391–400 of 407 posts
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Absolutely. Early engines were so inefficient that they could basically only be used in coal mines.
I'm no expert, but burning coal inside a coal mine sounds like a really bad idea for several reasons.
The engine would also typically be at the top of the mine, not deep inside it.
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I’m assuming you mean you’re in the top 8 percent of income distribution? Ie about 90,000 euros? If so, by my rough math, you’re paying about 25% more in taxes than an equivalent American couple based on PPP. That American couple would have about $30K USD/26K Euro more in disposable income, would likely have good quality health insurance paid for by their job, be eligible for $3K to $4K in social security retirement…
That's incredibly misleading. For a high salary, this American couple you mentioned, are probably living in California or New York or New Jersey or another high tax state. Now redo the math. I and most people in my peer group pay over 40 percent of income in taxes, and that's NOT including property taxes, which are much, much higher than in Europe. Some much more than that - like triple (city, state and federal). Sta…
The US median household pays roughly 10–12% of income in federal taxes. A German median-wage single worker's net rate is somewhere in the high-20s to high-30s percent.
Germany will be 10 to 20% higher in total taxes: income, property, sales/VAT, etc; than an American at a comparable professional income. If you claim to be paying 40, you'd be paying 50%+ in Germany. $10 to 30K a year more gives you a lot of room to save for college, pay for medical expenses, etc: the "safety net" in Europe only helps you if you don't want to work or don't want to earn a significant income.
States feature low or 0 income tax, including desirable places to live like Florida and Texas. Yes, they'll have property taxes or others, but again: personal decisions. If you choose to live in CA, vote for CA policies, then you have to pay for CA's waste.
If you read my comment, you'll see I'm saying you can minimize college expenses by doing 2 years at CC, then transferring, yielding a total college spend of just a few thousand dollars (not the absurd $100K student debt loads people incessantly whine about online). Healthcare costs are simple: if you pay for ACA-aligned insurance, again, your costs are capped: $10K OOP max sucks, but if you made the decision to purchase insurance, you're not paying the $200K medical debt people claim online.
My central claim was and remains: America provides more opportunity to earn money, and people misrepresent the "downside risk" of America's approach to healthcare, college, and income by refusing to acknowledge that the worst outcomes are of people's own making. America gives you far more opportunity to excel, but also doesn't backstop your personal failures with your neighbor's work to the same extent (at the individual level, ignoring govt. bailouts of companies).
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I suggest looking into “EQL”, or better yet, just replicating its index by taking a position in the 11 XL* sector funds from SPDR, allocating equal weighting to each. One will end up with one’s equities equal weighted by sector and with plenty of large cap exposure, as opposed to the pronounced mid-cap tilt found in whole market equal-weight strategies. Personally, I drop the financial sector entirely (Thomistic proh…
The problem is that this strategy is only feasible in a tax-advantaged account. Otherwise the drag of taxes during rebalancing dramatically lowers the returns.
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Your house (hopefully) goes up in value. The datacenter goes down.
Land tends to appreciate, but not so much the rotting box atop it I bring this up not as a "well, ackshually" but because the datacenter analogy is more similar in that respect...except worse, because now it's a rotting box full of very expensive hardware that hasn't historically held a lot of value until this current shortage
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Because the average person also makes a litany of poor financial decisions. $100K student loan balances for an state school arts degree, forgoing health insurance but expecting to receive $200K in care for free, or buying that $80K F150 on a 12.5% loan and rolling in negative equity. The US is second in the world for median equivalised household disposable income, second only to Luxembourg and 10%+ above Norway. For…
Victim blaming. It always works, whether on HN or Reddit. And why, pray tell, is the system set up so that all the things you obviously should do are bad decisions?
Here's the easiest example: with ACA subsidies the average cost of an ACA plan is $50, with low income people qualifying for plans as low as $10 a month. This will cover basic preventative care like screenings, tests, and vaccines; and importantly caps your OOP maximum, preventing a financial disaster if you have a significant illness.
Despite all that, many people still aren't insured. They aren't insured despite it being massively subsidized for them by taxpayers. They aren't insured despite the government running advertisements throughout open enrollment.
At this point, if you have a complaint about a massive healthcare bill, my very first question is: did you have insurance?
The same ideas apply to college, housing, cars, and health/diet: "the system" gives you a massive range of options, but people consistently choose poorly, shortsightedly, and wastefully. People need to take personal responsibility for their decisions.
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Victim blaming. It always works, whether on HN or Reddit. And why, pray tell, is the system set up so that all the things you obviously should do are bad decisions?
