fountainofage

I think this is interesting in that I don't know many people who view LLC's protections this way. The classic example is that if your rental property is in an LLC, then your tenants can't win a suit and get to your own personal house.

These examples of piercing the veil are from the other direction - a personal suit getting access to the LLC assets... Which sort of makes sense - the alternative would be the court ordering the seizure of my assets - which would be my ownership stake in the LLC. So in their example, I'd still expect to lose my ownership stake in my LLC by asset seizure even if I was in a multi-owner LLC... Or had stock in an S-corp.

What's interesting to me - I thought I was a pretty big fan of Top Gun, but now I'm not so sure.

I did not pick up there is an argument about whether or not dog fighting still was needed.

The only "argument" I recall was the recap of how pilot deaths increased after training stopped, and decreased after training started. But it was a one off history lesson as part of the Top Gun school intro.

But the rest or the movie seemed very clearly - yes, the US needs dog fighting to defend its interests across the globe. There seemed to be absolutely no challenging of that idea within Top Gun.

Those activities are also restricted and limited during COVID - either explicitly via state and local ordinances or via social pressures to not spread the virus.

Basically, the optimal solution right now is to not go anywhere or see anyone unless you absolutely have to. Which if all someone should be doing is sitting at home or getting groceries, they could do that for a lot less than SF prices.

> But cities have enduring appeal - proximity to people and culture and things to do

I think this is key right here. For the foreseeable future, those things won't be any more available in an expensive city compared to an inexpensive rural area. So why buy a 1 bedroom for $2 million or rent one for $3500 a month if I can do the exact same amount of networking and see the exact same amount of museums while paying significantly less?

They hate car salesmen, yes. But oddly enough "Family Jones Chevrolet/Ford/Toyota/Nissan/etc." has been sponsoring the local little league team for 20 years, so they don't have to do much to convince the locals to tell their state legislators that "protecting" these "family-owned" dealerships is good.

It really is that car dealerships are very wealthy and have a lot of political clout. There were also early rulings that a manufacturer can't order a car dealership how to operate - the basics of the case were that American manufacturers were lending or outright granting money for people to start dealerships. Those dealerships started trying to sell foreign cars, the manufacturers said "no way", the dealerships fought back, and the dealerships won.

Basically it's become a textbook example of the entrenched parties setting up barriers to entry. They have lots of money, and are often active in their local communities, so people generally like them.

Edit: basically, I'm saying it really is too hard to change because the law is on the dealerships side, and there's a lot of momentum and status quo to overcome.

Who said anything about lounging around?

One could read as many books as they like. Learn to play an assortment of musical instruments. Learn woodworking. Sailing. Write novels. Compose songs. Complete their magnum opuses. Master languages. Study art. Create art. Improve their athleticism. And so on.

The list is near endless of things to do.

From what I've experienced, the majority of the Bay Area is very liberal up until the point it actually costs them something - then it quickly becomes a conservative paradise.

People will shout and scream and boycott to make sure you can use whatever bathroom you choose. Or make sure that everyone respects your choice of pronouns.

But ask those same people to build more housing and provide ample public transit? Ask those same people to close all private schools and force people to use public school lottery systems that mingle rich, middle-class, and poor?

Absolutely never. They isolate into their communities and tell the folks trying to get in that their town is now full.

There seems to be a mix. Which is part of the problem with the national debate / conversation.

There are companies who found the absolute best in the world that they have to have. So they need that H1-B to get the job done and hire the best person.

Then there are companies who just want to contract out super cheap labor, so they do thousands of H1-B applications hoping a few hundred make it through, then the they charge a local rate, but pay the employee a fraction and reap the profits.

I don't think any reputable person has claimed an attempt to stop everyone from catching this. The mantra is "flattening the curve." It's been that since the beginning. We don't want to overwhelm the healthcare system like what has happened and is happening in Italy.

And shelter in place with strong social distancing has proven to be the most effective way to slow the spread of the virus given the current testing capacity and lack of contact tracing.

This is the solution. Have the firms issue stock and the government purchase the stock. Obviously make it ultra-preferred with no one else getting preference before the government gets paid.

If firms don't like that deal, they can either get their own funding from the private markets or go out of business.

Thank you! Posted at the same time as my edit! I forgot about the impact of reduced shares as well!

Could you help me in understanding this? In my head if dividends are paid out, wouldn't this drive the stock price up the same as if a buyback happened? Or is this some sort of market inefficiency / irrationality where the market is rewarding stock purchase volume rather than just looking at the total expected value of the company?

