flurben

I used to think the same thing, until recently.

Where I live (NC, USA) there was a big issue where commercial property owners have been able to reduce their property tax assessments, not on the basis of 'comparable sales' (like everyone else), but on the basis of the income derived from the property.

I can't say how widespread this practice actually is, but it's not unheard of. Apparently property tax rules are going to vary widely by jurisdiction, which country / which state or province / etc.

I tried! No country would let me in without a job, and no company in Europe would even interview me from America.

I once had a startup fire me after only 6 weeks, for performance reasons, which were purely a fabrication. I'm not sure if that counts.

It was not a good experience for me, but I did not feel like it had any long term consequences.

ASCE has a dog in this hunt

Esri's core products are a buggy mess, so it is impossible for me to get excited about anything shiny and new.

As someone who has lived in majority-black towns in the south most of my life, those words are simply not used in the way you are using them. Blacks in the south are universally considered a minority, even in those geographies where they are actually the demographic majority.

My great uncle was part of this; or so he claimed. He told me stories about training in California with the OSS for underwater demolition.

What is a usian?

For starters, in the U.S. system, interest rates on government debt are set by central bank policy. Investors cannot force it up or down.

In general, I'm not sure the guy they are quoting is a reliable source of information about macroeconomics.

I think you're conflating 'international recognition' with 'independence.'

Taiwan is functionally independent, currently, no matter what China, or John Cena or the Government of Djibouti says.

In fact there is no need for Taiwan to 'declare independence' because it has never been part of the PRC.

Considering that Taiwan is already independent and would need to be persuaded to join the PRC, these kinds of threats seem counterproductive to China's goals of "peaceful reunification".

A) This headline is flat wrong. Productivity is not at its lowest level in 40 years.

B) What they probably meant to say instead is that the US saw the largest monthly decline in productivity in 40 years. There is a very big difference.

C) Month-over-month productivity changes are just statistical noise, too short term to matter.

the reason your figures aren't comparable is because the U.S. figures being used :

a. Are not incomes for just a single-wage earner, they include the combined income for a household (of 2.53 people on average)

b. Are referred to in pre-tax figures, not post-tax.

c. Are not just wage income, but include non-wage income like dividends, capital gains, small business income, fed/state/local government transfers, etc.

d. Are using the median, not the average (mean).

Blackrock and Vanguard are just intermediaries, they do not actually own the shares in their ETFs, they manage the assets on behalf of clients.

Yes, you're reading this wrong. Referring to tax obligations as "Slavery" is disconnected from reality, and pretty insulting to all the Americans for whom real, actual American slavery is still impactful.

The goal of the legislation is to shift the tax burden towards high net worth individuals, and away from wage-earners.

Raising cap gains rates and/or increasing top marginal income tax rates are not very effective ways to achieve this goal.

Modern societies are not capital constrained, so capital formation is superfluous. The world is awash in excess capital among the rich, so providing government subsidies to facilitate further capital formation among the rich will not improve living standards.

What you're describing is the failed mentality of the early 1980's : the idea that the wealthy are "better" at capital allocation than everyone else. What it leads to is not some utopia, but simply bigger yachts, and more expensive sports teams, and more expensive land, while the human capital of the poor goes neglected and untapped.

What does the most good for living standards is the government investing in humans and households without capital. More broadly distributed capital, in other words.

Taxing incomes and not wealth is fundamentally unfair to people without wealth.

"Revenue neutral" just means a bill will not increase government revenues.

edit : You can downvote me all you want, it isn't going to change the definition of the term.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/r/revenue-neutral/

Reliability

I bought from carvana 2 years ago because they had:

A. Lower interest rates than the local credit union or the banks, and

B. Better prices on the vehicle I wanted than anyone else in the area.

Eliminate minimum requirements on parking and restrictions on height. Make demolitions easier. Eliminate the neighbors ability to stop any project that they don't like. Reduce the number of permits required, reduce the permit fees, reduce the time it takes to issue a permit.

In the case of San Francisco, they also need a centralized, online planning/permits database. They are still doing things on paper, and they've got a backlog of thousands of permits. It can take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars simply to navigate the permitting process.

I'm confused why you think Americans are relevant to this story. The word "cock" and it's status as an English language vulgarity is a product of England. It predates the U.S. by centuries.

In what way is it deviant?

Esri's JavaScript API 3 has poor performance, but I've been very happy with version 4.

Government developer roles can be sort of like this, it just depends on the details.

The general idea is that you're expected to fulfill a fixed set of responsibilities, which might be challenging for the first year or so. But as time rolls on, a decent employee can usually automate those things.

Typically you're just ignored, no one knows what you do except your boss. If you try to expand outside of the original scope of job duties, you'll be seen as a troublemaker.

And there's rarely any possibility of advancement, since government never promotes developers to the executive level, and advancement within the 'technology group' is usually predicated on your history of procurement, budgeting, and personnel management.

The difficult bit is getting that remote job, but hopefully that's changing due to COVID.

Interest rates have been low for quite some time, though.

Maybe it is also driven by perception of overvaluation among publicly traded equities?

ok. it seems our differences here are more in definitions and semantics

I interpret the phrase 'left to their own devices' to mean that there is no central bank and therefore reserves are as a concept are null and void, which then also nullify the concept of a federal funds rate, which would upend the concept of the federal funds rate being 'the market rate' in the first place.

I'll take your word for it about the mechanics of what happens to inter-bank rates under different reserve mechanisms, perhaps they would be driven to zero for the reasons you outlined.

However I'm unclear on what the macroeconomic ramifications would be of letting a small group of banks dictate the federal funds rate; I believe the purpose of this system is to achieve a congressional directive regarding price stability and labor utilization.

> If left to its own devices the market rate would be driven down towards zero.

How do you figure?

That is not even a real Thomas Jefferson quote.