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>...Additionally, wealthy people can use securities as collateral for near zero interest lifetime loans which also bypass having to pay income tax.

This is just Internet mythology. The IRS would go after such arrangements very quickly - the IRS has the Applicable Federal Rate for loans. Though this really isn't an issue with banks as they are not charities and tend to want to make money.

This is sometimes referred to as Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

>First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

>Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

>The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Well many government pension funds are horribly underfunded, so likely it would just add to the underfunding till eventually the government would bail it out. It is an expensive, inefficient way to try and solve the issue - when they screw up this bad, you fire them - this is how every other organization works.

If sending military advisors to a country is starting a war, the list of wars started by each President will get MUCH larger. (For some reason most people associate the Vietnam war with the President who deliberately lied to congress to get a use of force authorization and then literally sent over half a million troops into war.)

Depends on what you call a “war” since the last time the US declared war was in WW II.. In terms of military operations, a partial list would probably include:

Democrat Presidents: Bosnia, Haiti, Iran, Kosovo, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

Republican Presidents: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Grenada, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Panama, Somalia, Syria, and Venezuela.

It is outside the 50 year timeframe, but go back another 10 years and you have Viet Nam which caused more deaths than all the rest combined.

>... If retirement age was say 80 instead of 60, there would be 25% fewer jobs to go around. (using imprecise simple math).

Economists refer to this idea as the lump of labour fallacy.

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

>...I don’t know why people downvoted this because it is obviously correct. In a democracy you have to buy the votes of the largest constituency with other people’s money,

In the last few decades both political parties in the USA have tried to outdo each other in reckless over-spending, but for the first couple hundred years that wasn't the case. Something changed.

>...my parents were Silent Gen (WWII vets)

If your parents were WW II vets, wouldn't they be part of Greatest Generation (often considered to be those born 1901–1927)? Silent Generation are often considered to be those born 1928–1945. They weren't adults when WW II was fought.

>A lot more utility solar has been installed since then.

Yes, utility solar is very safe. Unfortunately rooftop solar is much more dangerous and also much, much more costly. So one has to wonder why anyone supports the massive subsidies that are still given to rooftop solar.

You won't convince many people if you think ad hominem attacks and insults are acceptable. Yes, subsidies are done to help drive adoption. The key is that the subsidies should go where they can do the most good. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further to decarbonizing the grid than a dollar spent subsidizing rooftop residential solar.

The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility solar installations. The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden (at least in the USA) because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid. This causes higher electricity bills for those in apartments and those who can't afford to put panels on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn’t have enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off. The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme.

Rooftop solar is good but it shouldn't be a gift to the wealthier residents paid for by those less wealthy. Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.

>...The reason why Buffet complains about them is that A) it makes harder to discern from financial statements how much staff is costing the shareholders, not that its a competitive advangage or disadvantage, and B) if theres a cost that you need to pay in order to run the business, thats called an expense,

Yes, that is true - that is what Warren Buffet says are his reasons. It might also be true that the actual reasons might have more to do with the fact that he didn't like the idea of having to potentially dilute his 100+ billion dollar wealth in shares of Berkshire or that he didn't like having to increase employee compensation to compete for workers since he refused to give out options.

>...it has always been about allowing those who are socially superior to avoid the embarrassment of having to compete in an environment where they might be defeated by their social inferiors.

Is your argument actually that women don't generally compete with men in sports because the sports don't want to embarrass the male athletes if they lose? If so, I suspect this is a bad faith argument, but if not, you can simply do a little searching to find that there is often quite a bit of difference between the performance of top tier male athletes and top tier female athletes. For example, no woman has ever run a 4 minute mile in competition and more than 2,000 men have and even about 30 high school boys have. I am sure you can find other examples.

Qualified immunity doesn't apply to criminal cases. It is used to defend against civil suits. It is unfortunately very easy to find many cases where it leads to injustice. For example:

>...Abby Tiscareno, a licensed daycare provider in Utah, was wrongfully convicted of felony child abuse when a child under her care suffered brain hemorrhaging. After calling emergency services, subsequent medical tests supported these findings. However, during her trial, requested medical records from the Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) were not provided. It wasn’t until a civil suit that Ms. Tiscareno saw pathology reports suggesting the injury could have occurred outside of her care. She was granted a new trial and acquitted. Her subsequent lawsuit for due process violations, alleging that DCFS failed to provide exculpatory evidence, was dismissed due to lack of precedent indicating DCFS’s obligation to produce such evidence.

https://innocenceproject.org/news/what-you-need-to-know-abou...

