Coronavirus

[Ccwatercraft]

Need some good shows to binge on while were bunkered down. I just finished all 4 seasons of Gomorrah and it was fantastic.

I started nurse jackie yesterday.

so far it's quite good.

[League Circles]

that's obviously false, or the states would not maintain those rates

It's obviously true that some people do this.

of course

The only question is how many.

billionaires per million residents along w/ top tax bracket (both 2016):

15.0  Wyoming 0
5.8  New York 8.8
4.7  Connecticut 7
4.1  California 13.3
3.6  Montana 6.9
2.6  Massachusetts 5.1
2.6  Nevada 0
2.5  Texas 0
2.4  Florida 0
1.7  Colorado 4.6
1.7  Washington 0
1.7  Arkansas 6.9
1.7  Idaho 7.4
1.6  Wisconsin 7.65
1.5  Tennessee 6
1.4  District of Columbia 8.95
1.4  Illinois 3.75
1.3  Maryland 5.75
1.3  Oklahoma 5
1.2  Arizona 4.5
1.2  Georgia (U.S. state) 6
1.2  Michigan 4.25
1.1  South Dakota 0
1.1  Nebraska 6.8
1.0  Mississippi 5
1.0  Missouri 6
0.9  Rhode Island 6
0.9  New Jersey 9
0.9  Minnesota 9.85
0.8  Pennsylvania 3.1
0.8  Maine 7.15
0.7  New Hampshire 5
0.7  Hawaii 8.25
0.7  Kansas 4.6
0.6  Indiana 3.3
0.6  Virginia 5.75
0.6  West Virginia 6.5
0.5  Ohio 5
0.5  Oregon 9.9
0.3  Iowa 9
0.3  Utah 5
0.3  North Carolina 5.75
0.2  Kentucky 6
0.2  Louisiana 6
0.2  South Carolina 7
0.0  Alaska 0
0.0  Vermont 8.95
0.0  North Dakota 2.9
0.0  New Mexico 4.9
0.0  Alabama 5
0.0  Delaware 6.6

no meaningful correlation between billionaires in residence and state tax rate

the real question is why there are 9 billionaires living in wyoming

Wyoming doesn't assess income tax either.

You can't just look at billionaires, small sample size and ignores almost all rich people. Think of people who have between, say 10 or 20 million in assets on the low end up to just under a billion on the high end. If you can find that data it would be much more revealing. Can't use "millionaires" because have a couple million bucks isn't that big of a deal anymore.

Here are the no income tax states:

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.

No meaningful correlation? 5 of the 7 no tax states are in the top 11 of billionaire ratio! Obviously there is a strong correlation, not in tax rates, but in the more apt tax/no-tax status. If you're gonna move your legal residence (again, not the same as moving where you lay your head at night), you'd likely move to a zero tax haven, or not move at all (leaving of course places like CA, NY and Connecticut).

Another big thing is that you have to look at income not valuation. You can have a billion dollars and have zero income that is taxable because a large portion of those people probably have a very large portion of their assets in stock capital and treasury bonds which are not subject to regular income tax. Well treasury bonds are exempt from federal income tax I think they are assessed sales tax on the yields in some states maybe all states for all I know.

[dougthonus]

Here's an interesting read if you guys haven't seen this before. It will probably be sooner than you think:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

I've read that before and it's an extremely bold assumption that the take off is going to be exponential though. You may run into a point where the take off is far more linear because you are hitting the physical limits of hardware and that the algorithms can't really be improved exponentially.

[dougthonus]

no meaningful correlation between billionaires in residence and state tax rate

The only thing that matters in this instance are the 0 states. If you're going to set up an address to move to and avoid taxes you aren't going to go to low, you're only going to go to a 0 state. 5 of your top 11 are zero states including #1 which has almost 3x the rate as any other state.

The difference in state tax is also paltry compared to the tax rise you are wanting to do, so people would be way more aggressive on switching.

the real question is why there are 9 billionaires living in wyoming

The answer is 0% tax rate.

