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Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

coindesk.com

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#911
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference is that you aren't involved with peoples' finances. There is a whole other level beyond the crazy you attract in services and retail.

That's true, but upset developers are up on the list of "how can I word this to be the most passive / aggressive as humanly possible". To be fair I think customer support in general is a hostile environment for the receiver. Everyone coming at you is usually dealing with an unexpected issue in some way that's preventing them from being able to do what they wanted to do. There's been a huge range of things I've seen.…

docker desktop stopped working on my windows box yesterday. tried clearing my containers, didn't work. factory reset, didn't work. uninstall reinstall, didn't work. finally the reset kubernetes button was ungreyed and that worked but i still don't know why if i already reset everything. lost my dev data. not happy with docker desktop, but haven't issued any death threats yet.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#912

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

My mother was a billionaire apologist.

The world would get on just fine without coinbase, stripe, meta.

$100m is an insane amount of money. Enough to buy anything you want. If people sell things for over $100m they'll soon bring their prices down.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

A wealth tax implies a tax on unrealized appreciated assets, which is beyond bizarre IMHO. So you buy a house for $500k somewhere. It surges in value to $1.2 million. You therefore have an unrealized capital gain of $700k. You are NEVER going to get that money until you sell it, and when you do you are going to pay a whopping amount of capital gain tax. But a wealth tax implies you pay that capital gain tax now. Okay…

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#914
post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the same? If my house is worth $1M in 2022, I pay tax on that $1M of value. If it goes down in value to $500K in 2023 (and is reassessed), I'd pay tax on $500K value in 2023. If I own $1B of AMZN in 2022, I'd pay wealth tax on my $1B holdings in 2022, if the market tanks and AMZN is worth $50M in 2023, then I'd pay the wealth tax on $50M in 2023. Just as with property taxes, a wealth tax is generally annua…

It feels weird I’d have to pay anyone just for owning something. Besides, how would you price private companies? Are those just going to be free?

It feels weird to let people own something

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#915
post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the same? If my house is worth $1M in 2022, I pay tax on that $1M of value. If it goes down in value to $500K in 2023 (and is reassessed), I'd pay tax on $500K value in 2023. If I own $1B of AMZN in 2022, I'd pay wealth tax on my $1B holdings in 2022, if the market tanks and AMZN is worth $50M in 2023, then I'd pay the wealth tax on $50M in 2023. Just as with property taxes, a wealth tax is generally annua…

It feels weird I’d have to pay anyone just for owning something. Besides, how would you price private companies? Are those just going to be free?

Why is that any weirder than expecting to get paid just for owning stuff?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#916
post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have to be absolutist about it. Houses are not nearly as volatile as stock, so evaluating and taxing them as wealth is pretty feasible.

> Houses are not nearly as volatile as stock I know six million American households who lost their homes to foreclosure in 2008 that might disagree with that one.

Prices dropped 15% from the peak to the trough.

The S&P is down 20% in the last 3 months.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#917

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point seems a little orthogonal. If I pay tax on X value in year 1, value goes up and now I pay X*1.1 in year 2, then back to X in year 3 because the home value lowers again, I don’t get a refund for the extra 10% paid in year 2 despite the fact that I never realized any value in the fact that my home appreciated for a year.

So in 2020 I inherit $16k and decide to buy 1 BTC for $16,082 on Nov 12, 2020. Later that day the wealth tax department is created and levies a 20% tax on all unrealized appreciated assets. Your reporting day is on the anniversary of the original asset purchase. So a year later (Nov 12, 21) Bitcoin is at $64,400. My accumulated unrealized appreciation is $48,318. I file my wealth tax return and have to borrow the $9,…

Too bad, so sad. You should have invested in something that has actual fundamentals instead.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#918
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that do something to the power relationships in the world? The fact that you're even asking that is a reason we shouldn't have billionaires -- world power relationships shouldn't be based on the wealth of individual citizens. For example, what did Musk really talk about when he met with the president of Brazil? Did he represent American interests, Amazon Inc's interests, or Elon Musk's interests?

Why not btw? I mean, why is it worse for somebody to have power because he worked and invested for decades and made optimal decisions (and probably some luck) than for somebody to have power because he was born into the right family, knows all the right people in The Machine, has nice hair and is able to conceal his rampaging cocaine habit long enough to make himself too big to fail? I get that "wealth gets power" is…

> made optimal decisions

Optimal decisions for themselves, not for the country.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#919

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

you are making the incredibly naive assumption that taxes is capital that is properly allocated once seized. more often it isn't used well. what gives the government the right to wastes someone else's hard earned money?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#920
post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this logic is that real estate values are out of control. In my city not uncommon to see stories of families who have owned a home for generation or more being forced to sell it because the value of the land went from $200k to $800k in 10 years and is now taxed as such.

If the value of the land goes up with increased economic activity, but you're not economically active enough to continue living in the area, how is it unreasonable to be expected to sell? The other side of every "family was forced to sell" is "another family was very happy to move in".

What's the purpose of buying a house if you can't stay in it more or less indefinitely? (Yes, I know people sometimes buy houses planning to only stay in one place a few years, but I would wager most don't.)
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