PorterDuff

Another take is to put money in investments with no taxable event (I think that Berkshire Hathaway is one) and live off of savings in the meanwhile. Outright home ownership (as you mention) is another one. Regular and tax deferred savings get treated even more differently than normal.

I don't doubt that for people with some money, it'll be common to countdown using similar strategies for 5-10 years until you hit the magic 65 age. Given the difficulties in staying employed until full retirement age for programmers, it's quite a gift.

In another couple of decades, a lot of people get to do the pay-down fandango where couples split their assets so that one doesn't pauperize the other (via annuities).

All brought to you by the market warping body called government.

SEND MORE I LOVE LUCY.

At least it would be a source of materials on the way there.

Just view light as like being in line at the DMV.

Hey, I like that idea.

Maybe it implies that every interstellar mission is just an in-flight rescue mission.

Hah, that's an interesting trap to be in. It's not dissimilar to pushing wages down in order to qualify for high ACA subsidies. The way the system is set up, there's quite a tax cliff...especially for older people (the difference between $0/month and $1200ish for an individual).

What was the NRE on that pill or the hundreds (thousands?) that didn't work at all?

OTOH (or the other other hand), I'll bet that you could make a strong argument for stopping new drug development entirely. Simply sell existing drugs for as little as possible. It wouldn't surprise me if most of that research has insanely high marginal cost with little benefit at this point.

I'll bet you'd have a healthier public, on average, if this happened.

I'm thinking partly in terms of paying US health professionals what they make in places like France. A certain amount of hilarity would ensue.

Having personally been through the employee vs contractor maelstrom when, for some unknown reason, the state government got a bug up it's ass, I'd have to say that the state requirements become quite arbitrary.

What you might think is appropriate is sort of besides the point.

"whether a company’s dominant position in an industry hurt consumers (ie created higher prices)."

Exactly. Thank you. It's a bummer that the rest of the topic turned into some kind of healthcare talkathon (like the topic on California employment law for contractors).

I picked up the same overview on antitrust from The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The new, scary angle is that defacto monopolies are being built around surveillance, not building cars or pumping oil.

A quick wikipedia quote concerning Bork's book on the matter:

"Bork argues that Congress enacted the Sherman Act as a "consumer welfare prescription."[4] The Supreme Court embraced this view in Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U.S. 330 (1979) and in all subsequent decisions."

Honestly, I can't see why California is unable to roll out a single-payer plan. It's certainly larger than many of the countries that have one. In a single-party state, it should be a relatively straightforward thing to do.

My guess is that no one is serious about healthcare and that it's simply a get-out-the-vote scheme like abortion and gun rights.

"a difficult proposition to say the least in a country that guarantees freedom of movement"

Levels of benefits already differ considerably, no? If freedom of movement is a deal killer, than it seems to me that strict, highly enforced immigration laws would also be a precondition.

It's a shame that doesn't exist. I've always thought you could make an especially strong argument for licensing for embedded software people, for many of the same reasons that a PE is licensed.

It wouldn't be a requirement for a job necessarily, but not a bad thing to have.

"Yes, there's some grey area in there."

From my experience, I've never seen a software contractor that could avoid being considered an employee if the eyes of the state government fell upon them closely.

I'm still confused how you can avoid tell someone how to do their job. A SW contractor can't be told which language to use or be connected to company source control or use existing company software libraries? A carpenter can't be directed in some fashion beyond: 'YOU, GO BUILD HOUSE FRAME'.

Couldn't you simply require Uberlyft to run potential drivers through a quick course on depreciation, injury risk, opportunity cost?

That's really not a bad idea generally. Give them full information and then treat them like adults.

There's an irony that laws set up to protect workers at the low end mess with workers at the high end. As a SW contractor, I never much cared about insurance/time off/sick leave/etc. and was well paid to not care.

From another article:

" b) is doing work that isn’t central to the company’s business, "

Bam. How many contractors lose their jobs from that sentence? Ridiculous.

a quick edit: Now that I think of it, does FTE imply an hourly rate? If so, how do you reconcile an Uber model of piecework with that? Perhaps they could simply rent out an Uber medallion.

I think you could make an argument for a 'war', but you need to think less like a Roman and more like a Byzantine.

"Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards..."

Heck, why not put 1/3 of the NSA budget towards hardening computers and networks?