At any rate, it's somewhat of a moot point. I agree overall with your theory that you need to, at some point, provide universal income, and I agree you have to figure out at some point how to get money from the wealthy. I disagree that you can cut all taxes besides income tax and convince wealthy people to pay. It also ignores all of the money people make on equity but don't immediately get taxed on and probably encourages wealthy to stay wealthier even if you could figure out all the other solutions.

But I also don't have any brilliant idea myself. It's easy to shoot down almost any idea, because it's an extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, problem to solve. Even if there was a workable solution that you knew 100% would be effective, the people crafting our laws would be hurt by it and never do it.

[Habs72]

Here in Finland hospitals are now in full alert, as more severe cases start to emerge that need hospitalization. Were about to go to next phase

And at the same time in Florida ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-florida-beaches-ignore-social-distancing/

[jc23]

Here in Finland hospitals are now in full alert, as more severe cases start to emerge that need hospitalization. Were about to go to next phase

And at the same time in Florida ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-florida-beaches-ignore-social-distancing/

At the very beginning of this i sorta understood people still going out and not taking the situation seriously. Now your just an selfish prick.

And their idea that this will not affect them is insane, the economy affects us all, which for them means a tougher job outlook or less money flow from their parents. Outside of the social distancing, all people need to be extra precautious when this thing spikes, when all of the ventilators are being used and there are no beds available in the hospital you do not want to be brought in for any life threatening injuries.

I mean where are the cancel culture folk when you need them to publicly put people on blast now?

[jnrjr79]

It's obviously true that some people do this.

of course

The only question is how many.

billionaires per million residents along w/ top tax bracket (both 2016):

15.0  Wyoming 0
5.8  New York 8.8
4.7  Connecticut 7
4.1  California 13.3
3.6  Montana 6.9
2.6  Massachusetts 5.1
2.6  Nevada 0
2.5  Texas 0
2.4  Florida 0
1.7  Colorado 4.6
1.7  Washington 0
1.7  Arkansas 6.9
1.7  Idaho 7.4
1.6  Wisconsin 7.65
1.5  Tennessee 6
1.4  District of Columbia 8.95
1.4  Illinois 3.75
1.3  Maryland 5.75
1.3  Oklahoma 5
1.2  Arizona 4.5
1.2  Georgia (U.S. state) 6
1.2  Michigan 4.25
1.1  South Dakota 0
1.1  Nebraska 6.8
1.0  Mississippi 5
1.0  Missouri 6
0.9  Rhode Island 6
0.9  New Jersey 9
0.9  Minnesota 9.85
0.8  Pennsylvania 3.1
0.8  Maine 7.15
0.7  New Hampshire 5
0.7  Hawaii 8.25
0.7  Kansas 4.6
0.6  Indiana 3.3
0.6  Virginia 5.75
0.6  West Virginia 6.5
0.5  Ohio 5
0.5  Oregon 9.9
0.3  Iowa 9
0.3  Utah 5
0.3  North Carolina 5.75
0.2  Kentucky 6
0.2  Louisiana 6
0.2  South Carolina 7
0.0  Alaska 0
0.0  Vermont 8.95
0.0  North Dakota 2.9
0.0  New Mexico 4.9
0.0  Alabama 5
0.0  Delaware 6.6

no meaningful correlation between billionaires in residence and state tax rate

the real question is why there are 9 billionaires living in wyoming

Wyoming doesn't assess income tax either.

Yep, and it has one of the nicest ski/leisure areas for rich folks in Jackson Hole, so I can see billionaires designating that as their residence. IMO, most of these billionaires don't really live in one place - they have multiple homes - so even if you "live" in Wyoming you might just be there for ski season.

[dougthonus]

This is the first day in awhile where the stock market isn't going nuts with volume or huge percentage swings. Of course, we'll see if some breaking news hits in the next few hours to change all that.

[moorhosj]

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.

