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True Rate of Unemployment

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Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#231

Post by sokoloff »

teiferer wrote: post #140
jandrewrogers wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income from capital has a low tax rate in the US (and many other countries) because you can deduct neither losses due to inflation nor losses due to risk, both of which are substantial for capital income but non-existent for wage income. The lower tax rate is simpler than actually accounting for these differences. Treating wage and capital income equivalently would require recognizing losses due to inflation and risk…

> losses due to inflation nor losses due to risk, both of which are substantial for capital income but non-existent for wage income. Neither is true. The only asset class directly hit by inflation is cash. No high net worth person in their right mind holds substantial cash for a longer period of time. If they do, it's a conscious choice and it's not clear why the tax system should help in that situation. The risk of…

Capital gains taxes are assessed on nominal gains not real gains.

If I bought $100K of stock in 1999 and sold it in 2026 for $200K, I gained no real wealth from that transaction. What I could purchase today for $200K could have been bought for $100K in 1999 because of inflation.

Yet, I’d owe capital gains on the $100K of nominal gain I experienced. This is part of the reason that long-term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#232

Post by user____name »

boxed wrote: post #73
xbmcuser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the true problem which most countries dont even acknowledge is low wealth and capital gains tax. Salaries are not enough because of land prices and the prices inflation it causes through out the economy. You bring down price of home land rent then price of everything else comes down. And their is a lot more economic activity as trillions of dollars are not parked in real estate for wealth generation.

> You bring down price of home land rent then price of everything else comes down If any price for any reason goes down, that money ends up in housing. The only way to bring down housing pricing is to build more housing. This is extremely well documented.

Meanwhile my country has tons of vacant housing and prices keep going up.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#233

Post by ButlerianJihad »

afpx wrote: post #104

Tangential question: how do you actually find and hire people? I have a decent amount of disposable income [1], and I often want to pay people to help with things I’m not particularly skilled at. The problem is that I have no idea how to reliably find the right person or even how to structure the arrangement once I do. I have lots of examples, but here’s a recent one. A device failed, and replacing it would have cost…

I had a female friend who moved to San Francisco and lived alone without a vehicle. So if she needed some handyman work, she would summon a Taskrabbit from the app. I found Thumbtack to be a decent equivalent of this, and I tried it once.

All I needed was to swap two large pieces of furniture. I had a 4-drawer file cabinet and a full-size folding bed. All I wanted was to put the bed in the other room and the file cabinet where the bed used to be.

So I wrote up the job on Thumbtack and connected with a seemingly professional service who could send a guy out. The guy appeared at my door and immediately launched into a sob story: he had a flat tire and his truck needed repair and oh god things were just terrible, and he had a slovenly, unkempt appearance, no uniform or livery, and he was toting a home-made furniture dolly with casters on it.

Okay, so he got inside and he was perfectly competent to move the furniture around as requested, and when he finished the job, I told him that his company would be paid in the Thumbtack app. And he cast his eyes about the room, saying "well people usually pay me in cash..." and I could smell the scam powerfully by then. So I opened the app before his eyes and showed him how I sent payment in full, so he would not be leaving without proof. And later, I sent another $25 and I contacted the company to say he did a good job and please make sure he receives this gratuity.

So Taskrabbit or Thumbtack may work for you, depending on your negotiation skills. But I was put off, by the way they sent a lone dude trying to collect cash off me at home.

My church bulletin often has handyman listings in the advertisements. I don't know if they are well-vetted either, but it is something worth checking in your local rags and craigslist.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#234

Post by [deleted] »

afpx wrote: post #104

Tangential question: how do you actually find and hire people? I have a decent amount of disposable income [1], and I often want to pay people to help with things I’m not particularly skilled at. The problem is that I have no idea how to reliably find the right person or even how to structure the arrangement once I do. I have lots of examples, but here’s a recent one. A device failed, and replacing it would have cost…

[deleted]

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#235

Post by sph »

sokoloff wrote: post #223
lifestyleguru wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In context of your problem there are three groups of people: 1. Those who have so much money they pay whatever is needed, getting screwed by countless middlemen. 2. Those who do everything by themselves full time and overtime. 3. Those who have lots of broken equipment, unfinished projects, and house or apartment waiting to be refurbished.

