Castanza

Yep, this is right. That's why you don't want inequality to become excessive. If you're working hard and can't feed your kids and your child died because you can't afford healthcare, then there's a lot of incentive to say, "the rich are evil, we need equality." Like, clearly your life sucks, so why wouldn't you attempt to destroy the system in the hope that what's rebuilt is better for you? That's why the extremes of communism and capitalism are both problematic. You need to have inequalities so that people can strive for more, but not such great inequalities in an unforgiving system that it becomes clear that striving for more won't actually accomplish anything. The way to stop that "the rich are evil, we need equality" message from materializing is by ensuring the system supports income mobility. And income mobility is better achieved through more regulations, more license, more barriers to entry, higher taxes, and more red tape? Government is a value trap. Doubling down on failed policy is equivalent to catching a falling knife. Policy is never reversed. When was the last time government said, you know what this policy really hasn’t worked for the last 20 years. Maybe we should remove it. Instead it’s always, well it hasn’t worked so let’s just tweak it.

Equality of outcome is a fools errand. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell....Parent's can't guarantee equality of outcome for their own children living under the same roof, with the same resources. Yet, the government thinks it can legislate to produce equality of outcome for millions of people?

Those that think communist countries have wealth equality have never been (or studied) a communist country. People there are about as equal than the animals in Orwell’s Animal farm. Everyone knows this...but a key message when the transition to communism is made is "the rich are evil, we need equality"

In the US can the government build a hospital, staff it and offer healthcare to sick people? Yeah, it’s called the VA and it’s fucking terrible LOL

Let's hope, I missed the boat on this the past few months. Removed it from my watchlist somehow and completely forgot about it. Their products are top notch. Setup a whole home enterprise network in my home this past year.

Good thing silver is a byproduct of mining lead, copper, gold, and zinc :P It's absolutely possible though. But silver currently is a tier 1 product for panels. If the goal is to increase efficiency, decrease footprint, and decrease costs then going with a sub par product wouldn't make much sense no? I guess inefficiencies could be reduced in other areas to make up for the difference. SunDrive is doing without silver and seem to be turning out solid products. I'm more so saying I feel more diversified with silver than gold simply because of it's industrial demand.

I would agree that silver is a better proposition on the fundamentals. Not just the demand side but also the current price ratio to gold. There's also less gold nuts speculating in silver so your price won't get whipped as much based on "mood". The downside is that you don't really have good silver mining pure plays out there so you have to go physical. There could also be an interesting long/short trade if you want to go after that silver-gold differential. First Majestic Silver looks relatively interesting.

I think silver is a bit more interesting. The EV and solar boom that is just getting started is heavily reliant on silver. It's a key element (best in class currently) for batteries and panels. Even as efficiency increases the demand is still growing due to sheer volume. There is already a shortage globally on an annual basis, and is projected to grow exponentially. From a mining perspective, silver is much harder and time consuming to mine than gold. There is also far fewer good productive mines out there. Yet the price of silver hasn't moved much. Mines need higher prices to be profitable, couple that with increased demand and it's difficult to not see silver ticking up over the next decade.

ATCO

Just had gas run to a property I purchased. Gas company ran it for free, and installed the meter for free. Stipulation is I have at least one appliance hooked up to gas within a year. Just just ran the gas line and plumbing for an on demand water heater and the line for the range. Previous owners were generous enough to leave me a 3/4 tank of oil for free. So I’ll probably hold off on the gas furnace till next year. Biden better not ban gas/fracking anytime soon or I’m out a couple grand ;D

Wrong thread?

Last week added to: ATCO, PCYO, RTX, BAC, WFC, INTC, and started new 3% position AAPL This morning started positions in ESRT, PGRE, VNO. Still cheap with the vaccine news.

Anyone have the cajones to lever up at this point?

