The "hoarding" argument has no economic basis. Money that is saved in stocks, bonds, or bank accounts is immediately put to use by companies, banks, or governments.
This is false. Nobody claimed or believed an attack on the US was imminent (although another attack on Israel was a concern), the idea was that taking out Saddam could help stabilize the middle east. In official Washington it was well understood that WMDs were just an excuse/legal justification/foreign policy explanation for finishing the job begun in Iraq in 1992.
Honor wasn't satisfied-- the top Taliban Mullah and Bin Laden both got away. And it wasn't just the Bush team whipping up support-- Congressional Democrats almost all voted to authorize force and the New York Times reporting supported WMDs as well. The consensus thinking was that Saddam was a bad guy who might have WMD, ongoing sanctions had their own human costs, and we were positioned to take him out easily.
Point is that taxpayers are subsidizing your gain in disposing a car that isn't worth the book value, as well as the process of transporting and selling the car, and KQED might not get much money at all.
Amtrak is actually a creature of the federal government that does own the northeast corridor rail lines. There's no reason Amtrak can't run bullet trains on the NE corridor except that they lack the capital needed for the track upgrades, and likely are incapable of executing on the project.
The fundamental problem is that the ground experience is managed by the airports, which are usually unionized governmental entities with little concern for the customer's time, and by the TSA. Similarly, despite very compelling economics, interstate passenger rail is a failure in the US because the government corporation Amtrak has a monopoly, deals with some of the most absurd unions in America, and doesn't seriously innovate.
Taxpayers still took a huge downside risk with the loan to Tesla, and that loan has to be measured against the overall government loan program's losses, which is a massive failure costing billions.
I've been a vocal critic of Tesla and the DoE loan program, and I'm really glad to see Tesla pay off the loan and move into private markets. I want to root for this company to succeed and now I feel like I can do that. Taxpayers still got ripped off given the size of the loan relative to the company, and the huge downside risk, but I'm glad Musk pulled it off!
There was a point a couple years ago when Posterous was really innovating and Tumblr seemed dead-- the Tumblr staff (CEO?) were ranting at their users and there were technical problems.
The problem is that the social contract is a lie. Fed policy of inflation is a kind of deliberate taxation. Social Security is a bankrupt fraud. We borrow a trillion dollars a year, a debt that will burden today's children who have no say in the matter. The complex tax code is a giant con game where insiders and the wealthy shift the burden to the middle class. And you're not free to leave the US if you are wealthy, there is a substantial financial penalty (confiscation).
It isn't all or nothing, we can have low, honest taxes and a decent society with a more vibrant private sphere.
There absolutely are moral limits on taxation. Otherwise we are all just slaves to the state.
"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built." -- Abraham Lincoln
Well put, but the top income tax rate in the US is now nearly 40%. Plus there's 12.4% for Social Security (employer+employee but it is economically all your salary) and state income taxes. And if you invest anything after that, there's capital gains and dividend taxes.
It doesn't sound like that's the case, and there is NEVER a reason for an employed person to allow a simple speeding ticket to turn into a bench warrant. I've struggled with these kinds issues in the past and the way out is to step up and take responsibility for your financial decisions.
It is not just a personal matter if someone has a criminal background or routinely doesn't pay their bills. Credit scores are a statistically significant indicator of other kinds of behavior-- for example, people with better credit are also likely to be safer drivers, which is why insurance companies use them.
Yes a very good friend working in finance had an offer rescinded at this stage. They won't tell you why, although if the credit score is the reason they are legally supposed to send you an letter. Seriously, though, 400 FICO is appalling, I've never heard of a score that low in real life. You don't have bad credit because you don't have enough money, it is because you are living beyond your means. Stop making excuses. You are making $23K, which is enough for a single guy to live on in South Texas (I survived on a similar amount out of school). You need to get organized and take care of your business, including the speeding ticket. If you are a developer you should freelance to earn extra income-- that can actually lead to a better full-time job. You also need to downside your apartment-- live at home if that's an option, or get roommates. Also get rid of cable TV. The good news is that FICO scores can rebound pretty quickly.
Of course Netflix already abandoned the mail delivery model as their focus, they even tried to spin off that business, and it is only a small portion of their revenue today. There were a lot of factors that went into Netflix's success, including working closely with the USPS on rapid delivery, a terrific web presence, and catching the DVD market at a point when they were dropping in price but still a popular format for consumers. The window for Netflix was actually quite small (I suspect you are young and don't remember the time before DVDs) as DVDs were the most rapidly adopted media format in consumer electronic history, and are imploding at an impressive rate as well.
The US is one of the most energy efficient economies in the world. The US consumes a lot of resources because it still produces so much of the world's GDP. And we're constantly inventing new resources and better ways to extract them-- we're moving towards being a net exporter in some energy categories, and we feed much of the world.
This is HTML! But with tags that you can create, and pass values to, and do things in the browser. It actually empowers developers who don't grasp javascript by encapsulating it.
Wow Ezra Klein gets it completely wrong. I think he's confusing 501 c(4) and c(3). c(3) are traditional social welfare charities and donations to them are tax exempt, c(4) are explicitly for political lobbying and donations are taxable. (I worked as an executive in this space for a decade). c(4) cannot get involved in elections (they can't call for the election or defeat of a specific candidate) but they can do "voter education". But in any event, the donations made to a c(4) are not tax-deductible and are private. By the way, the c4 privacy rules emerged out of the civil rights movement, when there was a concern about the government punishing people supporting civil rights. Many groups-- think Sierra Club-- have both a c(3) and a c(4) and have internal accounting in place to keep track of it all.
It isn't a lack of taxes, it is that Medicaid (a federally mandated program) is out of control and is absolutely destroying state education budgets.
"Governments’ general support for higher education 25 years ago was nearly 50 percent greater than state spending on Medicaid. That relationship has now flipped: Medicaid spending is about 50 percent greater than support for higher education. If higher education’s share of state budgets had remained constant instead of being crowded out by rising Medicaid costs, it would be getting some $30 billion more than it receives today, or more than $2,000 per student."
Consumer Reports is part of Ralph Nader's Consumer Union, an extremely left-wing operation. It is inconceivable that a $89k car with a top range of just 200 miles gets their top rating without a bias.