A system can be owned using various exploits combined together. So if someone finds a way to alter the installation images, suddenly a mild trick that would normally just result in funny icons is now an exploit.
Maybe Nintendo never considered someone screwing around with their network to load an arbitrary image in a place that only Nintendo-Generated Mii png images should be but then I found a way... and if that libpng was vulnerable, suddenly we've gained usermode execution on a Wii U. Or worse yet, similar to the Sony PSP .tiff image exploit, maybe after gaining usermode we find a kernel-mode exploit and attack that. Now, we're near the realm of game piracy and private keys.
In comparison to what? And exactly what income-levels paid what percentage of that? Did the poor & middle class paid 98% of of that? Did the rich & powerful use all kinds of crazy tax-loop-holes to avoid paying trillions? Cost of living/retirement in what parts of America?....maybe 19 billion is a drop in the ocean, maybe not.
There's no way you can believe otherwise, a millionaire can afford all kinds of financial experts to work 40hrs/week to move money all over the place to avoid taxes. It's unreasonable to think they don't (ab)use that ability.
Buffet doesn't pay lower taxes because of fancy lawyers and accountants though. He pays lower taxes because capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income.
We can certainly debate whether that is good policy or not, but it has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of fancy tricks.
I wonder which group of people lobbied for capital gains to be taxed lower than ordinary income? Is it coincidence that since the law (one of Reagan's tax cuts) was passed a lot of executives are paid a lower base salary and tons of stock options?
I'd consider that a fancy trick :)
EDIT: To answer harryh: Yes and it has been steadily decreasing [1]. And your point is?
I think we can agree this mainly benefits the rich; I don't see someone in the middle class would have the discretionary income (not 401k, I'm talking about leftover income after expenses) to put his/her money in massive amounts stocks.
The rate was much higher pre-Reagan, nearly double what it is today.
Also, the rise of finance means a lot of Wall Street hedge fund managers who should be paying ordinary income tax are paying cap gains rates through the carried interest exception. Venture capitalists too.
Reagan lowered max cap gains rates from 39% down to 20% but then back up to 28%. At the same time he lowered the max rate on ordinary income from 70% down to 50% then down to 28%. So ya, at the end their they were briefly the same (which is why I used the word almost). But in general my point stands. Capital gains rates are generally lower than ordinary income rates as a matter of public policy.
A similar point holds for the carried interest rule. Those taking advantage of it aren't doing so because they've hired amazing accountants to file their taxes. They're just following relatively straight forward tax law.
Adjacently, while I generally agree with you on the topic of carried interest I did find this column thought provoking. You might enjoy it.
My understanding is that the carried interest rule was originally created as an incentive for mining exploration. It wasn't until the 80s that Wall Street hedged funds started taking off, and that they really started making use of it.
My feeling is, if you don't have actual capital at risk, you shouldn't get a break. Or put another way, if it's not possible for you to experience a capital loss, then it's not possible to experience a capital gain. Most VCs and hedge funds also invest a substantial amount of their own capital in the funds they manage, so it's not like it would be a radical change.
A few years ago I went to the Aspen Ideas Festival. One of the speakers was David Rubinstein of the Carlyle Group. Someone cheekily asked him what the tax on carried interest should be. He said "It should be zero. But politicians 'earn' so much money in donations by by threatening to repeal it, I predict it will always come up as an issue every three or four years, and will always stay about what it is now."
I generally agree with you about risk, though the counter argument is that they are putting capital at risk. They are taking some portion of their compensation as equity that may or may not turn out to have any value. It might not be actual dollars coming out of a bank account but the risk is still there.
Incidentally, since this is HN, one might ask if startup employees are doing the same thing to which I would generally nod and agree with you.
But Buffett does make his capital gains exclusively through Berkshire who absolutely does make money through fancy lawyers and tax loopholes.. See the pointless Burger King / Tim Horton's inversion they shepherded through last year;
Shares of BRK.B are available to anyone who wants to buy them. So they can participate in those gains as well.
