earn, the higher % you get taxed) makes sense as a fair thing to me.
Where I am from, it's 52%, and that's a reasonable price to pay for having bike paths, greening, parks, good roads, affordable public transport, great public schools, and paid time off and maternity/paternity leave.
Once there was a strike of the public sanitation workers in my city due to their low wages. You know what happened? In 2 weeks it changed from a beautiful place to live to a cesspool. Don't know about you but I was happy to spend some of my $$ so I didn't have to fight rats, rabid dogs and mountains of garbage to take my kids from school.
As a matter of fact, once somebody reaches a certain amount of wealth, I'd be very much in favor that it should be 70%, 80%, 90% and 99%. And, of course, then you get the prize "you won capitalism, now relax".
No, that's not how any of this works.
https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/voting-elections/...
Politicians' campaigns are usually funded by large corporations and individual donors, not by public money.
> Not so long ago, people paid the tithe (10%) and if any lord,
The current right wing governments are trying to bring us to that time, it seems.
> There's many countries in the world with smaller taxes and still great service
Name a couple.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-...
Luxembourg - 42%
Netherlands - 49%
Denmark - 42%
Should I go on?
One thing I can assure you: the moment you get a job, a house, a family, that's the moment you'll realize you are being systematically robbed by taxes that end up eating 70% of your income. If you are not socialist when you are young, you haven't got a heart; if you are not conservative when you grow up, you haven't got a brain.
The rich through times always have had the delusion that their wealth will protect them and isolate them from society, with their private armies, private healthcare, private tutors and expensive villas. But if anyone looks at history, it always ends up the same way. Based on that knowledge, it's the rich that should be actively supporting equality and progress in society as if their lives depend on it.
I'm more than happy to pay my taxes and ensure everybody else has a good life, too. I don't want to find out first-hand how long a head survives without its body still attached to it.
Where does the water from your tap come from?
Where did you or your children go to study?
Did you make your own road, that you use to go to work?
Do you have a pension built up?
Do you fight your own fires and fight your own crime?
If these organisations were private, waste would be equivalent, but they would lose the mentality of acting in the public interest, and there would be a profit margin taken off. I'm pretty sure it would not be an improvement overall, purely from a viewpoint of efficiency.
If you don't artificially curb wealth accumulation with laws, taxes and wealth limits, you will always and inevitably end up having an accumulation of wealth that allows the rich to stay rich forever, and keep the rest perpetually in poverty. I have consistently been in the highest taxable bracket in my country, and am happy to contribute even a bigger % of my wealth towards the betterment of the living conditions of my country and city.
Sauce:
- https://ifs.org.uk/articles/inherited-wealth-course-be-much-...
- https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/08/moving-up-the-income...
> The gap was most pronounced in the US: less than 10% of sons with low-earning fathers made it into the richest 25% of the population, while almost 50% of those with top-earning fathers grew up to become high earners themselves
Talk about "self-made". History has shown again and again that this can only go on as long until the poor and oppressed rise up, seize the wealth, and in the process, harm their "oppressors".
It's funny to me that you both think that "benefitting society" is "communist propaganda" and that others need to start thinking for themselves. Who are these communists spreading this duplicitous propaganda of considering the well-being of others and the betterment of our community? I need to find them to thank them for their service and also scold them for being bad at communism.
>One thing I can assure you: the moment you get a job, a house, a family, that's the moment you'll realize you are being systematically robbed by taxes
I have all that, and I still care for people other than myself and my family.
Maybe it could have been easily circumvented, but it wasn't circumvented in this case. It obstructed direct inheritance, thus, worked as intended for the rich.
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cavendish,_11th_Duke_of... "Devonshire inherited the estate but also an inheritance tax bill of £7 million (£303 million in 2023), nearly 80 per cent of the value of the estate. To meet this, the Duke had to sell off many art objects and antiques, including several Rembrandts, Van Dycks and Raffaello Santis, as well as thousands of acres of land"
Where is the trust created by coders for coders at a time uniquely profitable for coders?
However, is Mozilla a money oriented coder trust?
If you've had any experience with small trusts, they often get captured by self-interested people. The Scott Trust seems to stand out from others with its outcomes.
In general, it's fairly clear that jobs for open source developers is generally more effective than charity of various kinds which is subject to change at any time. (OK, jobs are too but that tends to be less related to political, etc. winds.)
Something similar happened in a history podcast I heard about Porche, which is still owned by the original family. At one point, germany told them their tax on ownership gains is 90%. So instead, they decided they would just re-invest into the business R&D to write off the taxes instead. That gave us the invention of Porche's Racing team. source: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/porsche-with-doug-demuro
How? You keep the kids in management, you encourage lots of cross holdings between corporations so that even though the kids’ share falls, you enforce power through social contracts in the upper strata of classes that is horrible for shareholders and innovation as a society.
That said Porsche indeed is an exceptional company in many ways in both the innovative end as well as their holdings structure.
> you enforce power through social contracts in the upper strata of classes
Do you have any links that explain this?
I'm planning to visit South Korea so understanding some of the politics is interesting...
Elliott's activist letter to Samsung: http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Press-Relea...
Elliott's presentation: http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Presentatio...
Elliott famously disapproved of the Samsung C&T merger, which ultimately went through. The Korean media demonized Elliott for trying to reform the company. It was an eye-opening experience seeing how Samsung effectively captured Korea both politically and through the media.
McKinsey Report (ctrl-f: "korea discount") https://www.mckinsey.com/kr/~/media/mckinsey/locations/asia/...
Bloomberg report on the Korea discount: https://archive.md/eBJdl
FT Report about cross shareholding: https://archive.md/eYXGM
For all claims of Korea's dynamism, it's still seen as investment rat poison and it's telling that it's still considered an "emerging market" by MSCI. Public markets aside, SK's venture capital scene is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.
Investors have undervalued South Korea's company stocks compared to other countries, leading to the term "the Korea discount."
This "discount" is in part attributed to corporate governance in South Korea where some companies may have less incentive to grow their share price to pay less tax when gifting or inheriting financial assets.
with analysts saying poor corporate governance is one factor behind what is known as the “Korea Discount.”
