Coronavirus

[Chi town]

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

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

Yikes.

I don’t believe China’s numbers for one second though.

[dougthonus]

My wife looks like she will be forloughed, not definite though. Won't get paid in short term but won't lose her job. We'll be fine, but it just makes it more real for all the other people hurting out there to me.

[dice]

no meaningful correlation between billionaires in residence and state tax rate

The only thing that matters in this instance are the 0 states.

no, it's not. that sample size is far too small. and the highest taxed states also happen to be near the top of the list

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.

of course. the question is how many people are doing that. and it's very likely a very small number

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.

nope. it's an eleven percent gap between california and the "zero" states. my 50% TOTAL tax rate on the uber-wealthy is simply not going to be substantially more than the 11 percent increase on what people are already clearly willing to pay. i've already provided data on that. and for those living in california, for example, it would only be a marginal increase on what they are already paying

oh, i didn't specify that i also believe that capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income. were that to be the law of the land there would be no way to escape it

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

The answer is 0% tax rate.

it's quite obviously more than that. why are they not in florida or texas? i would assume that part of it is random variation based on the super small state population (as evidenced by only 1 billionaire living in s. dakota). i would also guess that some of them like the idea of retiring to their own massive quantity of land in a peaceful, open air environment, where they are basically king of the castle. in which case they've already made their fortune and are no longer even subject to much in the way of income tax

there is simply no evidence either on an international or intra-national basis that tax increases lead to substantial population movement. tax increases pretty much always lead to additional revenue. you would have to go to extreme lengths for that not to be the case. the laffer curve is for laughs

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.

it merely requires cultural norms to shift. which is obviously a long process. it would gradually get to that point over the course of decades. again, other nations already have total tax rates at or above that which i would favor (even higher for their wealthy). and they didn't always. hell, we as a nation have only been culturally/politically averse to high marginal tax rates since the reagan revolution!

[dougthonus]

it merely requires cultural norms to shift. which is obviously a long process. again, other nations already have total tax rates at or above that which i would favor. and they didn't always. hell, we as a nation have only been averse to high marginal tax rates since the '80s!

Times are different now which is a challenge. It's much easier to move around than it was in the past. You see tons of corporations whom have started off shoring resources, but that's a relatively new phenomenon, and they're doing it for relatively little tax benefit comparatively.

[dice]

it merely requires cultural norms to shift. which is obviously a long process. again, other nations already have total tax rates at or above that which i would favor. and they didn't always. hell, we as a nation have only been averse to high marginal tax rates since the '80s!

Times are different now which is a challenge. It's much easier to move around than it was in the past. You see tons of corporations whom have started off shoring resources, but that's a relatively new phenomenon, and they're doing it for relatively little tax benefit comparatively.

that chart has nothing to do with corporate taxation though

[TallDude]

Most of extreme rich people don`t pay taxes. They avoid to pay taxes. Usa or any country does not live rich people taxes. Upper middle clas and middle class pay most of them. They can go some banana islands but they need workforce. And they money is only in data. The money is only illusion. Only stocks and data. I would not worried about Billionares. I worried normal people. Rich people can`t avoid this. Now it is time to keep people safe. After that economy. This is bad and getting much worse but it is not end of the world. Well some people it will

[League Circles]

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?

I don't understand the question. Of course there aren't more people with over 10 million bucks than there are millionaires. The point is that being a "millionaire" most typically means that you have a healthy retirement account and a nice house. Those kinds of people typically work for a living or are retired, they are not people living off of generational wealth bond yields.

It's as if you're suggesting that people who are rich don't like (more) money? Is that your claim? If not, my claim should be agreed on as the default. The unknown is the extent to which it happens. It obviously happens. I know for a fact. Obviously.

[dumbell78]

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.

Absolutely agree. I'm in the insurance sector, more of a specialized role and my company rolled out work from home options over TWO YEARS ago. I gladly accepted on a fulltime basis. Most ppl thought it was extreme and I would go crazy, my wife included (shes a lawyer). Slowly my team (I am a part of 40+ ppl), most of them followed the same deal.