No meaningful correlation? 5 of the 7 no tax states are in the top 11 of billionaire ratio! Obviously there is a strong correlation, not in tax rates, but in the more apt tax/no-tax status. If you're gonna move your legal residence (again, not the same as moving where you lay your head at night), you'd likely move to a zero tax haven, or not move at all (leaving of course places like CA, NY and Connecticut).

You could have just as easily said 5 of the top 6 states for billionaires have high individual tax rates. That doesn't reinforce your pre-determined answer, but it's just as true.

This data isn't complete. It doesn't include property tax rates or states where counties or cities impose their own income tax. In Indiana for example, the state income tax rate is 3%, but counties can also apply an additional % on top. Certain cities, like St. Louis and NYC, also have their own income taxes.

There are considerable efforts undertaken by states to find the tax evaders. It's not as easy as just buying a new house in a no-tax state.https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/tax-collectors-chase-rich-new-yorkers-moving-to-low-tax-states.html:

New York conducted about 3,000 “non-residency” audits a year between 2010 and 2017, collecting around $1 billion, according to a data company. New York is looking at cellphone records, social media feeds, and veterinary and dentist records in verifying residency. Auditors are even conducting in-home inspections to look inside taxpayers’ refrigerators.

[MrSparkle]

One positive (with a set of negative side-effects) is this will perhaps give the big cities of the world a solid example that the old "9-5 commute to work" and business travel culture probably can be greatly reduced with work-at-home/video-conferencing/etc., and that it was long overdue. Holding hope that my friends and family who have NO source of income right now will get temporary bail-outs until the street infrastructure is safe and normal again, but I also have a lot of folks who at least have part-time or full-time work transitioned to at-home, and in many ways haven't missed a beat.

The amount of driving and flying for day-to-day corporations and companies has been inflated and senseless. Raise your hand if you or your spouse have had a job that would fly you to a different across the country/world, house you for a week, basically to have a few meetings and social gatherings. And this would happen regularly. There are many industries where travel or commuting is required, but the desk/cpu/admin jobs, schools, etc. there are obviously plenty of reasons to have physical interactions be a big part of our lives, but "40+ hours a week" with frequent travel trips for conferences and meetings? It can easily be adjusted down in HALF or more (depending on the profession) imo with similarly productive results.

I don't think the airline, automobile and gas industries like the sound of that, though. Also as a person who is probably 60% introvert , I am biased.

[League Circles]

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.

No meaningful correlation? 5 of the 7 no tax states are in the top 11 of billionaire ratio! Obviously there is a strong correlation, not in tax rates, but in the more apt tax/no-tax status. If you're gonna move your legal residence (again, not the same as moving where you lay your head at night), you'd likely move to a zero tax haven, or not move at all (leaving of course places like CA, NY and Connecticut).

You could have just as easily said 5 of the top 6 states for billionaires have high individual tax rates. That doesn't reinforce your pre-determined answer, but it's just as true.

This data isn't complete. It doesn't include property tax rates or states where counties or cities impose their own income tax. In Indiana for example, the state income tax rate is 3%, but counties can also apply an additional % on top. Certain cities, like St. Louis and NYC, also have their own income taxes.

There are considerable efforts undertaken by states to find the tax evaders. It's not as easy as just buying a new house in a no-tax state.https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/tax-collectors-chase-rich-new-yorkers-moving-to-low-tax-states.html:

New York conducted about 3,000 “non-residency” audits a year between 2010 and 2017, collecting around $1 billion, according to a data company. New York is looking at cellphone records, social media feeds, and veterinary and dentist records in verifying residency. Auditors are even conducting in-home inspections to look inside taxpayers’ refrigerators.

In the absence of data, look at deductive reasoning. Why WOULDN'T rich people move or fake move to low tax havens?

That article talks a lot about efforts. Doesn't talk about results. I didn't read every word, but for example, it talks about auditing people who MOVE to FL from New York. What about the people that functionally live in a place like NY but have never actually had it as their legal residence due to taxes? I'm talking about people from generational wealth. People who have, say 50 million dollars in treasury bonds that would be traced back to some relatively successful company in the 1920s and conservative living and good investments.