But investors often price [Korean shares] below their book value
[Another] explanation is the risk discount because of nuclear-armed North Korea.
To maintain control across generations despite South Korea’s unusually high 50 per cent inheritance tax, they have resorted to elaborate solutions that depress the country’s stock valuations.
At Samsung, heir apparent Lee was sold equity at well below fair value to the detriment of other shareholders. Lee's equity value went from ₩9.5 billion to ₩6.7 trillion
[The Hyundai family owners syphoned value] largely at the expense of shareholders in other Hyundai companies, according to court and regulatory findings that affiliates unfairly supported a company through noncompetitive contract awards at inflated prices.
It rather depends on what you mean by journalism. I suspect your definition is true to the Guardian's apparent aims, publishing well researched truths to an interested population. What was being published in the 1800s was most certainly not that; instead, being very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today.
They are lucrative, but I don't think exceptionally so.
Probably not as lucrative as the despicable academic publisher parasites.
Inheritance taxes invariably are. The recent UK controversy around farm land inheritance was the same.
I feel like a lot of these cases could be avoided if people wanted to structure their family business like a business and gradually transfer control to their children, rather than keep it as personal property right until the very last minute.
weasel words if ever there was.
OTOH... Elon and Donald had gobs of cash drop in their laps, what's not to like about reasonable taxes on it ? Split it (say) 50-50 with society. Unless you have found an infant with a track record of accomplishment - and an investment strategy to match.
It's a tax levied on those who get a completely free/undeserved sudden windfall; in the sense that they did not do anything to obtain it and didn't even have to expose risk or pay for a chance.
Most nations put pretty serious taxes on earnings from lotteries, and an inheritance is like a lottery where you didn't even have to pay for a ticket.
There's no obvious objective truth about the idea of taxing inheritance. But calling it "silly death tax" is, oof. Idiotic. Cut it out.
Huffing and Puffing about paying taxes when you do a thing _just_ because the thing you are doing, you do with money you already paid taxes on - is a crazy idea. So crazy, nobody does it even though that happens all the time. Except, apparently, inheritance tax.
You must really hate taxes on fuel or cigarettes too, and sales tax of course.
Similarly, this:
> but you decide that you have more of a right to direct those assets for them.
Is quite the statement. That is what governments do all the time. You want to do a thing, they tell you: No, you cannot do that. If you fail to comply, we will punish you. For some countries, all the way up to and including murdering you.
Government dictates and you agree. That whole 'monopoly on violence' thing.
In this case, government has some thoughts on how you should spend your money as you are shuffling off your mortal coil. It suggests you spend some of that on general things the country as a whole wants funded. It very strongly suggests it. Insists, really. Kinda like how it insists you wear a seatbelt.
Yes. I'm not against taxes in general, but I think our tax system is a monstrosity. No, I don't have some kind of alternative, I just grab my ankles and grit my teeth like everyone else.
> That is what governments do all the time
Oh, well I guess it must be fine then. Is this supposed to be an argument?
Declare the pennies on your eyes
One of the punchier Beatles songs, good riff.
The incongruity of this never crossed your mind?
It’s clear from his post that we need higher inheritance tax, and wealth tax in general, especially on unrealised gains.
Right, absolutely brilliant idea. You live prudently, save some money every month and invest it (stocks, bonds, whatever). Due to factors entirely outside your control like a stock market bubble or an interest rate drop, the $50k portfolio you built over 30 years is now worth $70k. Your unrealized $20k gain is taxed at 10% for easier math. You don't have $2k cash on hand and are forced to sell some of your portfolio to pay the tax.
Next year, there is a crash. You now have just $40k in assets. But there is a gradual recovery, and the year after it's back to $50k. You now owe another $1k. Sound good?
(I do find some irony in the fact that a majority of Guardian readers these days would abhor attempts by rich businessmen to dodge taxes.)
Isn’t it money that should have gone to the State here, rather than the children? They didn’t do the trust not to give money to their children, but rather to avoid taxes.
The same kind of logic was applied to two french newspapers:
- Le canard enchaîné, created in 1915, specific status preventing sale of capital made in 1958. Motive was foiling an attempted takeover by another company.
- Mediapart, created in 2004, trust made in 2019. They made the change deliberately in order to protect the newspaper's future.
Both newspapers are doing well today, so I'm not sure this kind of thing is a product of its time and impossible to copy nowadays. However, both newspapers are producing quality investigative journalism, which most news media don't these days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited
Bozo could easily establish a similar trust to support the Wash Post in perpetuity. But clearly he has other motives.
Their success, I suspect, is due to being early to shift from addressing a particular geographic market, to addressing an ideological market, after the internet destroyed the geographical barriers to entry.
I suspect this internet driven incentive to focus on ideological markets is a big part of why politics in most countries has become so partisan. When newspapers focused on a particular geography, but had limited completion, they had an incentive to avoid becoming partisan because that would only serve to limit their addressable market.
If you were to name some important newspapers in 1995, you'd probably also have the Guardian, NYT, WaPo, on your list. They just pulled away from the pack due to the was reputation works in the internet age.
Checking the other side of this, what media properties did not exist in 1995 but are a world class now? Not too obvious to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Harmsworth,_1st_Viscoun...
This is why the Guardian is simultaneously "progressive", yet also at times openly hostile to the working class. Its "progressive but not working class" stance promotes identity politics, and probably does more to pit left-wing voters against each other than any other UK-publication.
That said, I am a subscribe to the Guardian Weekly which I supplement with the Spectator, a traditionally conservative publication, in order to get a decent balance of UK news.
Edit: Scratch that. Bosch is owned by a foundation.
How do they explain their taking ads, then? https://advertising.theguardian.com
There's zero assurance that they could provide that would convince me this doesn't come with influence over editorial matters. It's the same problem NPR has (shoutout to the 'old "National Petroleum Radio" moniker from the invasions of the oughts).
EDIT: you -> they
And assuming the trust is well funded, they may not feel compelled to do so.
That said, its very possible for not for profit entities to go very wrong so you cant rule it out absolutely.
