MrTonyD

34 ms·

271.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
Have you actually looked into the background of the tens of thousands of Senior VP's at companies? Their background is usually Harvard or Yale or Stanford and studying Finance or Business so that they would get executive positions wher
272.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
What really bothers me is that the top .1% in the US have such an incredible amount of wealth. I used to believe the propaganda that they "earned" it -- until I worked with multi-billionaires and multi-millionaires in Silicon Vall
273.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
Many workers are closely supervised and monitored (I think of the facial recognition being used by WalMart to track all their employees continuously.) I think that both wealth and power should come with responsibilities - and the obligation
274.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
These Harvard economists always seem like clones of one another. They purged out all the Keynesian economists from the faculty - since Keynesian economics can't justify business selfishness - and since then they do everything they can
275.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
We live in a time of Big Data. I think of Walmart - where they use hidden cameras with facial recognition to track all their employees (as well as monitoring every call.) This makes me think that money and power in a society should come wit
276.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
Actually, I don't think that will work. I understand that the increasing wages for education over the past decade have been a chimera. In fact, those wages have been stagnant compared to economic growth in the USA, while others wages h
277.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
He can safely call for higher capital gains taxes - since most of his money is hidden offshore and away from US accounting. My boss used Bill's accountants, as did many Silicon Valley executives, and described to me some of Bill's
278.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
Percentages mean almost nothing sometimes. I was running my own business for a while and making many hundreds of thousands - and spending $30,000 in a day didn't mean anything to me. So paying 20% vs 30% vs 50% wouldn't have made
279.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
Perhaps 20 years ago I remember reading an article describing how most foreign workers were no longer using the H1B program - and that Congress had created new programs (and changed limits on other programs) in order to make the number of f
280.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
Regulation has a scope defined by governments. And when money can be moved easily outside any particular government, it becomes impossible to regulate. Just look at how Walmart moved cash to offshores to loan to themselves so that they coul
281.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
I've been reading Krugman for decades. He has said a lot of things.
282.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
It is information...but if you read my original comment you will see that the benefit of such increased income is far outweighed by other considerations. As I recall, even Krugman himself described that gain as very small (small single digi
283.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
I think Krugman is both brilliant and blinded by his own brilliance. Krugman's focus on economic data blinds him to the second and third order consequences of worldwide trade. In particular, trade outside borders allows schemes for hid
284.
by MrTonyD 10y ago
Kind of off-topic -- but I still remember laughing when I read about how the oil industry was using "IP over mud" between the drill tip and a receiver. Apparently, the temperatures won't allow typical electronics to survive i
285.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
I realize I'm an outlier -- but I'm not fond of solar. Though when I was younger, I was an enthusiastic supporter. But now I realize that a 30 year life-span for solar panels means that there will be a huge recurring cost associat
286.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
Thanks for bringing up the coexistence of zero-sum and non-zero-sum. Too many people talk about them without any real understanding. Just as a time-series can be infinite, it can also be non-infinite at any point in time. People who dismiss
287.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
I read an article in the New York Times about unpublished research. A major company hired researchers to figure out why they had fewer women employees. They found that women quit more than men. Surprisingly, women had exactly the same work
288.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
A guaranteed income solves the income problem -- but that shouldn't be conflated with the causes of that problem that it solves. The massive income inequality, which is arguably an underlying cause of the problem, requires different so
289.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
They pay no taxes on any of the money. And they can still spend it offshore if they spend it from one of the offshore accounts "lower in the maze" of accounts. Also, products haven't been priced based on production costs for
290.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
Having worked for Fortune 50's for most of my life, I'm not optimistic about that law. There are so many ways to adjust accounting that it is just amazing. And every company uses many offshores these days - they provide services a
291.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
It has been a standard practice to discourage tax laws by making them apply to everyone equally. But there is really no reason for that to be the case. Perhaps I have the advantage of having worked on Big Data problems with the NSA, and we
292.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
Basic income doesn't solve this problem. I've worked with several executives who get to decide how much they want to "appear" to make in the United States -- all the rest is hidden offshore in stocks. The stocks they own
293.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
The insurance companies are careful not to do anything illegal. Declined reviews and firing people and "losing" paperwork can all be explained away. I spoke to an attorney after doing work for a couple of insurance companies -- an
294.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
I hate insurance companies. For one, they refused to pay for pre-approved claims when my wife had cancer and was being treated at Stanford (We were double-insured. Apparently, when you have two insurances, it is common for carriers to decli
295.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
For every Levittown there are also hundreds of neighborhoods that never got any better after they were built. I would argue that Levittown can't be disentangled from the economic period in the United States - and it reflected the impro
296.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
I've known several senior executives in Silicon Valley and they all had many offshore stocks. Once you got to know them, they freely admitted it (they were legal, and set up by the Big 3 or Big 5 accounting firms.) But they usually did
297.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
Yeah, business has been corrupt since before any of us were born. I worked at a US company that reached an agreement with a foreign government to provide all their systems for their entire government. They were dumping Microsoft, and they w
298.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
This aligns with a concept I read recently -- real freedom means that you will often be restricted in your actions. When you think about it, that makes sense. Since other people are also free, it is just reasonable that a community would co
299.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
Lots of applications are really full featured databases with a simplifying user interface to suit a particular use case. I think a good Todo list could and should be the same - with both a simple Todo use case supported while also able to b
300.
by MrTonyD 11y ago
I think using the word "intuition" does the concept an injustice. There are many different types of intuition - and they are unrelated. I've known some people who have an uncanny ability to predict outcomes or complexities. O

More ›