Sure you can't just buy a house in another state and be sure to fly under the radar, but it's not that hard to go back and forth as needed and when needed to satisfy the surface level investigation of an audit. Oh they check dentist visits and phone records? Big deal. Soooo easy to get around.

The true rich do not have jobs and have virtually 100% free time. They go back and forth plenty between their houses in different states.

[moorhosj]

In the absence of data, look at deductive reasoning. Why WOULDN'T rich people move or fake move to low tax havens?

That article talks a lot about efforts. Doesn't talk about results. I didn't read every word, but for example, it talks about auditing people who MOVE to FL from New York. What about the people that functionally live in a place like NY but have never actually had it as their legal residence due to taxes? I'm talking about people from generational wealth. People who have, say 50 million dollars in treasury bonds that would be traced back to some relatively successful company in the 1920s and conservative living and good investments.

Sure you can't just buy a house in another state and be sure to fly under the radar, but it's not that hard to go back and forth as needed and when needed to satisfy the surface level investigation of an audit. Oh they check dentist visits and phone records? Big deal. Soooo easy to get around.

The true rich do not have jobs and have virtually 100% free time. They go back and forth plenty between their houses in different states.

Here is a top 10 list of millionaires per capita https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/07/states-with-the-most-millionaires-per-capita.html and the data looks even worse for your assumptions:

Maryland - 7.87%
New Jersey - 7.86%
Connecticut - 7.75%
Hawaii - 7.57%
Alaska - 7.5%
Massachusetts - 7.41%
New Hampshire - 7.36%
Virginia - 6.98%
Delaware - 6.62%
California - 6.61%

You can believe what you like, but in this case the data doesn't support your "deductive reasoning" assumptions. Try changing your assumptions and taking another look at the data.

[PaKii94]

Here's an interesting read if you guys haven't seen this before. It will probably be sooner than you think:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

I've read that before and it's an extremely bold assumption that the take off is going to be exponential though. You may run into a point where the take off is far more linear because you are hitting the physical limits of hardware and that the algorithms can't really be improved exponentially.

If history is any indication, exponential growth isn't that bold of an assumption. Expecting a barrier/stagnation is the bold assumption. Progress will continue to be made further. The post does address the stagnation in that technology matures in an "S" shape (burst of improvement).

From the time of that post, I think gpu power has already increased 2-3x. The next generation gpus are supposed to take another 100% jump. Quantum computing has made some progress too.

[League Circles]

In the absence of data, look at deductive reasoning. Why WOULDN'T rich people move or fake move to low tax havens?

That article talks a lot about efforts. Doesn't talk about results. I didn't read every word, but for example, it talks about auditing people who MOVE to FL from New York. What about the people that functionally live in a place like NY but have never actually had it as their legal residence due to taxes? I'm talking about people from generational wealth. People who have, say 50 million dollars in treasury bonds that would be traced back to some relatively successful company in the 1920s and conservative living and good investments.

Sure you can't just buy a house in another state and be sure to fly under the radar, but it's not that hard to go back and forth as needed and when needed to satisfy the surface level investigation of an audit. Oh they check dentist visits and phone records? Big deal. Soooo easy to get around.

The true rich do not have jobs and have virtually 100% free time. They go back and forth plenty between their houses in different states.

Here is a top 10 list of millionaires per capita https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/07/states-with-the-most-millionaires-per-capita.html and the data looks even worse for your assumptions:

Maryland - 7.87%
New Jersey - 7.86%
Connecticut - 7.75%
Hawaii - 7.57%
Alaska - 7.5%
Massachusetts - 7.41%
New Hampshire - 7.36%
Virginia - 6.98%
Delaware - 6.62%
California - 6.61%

You can believe what you like, but in this case the data doesn't support your "deductive reasoning" assumptions. Try changing your assumptions and taking another look at the data.

I've already addressed this in previous posts. You can't include "millionaires" because now days, tons and tons of people have over a million dollars in assets. That's not rich. You'd really have to look at people with assets over 10 or 20 million to see the trend that I'm very confident is widespread.