And believe me, for the colleges I examined this at, tuition was a rounding error compared to the return on the endowment. It is just for aesthetics of charging students in a uniquely american show of stupidity.
Anyway, the very clear ideological orientation, even openly so, is what makes it a "propaganda magazine" of sort (like all ideologically orientated newspapers). I find it very similar to the Daily Mail on the other side of the spectrum, actually. I think the readership is more educated on average so it is more "intellectual" but overall it is the same type of highly orientated take on things.
Interesting that articles from The Guardian appear so often here ;)
Edit: It's saddening that this apparently cannot be said or discussed. Or is it a superiority complex because I compared it to the Daily Mail? (Oh dear, what have I done ;) )
It’s clear to everyone in the ripe that the democrats are on the right leaning side of “centre right”, but half of America thinks they are “far left”. A party that can’t even implement a national health service.
Sure overall it is not as left-wing as, say, Le Monde Diplomatique in France (someone mentioned it in another comment) but still.
Overall, Wikipedia is quite accurate: "The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and the term "Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of a person with modern progressive, left-wing or "politically correct" views." [1]
Public comments on newspaper sites are a very poor judge of the newspaper's political position. Sometimes, even Daily Mail comment threads skew left!
They do have very left-wing columnists, too, quite a few of them, most famous being Owen Jones.
> The Guardian is left-wing and has many very left-wing columnists.
Sure there's some subtle distinction between the paper itself being one thing but still having "many very left-wing columnists", but not a lot.
I stand with what you quoted. This was a honest and rather matter-of-fact statement... But I obviously deserver to be shot for it by the "progressists" it has somehow managed to offend.
Owen Jones is perhaps as close as they come to "very left-wing", and while he is a bona fide socialist, he's certainly not a revolutionary.
This is repeated frequently, but, no, just no.
Name one position by the Democrats that is to the right of typical center to center-right parties such as CDU/CSU, La République En Marche, PP, CDA, ÖVP.
Immigration, abortion, environmental regulations?
On some/many social issues (minorities, abortion, drug policy) Democrats are relatively liberal even by European standards.
There's been a trend recently to call them center-right to make the distinction with far right parties which were anecdotal 50 years ago, but make no mistake, when a party is called center-right, it's a rightwing party, not a center party that could align either with the left or the right depending on the topic.
Macron himself is very centrist to centre left. He started in government in Hollande's cabinet, which was a Socialist Party (= Labour) government. Many top figures in Macron's party now are former Socialist Party.
The rightwing party in France now is effectively the RN (although it is still referred to as "far-right" for historical and tactical reasons).
You would have trouble finding which major policy they made that aligns with the left, while many of their policies effectively dismantled workers’ rights.
Also the former socialists were from the PS’ right wing, which was (in a classic sense) liberal economically as well as on societal issues. That wing was happy supporting rightwing laissez-faire policies. That was the reason Hollande’s PS destroyed itself.
This reminds me of Maoist China where just suggesting a milder approach was enough to get you labeled "rightwinger"! Similarly, the views of the French far-left are not the "French perspective".
> especially after I've just described the French perspective.
Make up your mind.
> Similarly, the views of the French far-left are not the "French perspective".
No one in France is seriously challenging the idea that Macron is rightwing. He's been pursuing the classic rightwing agenda, and has years of political alliance with the other rightwing parties in France.
But then again, considering your talking point is that RN is the only rightwing party, I'm not sure we're having a honest discussion here.
The sad part is that you can't make the distinction between a paper being opinionated and it being propaganda. Plenty of newspapers have historically had a very strong bias but also a strong commitment to journalism ethics and standards.
Well if it is "opiniated" and has a "very strong bias" I call it propaganda. Again, they are not the only ones and I am not singling them out.
I used a blunt term that seems to ruffle some feathers but it is better to be aware than to take everything we read at face value.
Any journalist or newspaper carries a bias when looking at information. Their ethics and process is what allows them to still publish information that is verified, relevant and to treat topics which they would personally not want to hear about.
If a journalist with a strong bias doesn't check their information and write only what they would like to hear, that's propaganda. But that's not a necessary outcome of having a bias.
None of what you mention contradicts your previous statement, and mine, that they are "opiniated" and "very biased" or that it isn't propaganda according to the dictionary definition I quoted...
Perhaps the issue is that people associate propaganda with false information (which is what you imply). That is not the case.
To give you some perspective: I'm a leftist, the guardian represents the polar opposite of very fundamental beliefs all leftists share, they actively undermine and oppose what we believe in. Just because you disagree with both liberal and left-wing views doesn't make them the same. Leftists aren't allied with liberals, we despise them, sometimes we hate them even more than conservatives.
Just a few examples: [1] They were smearing Corbyn constantly as antisemitic (which we leftists view as a smear-campaign by liberals to purge the labor party of it's left-wing, which they successfully did btw.), [2] they did partner with the gates foundation on global development (leftists view the foundation as neoliberal and their development of the global south as part of neocolonialism, we think those are all bad things btw.) and finally [3] they push Israeli/Zionist framing of the genocide in Gaza.
[1] https://mondoweiss.net/2020/08/how-the-guardian-betrayed-not...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/guardian-launch...
[3] https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2025/03/17/guardian-israel...
That further is actually published as the view of the paper as opposed to opinion pieces, that often are "stuff they disagree with" yet still are happy to publish.
The closest I've come to seeing an official statement arguing for some degree of regulation have been mild and vague. Even one stating that the cost of fake campaign videos is real, and pointing out genuine concern over implications to democracy, only called for "paying attention" and "developing suitable responses".
My impression is that The Guardian is about as firm as a wet blanket when it comes to taking a stance against movements leveraging misinformation.
Corbyn and McDonnell were hardcore socialists and Marxists so if that's what you call "mildly social-democratic" then The Guardian might be Conservative...
It seems that younger people have no references and understanding of political concepts. Corbyn had full-on socialist policies in the Labour manifesto of the time but simply because he used terms like "coop" they seem to have been missed by some...
Blair was centre-left. He didn't try to destroy private schools so that still makes Starmer's government more on the left.