Edit: sorry about that, I get it now after thinking through it more.

Let's say the stock is truly worth $100 (assuming we could figure that out). Then if the company does buybacks, the stock trades at $100 - great for the executive with stock options. However, if the company pays dividends, then the stock price is reduced by the expected value of those dividends. So total expected value is the same, and long term executive comp is the same because they get the dividends as well, but short term they would prefer the buyback because of the higher stock price. They only benefit the same from dividends if they have a long term view.

This is part of the thinking behind tarriffs - make that resiliency more competitive.

The economic term is "deadweight loss" and the most ideal scenario (outside of not having it) is to have both the supply and demand side share the deadweight loss equally. However, if either curve is out of sync with the other, then the portion of the deadweight loss paid shifts. So if a landlord can pass on 100% of the property tax, then demand is dramatically and catastrophically way outpacing supply. This is a bad situation to have if you want an efficient market where buyers have lots of choices and options.

Edit: I see where you might be confused - I'm talking about passing on 100% of the property tax. In an ideal scenario, landlords would have to cut into their profits to pay for the property tax that tenants wouldn't. But in California, we obviously don't want a market where buyers have lots of options, so apparently everyone is ok with landlords passing along 100% of the property tax cost to the tenants.

First of all, no one said renters are paying less than property tax? But even if they were, it's still the same logic.

That's just the law of supply and demand. Renters pay the market rate. If an owner can't afford to rent at that market rate, then as you noted, they go out of the renting business. You'll find if you run the numbers on properties in SF, landlords are banking on property appreciation. The market rents don't pay the ownership costs, usually by a huge margin.

I'm not really advocating one way or the other, just pointing out that property taxes are usually constructed such that the owner pays a flat rate based on an assessed value. There is no tiered increases in rates as the value goes up, so it's pretty much a classic example of a regressive tax.

Taxing anything at a flat rate without regard for a person's ability to pay is going to pretty much wind up as a regressive tax. Not saying this is good or bad, just that it is what it is.

I'm against Prop 13 more than anyone I know, but property tax (at least the way it is normally set up) is a regressive form of taxation. It's a flat rate regardless of circumstances, which is pretty much the definition of a regressive tax.

Renters pay market rate for rent. If the landlords can pass on 100% of the property tax, then the supply is way out of sync with the demand.

Then perhaps the start up should just pay above market rate in salary and not offer any ISOs since those ISOs are so dang valuable but couldn't possibly be given the same liquidation preference?

If you're trading more than $20 million a year in stocks, you are in the vast minority that everyone here acknowledges would need to adjust and file your taxes manually.

99.999% of the US population is not trading $20 million a year in stocks, and everyone else here is merely talking about the 95% of the population that has straightforward tax returns.

I majored in one of the STEM fields that doesn't pay any money (chemistry), and now I do the computer stuff for a living and to make money. Given how I did the whole "do STEM and you'll never be wrong route" and it was wrong... Well, I wish I had spent those 4 years at college reading philosophy works and studying the classics. I'd probably still be in the same place I am now, but at least I wouldn't have spent 1000+ hours in a lab to get here.

Or is the issue that school starts rewarding this kind of behavior, and it carries into adulthood?

They do if the equivalently-skilled citizen won't do the job for less than that total cost.

... well, it is, though, otherwise it wouldn't be possible. I think it's fairly obvious our tax system is designed to heavily reward those who have the means to pay experts to find the correct combination of steps to report revenue.

edit: are to our

Just want to say - the prices I've seen for that hired help in California is more along the lines of $25 per hour to start. And that's just to watch the kid - additional housework will cost more. And that also doesn't include paying for their vacation time.

Eh, I'd say I've met quite a lot of long-term residents of San Francisco. Pretty much no correlation between ownership and how worthless that person is to the community. I know renters with their 30-year lease that don't even live here anymore. I know homeowners with their 30-year old property tax assessment that also don't even live here anymore.

Both just pop in every now and then to enjoy the Bay Area for cheap and then let the home sit vacant the other 300+ days of the year.

I also know renters and owners that have been very active in their local communities.

If the metric you care about is "societal productivity" there are better ways to measure and reward that than based on "how long have you owned here."

Again, no need to evict people. The state will get its money someday. For shorter term expense needs, they can issue bonds referencing that lien as the collateral. Everyone dies eventually.

No one else here is arguing about the merits of a property tax. The issue is that people are paying wildly different tax amounts for the same asset. This is exactly the same issue we see in industries where the entrenched companies put up huge barriers for newcomers.