What you're really getting at is tax incidence. Ultimately corporate taxes are still taxes on people. It's a complicated question to figure out which people. Sometimes it's shareholders like buffet, but it's also often employees or customers.
I do generally agree with you though that corporate taxes probably fall disproportionately on rich shareholders so to whatever degree there are shenanigans it's probably benefiting those rich shareholders.
Personally this makes me question the value of corporate taxes entirely. Just get rid of them and tax people directly. It would save a lot of paperwork and be easier for everyone to understand. Most people disagree with me on this point (though I would say that's because they don't think about tax incidence!).
This is why I actually favor doing away with the corporate income tax. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of accountants and tax lawyers would be out of work, but on the flip side companies would have no incentive to play all these games and keep money offshore. Just pay a dividend, or don't, and let the investors figure it out.
No, you'd still tax distributions to investors. Basically, once money touches a personal bank account, it becomes taxable. The difference is that corporations would have much less incentive to hide their earnings.
How much one "should" pay in property/income forfeiture is, of course, a matter of political policy.
Just think how much money goes into the economy to preserve income...if we simplified the tax code in any way, so many people would be out of work in both the private and public sectors.
From 2003 to 2013, the top marginal and capital gains tax rates were 35% and 15% respectively, and the top 0.01% of taxpayers faced an average tax rate of effectively 25%. The last time rates were that low was before WW2, leading up to a period we remember as the Great Depression. During the nation's most prosperous decades, those rates were consistently above 40%, and leading up to them, ranged between 60% and 40%.
The issue isn't that the mega-wealthy pay no taxes, but that the value of the taxable income of a handful of people vastly supersedes that of most of that of the rest of the population. In essence, lower tax rates didn't fix anything about the economy unless you thought taxes were the problem and provided no overall boost to the economic security or general prosperity of the public.
So when GE Capital pays no corporate taxes and someone points that out, you're likely to hear that they pay those taxes through the number of people they employ. This is deceptive, since a legitimate small business would be paying both taxes. That entities like GE Capital exist is the trope that you need to dispel. Or did those estate taxes not come from the earnings of mom and pop shop owners and people who put in their 40 quarters with a little wise investing?
Taxes are for the 99% The 1% can and do pay lawyers to get out of paying much. Check out this loophole - it is complicated but basically if you can afford to set up one of these trusts you can give money to your kids tax free:
Short explanation: capital gains, dividend income is taxed less than normal (wage, salary, etc) income. And I believe Buffett means that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, not fewer taxes in absolute terms.
I'm assuming the OP is talking independent stores vs. Amazon as in "I don't wanna support the monolithic beast known as Amazon; I'd rather support mom&pop stores".... and other various data points around Amazon-is-evil-crazy-sweatshops-and-twist-arms-of-book-authors type stuff.
You need proof that a child growing up with quality care and a quality social/cultural environment is more likely to be able to function and "succeed" in life as an adult?
Yes - I've seen studies that show things like "quality education" don't really hold up under close inspection (for eg. when you control for student performance before college difference between elite colleges and standard ones disappears).
I would be interested how research defines this "high quality social/cultural environments" and how it controls for factors such as genetics, family cultural and financial background, etc. Separated twin studies would probably be ideal (but I'm not an expert in the field).
It's not readily apparent that increasing the amount of children per staff member will significantly impact a child's ability to "succeed" in life as an adult.
I'm not sure how we expect a 1:6 ratio to be "cheap", even before factoring in costs like real estate.
Seems like a pretty weak reason to keep permanent staff unless fires are common. It's as if there is absolutely no-one else around who could help in an emergency except people paid to be there full time.
Telling a parent their kid burnt up because you didn't have the staff is not a weak reason. Safety is a component of staffing guidelines and not the only reason.
>>any non-pathological adolescent or adult can take care of children acceptably
Define "acceptably".
Some babysitters think it's acceptable to just chat on Facebook all day and plant the child in front of the TV for 10 hours. That's not acceptable to me, but that's more or less what you get for very cheap labor; just someone to keep you legally clear from abandoning a minor. Like those super-cheap bare minimum car insurance that does nothing but keep you legally driving.