Social democratic and labour parties are, at least were openly socialist at least until the 1990s. UK Labour party is part of the Party of European Socialists and an observing member of Socialist International. Most social democratic parties were "Bernsteinian" with the explicit goal of democratic transition into socialism. Coops have been promoted by both left and right.
At least with a bit longer reference span democratic socialism is not radical or far-left in the European context.
> Coops have been promoted by both left and right.
The "coop" in Corbyn's Labour manifesto were effectively "soviets" as the proposal was to nationalise companies and hand control to the workers by turning them into "coops". This was not "mildly social-democratic"...
The separate "right to own" proposal was an option for workers to buy the company in case of it being sold or dissolved. Similar laws exist in e.g. Italy and in some US states. There was also a proposal for public financing for worker coops, which is also in place in many countries.
E.g in Norway, the conservatives, about 4 parties to the right of the Norwegian Labour Party, not that many years ago argued a blocking minority stake of over 1/3 of the largest bank was a strategic goal for the state.
I that light, the Corbyn labour manifestos were only mildly left wing.
State ownership of some key infrastructure is popular even by a majority conservative voters.
I'm happy that turning 50 this month I'm still lumped in with "younger people", but I find this rather comical.
I find mainstream left of UK to be quite clearly center left. The current Labour government policy could be characterized even as center right.
Anyway it is getting excessively tiring not to be able to discuss or say anything so have a nice day.
Back when it was The Manchester Guardian, they produced one of the most remarkable TV commercials in history, "Points of View":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsccRkLLzU
I first saw this commercial when Will Hearst (yes, of that Hearst family) screened it at a Software Development Forum meeting in the late 1980s.
I wish this were a better transfer, but it is what we have. Does anyone have a link to a higher resolution transfer?
As I said, they're the best of a bad bunch but that's damning with faint praise.
They've always been left of centre, but they're lazy and jump more into the predictable culture war pandering.
The FT is streets ahead of anyone else, they've become more centrist and less dry in recent years. I don't know what their revenues are like but I'd wager that they're doing better as they're one of the only ones with a business model that allows them to pay for good journalism.
The "culture war" people refer to is not "woke ideology" being pushed everywhere as is so often the accusation, but an enormous, orchestrated push against an otherwise fairly organic process where the world had otherwise become more naturally more accepting of immigrants and LGBTQ+ minorities.
I also disagree that there has been a "fairly organic process where the world had otherwise become more naturally more accepting of immigrants and LGBTQ+ minorities". That's a rewriting of history. Equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community were incredibly hard fought for over many years. It's been anything but organic. It's important not to forget how recently most of the civil rights we take for granted in many areas of life were rights that were denied by a majority.
Sadly a lot of what calls itself jouranlism today is the exact opposite: Not showing the whole picture, serving prexisting world views, overly emotional and out to entertain.
I don’t think this is something new, I feel that most of "journalism" has always been like this with few medias making the effort to show the whole picture.
The Guardian has decent reporting but it also has some terribly embarrassing content. To wit:
"In Dark Laboratory, her groundbreaking new book, Goffe argues that it was the colonisation of the Americas by Christopher Columbus that set off the chain of events that has led us to where we stand today, on the precipice of global catastrophe.
Climate breakdown, she says, is the mutant offspring of European scientific racism and colonialism, conceived in the suffering millions of Africans, Asians and Indigenous Americans endured at the altar of capital accumulation.
The climate crisis is, put simply, also a racial crisis, and it is only once we come to terms with this, Goffe says, and what it means for the ways we relate to the world and each other today, that we can hope to find a solution." From https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/mar/28/dark-laboratory...
Either way I take your point. There's been a lot of fodder for right-wing figures to attack the guardian for ignoring or alienating the white working class.
I guess "in English" was implied.
>"We’re now at a place where our audience is actually bigger in the U.S. than The Wall Street Journal’s audience in the U.S."
That feels like not that much money considering the readership, right? The WSJ has somewhere around 3 million subscribers; they would need to be making only 14 dollars per subscription per year to do that sort of revenue.
Not to say that's necessarily a bad thing, but more that you need a pretty substantial readership to get there.
Put another way, that revenue is like 200k subscribers at 20 bucks a month. That would put you at the level of a newspaper like the Minnesota Star Tribune as far as subscription revenue.
I suspect donors (as opposed to subscribers) pay much less than $240/year.
It's just something that I feel should be in the conversation. The Guardian's business model is clearly successful for them, but IMO it's not something that can apply to most other newspapers.
Based on my napkin math for the WSJ compared to the Guardian, the WSJ would only expect to get ~5% of their revenue replaced if they switched business models. Even if I'm off by a factor of 5, you'd still be looking at a 75% reduction.
I don't say this to be critical of the Guardian. I love their work and I'm happy they've chosen the model they have, because it enables access to high-quality journalism for free. It is also a great case study proving that this business model works and can be sustainable. But I don't want people drawing the conclusion that every newspaper could survive like this.
I had a free subscription to the Financial Times through a weird cookie misshap, and I was impressed by the quality of the reporting and the fact they were happy to shoot down corporations behaving unethically, which I hadn't a priori expected.
The Guardian (and Luke Harding especially) have never really come clean about this, which is grating since publishing the unredacted cables is the ostensible reason for Assange's decade-long persecution and imprisonment, and the Guardian essentially followed the establishment line over this period, arguably then being complicit in the persecution of Assange for something which Harding was really responsible for.
Of course, the primary reason for Assange's persecution wasn't the release of the material per se, but to discourage him and others from further exposing govt crimes.
I also wish it were more of a leftist paper but it is what it is.
Good reporting is presenting facts about all sides.
Good reporting is not about demonizing your perceived enemies while excessively praising your idols.
> Good reporting is not skewed by ideology.
You can't not have a perspective. You can be upfront about what your perspective is, while giving reasonable time to other perspectives.
> Good reporting is presenting facts about all sides.
Here I think the school-age lessons about what is fact and what is opinion does us all a massive disservice.
> Good reporting is not about demonizing your perceived enemies while excessively praising your idols.
If you can make a good argument supporting your demonization or praise, why not?
> school-age lessons
You could elaborate on this "argument", but we would probably disagree about the problems of modern journalism.
> If you can make a good argument supporting your demonization or praise, why not?
