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How the U.S. became a science superpower

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Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#441

Post by anonfordays »

feoren wrote: post #435
anonfordays wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tax wealth somehow I don't unserstand how you can tax something that varies in value by double digit percentages every week. If Elon got taxed when TSLA was $450 per share, and six months later it's now $250 per share... How much should he be taxed? Should he be provided a tax refund?

We have computers in our pockets that can perform trillions of calculations per second; we have social media sites capturing terabytes or petabytes of data per second; we have LLMs with trillions of parameters. So it boggles my mind to see someone say "we can't tax wealth, that'd be too complicated ! We'd have to do dozens of calculations per year!" You're imagining taxes as being one big annual chunk, but it doesn't…

>We have computers in our pockets that can perform trillions of calculations per second; we have social media sites capturing terabytes or petabytes of data per second; we have LLMs with trillions of parameters. So it boggles my mind to see someone say "we can't tax wealth, that'd be too complicated! We'd have to do dozens of calculations per year!"

No one is saying that it's "too complicated" to calculate someone's net wealth in basic securities. I did not make that claim. This is a poor strawman.

>You're imagining taxes as being one big annual chunk

No I'm not, you're talking to someone who pays taxes quarterly.

>It could be more like sales tax: baked directly into how these financial instruments work.

We already have that via capital gains and income taxes.

>You're also imagining taxes as computationally difficult, but they're absolute baby math compared to something like rendering a single 3D frame -- they're only artificially difficult for people because Intuit lobbies to keep it that way.

Again, I am not making that claim neither is anyone else. All the computation in the world doesn't solve for something that is inherently illogical.

>People get infinitely creative with financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations over mortgage-backed securities

These securities are logical to understand.

>but as soon as we suggest taxing wealth people throw up their hands and go "there's no possible way to do it!"

Again, do you get a tax refund if your tax liability went down due to depreciation? How do you levy wealth taxes on assets such as private businesses and ventures that do not have a clear appraisal value, or one at all? Most countries that levied wealth taxes has discarded them due to these difficulties, ones that compute can't solve.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#442

Post by amanaplanacanal »

elcritch wrote: post #319
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. You never know what you are going to hear on HN :)

Fine I’ll oblige. :P I believe hastening it (momentarily) has been good. Well the looming debt issue as I understand this subthread to be about. Like a patient getting indigestion and goes to the ER thinking it's a heat attack, only to find it’s not but his cholesterol and BP is through the roof and he needs blood pressure meds asap. Trumps tactics has caused much more attention on the matter. Tariffs can be reduced,…

People have been predicting catastrophe since the 70s. Same with social security. Somehow we keep muddling along.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#443

Post by SecretDreams »

anonfordays wrote: post #437
SecretDreams wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can't eat with his shares. He can use them as collateral for debt. Presently, that's how he dodges taxes. You'd close that loophole.

>He can't eat with his shares. You can't eat with your brokerage account either, what is the point? >He can use them as collateral for debt. Yes, you can use your brokerage account, house, etc. as collateral for loans, this is not new or unique. >Presently, that's how he dodges taxes. What does this even mean? Loans are not taxable as you have to pay them back. >You'd close that loophole. That's not a tax... This is…

[flagged]

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#444

Post by HDThoreaun »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #292
roenxi wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Markets don’t account for externalities But on net the externalities are just as likely to be doing more good than bad. I've yet to see anyone in the public debate tallying up the positive externalities of markets. "They have externalities!" is likely to be an argument in favour of free markets, without the positive externalities a free market generates we would be poorer and more uncomfortable - it doesn't take mu…

I mean, you can easily observe it. Look at Germany. Not investing sufficiently into education, public Infrastructure, hospitals, and probably more. Inefficient bureaucracy everywhere. Long term effects already visible and only becoming more pronounced. People have a 4y political memory and electing the same shit again. This apparently will continue until we hit rock bottom. I just hope others will be ready to face an…

> Not investing sufficiently into education, public Infrastructure, hospitals, and probably more. Inefficient bureaucracy everywhere.

Youre blaming this on markets? Germanys problem is an overly rigid beuarcratic state that refuses to run a deficit, not overly free markets.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#445

Post by HDThoreaun »

fuzztester wrote: post #255
jack_h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…

>At least in the free market inefficient companies will eventually go defunct which frees those resources for more economically useful output. ha ha. you mean like in 2008 and 2009, the great recession (1), the subprime mortgage crisis (2), etc., and then things like: (1) the great recession (2) the subprime mortgage crisis TARP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Progra... terms floating around at…

what happened to lehman bros, bear stearns...? The worst companies did fail. You would never see that in the government

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#446

Post by Robotbeat »

kevinventullo wrote: post #430
Robotbeat wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s paper wealth. If you forced a sell off, the value would plummet. Look at revenue.

Maybe a direct transfer then. Don’t have to worry about share prices when the tax is a % of shares owned.

Do you think the government should start owning shares? Seems problematic. Instead, we could tax realized gains and profits. I think in general this is all just a round about way of doing the taxation we already do, just more of it. Which I support (except for the needlessly antagonistic populist tone), for the same reason I support some cutting of government spending. We legitimately do have too much federal debt right now.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#447

Post by ModernMech »

dralley wrote: post #82
aaronbaugher wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How much more straightforwards do you need it to be? How about this? > “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do…

The only thing they're not doing is twirling mustaches.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#448

Post by vaidhy »

anonfordays wrote: post #437
SecretDreams wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can't eat with his shares. He can use them as collateral for debt. Presently, that's how he dodges taxes. You'd close that loophole.

>He can't eat with his shares. You can't eat with your brokerage account either, what is the point? >He can use them as collateral for debt. Yes, you can use your brokerage account, house, etc. as collateral for loans, this is not new or unique. >Presently, that's how he dodges taxes. What does this even mean? Loans are not taxable as you have to pay them back. >You'd close that loophole. That's not a tax... This is…

The dodgy part is what happens after someone dies. The stocks get a one-time relief from capital gains as it moves to the heir. This gives opportunity for the heirs (or the estate) to sell the stocks to pay back the loan. That is the loophole.

The key here is that you need enough wealth to keep borrowing for rest of your life without touching your principle.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#449

Post by koakuma-chan »

Epa095 wrote: post #343
koakuma-chan wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read third bullet point https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...

Yes, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is very democratic, it says so in their name!

Having the word democratic in your name is not the same as sending a letter to a university where one of the listed demands is merit-based admission.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#450

Post by garfield_light »

simianwords wrote: post #363
garfield_light wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the delusion that true value is the same as a fungible one dimensional number, that externalities (negative or positive) don't exist, we have perfect information and local minima aren't real. The original example is that certain economic activities are force multipliers, the guy who actually does a good job in servicing the metro in my city (we avoid 10 minutes of delay) has more impact than most local CEO d…

if you think the metro guy/girl provides more value then he/she should be paid more. tough luck because its not the market that decides his wage unfortunately.

Yeah we knew that, that's the point.
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