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Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

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Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#191

Post by DiabloD3 »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #189
DiabloD3 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is what I keep telling people. There are two kinds of programmers I've met: those who think they became 10x devs because of AI, and those who AI is slowing them down. The people who think they became 10x devs? They were missing crucial skills that allow them to be productive devs, and the AI is filling the gaps... instead, they should be actually learning those skills, since without them they will never act…

> They were missing crucial skills that allow them to be productive devs, and the AI is filling the gaps What's wrong with that? AI is a tool and that's the whole purpose of using tools. Are you one of those people that expects everyone to write code in notepad?

The purpose of a tool is to make your job easier.

A good editor makes your job easier. A bad editor makes your job harder. Some people use bad tools because it is what they are familiar with, not because it is a good tool. Example: People daily drive VSCode and VSCode forks.

As I said, a bad tool makes my job harder. Examples of making my job harder include being inconsistent, requiring extreme vigilance and oversight or it will do the wrong thing, suddenly grows new features that are also the wrong thing for the task at hand and are enabled by default, not knowing if the tool will be available when I need it (and it usually won't, exactly at the time I need it the most) either due to fragility or poor design, or it just uses a woefully incorrect workflow for the task at hand, or even promotes and enforces bad security practices. Example: AI, but also VSCode.

Like, dude, if you want to hate on editors, HN has these threads frequently, but why strawman me with Notepad? There is nothing wrong with people using Vim, Emacs, Sublime Text, Textmate, or whatever. The tool has to work, be ergonomic, and not be hostile. Just because a tool is popular (for the moment, at least) doesn't mean its good. AI is popular currently, but it isn't good.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#192

Post by xigoi »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #96
amunozo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always the same ridiculous statement.

I mean we are still waiting for the European Apple or Microsoft or Google or anything of that scale aren't we? China has it's own version of all this stuff, where is Europe's?

How would European citizens benefit from having evil megacorporations?

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#193

Post by benterix »

Insanity wrote: post #26

As a European I want mistral and EU to do well. But at the same time, I wouldn’t actually give up my well paid engineering job outside of EU to even entertain working for them in EU. Too low salaries and too high taxes.

I'm very happy to pay high taxes in Europe, and enjoy everything that they bring.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#194

Post by Hikikomori »

no-name-here wrote: post #187
Gud wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich don’t have income, they have wealth. And the oligarchs in Sweden pay very little taxes.

> Rich don't have income Wouldn't rich people still have dividends, interest, and possibly executive compensation and capital gains? And if, for example, their money is in a business, that business would be paying all taxes as well, both resulting in tax revenue, and less for the investor? Or is there a source that they don’t have income? > oligarchs in Sweden pay very little taxes How are you quantifying that claim?…

The obscenely rich in Sweden are for the most part so because they own companies that grew a lot in value, when their stock was issued its value was low so they paid very little taxes on it. If they sell stock they pay 30% on profit from it, which is not a lot of tax on possibly billions.

They may also avoid selling by taking out loans instead, and just pay interest rather than any taxes.

This doesn't mean that the rich are not paying taxes or are not paying for a larger % of taxes in total, but they're far from paying their fair share because most of their wealth didn't come from income. Regular employees have higher effective tax rates, even more so if they're issued RSUs.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#195

Post by radicalbyte »

tmikaeld wrote: post #164
no-name-here wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective tax rates for European ultra rich seem to be ~50x that from my googling. Is there a source for the “well under 0.5% effective”? Perhaps you’re thinking of wealth taxes rather than effective tax rates? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/effectivetaxrate.asp

He is, the rich pay normal tax and in Sweden (~52-55% effective), includes extra tax on high income. Even dividend tax is 30%

Ikea use my country - The Netherland - to avoid paying tax. Same thing that Google and go co with Ireland. They have literal custom agreements with our tax office.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#196

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

vintermann wrote: post #184
gamblor956 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland has about the same taxes as most of Europe, but the taxes are spread between federal, cantonal, and municipal taxes. The combined marginal rate in Switzerland can reach 45%. Switzerland also has a wealth tax. TLDR: Switzerland is not the low-tax fantasy wonderland many people believe it to be.

Ok, but then why are Scandinavian billionaires emigrating to Switzerland? Personal wealth above ca. $215000 (with primary residence counted at 25% of its market value, and debt subtracted) is taxed at 1% in Norway, rising to 1.1% above $2.2 million. Presumably whatever wealth tax Switzerland has is lower than that?

I believe that there are some Swiss regional authorities (called cantons, I believe) that have lower taxes. This may be where people are moving to.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#197

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

hobofan wrote: post #60
scirob wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why googles biggest European office is in the low tax high salary country of Switzerland

That's the biggest engineering office, but not the biggest overall European Google office, right? That would be in low tax low salary Ireland.

> low tax low salary Ireland.

Ireland is neither of those, fwiw. I get pretty decent money here, and pay a marginal rate of 52% on everything over 80k.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#198

Post by amunozo »

gamblor956 wrote: post #163
amunozo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Zurich is everything but representative of Europe. Switzerland has much lower taxes and higher salaries than the rest of Europe.

Switzerland has about the same taxes as most of Europe, but the taxes are spread between federal, cantonal, and municipal taxes. The combined marginal rate in Switzerland can reach 45%. Switzerland also has a wealth tax. TLDR: Switzerland is not the low-tax fantasy wonderland many people believe it to be.

Switzerland can reach 45% with huge salaries. Spain, for example, reaches 45% from 60k€ a year. Switzerland is much more progressive and salaries are definitely much higher than in most of Europe.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#199

Post by spauldo »

Insanity wrote: post #134
insane_dreamer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you get much more for your taxes than in the US though

True, I agree. But it does suck working in tech on a “medium” salary when your overseas colleagues do the same work and earn much more. What I probably miss the most about EU (apart from family) is good food.

I had the opposite food experience in the EU, but I'll admit my experience is mostly Spain.

In the US there's usually a good variety of food from all different cultures available. When I spent two months in Spain, I got really, really tired of the same three seasonings the Spanish put on everything. I craved Mexican food like crazy the whole time.

Spanish food is great, don't get me wrong - I wish we had it here in the sticks where I live - but I'm used to a bit more variety.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#200

Post by gamblor956 »

vintermann wrote: post #184
gamblor956 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland has about the same taxes as most of Europe, but the taxes are spread between federal, cantonal, and municipal taxes. The combined marginal rate in Switzerland can reach 45%. Switzerland also has a wealth tax. TLDR: Switzerland is not the low-tax fantasy wonderland many people believe it to be.

Ok, but then why are Scandinavian billionaires emigrating to Switzerland? Personal wealth above ca. $215000 (with primary residence counted at 25% of its market value, and debt subtracted) is taxed at 1% in Norway, rising to 1.1% above $2.2 million. Presumably whatever wealth tax Switzerland has is lower than that?

Theoretically, Switzerland allows for foreigners immigrating to the country a one-time opportunity to negotiate long-term favorable tax deals to lower their tax rates. This is only available to non-Swiss foreigners with significant assets moving to Switzerland, because their assets become subject to the Swiss wealth tax.

But despite what they said to the media, they weren't moving because of the wealth taxes. If they were moving because of the Scandinavian wealth taxes, they would have moved to the U.K. or the U.S., which don't have wealth taxes at all. Instead, they moved to another country with a wealth tax and a relatively high income tax.

So clearly it was never about the taxes. It was either politics, or they just liked Switzerland better. When you're super rich, Switzerland is a much nicer place to live than Norway or Sweden.

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