Because this is a more or less proof you didn't write an article to inform the reader and that you had other aspirations. You also lose the trust of your readers, but of course you always can work from the minima some papers find themselves in. Boulevard can be economically viable.
Be that as it may, to be a successful journalist is difficult today. And if you are too successful, you probably have a lot of enemies in your own trade.
(all of this thread resonates well with my last HN submission btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538847 )
You could say humanism is the absolute variable good journalists could stick to, but the Guardian seems to be going beyond that, deeper into the left ideology.
I'm still a big fan, regular reader and supporter of the Guardian, but I do at times skip over some of their more openly leftist pieces.
Nonsense. Good reporting is about carefully filtering the evidence and reporting the essential stuff. Sometimes that's heavily skewed to one "side" or the other. What's suspicious is when it's always the same side.
Having James Delingpole as climate change denial columnnist also is really unimpressive.
I'm not criticising; I think they're a little too indignant at times - woke even - but overall they're probably the least objectionable newspaper in the UK, maybe the world.
Kind of like the left wing mirror of The Times.
(Separately the writing style is mostly not to my taste, but that's subjective)
Still haven’t seen an apology. Maybe they like rfk.
In a review article published in 2010, after Wakefield was disciplined by the General Medical Council, regular columnist Phil Hammond, who contributes to the "Medicine Balls" column under the pseudonym "MD", stated that: "Private Eye got it wrong in its coverage of MMR" in maintaining its support for Wakefield's position long after shortcomings in his work had emerged.
It feels wrong to me, but there we are.
Personally I use an ad-blocker, but I also subscribe for a few bucks a month.
They have to pay the bills somehow. The alternative to "consent or pay" is "pay". I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong.
I am actually having difficulty writing this, as "consent to share your data" is ultimately a way to track and collect data on you. But what can you do? They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data.
Isn't this choice better than companies just always tracking you, and also trying to get you to buy something?
Deep down I know most people don't understand the amount of data and other information companies collect on them nor what they do with it. But at a certain point we have autonomy. I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying. There is always the third option of not consuming the content. The choices we make.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...
On the same page that the ICO gives guidance that "consent or pay" is legal, "take it or leave it", in which you are invited to pay with your data or go elsewhere, is not.
This seems very weird to me. Either data is a form of payment or it isn't, and I had laboured under the (mis?)apprehension that the GDPR removed it from this sort of situation - that one had a right to say "no" to invasive tracking and that shouldn't affect the service provided one way or another. This muddies the water over true consent to track and it seems the ICO agrees -
"When the only alternative to consent is paying a single price which combines access to the core product with a fee for avoiding sharing personal data for the purposes of personalised advertising, it can be difficult to demonstrate freely given consent."
> They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data.
In this case I do pay for it with money
> I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying.
Personally I'd rather government legislate away the tracking unless it can be genuinely demonstrated that someone opted in, with no form of coercion at all, and those who wanted to be paid to host advertising switch to a more context-sensitive rather than audience-sensitive model. And I had thought that was where we were going. This feels a bit like backsliding on that.
(I'm not going to argue this is black and white "OMG so wrong!", I can definitely see there's room for differing opinions here, and I am aware I carry an anti-advertising, anti-tracking bias.)
On one hand, content creators need to be paid. On the other, users should be able to protect their privacy. In the case of news, all should be welcome to participate in their society.
Is there a limit in where providing data in compensation opposed to money makes sense? I wouldn't trade my data for the weather, they can get a zip code. On the other hand, I do trade my data to my financial institutions so they can do fraud checks. So we do exist on a spectrum of data intrusion and getting our needs met.
Is trading data for news closer to checking the weather or doing banking? In todays world, I would say access to news is important and if you can't pay with money, its okay to pay with data in order to be informed about the news.
There was plenty of ad funded media before tracking.
I have an issue with control over my browser. If you are sending me bytes, I am and should be free to render it as I see fit. If you send me bytes containing your product, you should understand this. If you want me to pay for your product, then place it behind an actual paywall. Don't offer the product together with some instructions that show commercials. I won't look at them, and no reasonable argument will make me.
I have no issue with paywalls and paying. I have an issue with attempting to control how I render what your webserver sends me.
If you want to continue benefiting off others work for free, that's on you. The server didn't just send bytes to your browser, you asked your browser to do so.
You get tracked when you subcribe as well. The Guardian is far from perfect, and that bothers me more when I'm paying a subscription.
And yes, that sucks. I object very much to the "you subscribe and we still track/advertise" model, just as I object to ads creeping into paid tv streaming services now. And yes, I would expect the guardian to hold itself to a higher standard :/
Compare that to the Financial Times, which has a low throughput of very high quality content, enabled by a discerning and high paying subscriber base. I read the Guardian for the lifestyle / cooking sections these days, but the FT is an incomparably better and more serious publication, whatever your politics (mine are the diametric opposite of the financial class).
To be fair though, the FT is both really expensive, sells market data for a large price, and has a tier of subscription that can only be bought by organisations (they didn't even show me a price).
The Guardian has been going downhill massively over the last few years. I think the point at which I lost faith in them was when they trumpeted that 50% of carbon emissions were caused by 10 companies (i.e. the oil majors).
Betsy Reed runs the American side with a lot more quality and a lot less political baggage, which is to her credit. I do think that her tenure at The Intercept, and and in particular The Intercept's inadvertent leak of Reality Winner's identity the feds, has made her more thoughtful.
Yup. As Harold Wilson is reputed to have said, with friends like the guardian who needs enemies?
Originally founded, written, published and printed in Manchester and bearing the name 'The Manchester Guardian' it's now abandoned all of these in favour of London with just a handful of Manchester based journalists.
The contrast with the US and Germany say is stark.
> "... there is a real crisis of access to reliable information for people who don’t want or have the means to subscribe to the New York Times. That is a real problem that we have an answer to.”
One day I got a call from a private detective hired by a couple whose home they were squatting in. I went to court on their behalf too. One victim of his exploits in the UK periodically contacts me to follow up on whether I have had any news.
All in all a pretty interesting episode.
