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TranscriptComic title: Life in 2030”

This shows guy facing futuristic yet bleak smart home with many IoT devices and AI etc. Smart toilet is updating so he cant use it. Robot wife low battery so cant sleep with her. Fridge locked behind ads and ask to upgrade to premium version. Park is now data center so no walk for him. Smart bed subscription expired so he falls on floor. Air is taxed so he cant breath and vents say pay now to getair. Man looks stressed and sweaty in every panel.

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[–] 148 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (23 children)

This is silly. A tax is something the government charges you. We'll be paying a privately owned corporation for our their air.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (11 children)

    Don't a lot of people already pay companies to do their taxes for them? They're just cutting out the end man and keeping the middle man

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (10 children)

    That seems to mostly be a thing in the US, in developed countries we have pre filled out tax forms that you sign online, if you haven't got anything special to report, it takes 5 min to just double check the numbers and sign it.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Here in the UK "normal workers" dont even do that. Your employer does it all for you and you just get told about it in your payslip.

    [Here's how much you earned.]

    [Here's a bit of tax.] [Here's a bit of other tax] [Here's a bit of national insurance] [Here's a bit of pension contributions] [Here's some other numbers that I cant even remember because I never bother looking] [boring stuff really] [you should probably look at this but who gives a shit its boring]

    [Heres what youre actually getting!]

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Oh yeah, your employer pays your tax here in Sweden, I am just talking about the yearly income report you have to submit.

    You only have to make any changes if you have earned money not automatically reported to the government.

    I sold some stock a few years back, and had to report it and pay tax on it.

    I ran the simple calculation, reported everything, and transfered the money to my tax account, total time was 45 min.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    In Spain your employer pays, and you also pay some at the end of year. And for more complicated cases Spain publishes short instructions on how to pay taxes as an individual, just about 900 pages

    I heard, Spain tax system is considered the most complicated in the world because of all the legacy stuff

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    PAYG (pay as you go) Australia uses it too

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I have even reported a slightly higher tax rate to my employer, this means that I slightly overpay my taxes through the year, and when it is time to report your taxes, you will always get a tax return.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    In France, when you check your income tax if you have nothing to correct you don't even need to sign it.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Finland too. Government just sends a letter (digital today, used to be an actual letter) which says 'here's our info about your income and other shit, go to our website if you need to correct anything, if all is good you'll receive invoice/returns for X euro"

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  • [–] 56 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    "Every time we demand to be heard, they hold back our water, ration our air, until we crawl back into our holes, and do as we are told!"

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  • [–] 36 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    And that's why you should always have a can of PerriAir at home!

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  • [–] 27 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    joke about the air, but in a few short years we're going to be paying for climate control like that because we're in for one hell of a summer here, and from here on out they'll only get hotter.

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  • [–] 23 points 4 months ago

    On the other hand, some Nazi might own quadrillion dollars by then. Think about that.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    They flag you as a terrorist because the AI hallucinated, and you find your pay for air button just does not work anymore one day.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    And once you're pissed enough at the AI, ICE will deport you El Salvador, because the AI tech bros have lobbied out a law that labels all anti-AI activities as an act of terror on behalf of China.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago

    So many dystopian novel authors predicted this. P K Dick and Gibson among others. Forced to pay for life critical necessities like air and water, as well as fees to enter your apartment or take a shower.

    Companies have given up making anything new. It takes too long, requires a large R&D investment, and expensive tooling to manufacture new things. So they just start making up ways to claim ownership over everything they can and the delivery method to get it there. Robber barons and bridge trolls profiteering as middlemen that actually produce nothing. Want a concert ticket? Buy it through a service that bought it from the venue and pay fees on top of that if you can get them at all on release, if not pay again to the same company that lets scalpers resell and they get fees a second time. Want music? Pay for the data service, pay for the music service, pay again for the album if you actually want to keep it, pay for the cloud you store it in.

    Itβ€˜s only getting worse.

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  • [–] 20 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Bed think literally already happened, some amazon smart bed or some shit that was adjustable and it would fold shut like a clam if you didn't pay the subscription so you physically couldn't sleep on it.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Pod8, not Amazon related but a like 3-8000 dollar mattress topper that can heat or cool depending on a number of factors. The model that adjusts temp is server sided so it will work without a subscription (for now) but just in basic β€œset temp” mode, when it’s sold as this device that tracks heart rate and movement to dynamically adjust temp. Tech bros with no kids and too much cash love it

    It also stops working if Amazon web services go down, which is hilarious (which is maybe why people link it to Amazon, but that’s a different and worse problem where Amazon controls like 50% of the internet through data hosting)

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Never heard of this one. Eight sleep smart bed would revert to basic features if you didn't pay subscription though.

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago
    [–] 14 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Woke up this morning.

    $5 convenience fee for that.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    For an extra $3 per day, your wake up can include no headache. Please provide your credit card information to subscribe

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    You joke, but people with chronicle chronic headache will find that a great deal. No side effect, though.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    Philip k. Dick, in his novel Ubik, described the main character being trapped in his apartment because the front door required a .25 fee to open and the MC had to trick the door in order to leave his own home.

    There's a lot more than that in the book. It would be interesting to see someone try and fail to make a film out of it.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    That's been the joke for a long time. If corporations could charge you for air, they would. This comic is too real.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    People are buying water right now as we speak.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    Oh, yeah, I'm waiting for the water wars to start. Already have in some middle eastern countries. But, I'm sure they'll reach richer countries as well like the U.S. eventually.

    Climate change isn't going to wait for us to care.

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  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Doesn't seem much different than now

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Whatever happens, I'll never forget to charge my Wife Pro Max.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    A capitalist's dream come true! ... remember, socialism is bad πŸ˜…

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Every subhuman CEO's dream.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago
    [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Professional wife haver

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago
    [+] -11 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Well this is just utterly ridiculous. Yes some things are annoyances but this is just an utter extreme

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)