Guess what has happened in the last two years...team is much more efficient, magically sick days are way down, ppl are able to tackle more and not worry about making a train if they stay behind, etc. I take my kids to school and daycare every morning, come back and carry on with my workday. Usually go for a jog during lunch, dinner is always ready. Its ridiculous to be locked in a office environment for 40+ hours a week. I understand not everyone in the workforce is able to do this but for those of us that are basic office workers, its a no brainer to start incorporating.

Now lets not kid ourselves, my company knew very well that the savings of WFH made it way more interesting/accepting. They now need half the office space they did about 3 years ago. They dished out a pretty penny initially to set everyone up at home but now the financial benefits are a huge win for them.

Oh my wife, who thought I was nuts.....well she's working from home two days a week now lol.

[League Circles]

it merely requires cultural norms to shift. which is obviously a long process. again, other nations already have total tax rates at or above that which i would favor. and they didn't always. hell, we as a nation have only been averse to high marginal tax rates since the '80s!

Times are different now which is a challenge. It's much easier to move around than it was in the past. You see tons of corporations whom have started off shoring resources, but that's a relatively new phenomenon, and they're doing it for relatively little tax benefit comparatively.

that chart has nothing to do with corporate taxation though

Worth noting that chart compares a fixed number of people over many decades while population has been growing a lot, with a percentage of the population. It's absurd.

[AKfanatic]

The report, issued Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that — as in other countries — the oldest patients had the greatest likelihood of dying and of being hospitalized. But of the 508 patients known to have been hospitalized, 38 percent were notably younger — between 20 and 54. And nearly half of the 121 patients who were admitted to intensive care units were adults under 65, the C.D.C. reported.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-people.html#click=https://t.co/yqAfe4xVYu

[moorhosj]

It's as if you're suggesting that people who are rich don't like (more) money? Is that your claim? If not, my claim should be agreed on as the default. The unknown is the extent to which it happens. It obviously happens. I know for a fact. Obviously.

I'm not suggesting anything, I provided data which shows little correlation between higher income and lower taxes. If you want to claim that isn't true, or carve out some small group of people where it is true, then you are welcome to bring some (any?) data to support your stance. Absent that information, why would an unverified claim be accepted as the default? It doesn't make any logical sense.

As far as why the data shows us this type of activity, maybe people that are rich figure they can get even more rich in higher tax states, maybe they care more about amenities than taxes, maybe they are tied to families or businesses that operate in higher tax states, maybe you and I have different definitions of the word "rich", maybe the rich like high tax cities more than low tax cities, maybe they prefer the politics in high tax states to low tax states. All of those could be true without aligning to your binary options.

[SimonFish]

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.

Quadruple witching day tomorrow. Will be fun.

[Chi town]

This.

https://medium.com/@Jason_Scott_Warner/the-sober-math-everyone-must-understand-about-the-pandemic-2b0145881993

It’s way more ugly then what we realize and if don’t go full lockdown everywhere way too many lives are going to put for it.

[Chicago-Bull-E]

My kids daycare just got shutdown, another parent tested positive. Which means my kid and myself are probably at a high risk to have.

Feel like the walls are closing in around us. Just have to stay healthy and when we get it hope for the best.

[League Circles]

It's as if you're suggesting that people who are rich don't like (more) money? Is that your claim? If not, my claim should be agreed on as the default. The unknown is the extent to which it happens. It obviously happens. I know for a fact. Obviously.

I'm not suggesting anything, I provided data which shows little correlation between higher income and lower taxes. If you want to claim that isn't true, or carve out some small group of people where it is true, then you are welcome to bring some (any?) data to support your stance. Absent that information, why would an unverified claim be accepted as the default? It doesn't make any logical sense.

As far as why the data shows us this type of activity, maybe people that are rich figure they can get even more rich in higher tax states, maybe they care more about amenities than taxes, maybe they are tied to families or businesses that operate in higher tax states, maybe you and I have different definitions of the word "rich", maybe the rich like high tax cities more than low tax cities, maybe they prefer the politics in high tax states to low tax states. All of those could be true without aligning to your binary options.

