Harvard Law paid $27 for a copy of Magna Carta. It's an original
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Using the market value as collateral is in fact one way of realizing the gains: the investor is using the loan to convert their gains on invested capital into something usable. The capital gains tax would only be triggered when the investor utilizes a price other than their basis cost for their financial instruments.
This would probably not affect very many people: 99% of people don't use their retirement stocks as collateral on loans. It would fix the "Jeff Bezos et al. never pay taxes because they just keep getting bigger and bigger loans to pay off their loans" nonsense.
I don't think anyone in D.C. is currently proposing this, but I think it's a nifty idea. Even if the tax revenue generated is modest, it would boost the average citizens confidence that the system is working and not rigged/broken. And that is probably something worth pursuing these days given how dissatisfied voters have been for the past 9 years or so.
Actually weird of so few people make use of it.
This might be the larger problem with this, since we probably, culturally at least, want more family owned farms and less corporate monster farms. This would not help the current trend away from family owned farms.
That said, it's an interesting proposition.
You’re talking about behavior which is only taking place as a part of the tax dodge: taking out loans with stock as collateral.
Worst case scenario is the ultra-rich sell their stock bit by bit.
Or they donate it to charitable foundations they themselves manage.
There are small edge cases for "the thing I own is worth a gazillion dollars now but I never want to sell it." Those edge cases already exist with the "I grew up in this house and I am emotionally attached to it" situation. It sure seems to me like people having unrealized gains in equities is, you know, vastly more common than finding out that the weird knick-knack that reminds you of your mom is actually a valuable collectable worth millions.
That’s what California’s Prop 13 was supposed to address.
Valuable possessions have a tendency to move to areas where ownership is not taxed.
Thus only unmovable assets are taxed simply for possession.
You can see it in the UK legislation portal — the parts which are still in force
Median home price in 1940 Boston area was $3,600 or 180oz gold. Today the median home price is 215oz of gold in the same area (or $670,000). In terms of gold, house prices are up 20%. In terms of dollars, 18000%.
A new car still costs around 13oz of gold.
Real inflation of fiat is easy to obscure for political reasons. That’s much harder to do with the market value of gold.
Not really. It has fluctuated a lot. You can pick starting and ending points a few years apart and come up with very different results relative to actual inflation.
> A new car still costs around 13oz of gold.
Now take this idea and average it across a large number of different items and you arrive at inflation statistics, which are better than using 1 commodity or 1 purchasable item as a benchmark.
If only it was as simple: you will need to introduce weights between different items, and account to the change of those weights too. Also gold isn't just commodity, it's monetary commodity.
If you use official inflation dollars you get 1$ 1940 ~= 23$ 2025. You can see how magnitude wrong it is for housing or cars in the example above.
Here's food prices from 1940 diner: > A 25-cent platter, 5-cent hotdog, and 10-cent hamburger. Also doesn't really work with official inflation dollars either. And again works much better with gold prices.
2024 there seems to be an estimated ~$75,000 median household income.
Housing and cars are also apples and oranges seeing that the average family size and sq footage for even 50’s homes is completely different than today. Today fewer people are living in significantly larger spaces than was normal back then.
For houses I think I expect to get better product for same “real” dollars, like with cars or TV. But given somewhat limited supply of houses this can be wrong assumption.
As for income tbh I read it more like real income fell a lot, rather than a proof that inflated dollars reflect reality well. I.e i think if income inequality didn’t grow as much as it did 2024 median household income would have been much higher which would have increased different between inflation figure from real one further.
I think he's talking about really long periods of time. It's true that gold is an extremely volatile investment, whose price can seemingly quadruple or be cut in four at any time. But if you look over periods where the price of gold increased by more than 20x, this becomes a lot less important when you try to estimate things like the average rate of inflation. If you work with a ten-year moving average of the price of gold the problem is also reduced. Gold is the only metal whose sulfide is unstable under standard conditions (101.3/293.15).
In other fields, this is called a "low-pass filter".
The reason it's been fairly constant is that over the long term the cost is driven by the cost of mining it and costs of say getting an acre of land, digging up earth and processing it remains somewhat comparable to the cost of getting an acre of land and building a house.
Cash depreciates because voters say we need more wages and it's easier for governments to print money than make everyone richer in real terms. They can try to generate the illusion of richer in real terms by fiddling the inflation stats, say focusing on a basket of vegetables and not medical costs or beachfront property,
Stocks go up because companies make profits and reinvest.
Except that the gold price fluctuated by 50% within the last 30 years: https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html
But a new car today is vastly different from a 1940s car, so different that it's nonsensical to use it to compare purchasing power of gold.
New cars aren't necessarily a lot better than cars built 20 years ago, but compared to anything built before EFI they are vastly more reliable. And then you could also talk about radial tires if you are comparing to the 1940s.
While you are fiddling with your carb and fixing 2 flat tires, I'm cruising along with a misfiring cylinder and a nail causing a slow leak.
They have basically the same utility. What is a car?
https://www.5yearcharts.com/historical-gold-price-chart-how-...
Uh... Gold has doubled in the last two years. Fast forward past the trade war and it'll likely crash again. Gold is far, far more volatile than currencies. More even than securities, and frankly even most commodities are more stable.
Also, too, no it hasn't, not remotely. Don't hyperbolize, it cheapens the discourse. Food CPI is about 1-2% higher than general CPI right now. (Or maybe you moved from CDMX to San Jose or something, likewise not a statement about value).
A car or house built in 2025 is very different object than one built in 1945.