I recently went back to the guardian after 10yrs as NYT and even WSJ just got crappier in every way.
The Guardian podcast ‘long reads’ is so good. I hope they continue to thrive
(This is better than most US news organizations I've checked, who seem to sell out the news-reading behavior to numerous third-party trackers.)
The BAe bribery scandal: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/11/bae.freedomofi...
And before that the downfall of Jonathan Aitken and Neil Hamilton in the 1990s.
If you just want examples, the articles about various journalism awards often list topics from that year.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/investigative-journalism+t...
You had to pay for a newspaper. Was that elitism?
Printing a newspaper costs more money than serving a static pageview. But cost of reproduction aside, people could read the newspaper for free at their public library, or down at the local diner, coffee shop or bar. There were newspapers in the break room at work. Teachers got stacks of yesterday's newspaper for free to use in class. Friends and family members could clip articles to share with friends. You could even fish one out of the trash or pick up an abandoned copy from a park bench or public transport seat. And if you really could not find any other way to read it, you could simply buy a single copy - no subscription required, no need to trade PII for access, no cookie popups, no tracking pixels. It's quite a different product.
You need funding sources (subscribers, ads, in this case a trust) but it doesn't really matter if you don't have quality content.
[0] https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/who-is-the-money-behind-t... [1] (PDF) https://www.nuj.org.uk/asset/18CD4D84-FD26-4CDB-AF43E11F6A6C...
The default has always been no friction, especially no paywall.
Anything less is supposed to raise an eyebrow.
If you've got significant visitors to your website, the default is flourishing also.
Paywalls or other obstacles are just a sign that you're not flourishing as well as others in the same environment.
Similar to how Trump made CNN unwatchable. I mean, I hate the man, but I want an independent, factual slant on the news, not to be continually told how bad Trump is.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/02/whyiha...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/10/french-writer-...
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-The-Guardian-so-increasingly-mi...
The people whose villages were pillaged by the Red Army, who raped all women there and stole everything of value will likely hate Russians.
Women who experience a lot of violence from men, even second hand, will likely hate men. It’s normal, hate is a natural response to harm.
Doesn’t mean all Russians are bad, or all men. I don’t feel personally attacked.
You can make up all sorts of excuses for racism and sexism and all the other -isms. They don't make it right.
TL;DR: The Guardian is misandrist.
The problematic racism is when people hate <race> despite <race> never harming them in any way, usually because that helps them justify systemically disadvantaging <race>.
You don't make the distinction, and draw equivalence between the two, so for you it's equally bad, I understand that.
I didn't spend much time on it. Let them stew in their manhate.
Not going to lie, I was really hoping that this would be much more like the 99% of articles on NYMag that is fully paywalled, for irony's sake.
Breaking news whenever it feels like breaking.
Beyond that, I personally take issue with Google not SEO banishing news companies for providing different results to Google than the average user. It's been over a decade since I've worked in the SEO industry but at the time that was a mortal SEO sin.
From all the newspapers the Guardian isn't exactly what comes to mind here. Their opinion section might have some content that is very liberal or left from an American perspective but their news reporting is factual and pretty good while succinct in my experience.
It’s not really surprising, or even controversial, for a European newspaper to be mostly anti-Trump. They are also anti-fascism and pro-democracy. All perfectly logical.
Even they, and the rest of the right wing press in the U.K, seem to at most indifferent to Trump at the moment.
Quite odd really. Hitler in the 30s was threatening to invade neighbouring countries, saying Germany needed places like Austria, Czechoslovakia, for national security reasons
I must admit that I don’t go out of my way to read the Daily Mail. Maybe I should. I wonder which way they are going now, with the conservatives missing in action, Reform intent on sabotaging itself and Trump quite hostile and not very sensitive to the “special relationship” argument. Same for the Telegraph, actually.
> Hitler in the 30s was threatening to invade neighbouring countries, saying Germany needed places like Austria, Czechoslovakia, for national security reasons
The history of British international policies is fascinating. It has always been a combination of splendid isolation and playing continental countries against each other. I can see how there could be a tendency to support anybody just to annoy the French, or to have a strong right-wing government to eliminate the Communists. There is some kind of internal consistency, if you assume that no problem will cross the Channel.
And really Trump is doing enough to warrant rage, all the guardian needs to do is report on it :)
That said, being anti-Trump is not a partisan position for a UK newspaper. Since the Zelenskyy/Oval Office events, he's unpopular even among much of the right. Nowhere near as unpopular as Vance and Musk though.
> Despite The Guardian’s strident anti-Trump fundraising pushes, its broader audience is less partisan, as is the tone of its news coverage. It’s a weird line to straddle. “The appeals that you see at the bottom of articles are really framed around issues of press freedom and our identity and our structure of ownership,” Reed said. “They are not appeals that say, ‘Trump is bad, you need to support The Guardian, we are against Trump.’” Maybe not explicitly. But they are clearly benefitting from this moment and using the new money to hire, with expectations to continue growing its staff in the U.S. this year.
I read the Guardian for 20 years, it's not less partisan in its output, it's incredibly partisan - just like all the other big papers. Thinking a news source doesn't have a slant is incredibly naive, in my view, but since this is coming from another newspaper or journalist with their own biases and slant, it's at best false and at worst a lie.
I can pick certain topics and check the Graun to see whether they ever deviate from positive or negative on those topics. That's partisanship, wholly different from where they land on the political spectrum.
I'd love to get a higher quality source of data on media bias and accuracy. Both of these matter because even reporting facts but emphasizing a certain perspective distorts reality. Inaccuracy or straight out making stuff up is another form of reality distortion.
As to the distortions, the only defence against that appears to be to read a wide array of sources. I stopped reading the Guardian after one too many straight up lies but I certainly can't say they're the only ones.
The Guardian has some statistical errors (600 vs 30), a couple serious and the others less serious (9% vs 3%).
It seems to be being held to a higher standard than media known to be less trustworthy.
Neither is desirable, but one seems quite definitely worse than the other, and I wouldn't say the one making mistakes is worse than the one they call out as "PANTS ON FIRE"...
Also it would depend on the ratio of fact check issues to stories. Maybe Fox News runs a lot more news?
