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A letter to our daughter

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Re: A letter to our daughter

#531

Post by MagnumOpus »

saiya-jin wrote: post #450
visakanv wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant bit from Playboy's interview with Steve Jobs: > Playboy: What does the money actually mean to you? > Jobs: I still don’t understand it. It’s a large responsibility to have more than you can spend in your lifetime—and I feel I have to spend it. If you die, you certainly don’t want to leave a large amount to your children. It will just ruin their lives. And if you die without kids, it will all go to the Govern…

honest question - how did that went? I mean donation & public foundation part

In typical Jobsian fashion. He talked a good game, but decided to do the opposite. Put his wealth into a living trust to shield it from taxes and publicity and left it to benefit his wife and children.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#532

Post by toomuchtodo »

jsnathan wrote: post #395
toomuchtodo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is "better" is subjective, and its probably preferred that the majority of people determine what better is instead of the small minority of people with billions of dollars. I like the future Bill Gates and Elon Musk want to bring. I do not like the future the Koch Brother's envision.

But would you be in the majority with that? :)

Yes, I'm part of the 7.3 billion people who are not billionaires.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#533

Post by jsnathan »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #532
jsnathan wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But would you be in the majority with that? :)

Yes, I'm part of the 7.3 billion people who are not billionaires.

Sorry I was referring to the second part of your comment.

Even if you happen to be in majority with your progressive views, in this instance, there is no guarantee for that generally, especially if we consider the entire global populace.. is what I was trying to point out.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#534

Post by toomuchtodo »

jsnathan wrote: post #533
toomuchtodo wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm part of the 7.3 billion people who are not billionaires.

Sorry I was referring to the second part of your comment. Even if you happen to be in majority with your progressive views, in this instance, there is no guarantee for that generally, especially if we consider the entire global populace.. is what I was trying to point out.

I'd argue 7 billion people can find common ground on what you'd consider "quality of life" for everyone.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#535

Post by gradstudent »

tertius wrote: post #354
gradstudent wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My claim is simple. The U.S. is the most prosperous place on the planet, the inequality doesn't touch at least a hundred other countries. Again, inequality isn't necessarily an indicator of poverty. The comparisons you make are on absolute terms but the reality is more nuanced. There are almost 47 million people living in poverty in the US [1] and something like 38% of the population live paycheque-to-paycheque (up…

> There are almost 47 million people living in poverty in the US Look at the definition of poverty and you'll agree it's certainly a form of poverty, but again compared to the majority of the planet doesn't really cut it. Living paycheck to paycheck is generally an unfortunate choice or lack of education, but the point remains that there's a paycheck. And I can certainly agree that the culture of credit/debt isn't th…

> Look at the definition of poverty and you'll agree it's certainly a form of poverty, but again compared to the majority of the planet doesn't really cut it.

Poverty is defined along a spectrum, not relative to some kind of global nadir.

> Living paycheck to paycheck is generally an unfortunate choice or lack of education, but the point remains that there's a paycheck.

You're misrepresenting the situation by arguing it's a lifestyle choice. When you're poor it's very hard to save much of anything. Housing, transportation and food can quickly eat up most of a weekly paycheque.

> Our ability to generate the paycheck or our ownership of assets on average outstretches the vast majority of the planet.

Nobody is arguing the US the is place to be if you have money. The point I'm trying to spell out for you is that the averages you discuss are massively skewed by huge inequality. America's middle class are no longer the world's richest and they are shrinking in number. More, America is increasingly opting for a a system of governance that is leaving more and more people behind, especially its most vulnerable.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#536

Post by zardo »

tertius wrote: post #355
Retra wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider debt an asset? If I can feed myself by going into debt, am I wealthy?

Easy access to debt is another economic asset that most of the world does not have. If you can feed yourself by going into debt, then you have purchasing power. You need something (except if you're a student) to guarantee the loan.

I'm not convinced they would be better off with it. For every American that wisely uses debt to get an education that will lead to an ROI, how many are just screwing themselves with consumer debt and degrees that don't pay?

Re: A letter to our daughter

#537

Post by iamsohungry »

carb wrote: post #530
iamsohungry wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly. Do you even know what Internet.org is ? They're providing free access to a subset of the internet that Facebook controls, while forcing people to pay if they want to access the internet as a whole. The entire reason Internet.org exists is to create a Facebook monopoly on data access in developing countries. Your entire comment…

Internet.org provides access to a subset of the internet that Facebook chooses to pay for. The target audience is mostly people that can't afford any internet access to the first place because it is to outrageously expensive. As well, that subset of the internet is open to developers to submit their own services to be supported by Internet.org [1]. Last time I glanced through the agreement, Facebook is just trying to…

> I have yet to see research that providing a zero-rating service is harmful as you suggest.

"Internet.org provides access to a subset of the internet that Facebook chooses to pay for."

> Last time I glanced through the agreement, Facebook is just trying to avoid paying for HD photos and video downloads, which would increase the cost of Internet.org beyond feasibility.

This could be achieved by choking bandwidth, which would be easier to implement, simpler, and more transparent. Instead, you get stuff like:

"In order for your content to be proxied as described above, your URLs may be re-written and embedded content (like javascript and content originating from another domain) removed. In addition, secure content is not supported and may not load." [1]

Let's be absolutely clear here: Facebook wants to control what content gets into Free Basics and how it's presented, and is willing to make security impossible in order to do it. This enables both censorship and mass surveillance controlled by Facebook and whoever is willing to pay them.

> The users of Internet.org get free access to Facebook as well as the other services being provided and that doesn't detract from the service or make the whole initiative evil.

It's not the things users get access to that I'm worried about, it's the things they don't get access to, and who else gets access to those user's data.

[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/participat...

Re: A letter to our daughter

#538

Post by jsnathan »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #534
jsnathan wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I was referring to the second part of your comment. Even if you happen to be in majority with your progressive views, in this instance, there is no guarantee for that generally, especially if we consider the entire global populace.. is what I was trying to point out.

I'd argue 7 billion people can find common ground on what you'd consider "quality of life" for everyone.

That seems counterfactual to me, but that's just my opinion.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#539

Post by cdcarter »

fmueller wrote: post #487
dagw wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible in the US to take both names after marriage? Where isn't it possible?

In Switzerland for example. Either both use the same name or they keep the one they already had.

According to https://www.ch.ch/en/married-name/

> Surnames combined with a hyphen, such as Meier-Müller, are still allowed. Combined surnames are not official registered names, but may be used in everyday situations and recorded in your passport and identity card.

So, it's not "official" but you can use it everywhere including on your official documents.

Re: A letter to our daughter

#540

Post by cdcarter »

cplease wrote: post #315
bonzini wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides taxes, selling 44.5 billion worth of shares would affect the share value negatively. They will probably use some kind of derivative contract to get funds for the non-profit.

He's not selling the shares. He said they "will give 99% of our Facebook shares." If he sold appreciated stock and donated the proceeds, he'd still have to pay tax on the capital gains, and could only deduct the amount of the actual donation, which would be smaller after tax. By donating stock directly, he still gets to deduct the full value of the stock without paying any tax, and the charity (or more likely, privat…

The Initiative is an LLC and not a public charity or private foundation, so as not to limit the activities they can take part in. This will all be taxed at some point (though the Initiative may further grant shares to public charities).
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