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America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

nytimes.com

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Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#241

Post by fjsolwmv »

zemptime wrote: post #183
paganel wrote: post #36

> Because private-equity firms appear frequently as villains in the press, many people assume that they cater mostly to the superrich, earning high returns on investments for billionaire clients. They do. But by far the most important piece of their business — 48 percent, according to the data-analytics firm Preqin — is investing capital for American pension funds. This doesn't get mentioned often enough when talking…

w/r/t "almost no politician has focused on this contradiction," I've heard Andrew Yang talk about it tangentially through the (probably a/b tested) talking point of "job loss to automation." Then when I looked more, I realized, he _wrote explicit policy on his website_. :O https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/ , hop into the question that's: > Why does Andrew Yang want to implement Universal Basic Income (UBI) in Ame…

You have to squint pretty hard to call Andrew Yang a politician and not a person on a vanity/activism project.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#242

Post by fjsolwmv »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #122
honopu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/self-employment-taxes/t... See 20% deduction on self employment income.

That's a good point, and it may net out to be an advantage for a gig employee. But is is a complicated calculation. Throw in the higher payroll tax rate for gig employees, and tax deductible healthcare expenditures by companies on employees and it is unclear there is any advantage in overall taxes paid.

Gig independent contractors pay the same payroll tax as employee/employer pairs.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#243

Post by fjsolwmv »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #143
WillPostForFood wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What lost tax revenue do you mean? Self-employed/temp/gig workers still pay the same taxes as full time employees.

They're also responsible for paying for their expenses, and i'll bet they're not as good at getting writeoffs as the in-house CPA. So you might actually see increased revenues as a result. Decent question though.

Their low wages due to capital capturing profits instead of labor makes for decreased tax revenue

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#244

Post by [deleted] »

irrational wrote: post #194
Shivetya wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many want the trappings of success out of the gate and keep ignoring many of their bosses and superiors at work have a lot of time invested and earnings already. they also confuse what they seen TV for real life. tell, who doesn't have people in the lower rungs of their IT group with more expensive cars or outfits than you would feel comfortable with at twice their salary? then top off the people who eat out every da…

I tell this to my college age kids. One of them is off touring Europe right now. I asked her how she is paying for it (and pointed out that I've never been to Europe because I can't afford it). She says she is going into debt to do it, but it is okay because experiences are more important than money. She is studying anthropology and non-profit management. I've pointed out that there aren't very well paying jobs with…

[deleted]

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#245

Post by DuskStar »

cascom wrote: post #236
vorpalhex wrote: post #2

This is not an uncommon story for firearm manufacturers unfortunately. Tooling costs are high, sales hard to predict, and designs can fail easily. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has done a lot of videos on this topic.

Not to mention as consumer products go they are incredibly long lived, I can’t think of many activities where someone might still use their grandfather’s [tennis racquet, golf clubs, etc], but you regularly see people still using 50-75 year old guns (if not older)

It doesn't help that a lot of the "fun shit" is restricted to those older guns, since they've been grandfathered in during the US's various prunings of gun rights. So a 50 year old gun might be legitimately superior to one manufactured this year, which causes all manner of weirdness.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#246

Post by golergka »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #147
UweSchmidt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then our intuition is wrong. If your finances throughout your life are not in order, if you have high debt, regardless if it's because of medical bills, student loans or too big a car and house, you are in a weak position. What good does a nice car do if you worry about bills and if you try to avoid to look at the balance in your banking app? You don't always know how rich some folks are, but for the most part i…

Well, thought experiment: John lives in extreme poverty. He's debt free, but is unable to adequately feed himself or his family. Several of his children have died from malnutrition. Marc lives in a nice suburban home, has 3 square meals a day, so does everyone in his family. However, his debts (including his mortgage, car payments, student loans) exceed his savings. If our intuition is wrong, then John is winning. He…

Your said nothing about Marc's level of income and if he's able to service his debt easily, so we have no information to pass any judgement here.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#247

Post by fjsolwmv »

sDlEzAtyoNAz wrote: post #62
jfk13 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course, the more of them we have around, the better the chances that one of them will somehow accidentally get misused one day. Oh, sorry; I'm sure you're entirely careful and responsible, all the time, just like every other firearms buyer. So there's clearly no problem with having an ever-increasing number of them around.

And the better chances that one will be used intentionally to protect a productive and decent member of society from a violent criminal.

That's certainly the fantasy.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#248

Post by wl »

DuskStar wrote: post #245
cascom wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention as consumer products go they are incredibly long lived, I can’t think of many activities where someone might still use their grandfather’s [tennis racquet, golf clubs, etc], but you regularly see people still using 50-75 year old guns (if not older)

It doesn't help that a lot of the "fun shit" is restricted to those older guns, since they've been grandfathered in during the US's various prunings of gun rights. So a 50 year old gun might be legitimately superior to one manufactured this year, which causes all manner of weirdness.

What kind of "fun shit" are you thinking of? Select fire is rare and expensive. Open bolt semiautomatics? Eh, some people are into collecting such things, but closed bolts are just as fun to shoot. Just about the only somewhat reasonably priced grandfathered "fun shit" are pistols that can take stocks and not be NFA SBRs.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#249

Post by wl »

omegaham wrote: post #66
josefresco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My pro-gun friends typically seem to have 2-3 From my experience, that's sort of low. I never thought my neighbors had so many guns, until I started spending time at the shooting range. A common site is a trunk packed to the gills with firearms. The "gun guys" buy them like the "sneaker guys" buy Nikes. They usually won't talk about it, unless you express interest or go shooting with them.

Can confirm, my father-in-law has more than 50. It's actually a really neat collection, but I wince at how much it had to cost and how much use he actually gets out of them.

Some people collect coins. Or cars. Others collect guns.

You don't have to shoot a gun to appreciate it. My great grandfather's service revolver? It's a link to the past, not a range toy.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#250

Post by klyrs »

laughinghan wrote: post #225
mwfunk wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re both screwed. I’d rather have crippling debt than children dying from malnutrition, but obviously both Marc and John are completely screwed in different ways. They’re both losers in this scenario, there are no winners.

In what way is Marc screwed? In the scenario given, even though Marc's debts exceed his current savings, there's every reason to believe his future income will outpace his debts and that he'll be able to maintain his standard of living until he dies.

> ...he'll be able to maintain his standard of living until he dies.

Under the assumption that his wages track with inflation, you might be right. He'll be able to scrape and hustle and pivot right until the day he dies. That's not a "win." When his health inevitably falters, he'll have increasing difficulty finding work, accumulating ever more medical debt. Chances are, his children will be dependent on him well into middle age, but "his" house and assets will vanish to cover debts.

A good outcome is one where we're making enough to save up for a comfortable retirement. That's not the reality for, perhaps, most people born after 1980

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