I'm afraid that given the choice between:

. Everyone is surveilled.

. No one is surveilled.

They'll always pick the first, even with the best intentions.

It's for the children.

100% agree with the drain on hospital budgets, at least so far as I know.

Dunno how 'Medicare for all' will work out if you simply start paying providers what Medicare currently pays. Dictating a price might work in the long run but would be plenty hairy in the short.

My guess is that the current sweet spot is lower income ACA Silver plans.

OTOH, I'd say that the people who got really nailed with the ACA were the middle-class individual policy holders.

Am I missing something here?

. Hospital system is a bastard to people who owe them $$$$.

. This is an argument for government-run healthcare.

. Hospital system is run by the government.

I'm certainly not against copying someone else's system (Switzerland? Singapore? it isn't like they're the same) but just assume nothing good will happen. There's too many iron rice bowls, including actual providers, plus you have to fix the plane while it's flying.

Best to deal with the world as it is and keep your head down. That memory care center in Thailand is starting to look pretty good.

lol. I entered this thread purely to post the same comment.

So, am I actually going to start laying down track for this new product you hired me to do? or are you going to kidnap me to work on legacy software emergency patches the second I walk in the door?

An invaluable question if honestly answered.

"But after you acquire a grounding in the basic forms like ...rhythm changes"

I suppose that anyone who has heard the theme from The Flintstones has already done that.

To some extent, I think that 'simple' depends on your own listening history. Jazz that sounds like noise to one listener might sound logical to the next once the second guy has internalized all of the cliches that are built into the music. If tension-release mechanisms simply result in tension, you gotta problem.

I've largely retooled my thinking on a lot of these things. I can see more genius in a pop tune that is highly addictive than in something with complex changes going 100 miles an hour. Rather than wondering why people prefered (being an old guy) The Eagles to Joe Henderson, I've made an effort to appreciate popular music more.

Dunno much about classical music, and you can argue about whether it's anything but a museum piece (and interesting more for live sound in an era of perfectly good recordings), but I've always been surprised how jazz has largely avoided taking on useful rock cliches in building arrangements. I would think that instrumental music would be more popular as a result.

From the article:

"There are other reasons why manufacturers keep quiet about their sustainable practices. After 15 years of dedicated effort, a well-known car manufacturer reduced the amount of energy it took to make its cars by 75%: it can now make four cars using the same amount of energy it formerly took to make one. Evans was amazed when he discovered this while working with the manufacturer and asked if he could tell the world. It refused, not because the innovations were trade secrets, or because it risked losing a cost-saving competitive edge (due to cheap electricity prices, the cost saving amounted to less than 1%), but because the management was worried that to flag one area of innovation in the business for praise might attract unwanted attention to parts of its operation that were less sustainable, potentially sparking accusations of “green-washing”."

As an aside, it's funny how tiny these 'articles' are. I wonder to what extent cell phones have made people unlikely to read a anything more than a few paragraphs long.

"Moreover, if mankind ever expands into space, it would be rather naive to think that earth's nations would play a role there in the long run."

Assuming some sort of breakthrough in cheap propulsion and living systems, I couldn't disagree more. If anything, you'd see efforts at a sub-state level with the early colonies in the Americas given as examples.

I think that states, and particularly nations, are well suited to large scale efforts with minimal or no immediate payoffs. It's hard to get a sufficiently large group to pull on a rope at the same time.

It seems to me that any fundamental change in a product line will result in job loss at this point in time, this is on top of a fewer-parts-in-the-car issue. Cleansheet chances to redesign the supply chain and assembly system gives you the opportunity to modernize (ie. simplify and automate) while you're at it.

It's also an excellent opportunity to out-source or in-source depending on the facts of the matter. 52 card pick up.

I suppose that Amazon, at least the retail sales part of it, is essentially a shipping company. No surprise that it would build out over time, plus you'd be silly to trust them as a single huge customer.

One sentence in that article that I like was mentioning Amazon purchasing of dead malls. I had to thump myself in the head..'of course'. I've always wondered what would happen to those facilities and mini storage and fulfillment centers are good ideas.

Maybe we could ship Amazon direct to mini storage and cut out the middle man. Making 'too much stuff' more efficient seems like a genuine plan.

In the long run? Just another one I think, and smaller than many.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...

(I guess that wikipedia is good for something)