Excel_Wizard

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This article doesn't do a good job of explaining the income breakdown of the top 400 households. I imagine it is nearly 100% long term capital gains and dividends. That doesn't explain the change in the chart that occurred in 2018 though.

How would you propose organizing society such that it is environmentally sustainable?

That's a bit much.

You disavowed the wikipedia article for being strictly fact-based, having no interpretation. I can vouch for the fact that there are many left-leaning people offended by the contents of that article.

You disavowed Damore's stance because it has been interpreted in a way you think is wrong and offensive.

You can't disavow both of these at the same time without contradicting your claimed intent (of wanting to hear facts that the left is offended by).

It's obvious, based on your reaction to Damore's stance, that you are offended by, if not the Gender Equality Paradox, something extremely adjacent to the Gender Equality Paradox.

The current population of African Americans in the U.S. has a lower average IQ than the current population of White Americans in the U.S.

They overlap. My bandsaw is a tool and a toy. Cars are often toys, but almost always tools.

Both Boeing and Airbus have received subsidies that are claimed by various parties to be illegal.

I think that the American Corporation is not in crisis, and is doing a better job at performing its primary function of benefitting shareholders better than ever.

I think, on the other hand, that public benefit corporations and other governance structures are in crisis, because it is evident that they are getting outplayed everywhere you look.

EDIT: Non-profits have been doing well though. It seems easier to go "all in" on a charitable cause, or "all in" on a greedy cause, but combining the two into an amalgamated pro-social gung-ho business (a la public benefit corporations) is not easy to do.

To me the article reads as a complaint that the legal and tax structures of employee stock and options compensation in Europe make such compensation rare.

It doesn't present numerical data on how rare it is though, I'd like to see data on this.

Wouldn't tariffs help a U.S. domestic rare earth mine? Unless the assumption is that China imports the majority of global rare earth production, even after being a huge rare earth producer.

This feels to me as if the politicians have recognized that they need some technically competent people to even understand how to legislate in these matters.

However, if the top-level politicians, who remain technically inept, are the ones giving the orders, confusion will remain.

Improvements that happen on the margin are better than no improvements at all. You seem to agree that the new app-driven delivery jobs are better than before.

"Lack of good jobs" has always been true, but has also been improving over time.

I have a question that is more likely to be answered here and now than at any other opportunity I've had before-

For a long while now, VLMC has been a work-in-progress. It is a video editor being made by the same organization as VLC. I've been eagerly anticipating having this as a free/open source video editing tool that I can trust will be available in the long term.

I haven't seen any evidence that it isn't vaporware in a long time. So to those in the know- when can we expect to see VLMC finished?

https://www.videolan.org/vlmc/

I'm pretty sure that you and kortilla are in agreement.

Was it a thought along the lines of him being selfish because his death (at any time) could leave his family without him?

If you explored the problem domain, starting with an understanding of trigonometry and calculus, it will naturally emerge as a result. It was not arbitrarily defined.

Imaginary numbers were not arbitrarily defined either, they precisely describe an actual phenomenon.

At a certain level, it is difficult to distinguish between "the reality we decided is true" for math vs. "the reality that must be true underneath". If you accept empiricism, such that you trust observations we make about the physical world, this problem becomes irrelevant to this discussion.

>The argument for yeomanship also fails to acknowledge that the high cost of college makes it an iffy proposition if the only purpose is to find a well-paying job. The economists John Schmitt and Heather Boushey found that among 24-to-35-year-olds, almost 20 percent of college graduates “actually do no better than their counterparts who left school after high school,” even before taking college debt into account.

This particular point is a very strange argument. Lumping all college majors together and saying that the 20% of the group has an income problem is ludicrous. It's obviously true that the people who majored in pursuit of a well-paying job are less likely to be this troubled 20%. So the author argues that the existence of this troubled 20% means that you should give up on the idea of the pay-oriented major? Does not follow.

Index funds do not contribute to the process of price discovery.

As long as a certain fraction of trades are performed by active investors, price discovery will continue to be accurate. Currently, active traders dominate, making up the majority of trades. This fraction could be much smaller than it currently is and still be OK.

Be careful what you say or you might start to believe it. There is absolutely no reason to hang the CEOs of Equifax. Not even close.

The risk of a crash was 1 in 1,000. This is 10 times the threshold of 1 in 10,000 that requires a maneuver. Both of these satellites have been in orbit long enough for accumulated error to cause the satellite to drift from its predicted path. There are many satellite orbit-crossing events every day, and the accumulated drift is the primary cause of their orbits becoming close enough to require action. An anticipated collision that requires course correction is as close to a no-fault scenario as there can be.

Architects call it functionalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(architecture)

I think this article is written from the perspective of a satisficer- it sufficiently meets the requirements he cares about. This is the perspective of most consumers for most of the goods we purchase. It's good to get a well-considered perspective from somebody that isn't deep into the "enthusiast" category of keyboard purchasers.

Why?

When you allow the most competent people to rise to positions fitting their competence, they can create wealth for everyone.

How is the Harvard Asian discrimination lawsuit going lately? I haven't heard anything in a while.

I 100% guarantee someone has died from substandard automotive goods. Not sure when or where, but mechanical failures contribute to accidents all the time.

The U.S. has 284 police officers per 100,000 people.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...) That would translate to ~14 police officers for a town of your size.

I am still able to go on ebay and buy small items (usb cables, camera lens caps, plastic pry tools, etc) shipped from china for $0.80. Is this going to change?

What about the same situation for items shipped from Thialand or Vietnam? There's quite a few of those available as well.

They are strongly right-leaning. Their selection of information that they present is heavily biased in its selection, but I believe that the statistics they present are true.

I don't think they would call anyone the "lower races" though. That was a quote from an 1800's biologist. They (the site editors) probably do believe that people of African descent are a bit stupider than other folks. Not sure whether they (the site editors) would believe it is genetic or cultural. It's not like anyone is surprised that an 1800's colonialist would use such language.

The statistics they present, on the whole, are still a useful bit of information to read. A lot of the information they have on gun control was both surprising and trustworthy. Just make sure they're not your only source- it would not be balanced. They are a bit malicious in their selection bias. They might be a gateway drug to the alt-right, but they also present a lot of information that other media specifically avoids because it is inflammatory and bad for business.