It is amazing how that bit of corporate PR is still being quoted over 100 years later. In reality, Ford had huge turnover problems with his workers - one estimate is over 370% annual turnover. One way to help prevent turnover is to pay more, and it solved the problem. (Even so, the base pay was still actually $2.30 and to get the extra $2.70 you had to abstain from alcohol, keep your home clean, etc.)

https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/henry-ford-implements-5...

>It has killed many, many more than the world’s nuclear accidents.

For that matter, it has killed many, many more than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan!

>If given a choice I would rather be born in 1940s. 80 years of relative peace,

I think after you got your draft notice in the 1960s to go fight in the Vietnam war, you might have had second thoughts.

> I just say "I believe in jury nullification and will use that power if necessary".

Have you actually said that during voir dire, or is this a hypothetical?

>...From what I remember off the top of my head, Finland has a system where private educational facilities do not exist.

Not quite. Private education is not prohibited in Finland, but for-profit basic education is prohibited and private education is pretty rare.

https://www.aacrao.org/edge/emergent-news/private-education-...

>...I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create.

The federal government does have a system to accept gifts which you might want to check out: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html

Whether your gift will make a better society, I can't know - much like your taxes you have very little control over what the money is going to be used for.

>...(there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).

A free market is generally considered a system where there are voluntary exchanges between buyers and sellers based on mutual benefit. It seems odd to claim that since there are some very wealthy people in the country that somehow a consumer can't buy bread from a baker, etc. Maybe you can expand a bit on how you are defining free market.

This was a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court and I think a large part of it was that an individual state could use this for political gain. As Kagan said during oral arguments: "I think the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States..."

I don't think that is the consensus view of why Caesar was assassinated:

>...According to Suetonius, Caesar's assassination ultimately occurred primarily due to concerns that he wished to crown himself the king of Rome.[13] These concerns were exacerbated by the "three last straws" of 45 and 44 BC. In just a few months, Caesar had disrespected the Senate, removed People's Tribunes, and toyed with monarchy. By February, the conspiracy that caused his assassination was being born.

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

I have not seen any indication that Mamdani has advocated for violence to achieve his goal, so calling him a communist seems unfair, but I think he would also agree it is unfair to simply say he is "left of the center-right".

Mamdani seems very proud to be a socialist and you get a taste of it where he says "...the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment" and "..we have to continue to elect more socialists and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism", etc. He is very clear about his beliefs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K7HDuoJ0MQ

Is Mamdani proposing a "one time" tax of 5% of all of a person's wealth or anything remotely similar? If not, I don't think it is reasonable to compare the two situations.

Not sure why you are bringing up private prisons. Private prisons are a tiny percentage of federal prisons and prison labor is used throughout the USA.

>...Someone in a Scandinavian country where there are virtually no unsheltered homeless people probably doesn't index their zero to "dying of exposure on the sidewalk due to untreated mental illness," while an American who sees that regularly would.

Maybe I am not understanding this - do you think the average American regularly sees people dying of exposure on the sidewalk? Or what do you mean?

While conspiracy theories about 9/11 being some sort of an inside job are widespread, they are not supported by evidence.

> ...which calls for "A New Pearl Harbor":

Reading through your link, I don't see how one can say it "calls for a "A New Pearl Harbor":

>...Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions.

...

>...Absent a rigorous program of experimentation to investigate the nature of the revolution in military affairs as it applies to war at sea, the Navy might face a future Pearl Harbor – as unprepared for war in the post-carrier era as it was unprepared for war at the dawn of the carrier age.

Just because they claimed it, doesn't make it true. OCR and screen reader software in 2023 did not have problems with serifs.

The title was chosen by the publisher:

>...The book's title was Svirsky's, chosen as a deliberate homage to George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). Asimov feared the title would be seen as elitist and condescending, and he suggested Everyone's Guide to Science as an alternative, but Svirsky refused. Years later, when he was confronted by annoyed feminists who asked why the book was restricted to men, Asimov would claim that the "intelligent man" of the title referred to himself;[3] thus anticipating the title Asimov's Guide to Science adopted for the third edition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligent_Man%27s_Guide_...