No one was suggesting a simple correlation between higher incomes and lower taxes. We were suggesting that for a very small group of ultra wealthy people, who do not need to live normal lives, they obviously are incentivized to save taxes. The reasons they are unique is that at that level of wealth, it is in no way an inconvenience to travel between properties, and they have no meaningful time commitments that they don't want. We are also talking about assets, not income. As I've described, many of these uniquely rich people have very little (taxable) income. They live off of tax free bond yields and hold vast amounts of capital which typically grows and then they have unrealized gains which aren't taxed. I don't know what to tell you. Most rich people are anonymous. They don't run companies. They don't have jobs that they are accountable to. In a certain exaggerated sense, "if you have income, you're not rich". Furthermore, as I've also described, many of this small unique group get much of their "income" from tax free bond yields. Now those may be taxed by some or all states that charge income tax, but they're exempt from federal income tax, which is the lion's share. So someone who has 50 million in T bonds living in LA may be paying 10% or whatever on the yield from those, but they're paying zero to the federal govt, so it's not a big deal. Now if they have massive stock equity that actually pays dividends (not that many stocks pay healthy dividends precisely because of tax reasons), they can save maybe 5-10% of their income by having their legal residence be in a no income tax state. So those that either like those states (for various geographic, political, or social reasons) or, perhaps more commonly, are willing to "cheat" (because they don't consider it immoral and they're confident they won't get caught), "move" to such states. Or their families have "lived" in them for a hundred years sometimes.

The reason my unverified claim should be accepted as the default is because all things being equal, people like money. And for the particularly rich (again, I'm talking people with at least 10 or 20 million in assets, many of whom of course have 50, 80, 200 million in assets etc), they are in a unique position where all other things actually are more equal than they are for people like me and 99.9% of the country or whatever. What I mean by that is that they have the time and money to do as they wish. They can sleep in Malibu or East Hampton 320 nights a year and go to Jackson Hole for 4 weeks a year where their "legal residence" is. Why wouldn't they? I'm really unclear on what you're arguing. Are you suggesting that people don't set up residences in tax havens? IMO the only question is, how much? Not how many people, but how many dollars those people have.

Another set of people who do this are just upper middle class retirees. They live in TX, FL or NV for a few months in the winter, have that as their "legal residence" even if maybe they're only there for maybe 4 months and 8 months up north. The reason they can do it like the rich that I've been talking about is that they have the time (and the lack of attachments like a job or minor children). It's pretty straightforward logic and I thought was common knowledge. I'm not going to bother looking for data because I can't imagine it accurately exists in published format because for many of them it's technically illegal. Now, do many of them spend 6 months plus 1 day or whatever the legal threshold is to do it legally? Of course. Many people would be afraid to get in trouble and/or believe it's wrong. But I'd bet plenty of those people would prefer to spend, say, 3 months in FL and 9 months in Chicago. I literally know someone wealthy who fits the description, going back and forth a few times a year to FL from Chicago area. I don't keep track of where he sleeps more than half of the nights in, but whether he's cheating or making sure he sleeps 6 months plus a day in FL, I'd bet my ass his "legal residence" in FL, because he's a human, he's smart, and he's rich, and has nothing holding him back (unlike those who have jobs they can't leave, who don't fit the description I've been taking about).

The bolded stuff is largely all superficial for the specific uniquely rich people I'm talking about. They aren't the barriers you're thinking of them as being. And they hold a massive, massive portion of the overall wealth in society.

I'm not sure there even is real data on individuals' assets in this country. I mean IIRC there usually isn't a tax need to disclose all assets, so what I'm claiming isn't really provable. It's just common sense and relatively common knowledge. I didn't know it was a controversial notion at all.

[dice]

It's as if you're suggesting that people who are rich don't like (more) money? Is that your claim? If not, my claim should be agreed on as the default. The unknown is the extent to which it happens. It obviously happens. I know for a fact. Obviously.

