I’m surprised that nobody mentioned tax brackets.
I laughed my ass off when my racist uncle smugly explained that he turned down a raise, because that would put him in an upper tax rate and cost him more money than the raise was worth.
Tried to explain how income tax works. Didn’t go through that thick skull of his.
This misconception is widespread enough that I can only think that it is deliberately perpetuated by the ruling class to save them money. The number of people who are convinced that going up a tax bracket could mean you make less total money is astounding, and many of them are like your uncle— utterly convinced to the point that being informed correctly sounds like naivety to them.
Another example is “Don’t work overtime, the taxes cost more than you make.”
Unless your marginal tax rate for your overtime is > 100%, that’s simply false. Given that all marginal income tax rates in the US are < 100% (that I know of).
Yep.
A graduated tax structure is evidently just literally too complex for about half the population to understand.
Throw ‘how is Social Security funded’ into that as well.
The top bracket is 176,000 and everything above that.
All it would take to keep Soc Sec funded is just add more brackets after that.
But nope, America is full of morons who think that their dumb ass making 40k or 80k is going to see a higher tax bill if you explicitly only additionally tax those making stupendous amounts of money.
Had an ex try and convince me that taking overtime pay instead of banking hours would net me less money for the same reason.
That can happen, depending on your company’s payment software. One place I worked at would calculate the expected tax burden based on the highest paycheck you made, so if you worked 50% overtime (thus making 175% of your normal paycheck), it would be placing you in a way higher tax bracket for the rest of the year, and you’d have to reclaim it all in the refund when you did your taxes.
Yeah this is just the payroll processor intentionally fucking with people, not how taxes work.
The only scenario I can imagine that making sense in is if you are getting SSI or SSDI and the overtime you exceed the threshold to keep receiving benefits, but would not exceed the actual SSI benefit itself.
Or for SNAP or TANF or something.
… the only other scenario I can think of is your ex is commiting tax fraud.
… or they can’t understand middle school level math… =[
That last thing
Some people are terrible with money. Take my wife… (Please) - after 20 years she suddenly* decided she wants a divorce. Rather than either of us keep our house, she wants to sell it and split the equity we get out of it. Fair enough, I can agree with that… But then she said she wanted to dump it on a flipper for 300k, when comparable houses have gone for 430-450. I said if you’re going to let it go that cheap, let me buy you out. I crunched the numbers, we owe 150k, so I’d either refinance or assume the loan, and give her 75k (her half of the difference between the sale price and what we owe) - she accused me of trying to screw her over. “I’m not letting you have the house for $75k!” “That’s right, you’re not- we (the couple) would be selling it to me (the individual) for $300k, it’s the same as dumping it on a flipper, just that I’m the flipper!” There was no getting through to her. Eventually she agreed to try and sell it properly for what it’s worth.
*to me… Evidently she had made up her mind months ago, but wasn’t going to tell me until her job situation improved…
If you’re on some social security program it could be wise to turn down a small raise. At least in some places. Once you earn above a certain limit those benefits stop and you actually lose money.
I had to explain progressive taxation to a coworker a while ago. Admittedly he was in his mid 20s and was a self described bad student. To his credit he actually understood. He also went back to school some time later and got an undergraduate degree.
Sometimes there’s hope for people.
I don’t think tax brackets are explained very well. I’m relatively intelligent, and didn’t understand until I was in my early 20s, at my first real job, and made a comment during the financial retirement introduction. Luckily the person leading the orientation took 30 seconds and blew my mind.
Except you’re ignoring tax credits. There are a slew of tax credits that only apply at certain income levels and below. It is very possible that you can suddenly no longer qualify for a credit by getting a small raise which is less than what the credit would have given you.
Always consult a tax advisor.
Ah sorry, I live in a country where we don’t require every single citizen to hire an accountant to file their taxes.
My condolences.
My mom was proud that the neighborhood worked together to block an “ugly new cell tower” from being constructed in the area. Then she was upset that her cell service was spotty, in literally the same fucking breath.
I worked in a retail pharmacy so here is a list:
- Women do not have prostates
- During Fukishima nuclear incident, there would be no physical issues for people >5,000 miles away
- Antibiotics don’t work on viruses
- Vaccines
- “Natural” medicines can significantly interact with other medicines
- What jock itch is and the astounding amount of men who thought it was normal
- Don’t recklessly shove things into your eye, ear, nose, butt, penis/vagina (exceptions apply)
wait what the fuck is jock itch?
A fungal infection most common amongst teenagers forced to wear sweaty unwashed clothes over and over again for gym and sports because the school system is somehow set up too stupidly to effectively deal with mildewy clothing in 2025
It can happen to anyone. It’s just super common amongst teens because enforcing and facilitating hygiene for young men is the lowest priority in our society for some reason
Do I want to know what the exception is where shoving things into places “recklessly” is okay?
Maybe recklessly isn’t the right word, but there are emergency medications that are administered rectally or nasally where it’s better to be quick than gentle. Rectally administered diazepam for seizures is a good example.
TIL that rectally administered diazepam is a thing.
I think I could have lived my whole life not knowing that and been the happier for it.