Here's the definition of acceptable when it comes to my children: Take kids to parks and museums. Can avoid using profanity around them. Won't smoke around them. Won't be speeding down the highway with them. Can be trusted not to fill my children with junk food. Can truly trust them to actively watch the kids so they don't do something crazy like sticking a fork into a power outlet or turning on the gas stove without the flame, thus filling the house with gas. Right now, the only people my wife & I trust with our kids are their grandparents... aside from the pre-school teachers.
Finding quality childcare is harder than you think.
It's only weird if the employee isn't directly responsible for creating that something.
e.g., You can buy a Lambo for nearly one million but the cars salesman who sold it to you probably isn't rich.
But when you buy a painting for nearly one million, it'd make sense to think the actual painter is doing pretty well.
A (good)public school teacher in America is woefully underpaid compared to the service they provide. They should be paid similar to doctors & nurses, imho.
My best friend is a public school teacher, and his circle of friends includes many more.
I can wholeheartedly assure you they are not as deserving as doctors, in large part because their training is much less rigorous, the job is much less demanding, requires less skill/ability, and a whole lot of teachers aren't "good" teachers. Just like any other profession, you have good, bad, and mostly average. The average teacher does not deserve nearly the same salary as the average doctor.
Working harder as a public school teacher isn't going to result in more pay. There are probably a ton of teachers who started out as "good" teachers and then slowly learned it wasn't worth the effort.
'Good' is an important point here, and those 'good' work in private schools or as tutors. Generally public school teachers in Montreal are bad and education quality is low, obviously IMHO. Still even public school teachers are paid OK. Salaries for Quebec / Ontario are publicly available - it is almost on pair with civil engines. Yep education is notoriously bad, high school drop out rate about ~20% for Montreal. So in case of education I wouldn't correlate salary / quality that easy.
> A (good)public school teacher in America is woefully underpaid compared to the service they provide. They should be paid similar to doctors & nurses, imho.
The teachers unions would go on strike if you tried to pay teachers based on performance or supply/demand (paying a CS teacher more than a gym teacher). And there's no way the average teacher deserves any more money than they're making now.
Because you never really know until you _really know_. I know there have been times in my life that I was 100% sure of something and never thought there was a way I could be wrong, but somehow new info came to my attention and turned everything upside down. What if there's some kinda stuff in a chinese document that FireEye hasn't read yet, stating that this is normal functionality of the SDK and the developer, who read the docs thoroughly, knows that it does this. Better to just present the facts and stick with "suspect" or "alleged" type verbage and only drop the bet-hedging when it is known without a shadow of a doubt. The fact Apple removed the apps does strongly indicate FireEye at least found something suspicious and the readers of this article are probably mostly convinced at that point anyway without FireEye having to risk officially throwing around accusations.
Also, nowadays it's getting a bit too easy to blame hacking/spying on the Chinese & Russians so you don't want to accuse them until you're absolutely sure. If you're wrong, it's going to look extra bad.
Very cool, and that definitely takes me back to eagerly pursuing/waiting out my beta invite. Unfortunately I would guess that even with a retro interface all of one's email data is still subject to content trawling, but that's a nifty discovery nonetheless.
Another could be: "Our users are being innovate and using our services in ways we didn't completely anticipate, therefore we are trying to let our products grow "organically" and will make changes that augment what our users appear to be doing."
I would be more sympathetic to that explanation if the feature being rolled out was somehow novel or at least adding new functionality. But it's not, it's just removing a small quirk and making the service more like everything else on the internet.
Kinda good example right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkPAgv1Gjz0
Maybe Nintendo never considered someone screwing around with their network to load an arbitrary image in a place that only Nintendo-Generated Mii png images should be but then I found a way... and if that libpng was vulnerable, suddenly we've gained usermode execution on a Wii U. Or worse yet, similar to the Sony PSP .tiff image exploit, maybe after gaining usermode we find a kernel-mode exploit and attack that. Now, we're near the realm of game piracy and private keys.