HN user
This is a common claim, but it is a misleading simplification of US politics and European politics. (In simple terms, many of the economic positions taken by the Democratic Party would be considered centrist in Europe, but if you include positions that have been taken on immigration, identity politics, criminal justice, reproductive rights, etc. it would not.)
...had Russia not also invaded from the North with 1.5 million troops, there's a chance they would not have surrendered
The Japanese had already moved all of their experienced troops from Manchuria before the Soviet invasion. They were maybe surprised that the USSR would break the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, but the defense of the home islands was their main concern at that point.
The Japanese knew the USSR was not a threat to the main islands as the Soviets could never have done a large invasion of Japan. The Soviets had a few ships that the USA had given them as part of Project Hula, but that is nothing compared to what would be needed for a full scale invasion of Japan. The Soviets did have plans to possibly attack Hokkaido, but as the wikipedia entry says "...Historians have generally considered it unlikely that an invasion of Hokkaido would have succeeded. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Ho...
In comparison, the proposed allied invasion was planned to have 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts. Even that wasn't considered enough:
...Ken Nichols, the District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District, wrote that at the beginning of August 1945, "[p]lanning for the invasion of the main Japanese home islands had reached its final stages, and if the landings actually took place, we might supply about fifteen atomic bombs to support the troops."
Marginal utility tends to diminish as you consume more of a good, but you can't compare utility between individuals. Utility is ordinal, has no common scale and is subjective. It doesn't make sense to try and claim that redistribution will always maximize the total wellbeing of society.
The 1% limit is a limit on the level of the property tax. If property tax values somehow fell by 50%, in theory, the property tax rate would double to ensure city operations remain funded. However, Seattle is almost at the statutory limit right now so there isn't much room to increase the rate - I this scenario the city would hit the 1% limit and be forced to get the money somewhere else or cut its budget instead. As I initially wrote:
...If total citywide property value drops by 50%, the tax rate would hit its legal maximum ceiling, and the city would have to make up the money somewhere else or cut spending.
And the city wouldn't even get all of the increase it is allowed as there are other tax districts who would also want a higher rate. The tax increase that would be allowed would be prorated with the other tax districts.
(The 1% revenue growth cap you referred to earlier is a different statute and a different issue.)
One big limitation is RCW 84.52.050 (Limitation of levies) which I think implements the 1% constitutional max allowed levy. I read somewhere that Seattle is at a levy of about 9.4, so that would be a hard limit right there.
...If total citywide property value drops by 50%, the property tax rate doubles that year.
This claim is simply not true. Even in a budget based system like Seattle, there are hard statutory limits on how much the tax could increase.
If total citywide property value drops by 50%, the tax rate would hit its legal maximum ceiling, and the city would have to make up the money somewhere else or cut spending.
Other papers have found both employment losses and more significant price increases. A discussion of the topic was in the Ask Economics subreddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1smjx29/was_c...
You're going to have a hard time convincing me the wealthy aren't gaming the tax system after all the reporting and leaks over the last ~40 years.
Obviously every person tries to avoid taxes - you don’t have to be rich do do that - but the idea that there are magic banks that loan money and don’t mind waiting decades to get their money back is some kind of weird propaganda.
...I suspect you are simplifying what's happening quite a bit
People keep saying “buy, borrow, die” as if it is really that simple - like it is that one simple trick that banks and the IRS hate.
...But wouldn't the more likely scenario be that you borrow 100m with a 10 year draw at x% interest and then at the end of the 10 years you do a stock sale (some taxes paid), pay the interest (interest is generally non-taxable) ...
Your scenario is not “buy, borrow, die” as a core concept of that meme is you take advantage of the stepped-up basis upon death and the estate pays the interest. With your scenario the person imght have an interest payment of 50 million + the original 100 million, so now they have to sell enough stock to pay the 150 million and the 23-36% taxes on the gain (depending on the state they are located in - obviously different for countries other than the USA). That isn’t estate planning, that is hoping your stocks really go up and that the loan doesn’t come due in a downturn like 2008.
"oh no my art lost value!"
That trick where for example, where someone would donate some painting to a museum and pay someone to say the donation is with N million, might have worked at some point in time, but that kind of thing is pretty much guaranteed to get an audit these days from what I have read and I would be very careful trying to do that.
A variant of the "buy, borrow, die" which some claim is done is basically that a bank essentially becomes a minority shareholder of the estate for giving the money. Though I recall one CPA who dealt in this area replying that none of the family offices he knew would likely be interested in this approach - people like Goldman Sachs are not your friends.
The buy, borrow, die idea came from McCaffery in the 90s which was before various IRS sections like 1259 and 7701(o) were codified.
Go get a calculator - if you took out a loan and had the interest set a the minimum of the AFR, what would it compound to in 30 years? It would obviously be much higher than just selling stock and paying capital gains on it.
The ultra rich do take out loans, and these loans do get repaid, and that money has to come from somewhere. Go google something like billionaire stock sales to see examples - if they all could just say, "Thanks for the zero percent interest loan! I'll pay you back in 30 years in my estate!" - I think they would have.
...Additionally, wealthy people can use securities as collateral for near zero interest lifetime loans which also bypass having to pay income tax.
This is just Internet mythology. The IRS would go after such arrangements very quickly - the IRS has the Applicable Federal Rate for loans. Though this really isn't an issue with banks as they are not charities and tend to want to make money.
This is sometimes referred to as Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Well many government pension funds are horribly underfunded, so likely it would just add to the underfunding till eventually the government would bail it out. It is an expensive, inefficient way to try and solve the issue - when they screw up this bad, you fire them - this is how every other organization works.
