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Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

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Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#161

Post by [deleted] »

tzs wrote: post #118
shittyadmin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't reside there, you're not liable to abide by their laws. I run a small US company, I don't have to comply with GDPR for example. Same applies here. I don't see why any company would implement this, perhaps appeasing regulators at the federal level.

You would have been right up to June 21, 2018. After that, you are wrong. See South Dakota v. Wayfair, decided by the Supreme Court on that date [1]. If your business is in the US, and your customer is in the US, you can now be required to collect taxes for your customer's jurisdiction even if you have no connection with that jurisdiction other than online or mail order customers reside therein. [1] https://en.wikipe…

[deleted]

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#162

Post by strictnein »

intended wrote: post #144
Shivetya wrote: post #14

Chicago is in the hole for nearly thirty billion dollars. They have been floating the idea of a ten billion dollar bond with the debt structured in a way which lets current politicians escape the fallout from its payment and not having to raise property taxes. The state of Illinois is not well off either with debts estimated at the low of one hundred thirty billion to two hundred fifty billion. An Illinois proposal j…

How can you be in debt for pensions of all things. Get employee. Put money in pension fund. Let fund grow. Wait 20 years earn interest and pay employee. end. What you are describing is gross mismanagement of funds, and blaming the rightful recipients of funds for the existing.

The pension systems have overestimated their annual returns for decades and planned for future returns that are completely out of whack with reality. This is a pretty well known issue.

So if you're putting money into a system, and you know it's not enough to cover your benefits, you're not exactly just a innocent victim here. You're benefitting from a system that you know is broken.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#163

Post by unchocked »

behringer wrote: post #160
roenxi wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand... (1) Pension decisions play out potentially over ~30-40 years. (2) If we accept that the cause is some official made a bad decision, it is almost certain that pension issues will be ongoing. There is potentially a 40 year window for idiots to get in and screw the whole system up. So in a sense, some large group of people need to be responsible. Not because it is fair, but bec…

So you're saying the pensioners are the reason for our failed system? I've never been more swayed by an argument in my life.

They’re saying it’s most reasonable to hold the pensioners responsible, but that’s a subtle difference and you weren’t reading closely anyhow.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#164

Post by chii »

strictnein wrote: post #162
intended wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be in debt for pensions of all things. Get employee. Put money in pension fund. Let fund grow. Wait 20 years earn interest and pay employee. end. What you are describing is gross mismanagement of funds, and blaming the rightful recipients of funds for the existing.

The pension systems have overestimated their annual returns for decades and planned for future returns that are completely out of whack with reality. This is a pretty well known issue. So if you're putting money into a system, and you know it's not enough to cover your benefits, you're not exactly just a innocent victim here. You're benefitting from a system that you know is broken.

I have no horse in the race, but it feels like the pension system is promising money that would never exist. How come there's no oversight or some sort of check against this when it was established? Surely those who would rely on the pension would at least band together to create this committee.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#165

Post by jonathankoren »

unchocked wrote: post #163
behringer wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying the pensioners are the reason for our failed system? I've never been more swayed by an argument in my life.

They’re saying it’s most reasonable to hold the pensioners responsible, but that’s a subtle difference and you weren’t reading closely anyhow.

Except that’s not how responsibility works. They may be the beneficiaries of a broken system, but they aren’t necessarily — and certainly not solely — the ones that broke it.

Just phase them out and switch to 401ks. It’s absurd that such a large portion of government budgets are retirement accounts.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#166

Post by jonathankoren »

Spooky23 wrote: post #129
scarface74 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole idea of policemen “risking their lives” is not statistically accurate. Only 144 policemen died in the line of duty in the entire United States last year ( https://www.npr.org/2018/12/27/680410169/more-police-officer... ) The Chicago police department isn’t exactly what most people would call “quality”.

Police and Fire work is hard on employees, reducing their overall life expectancy materially. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734369/

From the paper:

>A recent study suggested that overweight and obesity were more prevalent among law enforcement personnel than the general population (Ramey, Downing, & Franke, 2009) and lack of regular physical exercise is one of the occupational risk factors contributing to the higher prevalence of elevated blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, and CVD among emergency responders such as police officers (Kales, Tsismenakis, Zhang, & Soteriades, 2009).

