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nickff

12,571 karma · joined March 2, 2011

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nickff··on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
From what I understand, this lack of liquidity is not an issue in ‘financial markets’, but can be a problem for other assets such as housing.
nickff··on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
I’m saying that we shouldn’t base our tax policy on a bubble. The dot-com bubble was treated like a solution to the federal deficit, and it wasn’t.
nickff··on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
Yes, that is intended to disallow officers from avoiding taxes by being compensated via ‘loans’ and other means. I can’t find any case where dividends or buybacks were found to be violations of that rule. https://cpataxteam.com/blog/s-corp-owners-are-you-paying-you...

Do the math for yourself. Paying corporate taxes on profits, then dividend taxes on what gets paid out is not a savings versus paying income+payroll tax (which comes from money that is treated as an expense at the corporate level).

nickff··on Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure
Congress is not permitted to levy property taxes.
nickff··on Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure
Capital gains are permissible because of the 16th amendment; the 16A does not permit the congress to tax assets. It seems like quite a stretch to apply Moore to cash holdings.
nickff··on Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure
>”Genuine question, why?”

A wealth tax would clearly be a ‘direct tax’, which must be apportioned among the states according to the constitution.

nickff··on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
Many locales have laws that do not allow remuneration above the 'reasonable wage', to prevent tax circumvention by having employers spread wage payments across multiple family members of employees, but I am not familiar with any jurisdiction with a minimum reasonable wage law or regulation. Could you please link some source for the claim that business owners are required to accept a 'reasonable wage'?
nickff··on EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
Seems like power shortages:

>”The European Parliament has also faced blackouts this week due to energy consumption from cranking up its cooling system.”

nickff··on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
I am not saying that one party paying taxes means that no counter-party should. I am just saying that the impact of different structures should be accounted for.
nickff··on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
I agree that in a bull market, many corporations are not purchased and sold at book value. That said, we are on the largest bull-run in history, so we shouldn’t treat this as the norm, and base all our long-term decisions on the current situation.
nickff··on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
This would be my personal preference, as I believe that voters often overlook the impact of corporate taxes, and there are just too many (different) taxes.
nickff··on The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
Not the commenter you replied to, but one thing to note is that capital gains tax (at least in the context of investments in corporate equities) is applied after corporate taxes. Profits and reinvested earnings are taxed as profits, and they're two of the key components to valuing an equity.

As such, when comparing income tax and capital gains, you should add the impact of corporate taxes. Incidentally, corporate taxes are why many small business owners pay themselves wage income, rather than doing stock buybacks or dividends.

nickff··on Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
>” You can go ahead and call that rhetoric, but you are also reading in intentions that do not seem to match reports from the ground.”

This just seems like standard union rhetoric, like when they talk about quality, or caring about the company’s clients. If the union gets concessions on transparency, and less than a 5% raise for the first year, I’ll do my best to come back to this thread and post a retraction. I don’t think I’ll have to do that.

nickff··on Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
The employees of the Wikipedia foundation did not create the dataset, though they definitely contributed to the infrastructure behind it. Sam Altman (and the OpenAI employees) contributed even more to OpenAI's continuing success (and that of their industry). Both groups are still rent-seekers, as they are attempting to profit off a market position which was developed under different auspices.
nickff··on Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
Wikipedia has a lot of money, along with a valuable dataset (for AI); it was only a matter of time until rent-seeker(s) would come along and try to get it. As we saw with OpenAI, it is difficult to keep a non-profit dedicated to its public benefit mission when it has something of tantalizing value.
nickff··on Journalism is rearranging the deckchairs. It needs to reinvent itself
Money isn’t the only pressure which influences journalism. Access (and exclusion) is a huge pressure on sports, celebrity, and political journalism. A desire for popularity/notoriety cause sensationalism. There are countless other influences which confuse (or corrupt) the nobility of the profession.
nickff··on Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” ― Frederic Bastiat

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70896-the-state-is-that-gre...

nickff··on W Social, public institutions and the theater of European digital sovereignty
The comment you've replied to seems to be referring to OpenAI.
nickff··on Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them
Yes, I agree that it is possible that the 'open source model providers' are doing the equivalent of 'dumping' in an attempt to establish a dominant market position, or at least a foot-hold. I am generally a skeptic when it comes to the effectiveness of 'dumping' as a long-term strategy (as the producer tends to hemorrhage consumers when it increases prices), but some may see it as problematic.
nickff··on Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them
If you’re happy to use the current one forever, then yes. I was amending my comment above to address this when you posted yours.
nickff··on Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them
Are you saying that you think the US government is unpredictable and arbitrary, but that the People’s Republic of China is not? Do you remember all the PRoC’s strange and sudden policy shifts (e.g. steel, real estate, education, football/soccer, etc.)?

It seems to me that in the case of AI (as with many other modern technologies), you rely on vendor/creator support and updates to stay relevant, so the ‘next’ model matters more than the current one, and we have no idea whose next model will be open (and whose won’t).

nickff··on Making espresso with ultrasound
"Good" (well-extracted) coffee is still relatively good when warm, especially compared to "bad" (over-extracted, or under-extracted) coffee. That said, many believe that the optimal temperature for serving coffee is 50-60 degrees celsius (122-140 degrees fahrenheit).
nickff··on Palantir loses legal challenge against Swiss investigative magazine
Why? Naming a weapons company after Aragorn's sword makes sense. "The Daily Beast" on the other hand is a rather cynical name...
nickff··on Core PPI up 9.6% annualized (0.8% MoM) in May
Clinton damaged the White House intern program by making it look like they were either his harem or victims; having an affair in his office also made it look like he was more interested in using his position to cheat on his wife than do his job. It was at least a distraction, and probably more of a handicap. If he wanted to have sex with Lewinsky, he should have waited until she left the internship, and done it in the Residence.

I purposely avoided comparing Clinton to anyone else, so whatever horrible things Trump has done is just changing the subject. I personally believe that neither of them has committed (anything approximating) the most abhorrent acts by a POTUS, but that's a different conversation.

nickff··on Core PPI up 9.6% annualized (0.8% MoM) in May
If you do something at work with a subordinate, it’s no longer personal.
nickff··on Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time
This is a solved problem, and IFF was invented in the 1930s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe

It is believed that the Kuwaiti aircraft did not have its IFF transponder turned on (IFF is and has always been standard equipment on the F-18).

nickff··on Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time
Some cruise missiles have the ability to detect targets based on camera or infra-red match; on the other side, most (currently-deployed) drone types have at most that same capability. I believe that most of the infamous Shahed long-range drones that Russia has launched against Ukraine have been entirely inertial or satellite navigation based, with no independent re-targeting capability.
nickff··on Core PPI up 9.6% annualized (0.8% MoM) in May
I purposely avoided any comparison between Clinton and other presidents, as many have done bad things, and it is difficult to rank them all. I just wanted to address the parent comment's minimization of Clinton's wrong-doing, as evidenced by this quote: "l'affaire de bj was a willful attempt to take the president's private life public"
nickff··on Core PPI up 9.6% annualized (0.8% MoM) in May
The Lewinsky Affair got traction because Clinton used his position of power (literally in the Oval Office) to take advantage of a young subordinate, in a time when ‘sexual harassment’ was becoming a hot topic. Then lying about the affair made it much worse (as cover-ups often do). It was definitely used against Clinton by his opponents, but the way he abused his position, then perjured himself was truly shameful.
nickff··on Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time
This is a much more difficult distinction to make than you're letting on. Cruise missiles offer no quarter, but manually operated drones might (though there is often no way to capture the opponents). The question is what is the difference between the two weapons systems...
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