If sending military advisors to a country is starting a war, the list of wars started by each President will get MUCH larger. (For some reason most people associate the Vietnam war with the President who deliberately lied to congress to get a use of force authorization and then literally sent over half a million troops into war.)
Depends on what you call a “war” since the last time the US declared war was in WW II.. In terms of military operations, a partial list would probably include:
Democrat Presidents: Bosnia, Haiti, Iran, Kosovo, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
Republican Presidents: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Grenada, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Panama, Somalia, Syria, and Venezuela.
It is outside the 50 year timeframe, but go back another 10 years and you have Viet Nam which caused more deaths than all the rest combined.
... If retirement age was say 80 instead of 60, there would be 25% fewer jobs to go around. (using imprecise simple math).
Economists refer to this idea as the lump of labour fallacy.
...I don’t know why people downvoted this because it is obviously correct. In a democracy you have to buy the votes of the largest constituency with other people’s money,
In the last few decades both political parties in the USA have tried to outdo each other in reckless over-spending, but for the first couple hundred years that wasn't the case. Something changed.
...my parents were Silent Gen (WWII vets)
If your parents were WW II vets, wouldn't they be part of Greatest Generation (often considered to be those born 1901–1927)? Silent Generation are often considered to be those born 1928–1945. They weren't adults when WW II was fought.
A lot more utility solar has been installed since then.
Yes, utility solar is very safe. Unfortunately rooftop solar is much more dangerous and also much, much more costly. So one has to wonder why anyone supports the massive subsidies that are still given to rooftop solar.
You won't convince many people if you think ad hominem attacks and insults are acceptable. Yes, subsidies are done to help drive adoption. The key is that the subsidies should go where they can do the most good. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further to decarbonizing the grid than a dollar spent subsidizing rooftop residential solar.
The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility solar installations. The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden (at least in the USA) because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid. This causes higher electricity bills for those in apartments and those who can't afford to put panels on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn’t have enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off. The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme.
Rooftop solar is good but it shouldn't be a gift to the wealthier residents paid for by those less wealthy. Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.
...The reason why Buffet complains about them is that A) it makes harder to discern from financial statements how much staff is costing the shareholders, not that its a competitive advangage or disadvantage, and B) if theres a cost that you need to pay in order to run the business, thats called an expense,
Yes, that is true - that is what Warren Buffet says are his reasons. It might also be true that the actual reasons might have more to do with the fact that he didn't like the idea of having to potentially dilute his 100+ billion dollar wealth in shares of Berkshire or that he didn't like having to increase employee compensation to compete for workers since he refused to give out options.
...it has always been about allowing those who are socially superior to avoid the embarrassment of having to compete in an environment where they might be defeated by their social inferiors.
Is your argument actually that women don't generally compete with men in sports because the sports don't want to embarrass the male athletes if they lose? If so, I suspect this is a bad faith argument, but if not, you can simply do a little searching to find that there is often quite a bit of difference between the performance of top tier male athletes and top tier female athletes. For example, no woman has ever run a 4 minute mile in competition and more than 2,000 men have and even about 30 high school boys have. I am sure you can find other examples.
Qualified immunity doesn't apply to criminal cases. It is used to defend against civil suits. It is unfortunately very easy to find many cases where it leads to injustice. For example:
...Abby Tiscareno, a licensed daycare provider in Utah, was wrongfully convicted of felony child abuse when a child under her care suffered brain hemorrhaging. After calling emergency services, subsequent medical tests supported these findings. However, during her trial, requested medical records from the Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) were not provided. It wasn’t until a civil suit that Ms. Tiscareno saw pathology reports suggesting the injury could have occurred outside of her care. She was granted a new trial and acquitted. Her subsequent lawsuit for due process violations, alleging that DCFS failed to provide exculpatory evidence, was dismissed due to lack of precedent indicating DCFS’s obligation to produce such evidence.
https://innocenceproject.org/news/what-you-need-to-know-abou...
It is amazing how that bit of corporate PR is still being quoted over 100 years later. In reality, Ford had huge turnover problems with his workers - one estimate is over 370% annual turnover. One way to help prevent turnover is to pay more, and it solved the problem. (Even so, the base pay was still actually $2.30 and to get the extra $2.70 you had to abstain from alcohol, keep your home clean, etc.)
https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/henry-ford-implements-5...
It has killed many, many more than the world’s nuclear accidents.
For that matter, it has killed many, many more than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan!
If given a choice I would rather be born in 1940s. 80 years of relative peace,
I think after you got your draft notice in the 1960s to go fight in the Vietnam war, you might have had second thoughts.
I just say "I believe in jury nullification and will use that power if necessary".
Have you actually said that during voir dire, or is this a hypothetical?
...From what I remember off the top of my head, Finland has a system where private educational facilities do not exist.
Not quite. Private education is not prohibited in Finland, but for-profit basic education is prohibited and private education is pretty rare.
https://www.aacrao.org/edge/emergent-news/private-education-...
...I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create.
The federal government does have a system to accept gifts which you might want to check out: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
Whether your gift will make a better society, I can't know - much like your taxes you have very little control over what the money is going to be used for.
...(there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).
A free market is generally considered a system where there are voluntary exchanges between buyers and sellers based on mutual benefit. It seems odd to claim that since there are some very wealthy people in the country that somehow a consumer can't buy bread from a baker, etc. Maybe you can expand a bit on how you are defining free market.
This was a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court and I think a large part of it was that an individual state could use this for political gain. As Kagan said during oral arguments: "I think the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States..."