Deepthroatipo had a good write up on it a little bit ago. http://www.deepthroatipo.com/ant-group-co-ltd-yet-another-chinese-communist-financial-deathmobile-forex-grab/

Apple TV coming to Xbox and PlayStation https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/2/21545980/apple-tv-xbox-app-november-10th-release-date-features

They discourage consumption. So what? Here we are in an environment where nobody has any savings and we have to pump trillions of dollars in stimulus money into the economy to keep everything moving forward. Maybe it's simplistic, but allowing people to save more and spend as they see fit is not in and of itself a bad thing no? So what? First of all it's not true that nobody has any savings. There are tons of savings. It's the poor people that have no savings. And yes there's a lot of them. Second, you are aware that consumption=production right. Lowering GDP hasn't been very good for prosperity or stimulating economic activity... historically speaking. Third, you want to incentivize poor people to increase their savings by hiking their tax bill? This has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. I'm not saying tax the poor more and I'm not saying lower GDP. But you seem to be coming from the angel that GDP is all that matters. I think there is more to it than that. I don't believe higher taxes on the rich solve issues long term. It's a temporary stimulus in an of itself. I think deregulation, shrinking of govt and govt spending and allowing individuals to keep more of what they earn in general is the best way forward. Sorry but that's exactly when you're saying when you're talking about regressive taxes to encourage saving among the poor. You pretending it's not so doesn't change it. The whole shrink the government so that people can keep more is also pretty much bullshit. Most of the government spending is on healthcare, education and military. Those aren't discretionary items. People will have to consume those. In order for the people to keep more of what they earn the private sector will have to provide those goods cheaper. Out of those 3 (2 really) which one does the private sector offer at a lower price? Arguably both healthcare, education Consumption tax is regressive if you view it plainly as you do. There are many ways to structure a consumption tax that even has attributes of a progressive tax while still allowing this to be mostly volunteer. Canada has done quite a few studies on this in the mid 2000's and the results were positive. There is more than one way to skin a cat. The straight up progressive tax bracket has been anything but perfect here in the US. https://ideas.repec.org/p/sek/iacpro/5808138.html I also prefer a Negative Income Tax structure as well. Yeah. That's bullshit on the education and healthcare. The paper that you've posted here is. Not really a paper or a study. It pretends to be a paper but it's really more like a deck for a conference. It was written by some political prof at Mount Royal junior high and it's clear that he doesn't know what a regressive tax is. It employs a series of other fallacies as well to try to make its "thesis". At this point it's pretty clear that you're not dealing in facts here. This from someone who didn't want to make it political. Hey you guys heard it here first. The World Tax Czar rb scoffs at individuals like Friedman, Hayek, Sowell and their puny intellect. Stop recording tax history because the only way forward is a progressive tax! Not only that but he has also found a foundational truth that the private market cannot provide cheaper healthcare and education than the government! JFC, lets make this guy the supreme leader now and call it a day. Enjoy your weekend rb exiting stage left.

They discourage consumption. So what? Here we are in an environment where nobody has any savings and we have to pump trillions of dollars in stimulus money into the economy to keep everything moving forward. Maybe it's simplistic, but allowing people to save more and spend as they see fit is not in and of itself a bad thing no? So what? First of all it's not true that nobody has any savings. There are tons of savings. It's the poor people that have no savings. And yes there's a lot of them. Second, you are aware that consumption=production right. Lowering GDP hasn't been very good for prosperity or stimulating economic activity... historically speaking. Third, you want to incentivize poor people to increase their savings by hiking their tax bill? This has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. I'm not saying tax the poor more and I'm not saying lower GDP. But you seem to be coming from the angel that GDP is all that matters. I think there is more to it than that. I don't believe higher taxes on the rich solve issues long term. It's a temporary stimulus in an of itself. I think deregulation, shrinking of govt and govt spending and allowing individuals to keep more of what they earn in general is the best way forward. Sorry but that's exactly when you're saying when you're talking about regressive taxes to encourage saving among the poor. You pretending it's not so doesn't change it. The whole shrink the government so that people can keep more is also pretty much bullshit. Most of the government spending is on healthcare, education and military. Those aren't discretionary items. People will have to consume those. In order for the people to keep more of what they earn the private sector will have to provide those goods cheaper. Out of those 3 (2 really) which one does the private sector offer at a lower price? Arguably both healthcare, education Consumption tax is regressive if you view it plainly as you do. There are many ways to structure a consumption tax that even has attributes of a progressive tax while still allowing this to be mostly volunteer. Canada has done quite a few studies on this in the mid 2000's and the results were positive. There is more than one way to skin a cat. The straight up progressive tax bracket has been anything but perfect here in the US. https://ideas.repec.org/p/sek/iacpro/5808138.html I also prefer a Negative Income Tax structure as well.

