surfmike

42 ms·

451.
by surfmike 11y ago
I'm not an expert but I have family in the Krakow area and used to live there, and everyone I know burned coal (and trash) for heating. Not so many people used pellets, although I did hear about them too.
452.
by surfmike 11y ago
They were co-founders of the same company.
453.
by surfmike 11y ago
I've had two cofounder friends (both non-American) who sponsored each others' H1B. Seems like a loophole but it seemed to work :)
454.
by surfmike 11y ago
We could scale back benefits more gradually than we do today. That would be a lot cheaper than giving everyone a guaranteed pot of money.
455.
by surfmike 11y ago
Either you need to make a massive, basically unaffordable tax hike on middle-class and upper-middle class people, or make a decent size tax hike on everybody. Pensioners/disabled/people receiving unemployment benefits would be wor
456.
by surfmike 11y ago
Even this toy example would still require a 3% rise in taxes on all workers, decreasing the incentive to work. Also, in this case you literally wouldn't help any poor wage earners at all, since a minimum wage job in the UK is already m
457.
by surfmike 11y ago
I am agreeing with you that there's really no difference between a tax break and a subsidy. However, I don't understand your next point. If you're saying a $12K BI wouldn't cost anything extra after getting rid of social
458.
by surfmike 11y ago
Living in Scandinavia (Norway), once thing that's become clear to me is that the welfare system really requires you to work to capture most of the benefits. You won't get normal disability pay, unemployment payments, and maternity
459.
by surfmike 11y ago
Whether you call the way of paying a "claw-back", "flat-tax", or just straight up higher marginal rates, you need to pay for it somehow. In the end someone is getting less of each additional dollar they earn. All these n
460.
by surfmike 11y ago
In the first article, he says we'd need to increase taxes 35% if we don't cut any programs. If we cut them, he says we'd "only" have to increase taxes 18%. Neither seems particularly affordable to me — remember, thi
461.
by surfmike 11y ago
The benefit will be universal, but then you have to pay for it with increased taxes. So the increased marginal rate will disincentivize people from working.
462.
by surfmike 11y ago
That doesn't mean the cost goes away. You'll still have to increase marginal rates by at least 20% across the board, or if you have lower marginal rates for the poor, then even higher for the rich. ($12K is about 20% of the per-ca
463.
by surfmike 11y ago
The problem with a basic income is that for it to be close to enough to live off, it'd be very very expensive — way too expensive. Giving everyone in the US enough to be above the poverty line, say $12,000 (which is hardly enough to li
464.
by surfmike 11y ago
Yes. The Fed and ECB's goal is not to prop up stock market valuations, but to help the economy by encouraging spending and investment through moderate inflation. The banks are tightly bound by inflation targets. Arguably, the ECB has d
465.
by surfmike 11y ago
Norwegians go to Sweden for alcohol, Swedes go to Denmark, Danes go to Germany, Germans go to Italy, and Italians... well, I think they just stay in Italy :)
466.
by surfmike 12y ago
Because Google already has something like 30K-40K people working in Mountain View. It is opening offices outside of MV, like in Sunnyvale, but physical proximity to the rest of campus is very important for almost all teams. Even the SF offi
467.
by surfmike 12y ago
The Fed is still not even hitting its own 2% inflation target. Long-term inflation indicators are showing we'll have below-target inflation for a long time. People have been saying inflation is right around the corner ever since QE sta
468.
by surfmike 12y ago
I think, at least for the SF peninsula, you suspect wrong :-)
469.
by surfmike 12y ago
Yes, and building up is usually blocked by cities like MV.
470.
by surfmike 12y ago
It's very hard to find the kind of space they need anywhere else. And while working at Google I get the sense that they would prefer more mixed use, higher-density development near their headquarters, but local city planning officials
471.
by surfmike 12y ago
We can still grow crops in California without water subsidies. In places where water is more expensive, like Israel, farmers invest more in water-saving technology in their farms. And probably grow less water-intensive crops like rice.
472.
by surfmike 12y ago
Nope, it's 20 billion for all farm subsidies. 3 million was just for farms who didn't grow any crops at all. And we should cut out any wasteful program, no matter how small.
473.
by surfmike 12y ago
This document has some good advice: https://github.com/futurice/ios-good-practices
474.
by surfmike 12y ago
I think the recent stock split and creation of non-voting shares is also to help insulate these moonshot projects.
475.
by surfmike 12y ago
Yee, the proces is very simple. You can simply arrive and you have six months to look for work. Once you get a job you just need to register with the police (you make an appt a couple months in advance and then he visit takes 5 min) and get
476.
by surfmike 13y ago
If it's really the case that this corn would be produced anyway, then why do we need subsidies?
477.
by surfmike 13y ago
True, and fees are often way lower for debit cards as well. Not sure what it is in practice, but here's an example: http://www.cardfellow.com/blog/debit-card-charge-calculator-...
478.
by surfmike 13y ago
Creative ideas. However, discoverability is poor. Can you imagine getting a rental car or borrowing a friend's car and getting this to work? Also, this uses a whole iPad screen to control 8 settings-- eight knobs would take less space
479.
by surfmike 13y ago
Still, if it is in fact 7,1000 more powerful at warming the earth, wouldn't a concentration of 0.18 ppm have a greater impact on the climate than 400 ppm of CO2? Not sure if the math is that simple, but it's not obvious to me why
480.
by surfmike 13y ago
We have something similar in the Google Norway office: http://www.tu.no/incoming/2012/03/30/1200003568.jpg/alternat... (from http://www.tu.no/bygg/2012/03/31/se-g

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