I'm not suggesting anything

he's taken to grossly exaggerating if not outright fabricating a position that his self-styled "opponent" holds and then indignantly shooting down that invented position. he did it repeatedly in the fight he weirdly picked with me. i dunno if he's going stir-crazy from quarantine due to lack of exercise or what, but after all these years i finally had to block him

[dice]

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

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

Yikes.

I don’t believe China’s numbers for one second though.

china's reported numbers were huge at first, but they implemented heavy-handed, authoritarian quarantine measures that drastically slowed the spread. other nations do not have that option. that said, HOW slow the spread is now according to their reporting is indeed difficult to believe:

feb. 12: 45K reported cases
feb. 18: up to 74K (testing surge?)
past month: only 7K additional

in other news, apparently after gobert tested positive the state of oklahoma used a full 20% of their available tests on the OKC/jazz players and personnel (58 tests):

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-testing-rich-people/608062/

[dumbell78]

It's as if you're suggesting that people who are rich don't like (more) money? Is that your claim? If not, my claim should be agreed on as the default. The unknown is the extent to which it happens. It obviously happens. I know for a fact. Obviously.

I'm not suggesting anything

he's taken to grossly exaggerating if not outright fabricating a position that his self-styled "opponent" holds and then indignantly shooting down that invented position. he did it repeatedly in the fight he weirdly picked with me. i dunno if he's going stir-crazy from quarantine due to lack of exercise or what, but after all these years i finally had to block him

Did the same couple weeks back, I finally had to as well.

I mean I love good debates and even some funny banter but this was something else. Wasted energy.

[League Circles]

It's as if you're suggesting that people who are rich don't like (more) money? Is that your claim? If not, my claim should be agreed on as the default. The unknown is the extent to which it happens. It obviously happens. I know for a fact. Obviously.

I'm not suggesting anything

he's taken to grossly exaggerating if not outright fabricating a position that his self-styled "opponent" holds and then indignantly shoots down that invented position. he did it repeatedly in the fight he weirdly picked with me. i dunno if he's going stir-crazy from quarantine due to lack of exercise or what, but after all these years i finally had to block him

Yet apparently still interested in my posts. You guys aren't following the line of reasoning that Doug and I were offering because you're so consumed with unobtainable "data" that you're just oblivious to working things out deductively. I "picked a fight with you?" Because I thought it was was ridiculous that you didn't think shutting down the germ incubator that is a gym in the middle of an unprecedented international crisis where entire states and nations are being locked down "seemed necessary"? You're a good debator and I enjoy discussing things with you but at some point you've got to realize that you're a contrarian of the highest order. Now conventional wisdom is often garbage IMO which is why we actually quite often agree in things, but come on man. Gyms don't seem to need to be shut down in a global viral crisis (BTW I'm exercising more at home under quarantine than I was while out and about, it's a miracle of defying the odds!) Let's increase taxes on everyone, but on the poor more than anyone. The threat of tax evasion through tax havens isn't a thing. Hey everyone let's spend a few days helping me figure out how to make my 8 dollar cell phone work for my laundry machine cause despite being a trader, I don't need a real phone. I could go on and on. I gotta give it to you though, you don't back down and admit you're wrong virtually ever once you state a position. That stubbornness will hopefully help you more than hinder you. You're several levels above even me in terms of contrarian instincts, and that's really saying something lol. Be well.

[dice]

and at his white house briefing today, trump said that the FDA has approved a "very powerful" drug to treat coronavirus...except that they haven't

chloroquine is a drug approved by the FDA for other uses (malaria, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis) and can thus be prescribed by doctors for other purposes, which they will sometimes do if, for example, there is not an approved medication for a particular ailment (coronavirus in this case). research being conducted in CHINA has shown potential for chloroquine to treat/slow the spread of coronavirus and the FDA is now investigating along with government and academic institutions. a large clinical trial will be conducted to determine its safety and effectiveness