Consistent commodities like coal, rice, or silver make better points of comparison, but each give wildly different values for inflation just as gold does. Inflation doesn’t mean anything specific on very long timescales because the underlying economy fundamentally changes.
There’s really nothing suggesting gold is a more fundamental measure of value than silver which was far more commonly traded. IMO the reason people focus on gold today is its more consistent use in video games as a currency rather than say platinum. There’s just never been enough gold to use as a common medium of exchange between individuals, but in virtual worlds that’s a non issue.
Survivorship bias means most of the lowest quality housing stock either didn’t survive or was significantly upgraded, but that’s irrelevant when talking about what was being built.
The ban was only lifted once we adopted fiat currency, and it became not particularly useful for trade.
So if they paid in dimes/quarters/ half dollars /dollars, they were paying in silver
Depending on which city they sleep in, Bezos or Musk make all local citizens multimillionaires. Per capita. Statistically.
I especially loved walking around Widener Library and marveling at the murals and that original Guteberg Bible
All in all, loved the museums and history, but detested Harvard. I would have been a better fit at a more middle class college like Cal, Stanford, or MIT.
I found a visitor access page here: https://library.harvard.edu/visitor-access
If you want to see something special, like the Magna Carta, I am sure you can send an email to the special collections supervisor. They would probably be more than happy to grant you one day entry.
Related:
Digitising the Magna Carta: https://hls.harvard.edu/today/magna-carta-making-history-ava...
Collection of manuscript Magna Cartas and early English statutes, ca. 1300-1577: https://listview.lib.harvard.edu/lists/hollis-014294028
Magna Carta, approximately 1300. Manuscript. HLS MS 172, Harvard Law School Library: https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:49364859$1i
Amen to that. Love Stanford. Cal has a ton of great stuff too.
> the American customs gulag
What does that mean? I've been to Cantor multiple times and nothing seemed out of the ordinary security wise.
Late afternoon PST/EST tends to be when Asian and European HN is sleeping.
Asian HN seems to start up around 10-11pm PST, European HN seems to peak around 3am-7am PST, and "Global" HN seems to be around 7am-10am PST.
Maybe the person you responded to was up late or early or was referring to people who might be asleep. Do they not exist if they are asleep?
Yep! HN's tone has massive shifts depending on the time of usage, and basically turns into entirely different forums.
> Do they not exist if they are asleep?
That's more of a Descartes question than a me question /s
But yea fair.
There were earlier versions of the Magna Carta; originally authored by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1215, rejected, revised and eventually reissued and negotiated (largely by force) by William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke in 1217.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/magn...
Also, for its day, it was kinda open-minded and progressive, and Alphonse X was a damn nerd as he ordered to compose a book of games like chess and more tabletop games like Nine Men Morris (Libro de los juegos/The Book of Games).
But it will also be out of copyright so the cost of getting a “new” copy is basically just the cost of printing.
https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Secrets-Happiness-Intimat...
Not rare at all but some people might say it has some prurient interest (talks about his sexual misadjustment) so maybe they think it has to be limited access or maybe people will steal it or something. (The same library kept Steal this book in a restricted area of the stacks but let me check it out.)
Harvard: Sorry we can’t give you a discount in our outrageous tuition; yes I know how big our endowment is.
Also Harvard: Will you take $27 for this priceless artifact?
I’ve been pricing out elite institutions for my spawn. They ramp up pretty fast, assuming you can get In all fairness, the “great colleges” have tons of competition. Normal colleges have excellent outcomes.
In terms of research, they earn their reputations. But that means undergraduates can be a second-thought.
Even the wealthy have no compunctions about sending their kids to Bard or Claremont McKenna.
https://ask.loc.gov/preservation/faq/337286
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/handling-historic-colle...
https://info.gaylord.com/resources/for-the-glove-of-preserva...
> We're often led to believe that wearing gloves is essential when handling precious books. In fact, it poses a serious risk of damaging them.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/our-cause/history-heritage/...
Although I suppose the argument is that if you re-affirm the same text several times, that each one is legitimate.
>First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore.
>He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.
But still, it would be weird to say that a copy of the Constitution produced during the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln and re-affirmed by the govt was "an original" even if it otherwise had pedigree.
Harvardis alumnis corpus non habent sed quidem corpus de "habeas corpus" habent.
(Let's just say "Harvard" is a third declension noun because why not.)
Given Harvard maintains the tradition of Latin addresses (the Latin Salutatory), I’m sure they have an official position on what their name is in Latin. Wikipedia cites this article but not sure if it is online: Hammond, Mason (Summer 1987). "Official Terms in Latin and English for Harvard College or University". Harvard Library bulletin. Vol. XXXV, no. 3. Harvard University. pp. 294–310.
I spent a year as a student at the University of Sydney (Australia). I roughly remember how to say in Latin “University of Sydney Library”, because they stamped it on all their old library books (something like “Bibliotheca Universitatis Sidneiensis”)-I expect old books in Harvard’s library may be stamped in Latin too
sigillum academiae harvardianae in nov ang
https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/55900/55996/55996_harvard_seal.h...
Avacodos be damned
>>In the 1945 auction catalog it was listed as a copy and with the wrong date (1327) and was sold for £42 — about a fifth of the average annual income in the United Kingdom at the time — on behalf of Forster Maynard, an Air Vice-Marshal who had served as a fighter pilot in World War I.
>>Air Vice-Marshal Maynard inherited it from the family of Thomas and John Clarkson, who were leading campaigners in Britain against the slave trade from the 1780s onward.
Pretty convoluted path to launder stolen goods.