The Tax Justice Network said trillions could be raised with a ‘featherlight’ tax on the 0.5% of richest households, copying a current Spanish tax
Governments around the world copying Spain’s wealth tax on the super-rich could raise more than $2tn (£1.5tn), according to campaigners calling for the money to help finance the climate transition.
As a growing numbers of countries consider raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy, the Tax Justice Network campaign group said in a report that evidence from a “featherlight” tax on the 0.5% richest households in Spain could help raise trillions of dollars globally each year.
The Spanish government, under the socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, introduced a temporary “solidarity” wealth tax in late 2022, which is collected in 2023 and 2024, on the net wealth of individuals exceeding €3m (£2.6m). It is estimated to apply to the richest 0.5% of households.
Dave Van Zandt’s site, Media Bias Fact Check puts The Guardian and Breitbart in the same (Factual Reporting: MIXED) category of credibility. Apparently this is because they both have articles where the facts are contested. This ignores the difference in size of the two news sources’ publication rate, the number of articles contested, and the seriousness and type of errors. Van Zandt is not a social scientist, and should not be running a credibility gatekeeper when he doesn’t understand statistics, science, or bias.
MBFC uses a fundamentally flawed methodology for categorizing bias. Lemmy.World loses credibility every day this bot continues to operate.
Thank you for this public service. This bot is a fucking joke. We use The Guardian all the time as a reliable source on Wikipedia, and rightfully so. Breitbart, on the other hand, is so comically unreliable that it was deprecated (the same exact measure as the Daily Mail), and then on top of that it was added to the spam blacklist due to “persistent abuse”.
It’s also worth pointing out that from memory more than half the Guardian articles cited by MBFC as having failed fact checks were corrected or removed.
Also there is currently a pinned feedback thread on the news community asking for feedback on the bot so please post your thoughts in there if you haven’t already.
I’ve posted twice in the thread in !politics@lemmy.world, as well as reached out to @Rooki@lemmy.world, and his responses reek of bad faith. I’ve posted in the pinned thread, but if it has come this far, then politely containing our discontent to the sanctioned channels is not enough.
It’s pretty hard to ignore the overwhelming downvotes the bot posts have attracted, and if someone sees that and still thinks MBFC is a good idea, I question their judgement. It’s likely they will ignore our well-thought out concerns as well.
My suggestion is to respond directly to the bot so that people observing the spectacle of downvotes have a better understanding of what is going on. We downvote MBFC because we are on the side of fact-checking and media literacy - not against it.
Well said, it’s definitely a frustrating situation. I’ve also done my best through the proper channels, I don’t think much in the way of constructive action is likely to come from it but hopefully I’m wrong. At least from the many downvotes it seems like we’re far from alone but that also makes it more frustrating in a way.
We are collecting all the feedback here: https://lemmy.world/post/18775630
We are trying to come to a better solution ( except removing fully the bot ).
Why is removal of the bot totally off the table? I agree it’s not necessarily the only path forward but why would any particular course be off limits?
Having nothing and being a “trust me bro, this source is lit and unbiased” is better?
By having the bot you’re not solving the problem, you’re simply moving the “trust me bro” down one level and distracting from the actual discussion.
Granted I’m not a mod so I’m sure I’m missing some perspective here but I don’t think the bot is helping at all personally.
Also this is not an answer to the question. I simply asked why the option should be off the table completely. I didn’t say there are no better solutions. It just makes it sound like you already made your decision and are not open to feedback which is why I wanted to ask.
The MBFC is not any part of any solution, and failing to acknowledge how the bot is harming media literacy on Lemmy undermines any future solution you might implement.
Having nothing and being a “trust me bro, this source is lit and unbiased” is better?
Yes.
One of the basics of media literacy is that no source is unbiased. This is one of the flaws with MBFC - rating biased news corporations at the center of its spectrum as ‘least-biased’ sources. This is not a credible position for an organization that wants to be considered something other than a propaganda mill.
Many of your readers are interpreting political bias to mean credibility, and are rejecting sources that might expand their political horizons. MBFC conflates these two things as well, exacerbating the problem. Dave M Van Zandt rates left-leaning publications as less factual than alt-right outlets with even higher and more egregious problems with factual reporting.
If a reader is curious of the bias of a publication, it’s better they do their own research rather than poisoning the well before they see the article. Giving them bad information is worse than leaving them to their own devices and letting them develop media literacy on their own.
And it may not be hard to develop something better. But it’s difficult to focus attention on that when we’re distracted trying to quell the bleeding wound that is MBFC.
Thanks for fighting for accuracy, desperately needed in the modern era.
Can you make a change today so that The Guardian & Breitbart would never appear to be similarly [un]credible at first glance?
If not, a small pause could make sense. Better than damaging credibility not much of established news agencies perhaps but certainly the bot, limiting its impact in the future even if the problem’s corrected (think insta-downvotes from older users once burned by it). Folks respect pauses for refactoring!
Maybe MBFC isn’t tops and there’s some attractive alternative btw!
PS: thanks @Five@slrpnk.net for the alarm