bzbarsky

19 ms·

151.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
The thing that would make the most sense to me for smoothing out irregular income is to have progressive taxation with the bracket based on cumulative lifetime earnings so far, not on current-year income. I should also note that even our cu
152.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Well, more precisely: they definitively ruled that (a) a judge can decide whether a use is fair use and (b that this is fair use. Then they remanded the case to lower courts to decide what that means in terms of what happens next in this c
153.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
That... somehow seems fair? If what you are copying is the artistic expression and not the functionality, that seems like exactly the sort of thing copyright is supposed to be about.
154.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
This does not match my understanding of the situation (though note: I am not a lawyer; take everything that follows with a grain of salt). My understanding is that a jury's primary task of deciding on the facts is final. The facts in
155.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Indeed. That varies widely, though, and corporations are subject to it too, with its own weirdnesses, so I was trying to stick to apples-to-apples federal tax comparisons.
156.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
The other thing people forget are means-tested aid programs each of which is seemingly designed without considering interactions with the other ones. There are various places in the 0-$40k income range where people face >100% marginal r
157.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
More precisely: corporate income tax incidence is split between consumers (higher prices), shareholders (lower dividends) and employees (lower salaries). The exact split is a topic of hot debate in the economics literature, and likely depe
158.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
If it's paid out as ordinary (W-2) income, then your top federal tax rate right this minute is 39.35% (37% regular tax, 1.45% medicare tax, 0.9% medicare surtax). If it's paid out as some sort of investment income not subject to l
159.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
> Human beings cannot do the equivalent. They can to some extent, actually... See IRS publication Publication 536, "Net Operating Losses (NOLs) for Individuals, Estates, and Trusts". > Spend the entirety of your 20s making
160.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
> Also, what if the expenses are larger than the income? See IRS publication 536: Net Operating Losses (NOLs) for Individuals, Estates, and Trusts.
161.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Theft losses of personal-use property are only deductible if you itemize deductions, and only the amount exceeding 10% of AGI can be deducted. The amount also needs to exclude whatever insurance payments you got, and exclude $100 per theft
162.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
It sounds like we're getting very close to violent agreement. > it doesn't seem that far-fetched that some percentage of MIT staff might feel this way. I can pretty much guarantee that some percentage of MIT staff feel this way
163.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Note that the naming doesn't mean anything about organizational structure; it's literally a branding exercise. But more to the point, the closer analogy is an Amazon Post that claims to be editorially independent that publishes an
164.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
This is published by "MIT" in about the same way that an editorial in the Washington Post is published by "Amazon". As the first sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Technology_Review says:
165.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Thank you, that is exactly the sort of info I was looking for!
166.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
To be clear, 200,000 tons is the weight of the cargo+fuel this ship carries, not counting the structure of the ship itself. I haven't found a good number for the displacement (the total weight, including the ship), and would be curiou
167.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
> were already there I really don't think so. Most obviously because those two groups did not even exist as entities most people were conscious of until recently. > Hate doesn't spring parthenogenically from the void Of cou
168.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Interesting note: you can probably call your bank up and request that the disallow ACH withdrawals from your account if triggered by some third party. You can still get ACH deposits. You can still use the bank's bill pay and they will
169.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
The hate I've seen generated by ham-handed thought-and-speech policing is hate against the people doing the policing and hate against people standing up against the policing, not hate against the people the policing is ostensibly prote
170.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
https://www.royaltyexchange.com/blog/mechanical-royalties seems like a decent explanation, though I'm not an expert in this area...
171.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
You're right that on the specific topic of government censorship they are not nearly the same. Very different legal structures and all that. But from talking to people who were living in the USSR as adults through the 70s and 80s (and
172.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Good point. The source I was looking at was talking about .22 caliber rounds. I looked around some more, and that seems to be the general range in which you can achieve those velocities, though that can include discarding sabot versions o
173.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
> it goes up quite a few orders of magnitude from that Sorry to be pedantic, but modern rifle muzzle velocities are in the 1.2km/s range. Escape velocity in LEO is 11.2km/s, so your maximal closing speed is ~22.4kms. Which is
174.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Thank you, that makes your position quite clear. I appreciate your continued engagement with this conversation and the fact that I think we managed to keep it reasonably polite...
175.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Israel encouraged immigration, yes. And the countries the Mizrahi Jews left did all sorts of things that encouraged their Jews to leave. > Yes, I think Israel is attempting a genocide against the Palestinians. OK, we have that clear. I
176.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
> This is not modern history. Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing: we're talking about the mass ejections of Jews from various Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 50s, 60s, and 70s of the 20th cen
177.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Which is why Poland and Germany constantly fight over the border that was imposed post-WWII (20th century, yes) and the population displacement that took place at that time, right? It's really easy to declare things as black and white.
178.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
Middling. He keeps making decisions based on how he thinks (and I emphasize _thinks_, because this sort of evaluation of mass public reaction is not really his core expertise) they will play out in the media and politically. The most rece
179.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
> A good old pillory in the town square You mean like Twitter?
180.
by bzbarsky 6y ago
eBay has no problem facilitating the sale of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", or "Mein Kampf", or "laddie magazines", or cartoons of Muhammad, or any of a variety of other things that "denigrate peop

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