opo

13 ms·

151.
by opo 2y ago
>When the SOFR rate is <1% like during COVID, it's a pretty good deal. It is very common to make loans based on using stocks, etc. as collateral. But that isn't what people claim happens with the "buy, borrow, die"
152.
by opo 2y ago
>This is something people love to rage about ... Yes, people get angry about this, but no one has provided any statistics showing this is actually a common loophole. The basic idea in the reddit post is that there were lenders giving mul
153.
by opo 2y ago
The Paris Gun would seem to qualify as an attempt to bomb civilians in WW1. >...When the guns were first employed, Parisians believed they had been bombed by a high-altitude Zeppelin, as the sound of neither an airplane nor a gun could b
154.
by opo 2y ago
>...And on a personal note I get off on watching folks get kicked in the worldview, I would guess that might be the appeal for others also.
155.
by opo 2y ago
>(which is shocking "Ben is in his second year of UChicago’s JD-MBA"), Honestly it wouldn't have surprised me if it said he was in his second year of high school. Can someone who upvoted this, explain why they upvoted this
156.
by opo 2y ago
Is there an actual reference to the idea that the minimum wage was meant to be a "universal basic wage"? Is this in the original congressional debates, the legislation, comments by Roosevelt? (Searching for references to the phr
157.
by opo 2y ago
> All models are useful, none are correct. I have generally heard this as "All models are wrong, but some are useful" which is attributed to the statistician George E. P. Box.
158.
by opo 2y ago
>They’re a right wing organization, They usually define themselves as a libertarian organization which seems a much more accurate way of describing them. >...they clearly support conservative causes, "Liberals" don't su
159.
by opo 2y ago
Just because you have proof the money is yours doesn't mean they won't take your money. >...On his drive from Texas to California, a Nevada Highway Patrol officer engineered a reason to pull him over, saying that he passed too
160.
by opo 2y ago
>You're saying we shouldn't tax the rich because eventually it might be used to tax the less wealthy? No, what I said was: >>If the government puts in the effort to develop systems to track/process/etc a new kin
161.
by opo 2y ago
If the government puts in the effort to develop systems to track/process/etc a new kind of tax like this, no one should pretend it will only ever be used agains the ultra wealthy. If anyone doubts this, you need only look at the
162.
by opo 2y ago
>...The main loophole at the moment is the loan loophole: the rich get a loan against their unrealized gains. The last time this came up, it was a link to someone posting on reddit basically claiming they were a $2,500 per hour lawyer se
163.
by opo 2y ago
There were certainly groups in the services in WW II who suffered much higher casualties. For example, flying in a bomber crew was very dangerous. I can't quickly find some complete stats, but for example in 1943: >During 1943, on
164.
by opo 2y ago
ok, I think I misunderstood what you meant. Yes, when the sun is shining and the power grid is alive, you can use your power. People are usually shocked to find that when there is a power outage, they generally can't use their solar
165.
by opo 2y ago
Yea, it is pretty hard to understand the point you are trying to make and simply repeating yourself doesn't actually help. But to go through in more detail: >If rooftop solar costs me $300/MWh, that's a third cheaper than
166.
by opo 2y ago
What exactly is the point you are trying to make?
167.
by opo 2y ago
>If rooftop solar costs me $300/MWh, that's a third cheaper than the $450/MWh charged by my local utility provider. So, even without any subsidy or feed-in tariff, it would be rational for me to install solar, use it when
168.
by opo 2y ago
I guess it all depends on the prices the utilities have to pay to buy the power and whether they are forced to buy the power if they don't need it. If the price is higher than the rate the utility would pay for utility scale solar, th
169.
by opo 2y ago
Generally people who install solar also want to have power at night and when it is cloudy or raining. I think the earlier comment was maybe implying that there would be no grid connection - but that only works if you have enough backup bat
170.
by opo 2y ago
>...IMO subsidies made sense to kickstart the industry given the external costs imposed by climate change, but I agree that they don't anymore. In general, if a dollar of subsidy spent on utility based solar will go much further tha
171.
by opo 2y ago
Providing the infrastructure and reliability of the grid is very expensive, so there is a huge difference between the wholesale costs and retail rates for delivered electricity. From the latest Lazard report on levelized costs, they estima
172.
by opo 2y ago
It isn't very clear what you mean. If utilities are required to do net metering (i.e. buy all power whenever it is produced at the retail rate rather than buy what they need at the wholesale rate) it is a huge unsustainable subsidy to
173.
by opo 2y ago
The word "easily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Major expansions to the US grid won't be cheap, done quickly or easy to protect against terrorism. Getting agreement from all the stakeholders seems to sometimes be an
174.
by opo 2y ago
Solar energy comes up often on HN, but it is misleading to talk about solar without differentiating between utility grid solar and consumer rooftop solar. Simply put, utility grid solar provides low cost power and consumer rooftop solar doe
175.
by opo 2y ago
That doesn't sound like the lifetime loans that the supposed $2,500 an hour "private wealth attorney at an international law firm" was talking about. In his story, the loans are at .5% - 3% and only payable decades later up
176.
by opo 2y ago
Well it certainly is convenient that a "private wealth attorney at an international law firm" decided to go on Reddit and talk about tax policy a short time after there is a proposal to tax unrealized capital gains. There are many
177.
by opo 2y ago
>...PV would be cost effective here in Germany for residential buildings even without incentives, though most owners would probably build smaller installations. I suspect the cost differences between ground based solar installed by a uti
178.
by opo 2y ago
You don't need to use tentative phrases like "That might be the case", or "even if it is not theoretically most efficient use of that money". As the page on statista.com states: >Rooftop solar photovoltaic insta
179.
by opo 2y ago
>... With government incentives… Money is fungible and not unlimited. A dollar given to you by your neighbors in their taxes to subsidize you would have gone much, much further if the money would have been spent to build solar by your p
180.
by opo 2y ago
>...By that same logic, you can 'trivially' influence a democratic government, you have no such control over a corporation. That is a misrepresentation of the message you are replying too: >>You can trivially choose not t

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