They discourage consumption. So what? Here we are in an environment where nobody has any savings and we have to pump trillions of dollars in stimulus money into the economy to keep everything moving forward. Maybe it's simplistic, but allowing people to save more and spend as they see fit is not in and of itself a bad thing no? So what? First of all it's not true that nobody has any savings. There are tons of savings. It's the poor people that have no savings. And yes there's a lot of them. Second, you are aware that consumption=production right. Lowering GDP hasn't been very good for prosperity or stimulating economic activity... historically speaking. Third, you want to incentivize poor people to increase their savings by hiking their tax bill? This has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. I'm not saying tax the poor more and I'm not saying lower GDP. But you seem to be coming from the angel that GDP is all that matters. I think there is more to it than that. I don't believe higher taxes on the rich solve issues long term. It's a temporary stimulus in an of itself. I think deregulation, shrinking of govt and govt spending and allowing individuals to keep more of what they earn in general is the best way forward.

They discourage consumption. So what? Here we are in an environment where nobody has any savings and we have to pump trillions of dollars in stimulus money into the economy to keep everything moving forward. Maybe it's simplistic, but allowing people to save more and spend as they see fit is not in and of itself a bad thing no?

Well the whole rationale for having lower rates for capital is to stimulate economic activity. That means new real means of production. So from that perspective dry cleaning would qualify and clipping divvies would not. As for inheritance taxation I would say that duties that amount to seizure are not the way to go. But I also don't think anyone is talking about that. I do think that income shouldn't be sheltered forever and has to be taxed at some point. Personally I like Canada's system where there is no estate tax but you have a deemed disposition on death. But even that system could use some improvement especially when it comes to IRAs. Income is taxed when you earn it.... Well you're gonna have to earn your capital gains at some point. Why not tax income less and establish a flat tax on consumption? The issue with income tax is it's difficult to balance incentives to earn more. I think inflation is also more detrimental with high income tax because you can't exactly scale back how much you're paying. But if tax were primarily consumption based well you can scale back. I just think this idea of creating a class warfare on the rich is misguided and ignorant of history. This hasn't ever worked long term and basically destroys incentives long term all for some short term relief?

Well the whole rationale for having lower rates for capital is to stimulate economic activity. That means new real means of production. So from that perspective dry cleaning would qualify and clipping divvies would not. As for inheritance taxation I would say that duties that amount to seizure are not the way to go. But I also don't think anyone is talking about that. I do think that income shouldn't be sheltered forever and has to be taxed at some point. Personally I like Canada's system where there is no estate tax but you have a deemed disposition on death. But even that system could use some improvement especially when it comes to IRAs. Income is taxed when you earn it....

If wealth is concentrated in a few at the top. Is your country really prosperous? Is it not prosperous? Poverty is relative no? edit: Anyways I don't want to stray into politics on general thread, so I'll end with that.

100% upside really isn’t much beyond what the price was in January, so I guess my concern is at this point what should we expect as shareholders? I hope a distribution would begin being paid out. Otherwise there isn’t much reason to stick around. But once you have that recurring revenue stream at scale I don’t see a reason why a divy wouldn’t be established.

You can't tax your way into prosperity. "When Congress votes for all sorts of benefits, without voting for enough taxes to pay for them, they get the support of those who have been promised the benefits, without getting grief from the taxpayers. It's strictly win-win as far as the welfare-state politicians are concerned. But it is strictly lose-lose, big-time, for the country, as deficits skyrocket." Thomas Sowell

This is a terrible comparison... Under what emergency circumstances would one need to purchase a luxury vehicle? You know the price and precise monthly payments before you sign anything at a dealership. In your example the one extorting someone is the Ambulance company. In the car example the one extorting another party is the person who bought the car.