Either way, the analysis seems not crazy, and the Guardian seems biased and not 100% factual.
The guardian’s editorial is politically biased, it wears that on its sleeve, their opinion pieces come from a moderate-left viewpoint. But its reporting is generally factual, even if they make mistakes sometimes, as reported on that site.
Whereas they literally label some fox links as “PANTS ON FIRE”, I.e deliberate falsehoods. And we all know the story around, say, Dominion, where Fox knew they were lying but carried on. And the site gives them a higher score?
This is enough for me to doubt the site is anywhere near a reliable comparator.
But yes, The Avengers is riddled with inaccuracies and may not reflect yesterdays actual events in New York, London and Wakanda.
A lot of newspapers in Europe are also explicitly pro-Ukraine for instance. How is that different?
And politically being anti Trump is an extremely moderate position.
What the Guardian has, throughout its editorial, is a political position. This is something that UK national newspapers naturally evolved over time as a differentiator, and is common (but not universal) in many countries. There are various political stable-ish ecological niches -- left, center-left, center-right, upper class, business, popularist right, and various news media that have staked out their territory. That means that they can attract with "ragebait", and also build a reasonably consistent (or self-consistent, at least) factual reportage. Someone who leans right-wing but wishes to be informed might buy the Guardian regardless, because they can disregard and triangulate. You have a core audience, and as long as that audience is loyal -- and needs some connection to reality, you can fund greater than just ragebait.
Ragebait isn't the only business model for supporting honest journalism, and one of the lessons I learned at the Guardian is that the actual business models can be surprising and frequently unrelated to news reporting. For many years, the Guardian was kept solvent through used car sales via Autocar, the most profitable asset in the Scott Trust. (One of the reasons why the Guardian was so early going online is that its editors, in particular Alan Rusbridger, recognised presciently that the Web was going to absolutely gut Autocar's profits, and so they needed to get ahead of the game.) You will be surprised about how many booms and busts in UK media industry have been determined by audience-pullers like crosswords, bingo, photos of naked models, and sudoku.
Wasn't that Auto Trader, not Autocar?
After 2016, however, they seemed to adopt a firm anti-MAGA stance which I found to be biased and off-putting. Their highly critical stance against Israel after the Hamas attacks of October 2023 was the last straw.
Then, they withdrew from the X platform and now they might as well not exist, as far as I'm concerned. I think that was a mistake, given their significant following on X, but I guess they felt they don't need it.
How has the NY Times reported this?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/israel-killed-...
Since then, I have a personal filter that I apply to all journalism, which is to avoid articles of the form: "X is outraged by Y" (or horrified, shocked, etc). I don't need meta-outrage. With my filter turned on, I'm quite satisfied with the G's journalism.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/08/ashamed-t...
I remember this one in particular for random reasons. But these kinds of articles aren’t particularly rare in the guardian. The guardian’s editorial policy appears to be to generate a steady stream of random human interest stories with the common agenda of finding fault with everything that isn’t British.
You need counseling for your sad hostility.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news
The article you linked has some sources, though maybe a survey would help (if one exists). It might be applying a British viewpoint on America, in Britain the "shameful" jobs are in banking.
Believe me they find fault in everything that is British as well!
They are most definitely at the forefront of the "everything here is shit and we are all dreadful" mindset that infects a lot of the centre-left of the UK. For all that I like them better than most other news sources, the repeated refrain that we are all awful and should be ashamed of ourselves does get tiresome.
Errr, nah. It's mostly very high quality, sober and honest journalism.
Yes, a lot of the opinion and editorial is very obviously politically biased, and they do publish some absolute lefty tripe occasionally, but the news coverage is generally high quality and the longer form stuff thought provoking.
For ragebait in a British publication see "The Daily Mail".
It has a mild bent to its reporting, and that's about it. The world isn't "ragebait" just because you happen to disagree.
What’s not then? I’m genuinely curious since Guardian seems to be one of the most balanced major newspapers in their reporting that there is.
Sure it’s slightly left leaning overall and there are some quite unhinged editorials now and then but they are mostly isolated from the rest of the paper.
> sober and honest journalism
Well again.. can you give examples of more sober and honest journalism (besides just fact reporting news services like Reuters)
Just because it makes you angry doesn’t make it “ragebait”.
I donated for the longest time until they succumbed to rage bait journalism.
For a while I started avoiding it entirely, especially during the worst of the Trump and C19 years sanity and objective information seemed to have left everyone.
Also HN remember this is NOT reddit, downvote only if the comment brings nothing to the discussion. The above comment is simply disgreeing with the current blind guardian admiration.
They do not deserve all that praise, and those who point it out are not breaking HN rules and thus should not be removed from the discussion with mindless downvotes.
Read the rules ppl !!!
( wish reddit users could just stay in their own ruined toxic echo chamber and leave the still relatively healthy forums alone. Dont you people have a Tesla somewhere to scratch??)
Doesn't that describe your comment? I don't meant that as an attack or dismissal.
Musk is evil, most scientists warning about Trump, Trump takes over Chips Act, and Trump is a "dictator."
Then, Trump cuts Planned Parenthood, Trump reviews Harvard for antisemitism claims, and Trump pardons "Jan 6 loyalist."
Also, Israel are killers and woke people were right per someone on TV. Then, a few, normal pieces of news if the articles themselves had no slant.
Most of the front page would make those considering source integrity wonder if the paper was funded by a top opponent of Trump or Musk specifically to attack them. I'm not saying there's any data for that. I'm saying that, as a former liberal who used to want high-quality news with a range of views, I'd have thought the Guardian today was as extremely polarized as CNN or Fox.
Then, a popup that billionaires control the media with only two, right-wing ones mentioned. No mention that richest oligarchs funding or controlling education, media, and political campaigns are leftist:
Such papers are highly misleading with much drama following the games they play.
It's unfortunate given that the Guardian's ownership model might let it be a politically neutral paper with a range of views. They could be independent with quality, non-extreme writing from many sides. We could see a range of views. If one side, reporting with data representing many perspectives where we know they aren't cherry picking.