2 and 3 are the same in my own lived experience.

If you can/want to do a lot of things, you have a lot of projects going on at any time. Those that can’t do any, won’t have any either.

Isn’t the hard drive of the average software engineer full of half finished projects?

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#236

Post by crefiz »

teiferer wrote: post #220
dbspin wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Then maybe it's time you look up how unemployment statistics are calculated in Switzerland and you will be surprised that you counted into them." Not to criticise, but just to point out that this sentence doesn't quite make sense in English, and it's not immediately apparent what you mean. The sentence has to precisely opposed interpretations.

Oh interesting. What are the interpretations and why?

I beg to differ, perhaps my English dialect is different but sounds pretty OK to me – even for Chatty

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a98091f-9550-83eb-b17e-c636ac3441...

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#237

Post by woodpanel »

xelxebar wrote: post #93

From a cursory read of their white paper, my impression is that LISEP is trying to quantify the sense that making a livable income is harder and more disparate than it used to be. IMHO, this should be read as a campaign to improve and add precision to a political narrative more than an indictment of existing statistics. In particular, the BLS in the US reports 6 different measures of unemployment, U-1 through U-6, ea…

Agree. Add to that that usually those ideological metrics have some telling blindspots.

In the case of their white paper, while being very thorough in defining which workers should be deducted from the workforce bucket, they have no adjustment towards when someone should be eligible for this triage in the first place.

Students for example.

Who studies out of virtue, and who just because the job market is still closed off to him?

Specifically urban governments used this statistical trick to downplay youth-unemployment for decades while also benefiting themselves with providing employment for their political base. Funnily though, these social-worker-slash-educator jobs are often themselves not viable enough to make it into the „true“ workforce bucket

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#238

Post by sph »

RivieraKid wrote: post #213
stuaxo wrote: post #186

A huge demonstration of why we need to move from a 5 day working week. Some of the gains that have gone to the top need to be paid to spread the work over more people, a 4 day week would be a start.

In basic economic theory, high wages mean that there's insufficient supply. So I wonder why don't the "truly unemployed" people learn whatever the market rewards and compete with the highly paid workers. If it is because they can't for whatever reason, 4 day working week doesn't solve anything. (Genuine question, I'm not making some kind of a right-wing point.)

Yeah go ask a homeless person why don’t they become a hedge fund manager or neurosurgeon. Are they stupid?

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#239

Post by ykdhdjfzhg »

jaredklewis wrote: post #26
xbmcuser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the true problem which most countries dont even acknowledge is low wealth and capital gains tax. Salaries are not enough because of land prices and the prices inflation it causes through out the economy. You bring down price of home land rent then price of everything else comes down. And their is a lot more economic activity as trillions of dollars are not parked in real estate for wealth generation.

A land value tax would fix rich people parking money in real estate. A wealth tax or capital gains tax would not.

[flagged]

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#240

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

aslgbb wrote: post #191
21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competence is chain of trust. Chain of trust is adversarial to current market forces.

Maybe social forces as well. I don't have the same 'local trust networks' that my parents did for finding someone nearby to do something--probably because I spend most of my time online. And I had more confidence in what I found in the paper Yellow Pages that got delivered to my door than I do in what is presented in an online search, say, for local contractors.

A chain of trust - aka a local village, is not always just the historic medieval village. Often it is just a experience value: I know that guy, i trust his/her judgement when it comes to "topic". So when s/he recommends me a plumber, i know i can trust that guy..

So a chain of trust naturally accumulates over a lifespan- and by the time you will be as old as your dad was at point of reference, you actually would have a chain. Depending of course on the quality of acquaintances. As kid, all you have is your parents and relatives. Some with wild swings. We all had that story telling grandpa whose tall tales we proudly propagated.

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