Also important is what I previously mentioned - that most actual rich people don't necessarily have much taxable income, because they hold massive amounts of tax exempt bonds. If you're rich, smart and conservative, you basically live off of tax free bond yields and just watch unrealized capital gains grow and grow and grow untaxed because you rarely sell, and/or because you have other tax sheltered investment vehicles like variable life insurance contracts where the money in drastically outweighs the death benefit.

[dougthonus]

If history is any indication, exponential growth isn't that bold of an assumption. Expecting a barrier/stagnation is the bold assumption. Progress will continue to be made further. The post does address the stagnation in that technology matures in an "S" shape (burst of improvement).

From the time of that post, I think gpu power has already increased 2-3x. The next generation gpus are supposed to take another 100% jump. Quantum computing has made some progress too.

We used to gain speed in processors by shrinking the technology. We've done that to the physical limits that we feel may be possible right now. It's no longer an issue of whether we can make it smaller technologically (which it was for a long time) but now electrons start jumping around if you shrink further making equipment not work.

Recent improvements have largely been about adding more transistors rather than shrinking transistors. We've also looked at faster memory, larger caches, etc... All of these things have greater limits on how much faster than can get compared to when we could double the processor speed in terms of raw Mhz/ghz like we did 20-30 years ago.

If you look at single thread processing speeds, they actually have slowed down massively in terms of how fast they get and are no where near exponential anymore.

This isn't to say you couldn't resolve these problems or to say that if a super AI got say 50% smarter than a human and worked on it non stop that it couldn't solve all kinds of problems we can't solve now, but it's at least questionable that one wouldn't take off at an exponential rate. It's unlikely software can be improved exponential and hardware is dicey to say it could be, certainly not in a matter of instants like noted there (though this woudln't really be important, if it took 5 years and reach that point the end state is still the same).

Here's a random article from 2018 about the death of Moore's law, but you can look it up on the internet pretty trivially to see that cpu speeds have stopped scaling quickly for quite some time.

https://louisvillefuture.com/archived-news/rip-moores-law-why-computers-arent-getting-faster-but-theyre-still-getting-better/

[PaKii94]

If history is any indication, exponential growth isn't that bold of an assumption. Expecting a barrier/stagnation is the bold assumption. Progress will continue to be made further. The post does address the stagnation in that technology matures in an "S" shape (burst of improvement).

From the time of that post, I think gpu power has already increased 2-3x. The next generation gpus are supposed to take another 100% jump. Quantum computing has made some progress too.

We used to gain speed in processors by shrinking the technology. We've done that to the physical limits that we feel may be possible right now. It's no longer an issue of whether we can make it smaller technologically (which it was for a long time) but now electrons start jumping around if you shrink further making equipment not work.

Recent improvements have largely been about adding more transistors rather than shrinking transistors. We've also looked at faster memory, larger caches, etc... All of these things have greater limits on how much faster than can get compared to when we could double the processor speed in terms of raw Mhz/ghz like we did 20-30 years ago.

If you look at single thread processing speeds, they actually have slowed down massively in terms of how fast they get and are no where near exponential anymore.

Agreed that was the old school way but there are other things in the pipeline that continue to push performance gains. Intel has dropped the ball in pushing it further but they still have plans to shrink even further (current processes are at ~7nm, intel's plan is 1.4nm by 2030 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15217/intels-manufacturing-roadmap-from-2019-to-2029)

Also, CPU's were the measure of processing power before but I think the focus has shifted to GPU power due to the explosion of machine learning. GPUs went from 5-6 TFLOPS in 2015 to 12-16 TFLOPs in 2019. It's supposed to jump another 50% in this years cards so 18-24 TFLOPS(https://www.techradar.com/news/nvidias-next-gen-ampere-gpus-promise-jaw-dropping-performance-boost-over-turing) 3-4x increase in 5 years.

Finally, I think the magnitude of the effect of 5g/cloud computing has to be taken into account. This decade most of the processing from computers/cell phones will be transferred to the cloud. Once that's seamless, you pretty much have access to an *infinite* amount of processing power. (obviously not truly infinite but a couple of orders of magnitude more than what we currently have with our personal devices.)