"The system" isn't setup to make self-destructive, clearly bad decisions. People just choose to make them, and at some point the system can't help them by carrot or stick. Here's the easiest example: with ACA subsidies the average cost of an ACA plan is $50, with low income people qualifying for plans as low as $10 a month. This will cover basic preventative care like screenings, tests, and vaccines; and importantly…
Some people don't even have $10 per month spare. Wealth inequality in the USA is extreme. But more importantly: they are busy and stressed. If it's so easy to get health insurance it should either be mandatory and automatic, or it should be a checkbox on your taxes or some other form.
When I paid my student loan it was a matter of just ticking a box on the employment tax declaration that I had a student loan. And then it was automatically taken from my paycheck. It wasn't about the money, but about the ease of use. If I had to send a monthly payment with a paper check I'd surely miss payments.
The phrase "personal responsibility" is a thought-ending cliche used when someone doesn't want to see the big picture. It's like if Microsoft changes Windows 12 to break Valve games and you blame the game because "developer responsibility" or "executable file responsibility" and ignore the bigger picture that Microsoft is trying to drive Valve out of business to move games off Steam and onto the Microsoft Store.
Are they really "trying to hide" this debt? I think it's pretty common knowledge that a lot of these companies are using debt/bonds for funding. The debt not showing up where the author wants is a reporting formality not an attempt to hide it.
If it didn't matter, why would they bother jumping through hoops to keep the debt off their balance sheet? In the run-up to 2008 a big factor in the bubble forming was that poor quality loans were packaged in a way to hide the risk in those investments. I'm not expert enough in finance to know if it's the case now, but we do know that clever accounting to hide debt can lead to the incorrect valuation of assets, poten…
It's sort of like saying "aluminium smelter is hiding massive off balance sheet debt by agreeing a long term energy price with a power station" - when in reality it just agreed a forward price to de-risk it's production.
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"The system" isn't setup to make self-destructive, clearly bad decisions. People just choose to make them, and at some point the system can't help them by carrot or stick. Here's the easiest example: with ACA subsidies the average cost of an ACA plan is $50, with low income people qualifying for plans as low as $10 a month. This will cover basic preventative care like screenings, tests, and vaccines; and importantly…
If an option then system provides is self-destructive, maybe it should stop providing that option? Some people don't even have $10 per month spare. Wealth inequality in the USA is extreme. But more importantly: they are busy and stressed . If it's so easy to get health insurance it should either be mandatory and automatic, or it should be a checkbox on your taxes or some other form. When I paid my student loan it was…
For loan payments, somehow generations managed to pay mortgages, property taxes, and more with nothing more than a checkbook they manually balanced and gasp paper, envelopes, and stamps. Again, even if you have to log into a website to manually trigger an ACH, put a recurring calendar event in your phone and include a link. I bet you could get that down to 3 minutes a month, assuming they don't have autowithdraw.
Your Windows/Valve example has Windows taking action to make things harder for people. All the examples you provided are things that are easier now than they ever were in the past.
Even your initial premise that these options are inherently self-destructive is wrong. If you're a trust-fund kid and want to study art history for $100K a year, great! We shouldn't take the option away from everyone just because some people rack up $200K of student debt. We shouldn't further bureaucratize and regulate the healthcare system just because some people are too busy (read: watching TV) or stressed (read: can't follow instructions written at a 4th grade level) to work through a few questions on a website.
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The tax advantages of being forced to pay ordinary income rates on your distributions as compared to long term capital gains (which are low, capped, can be exercised before a tax hike, and avoided entirely if you just need collateral)?
401k reduces your taxable income when depositing money, this is more tax efficient than paying normal income taxes and then also paying capital gains. 401k lets you rebalance a portfolio with zero tax implications. The downsides are generally high fees and a 10% penalty for early withdrawal which makes them surprisingly bad for young people. They tend to start in lower tax brackets, have fewer reserves when unemploye…
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401k reduces your taxable income when depositing money, this is more tax efficient than paying normal income taxes and then also paying capital gains. 401k lets you rebalance a portfolio with zero tax implications. The downsides are generally high fees and a 10% penalty for early withdrawal which makes them surprisingly bad for young people. They tend to start in lower tax brackets, have fewer reserves when unemploye…
401k sure sounds good when you mention the "no taxes on money going in" and don't mention the "big taxes on money going out" part, doesn't it?
So most people get taxed at lower marginal rates in retirement when they take money out. Which makes deferring taxes a meaningful advantage. This is especially true if you intend to money to a state with lower tax rates in retirement, but a worse deal if you intend to do the reverse.