I want more news like that. Even the reliable sources that write in endless attacks or pour gas on the fire are draining to read. I'd rather it just be a little work or even pleasant. I dread reading the news these days.
> was as extremely polarized as CNN or Fox.
The guardian is an openly left-leaning publication, that's what it is, that's more or less what it's for.
If you're in the US I understand that you may not understand such a thing, or it may seem extreme to you because there is effectively no political left wing in America, and news is generally captured by oligarchs with a right-leaning slant. In the other geographies where the Guardian has a presence (UK, Australia) its reporting doesn't feel particularly extreme, probably because the ideas and viewpoints of the moderate left are a normal part of our political landscape, and we also have national broadcasters that are (generally, in intent) pretty neutral.
They're not in any way a Fox equivalent - the Guardian doesn't just make shit up or shit-stir for the sake of it, or try to pass itself off as an 'entertainment network' rather than news...
In America, almost all corporate outlets are Progressive left, most universities are, their politics were pushed into many big firms, and most of the government was liberal. They force their views on others in most places they control, too, with dissent not allowed.
A newer trend we saw during elections was them saying the same things in sync like they had a script. Recently, they all said positive things about Biden and Harris while saying negative things about Trump. They were willing to lie together many times. Like how liberal media reported Harris was the border czar in the past but all said it was a myth when Trump pointed it out. They also constantly misquote and lie about Trump which annoys me because I hate wasting time on lies or doing retractions.
The total, leftist control of major institutions and media... along with their games and lies... is the largest cause of the rise of Trump. It's why we now have kore accurate, but biased, reporting like The Daily Wire. Many people have left the Democrat party as a result of these things. Liberal news is lower rated by liberals than in the past.
Their control of media is proven by the fact that whatever you watch led you to believe they weren't in control of the media and country for a long time.
By stating tht there is "effectively no political left wing in America" they are asserting that the furtherest political left position held in the USofA is a centralist one called "Progressive left" there in the US.
Quite possibly the most obnoxious route to take
For me this is very counterproductive. If I still need to use my adblocker why bother to sign up?
I have the same thing with YouTube. Even if I pay for premium I'll still need to mess around with the sponsorblock plugin to get a truly adfree experience. In that case I'll just go the full way and just block everything. Especially on the TV as it means I'll still need to use smarttubenext. Because the official YouTube app doesn't support sponsorblock.
If they offered sponsor free videos to premium subscribers I probably would subscribe.
I wouldn't say this is the same thing at all. The sponsors are something that the individual video creator chose to do, and which youtube doesn't really have power over. If you pay for premium and you don't get ads injected by youtube, then they are holding up their end of the bargain in a way which "ad-lite" deals aren't.
Don't forget the creators already get a lot more money for a premium view than an adsponsored one. And nothing for an adblocked view.
Besides, I deal with YouTube. Not the creators.
A creator might not have the means to buy the equipment, so not being sponsored would mean not making that content, which would be a net loss in these cases in my view.
That said, sponsored segments for BetterHelp, NordVPN and similar can f right off.
I can’t be certain but I remember sponsorships and other monetization methods being against the rules from 2005 to around 2010. Everything had to be done through the official affiliate program (YouTube Partners, I think they called it), which required an application and a large number of views and subscribers. I don’t remember seeing sponsored segments regularly until well after 2013. Sponsorblock already crowdsources this information. It wouldn’t be a technical hurdle to require uploaders to demarcate sponsored segments.
I believe this policy came about due to FTC legislation that came into effect some time in the late 2010s or early 2020s. There was definitely a period in the 2010s when YouTube allowed sponsorships without the need to disclose them, or at least wasn't enforcing any policies they had against it.
> IRs are still against the rules today.
What does IR stand for?
Personally I don’t disable my ad blocker, ever. Regardless of whether I subscribe or not, or whether the website is ad free with a subscription. I give them (a bit of) money because I support them, not to avoid ads. The ad infestation is a battle we lost a while ago, now we can only make do.
> I have the same thing with YouTube.
Same, except that I am not giving (willingly) a cent to Google, ever. They mine me enough already.
We're still talking about The Guardian?
They advertise a $20 (AUD) per month "All Access Digital" plan here - https://support.theguardian.com/au/contribute?pre-auth-ref=h... - which they say gives you access to "Ad-free reading on all your devices"
But that might be through their app rather than the browser. Hard to tell.
I was confused with the "far fewer asks for support" that put me off. I mean if you're already supporting them, why?
Don't get me wrong, everything about this model sucks -- it's just not as straight forward as it might seem.
And by being unethical and double dipping you're setting a great example for your customers who won't feel bad about being unethical themselves and just blocking and bypassing all your monetisation. If a site is being honest and fair I'm also much more motivated to play fair with them. I used to with Amazon and Netflix and paid my subscription until they started charging extra to remove ads. Now I pirate again.
Ps by 'you' I mean the companies that choose to do this, not you the poster.
I don’t disagree with the message wholesale, but blocking ads is not unethical. It’s a vital defense mechanism against outright malicious actors or the excesses of the attention economy. There is no opt-out or alternative, and there is no consent.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...
I feel like this is ... slimy.
I suppose it does at least make things explicit - your data is very obviously a form of payment at that point.
https://www.culture.gouv.fr/thematiques/presse-ecrite/tablea...
The Guardian US expects to hit $44 million in voluntary reader donations in the U.S. and Canada this year, up 33 percent over last year [..].
These contributions account for more than 60 percent of the American operation’s total revenue, which last year exceeded costs by $16 million
(the rest of its revenue comes from advertising and philanthropic support from foundations).
Can you expand on what it is that you feel is not accounted for?
Social media is the new journalism.
Anyone who builds their model of the world primarily from social media without grounding it in actual journalism is doing themselves (but mostly the wider society) a huge disservice.
It's not journalism to only read the primary sources you have time to read. That's not proper research, it's narrow and limited. By definition nobody has time to do their own journalism, any more than they have time to write their phones operating system themselves.
People who cannot afford your product are not your audience, it is okay to be elitist.
> The number of national daily newspapers in the Netherlands was 108 in 1950, 38 in 1965, 10 in the 2010s, 9 since March 2020, and 8 since March 2021.