[Habs72]

Italy has now officially more coronavirus deaths than China. Italy´s closed cases death % is brutal(43%).

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

[Stratmaster]

My home, LA just shut down restaurants and bars.

My son is in law school at Loyola out there. Switched to virtual classes, which are pretty difficult for first year law material. At that point, the campus was still open, so he would go there and spend 12 hours a day studying.

Now they have closed the campus so he is sitting alone in a studio apartment 24/7 and for someone with his motor, it is driving him nuts. He is taking a lot of night drives and we have set up a skype schedule to try to keep him connected. Kind of worrisome for mom and dad, but it could be worse.

It all truly is very surreal.

My wife works near the Loyala campus, beautiful place to be if you have to be stuck somewhere. I'm sure as a parent this is frightening at a completely different level. I think the Skype idea's a good one. I was talking about doing that with my parents as well.

He is at the law school (downtown) not the main campus. He is moving right now from koreatown to an apartment right by the law school. He had a pretty sweet and lucrative summer internship, but it and most the others have been cancelled due to the situation, so he had to get a cheaper apartment.

He gave up a high paying job to go back to school, was cruising along, and then it all crashed. This will certainly build character. If he gets through this successfully everything else should seem like a piece of cake.

My other son is a seasonal worker in Alaska. 90% chance his job won't be there this year due to the virus either,so our household may be growing.

[moorhosj]

I've already addressed this in previous posts. You can't include "millionaires" because now days, tons and tons of people have over a million dollars in assets. That's not rich. You'd really have to look at people with assets over 10 or 20 million to see the trend that I'm very confident is widespread.

Also important is what I previously mentioned - that most actual rich people don't necessarily have much taxable income, because they hold massive amounts of tax exempt bonds. If you're rich, smart and conservative, you basically live off of tax free bond yields and just watch unrealized capital gains grow and grow and grow untaxed because you rarely sell, and/or because you have other tax sheltered investment vehicles like variable life insurance contracts where the money in drastically outweighs the death benefit.

You've said all of these things, but you haven't provided anything to back it up (data, articles, research, etc.). You just keep insisting that you are very confident it's true.

How many of the people that you describe exist? Is it larger than the 7.9% of Maryland residents that we know are millionaires based on actual, verifiable data? Is it possible your original assumption was incorrect?

[Chi town]

One positive (with a set of negative side-effects) is this will perhaps give the big cities of the world a solid example that the old "9-5 commute to work" and business travel culture probably can be greatly reduced with work-at-home/video-conferencing/etc., and that it was long overdue. Holding hope that my friends and family who have NO source of income right now will get temporary bail-outs until the street infrastructure is safe and normal again, but I also have a lot of folks who at least have part-time or full-time work transitioned to at-home, and in many ways haven't missed a beat.

The amount of driving and flying for day-to-day corporations and companies has been inflated and senseless. Raise your hand if you or your spouse have had a job that would fly you to a different across the country/world, house you for a week, basically to have a few meetings and social gatherings. And this would happen regularly. There are many industries where travel or commuting is required, but the desk/cpu/admin jobs, schools, etc. there are obviously plenty of reasons to have physical interactions be a big part of our lives, but "40+ hours a week" with frequent travel trips for conferences and meetings? It can easily be adjusted down in HALF or more (depending on the profession) imo with similarly productive results.

I don't think the airline, automobile and gas industries like the sound of that, though. Also as a person who is probably 60% introvert , I am biased.

I think this will be one of the adjustments of the new normal. No way folks working from home will be willing to grind with that awful commute either. I live in SF. We know all about it.

Have a close friend who has launched a business platform for creatives to work on demand from etc. he has struggled for years to just keep it going and now with the demand for content skyrocketing with everyone consuming way more during the shelter in place and the whole creative work force working from home... He has had offers from several VCs just this week.

The new normal is going to look quite a bit different post virus. Will be interesting to see who creates that future and how companies adapt.