Women do not have prostates
That’s a good one
Most don’t, some do, in context presumably it was relatively clear
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I remember in 7th grade, our social studies class did a module on taxation and tariffs. Seemed pretty easy to understand at the time. Little did I know, later on, that many, many people would not understand this relatively simple concept.
Having to explain that a certain infamous “Chinese alphabet” font¹ (favoured by tattoo joints everywhere) is not how you write in Chinese. There is a shocking number of people who have somehow managed to grow up not just to adulthood but to senior citizen levels who think that foreign languages are just English with a funky spelling; that grammar rules are otherwise the same, and that words translate one for one (and sometimes, in extreme cases, like the gibberish font, letter for letter).
¹ https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/2006/08/gibberish-asian-font-mystery-solved.html
山尺工卞工几呂 勹丹尸丹几ヨ己ヨ 工己 ヨ丹己と!
I saw a brand a while back, can’t remember exactly what, something like coffee or chocolate, and they were using this fake Japanese for all their product names and merchandise labels.
It was certainly the most surefire way to instantly demonstrate to me they have no actual understanding of, or connection with, Japan or Japanese culture at all.
Literal cultural appropriation.
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This happend multiple times. A lot people seem to not know that a Cow had to be pregnant to produce Milk…
I never knew knew that. I assumed we’d done some selective breeding along the line so when they start they just don’t stop. Seems really inefficient.
Yep. Really inefficient and horrible. In nature a cow give birth to about 4-6 calves in her entire life (They get about 20 years old.) In the dairy industry, they are fertilized for the first time at 15 months. From then on they are permanently pregnant until they die (in the industry they live to be around 5 years old). The calves are removed from their mothers after birth in order to pump the mother’s milk. Horrible for the calve and her mother cause they have the same kind of bonding to their child/mother that we have. In addition, the cows’ udders are extremely over bred for maximum profit. This makes it extremely painful for the cows to give milk.
The dairy industry is extremely brutal and morally reprehensible. Everyone who consumes dairy should take a look at how milk is actually produced.
From then on they are permanently pregnant
that’s not true.
Would you like to expand on your answer?
typically, they are only pregnant once per year
(They get about 20 years old.)
cows do not live to 20 years old without food, water, protection from the elements and predators, and veterinary care.
Ahh true. I forgot that every other animal in nature only gets a few month if not a few weeks old because they don’t have food, water, protection from the elements and predators, and veterinary care…
let a jersey in the woods.
A cow is a mammal !?!? Shocked Pikachu
I had to walk a classmate through how to install a program in Windows. You know, go to the website, hit download, wait for it to finish, next next next, etc. We’re two weeks away from getting our diplomas. In IT.
If you know how to build a computer, you’re already ahead of 50% of people going into entry level IT support.
I’ve had enterprise grade desktop servers with fans plugged into the wrong fan header (pump vs case fan, the pump header runs at 100% and its noisy AF), same problem for multiple of the same model. $3000+ computers and the people making them cant RTFM (they included the manual)
I was ‘two weeks ago’-years-old when I realized that maybe setting my AIO pump to 100% instead of letting it be throttled up and down like a CPU fan might be a good idea. (I was installing it on a motherboard too old to have a “pump header;” it only understands
CPU_FANandSYS_FAN.)Considering that my previous AIO worked just fine for seven years being treated like a fan – and in fact would still be in use if not for it failing to fit in my new SFF case – I’m still not actually sure the difference matters.
You mean you don’t just type in the name of the program in an app store like Synaptic or f-droid?
Is this actually how it still works on windows? Like it has not evolved since the 90s?
Look, they’re too busy changing the UI completely every two years to change things like functionality.
They just copy Plasma anyway.
package managers technically exist, including Microsoft’s own winget, and if you’re on windows they’re a decent choice, though they do come with a multitude of issues
there’s even a decent ish package manager GUI called unigetui
Plus 1 for uni get. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good.
how would it change, netbooting still requires significant infrastructure that only nerds and business have and almost no phones have support for USB mass storage device emulation (technically not emulation) so it still needs a USB drive or DVD.edit: misread the previous comment, didn’t see program
Me, still in university, trying to tell 3 graduates (all computer science grads) what a “data exception error” in COBOL was.
why consumers pay tarrifs
The earth isn’t flat.
Seriously, what the fuck.
“Tax the rich” does not mean anybody wants to tax you for owning your home. Unless it’s a fucking palace.
That in Judaism, Jesus isn’t all that special.
I thought that was obvious when they crucified him /s
The back of a hammer is used for pulling out nails.
Unless it’s a ball-peen hammer.
About 30 years ago I had to explain to my boyfriend’s mom that LGBTQI+ people do not just choose to be LGBTQI+.
I didn’t know at the time whether I got through to her, but years later she told me she understood why that was true.
I remember I had to come out of the closet to my adoptive mom as asexual like four times. She (unlike me) is Indian/Andamanian and asexuality comes off in her lifestyle like you’re being rebellious. It was only after a few times when she was like “oh she’s serious”.
I had to explain to an adult woman that prunes are to plums as raisins are to grapes.
Then why aren’t they called plaisins. Craisins are.
How fractions work to a 30 year old woman.
I literally had to draw a circle, and use the pie analogy from grade school.
But 1/4 is larger than 1/3, because 4 is bigger than 3!
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/
Eggzackly!