Lay off the donuts.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#167

Post by _zskd »

chii wrote: post #164
strictnein wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pension systems have overestimated their annual returns for decades and planned for future returns that are completely out of whack with reality. This is a pretty well known issue. So if you're putting money into a system, and you know it's not enough to cover your benefits, you're not exactly just a innocent victim here. You're benefitting from a system that you know is broken.

I have no horse in the race, but it feels like the pension system is promising money that would never exist. How come there's no oversight or some sort of check against this when it was established? Surely those who would rely on the pension would at least band together to create this committee.

Ex Chicagoan here. Basically corruption and incompetence took the actual money away

The money did exist. Workers pay into the pensions as part of their compensation package.

Chicago borrowed against the actual pension accounts and corruption/incompetence drained them. Then they did scoop and throw methods for two decades to avoid having the pensions land on their heads.

There is a ton or corruption in Chicago. I have a friend who works for Idot. They have a lot of workers on the payroll who are making 6 figures. My friend has never seen these people who are supposed to be his co-workers show up for work, and when he asked he was told "Don't bring it up. Over your head. We can't fire them."

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#168

Post by jonathankoren »

prepend wrote: post #51
gfodor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling or cutting the pensions of retired public service workers (many of whom who risked their lives to protect the public) would, beyond the ethical questions, eliminate the credibility of the city's promises to those who sign up for such jobs and hence would likely greatly reduce the quantity and quality of recruits.

I don’t think the fix is removing pensions from old people, but rather drastically reforming pensions for future retirees entering the workforce now. Cutting pensions now would be like cutting someone’s salary and would likely lead to skilled people quitting.

You can’t cut the pension for the retired, or the soon to be retired. Instead you try buy outs and phase them out. New workers get 401ks. Old workers get pensions. Middle aged workers get a choice.

30 years later, the pension holders are dead, or your company is. Either way, it’s no longer a problem.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#169

Post by intended »

strictnein wrote: post #162
intended wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be in debt for pensions of all things. Get employee. Put money in pension fund. Let fund grow. Wait 20 years earn interest and pay employee. end. What you are describing is gross mismanagement of funds, and blaming the rightful recipients of funds for the existing.

The pension systems have overestimated their annual returns for decades and planned for future returns that are completely out of whack with reality. This is a pretty well known issue. So if you're putting money into a system, and you know it's not enough to cover your benefits, you're not exactly just a innocent victim here. You're benefitting from a system that you know is broken.

How can a pension fund overestimate success?

Firstly pension funds are conservative in their estimates, they aren’t growth funds.

And what precisely is anyone supposed to do? NOT put money into a fund ?

The only option other than a pension plan is to put it in a more risky fund. Which means your investment would be blown out post 2008.

AND that means your benefit from that job changes, making it less likely for you to join a government job -at all.

There’s a huge amount of discussion here that seems to have nothing to do with pension funds, but some bizarre form of fund which you should be blamed for partaking or being a dependent of through your job.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#170

Post by intended »

conanbatt wrote: post #153
intended wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be in debt for pensions of all things. Get employee. Put money in pension fund. Let fund grow. Wait 20 years earn interest and pay employee. end. What you are describing is gross mismanagement of funds, and blaming the rightful recipients of funds for the existing.

Because pensions are guaranteed benefits. So if you put it on a bond, and the bond goes down, you need to draw more taxes to make the difference. Pensions are partially the outcome of wishful result-oriented thinking ("workers should have pensions they can depend on, so make the promise first and then the solution will happen").

What? How the heck is that a pension ??

That’s a bond. Why does that have anything to do with a pension ?

And who in his right mind plants a bond and links it to a pension ? How does that even work?

A bond is a loan. That means the firm or institution is taking a loan.

A pension is the opposite of that - it’s money taken from employee payments and added to a conservative fund with a time horizon of 20-30 years. This allows them to make long term plans which avoid the risks of high beta and risk stocks or deals.

So as your economy goes up, your fund goes up and you pay people off with the interest.

Something changed/went wrong, long before you got to the bond.

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