cjlars

17 ms·

121.
by cjlars 9y ago
It seems as though the cinema is finally entering a secular contraction. Home video hardware is getting cheaper and higher quality. Content going straight to netflix/hbo/hulu is getting better. And sitting in front of a movie suck
122.
by cjlars 9y ago
It seems as though Bitcoin is the least secure of all the 'stores of value'. I can find few examples, outside of military operations, with more than $10M in gold lost to a heist, yet it happens multiple times a year with Bitcoin.
123.
by cjlars 9y ago
Inflation is not deductible, so the US (and most other countries) have defacto wealth taxes to the tune of INFLATION RATE * CAPITAL GAINS TAX RATE, or roughly 0.48% annually to high earners in the USA.
124.
by cjlars 9y ago
Unlikely. Some quick googling gives an annual cost of $55BN for malpractice. Still, including the above, we're now at 1 / 10 of the overage. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048809/
125.
by cjlars 9y ago
If we spend $3.2TR on medicine and roughly 50% of that is 'overspending', as the article suggests. Then we have roughly $1.6TR in systematic inefficiencies. If the misapplication of occupational licensing for doctors are $100BN of
126.
by cjlars 9y ago
Who said anything about cost of getting caught? Tax avoidance is expressly defined as taking advantage of the legal options. There are a huge amount of loopholes out there, and a huge amount of effort goes into manufacturing legal ways to q
127.
by cjlars 9y ago
Put simply, Excel is excellent as a terminal node in any data pipeline, but poor as an intermediate node. Open speadsheet -> human plays with data -> human makes decision = good. Open spreadsheet -> human plays with data -> auto
128.
by cjlars 9y ago
If you have a a 50% tax rate and can cut 10% off your tax bill with fancy accounting, your after tax income rises 10% to 55% of earnings. If you have a 10% tax rate and can cut 10% off your tax bill with fancy accounting, your after tax bil
129.
by cjlars 9y ago
> 1. Issuing RSUs in a non-public company send like a bad idea. Does anyone actually do this? We offer stock grants (basically RSUs without a formal vesting schedule) to key employees at my firm and have had no issues. You say that there
130.
by cjlars 9y ago
I don't think any of this is new. My dad owned a restaurant over thirty years ago and has talked bad about them (as business investments) ever since. Restaurants have a number of characteristics that indicate they should be poor invest
131.
by cjlars 9y ago
Read the footnotes, it's lumped into individual income taxes.
132.
by cjlars 9y ago
Here you go! https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/tax-anal...
133.
by cjlars 9y ago
And when an owner wants to raise liquidity? They'll take a hit due to the cliff issue (voting rights have value and you destroy voting rights by selling). So any company with tenured voting rights will have created a system that forces
134.
by cjlars 9y ago
Humanity spends about $6 Trillion on energy annually, so 1% is no small figure [1]. Is a proper crypto-currency worth $60BN in maintenance costs per year? No idea, but it's likely to be more expensive than the alternative of traditiona
135.
by cjlars 9y ago
This assumption that passive investors have no cash inflows / outflows totally breaks his model. As soon as passive investors start buying or selling the index -- a real world necessity -- they are playing a zero sum game against a cou
136.
by cjlars 9y ago
Audio is a terribly insecure channel to accept commands through. You presume no one else has access to the device because it is physically locked in your house, but sound travels through walls and through speakers. Heck, you can even make a
137.
by cjlars 9y ago
Fair point. I think general black market retail transactions probably should have been added above.
138.
by cjlars 9y ago
When you're conducting business?
139.
by cjlars 9y ago
This is what I was trying to get at with the China point. If you're avoiding taxes, you can bet goverments will try to crack down on you. My whole thesis, btw, assumes that legal uses would dominate illegal uses in terms of transaction
140.
by cjlars 9y ago
Curious what investment strategy that would lead you to... If your bullish on blockchain but bearish on bitcoin, you're looking at, what, Ripple?
141.
by cjlars 9y ago
That's not quite true, the underlying volatility doesn't matter as long as the position sizes (as part of a basket of currencies) are correct and the relationships between the currencies are well understood.
142.
by cjlars 9y ago
Well I think it runs about $5 to prioritize a bitcoin transfer at this point (mentioned elsewhere in the thread). If you want to do a traditional wire, which takes about 2 hours to process, it runs $25 at most financial institutions.
143.
by cjlars 9y ago
Bitcoin (and other cryptos) do have real uses for which there is real demand. My worry is that the current price has substantially outpaced the support that those uses offer. Let's go over some of the things that make up bitcoin's
144.
by cjlars 9y ago
And everyone was paid. Where is the unfairness in voluntary transactions? If you're trying to argue that, "it would have just happened anyway", all you're asserting is that the profits would have gone to someone else, bu
145.
by cjlars 9y ago
>if it is impossible for a man to build a 747 with his bare hands & >without going through trades and transactions that are unfair It's fundamentally impossible for one man to build even the microwave that preheats the meals
146.
by cjlars 9y ago
I don't think there's a threshhold. Take Bill Gates for example. He's done a lot of good in his life. He built a huge company that transformed personal computing, employed an army of people and then put billions of dollars in
147.
by cjlars 9y ago
Also, garages.
148.
by cjlars 9y ago
I realize you may not have been able to get the data, but I think the more important distinction isn't the LLC / no LLC separation, but the employee / no employee distinction. Deciding to hire someone is a big marker that sho
149.
by cjlars 9y ago
Good point, updated. It would be further impacted by AMT and the standard deduction thresh-hold, but that's a good estimate I think.
150.
by cjlars 9y ago
For the sake of completeness. Top capital gains rate is 20% + 3.8% medicare surcharge + state tax. In a high tax state like California, you're paying 37.1% on investment income, not 15%. Also, top federal rate is 39.6%, not 35%, plus s

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