Slashdot Mirror

I think the wrongdoings is that a UK company interfered with an US election.

The issue is that Palantir technology (and probably data) was used by Cambridge Analytica. And THIS is what's scary. A UK based control of a US "Weapon of Mass Disruption".

Read up the details on Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/feat...

Is Jeff Bezos careful to be logical? It seems to me the answer is no, if you judge by how Amazon is managed. More evidence, added to the evidence in the parent comment:

A Slashdot comment: "you still can't sort prime-only items by price correctly (it includes the lowest priced non-prime seller)..."

And: "... Amazon literally still builds their rich pages using their normal grid layout, and in the most impossible to navigate way possible.

Amazon: Amazon warehouse jobs push workers to physical limit (Seattle Times, April 3, 2012)

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (Bloomberg, Feb. 19, 2013)

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (Salon.com, Feb. 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (New York Times, Aug. 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon paid no US income taxes for 2017 (SeattlePI, Feb. 27, 2018)

Amazon: Undercover author finds Amazon warehouse workers in UK 'peed in bottles' over fears of being punished for taking a break (Business Insider, April 16, 2018)

Amazon: The undercover author who discovered Amazon warehouse workers were peeing in bottles tells us the culture was like a 'prison' (Business Insider, April 18, 2018)

Amazon: Amazon Gets Tax Breaks While Its Employees Rely on Food Stamps, New Data Shows (The Intercept, April 19, 2018) Quote: "Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table."

Safe space flight depends on careful thinking. Everyone involved with flight into space must be logical. Maybe Jeff Bezos just needed to find a place to put his money; maybe he doesn't influence Bllue Origins much. But even if that is true, he has influence, and that is scary. My opinion.

So, chill. If solar really is cheaper than coal, then anything short of mandating use of coal (which noone is proposing) won't even slow down the uptake of solar...

Actually, they have been crafting a plan to mandate the use of coal using the cold-war era Defense Production Act. Thankfully, so far, that have not actually done it but, they have seriously proposed it.

I believe Bezos is working on that

LOTS of companies get raided. They survive just fine.

The real issue is that these companies do not want to pay ppl what they are worth. In particular, they were paying minimum wage and now are paying $10-12/hr depending on the area. Why? Because that is what it took to hire GOOD PPL.

Windbourne.

YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos, Entering the Gun Control Debate

Meh, to me it looks like a lot of exaggerated drama. Tesla got >3 billion on hand and can burn money at their current rate for well over a year. Meanwhile they've had a massive facility ramp-up. Bloomberg estimates they now produce 2733 Model 3s a week, if they can hit their 5k/week end of quarter goal all those shorting will be crying. Either way I think this more for investors and how good ROI they're getting, not that Tesla is going anywhere...

Deutsche Bank will be wiped away by the next forthcoming derivative crisis, well before they can ever set up an AI system to replace financial workers.

Actually, I'll thank Xi, since he alone is the one who controls North Korea's entire existance. Funny how all of this happens AFTER Kim visits China.

Funny how the planning of the Trump-Kim meeting was announced within 24 hours of Trump announcing tariffs on aluminium and steel.

Of course, NK seeking peace is all of Xi's doing on his own. That's why Kim visited China nearly twenty days after negotiating with the White House.

Also interesting after China consolidates into a dictatorship.

No, no, no. Trump is literally Hitler, remember. How does Xi not having term limits affect NK? China in real terms is the same China of January. The only difference is Trump. Trump solves problems instead of going on apology tours.

Try the red pills. They are better than soy lattes.

The Jones Act is not the problem in any significant way. Explain to me how slightly larger transportation costs for imported goods equals a power utility that is $9BN in debt and needs $17BN to recover? PR got rich based on advantageous tax laws that expired a decade or two ago, and PR never adjusted it's spending to reflect the new reality.

Does Puerto Rico even have a deep water port big enough to take transoceanic container ships directly? I think Puerto Rico needs to have it's imports arrive on smaller US-flagged ships because of port restrictions.

Do you really imagine that a poor island nation of 3-4 million people consumes enough to support a sustained flow of goods from Asia?

Puerto Rico has for years made countless dumb decisions, long before Maria hit - it was wildly bankrupt before Maria with $172BN debt before Maria struck, or about $50Kof debt PER CAPITA.

Level 4 vehicles (fully self-driving, no human attendant, but geofenced to a specific area) are already here, working in real life, and have been all year.

From your link:

"On November 7, Waymo announced that it was going to start testing cars without a safety driver. "

So when did they start? That announcement and entire article says that they intend to start. It doesn't say that they have started.

Hundreds of these are already ferrying the public around Phoenix, and they now have a licence for full commercial operation.

You claim that they are already ferrying people, the article says that they intend to use the license to ferry people. Do you have another link? This one doesn't support your claim. What they intend to do and what they are currently doing are two different things.

Level 4 vehicles (fully self-driving, no human attendant, but geofenced to a specific area) are already here, working in real life, and have been all year. Hundreds of these are already ferrying the public around Phoenix, and they now have a licence for full commercial operation.

Expect to see thousands more real self-driving robotaxis in service in the 25 cities they're being tested in today.

Though I think even SpaceX was surprised by some of the issues they had to overcome.

Yeah, one of those issues in particular took a lot of people by surprise. (Okay, we don't actually know they used Kobe Steel's aluminum... but AFAIK that theory is still in play)

I know, right! The Model 3 is already the best selling (as in actual deliveries) EV. It also outsells similarly priced 4-door ICE competitors like the Acura TLX, Mercedes C/CLA, Audi A4, Lexus RC, and the BMW 2, 3, and 4 series.

I'm assuming you are joking. But in case you aren't, the highest estimate of model 3's that I've seen is just over 17KThe Chevy Bolt hit 20K before the end of last year Nissan has delivered 300K Leafs as of January of this year.

It was also gerrymandered up the wazoo when Democrats were in power.

Yes. Reynolds v. Sims and Baker v. Carr. Of course, those Democrats were often entirely different in politics. Such is history.

Gerrymandering simply strengthens whoever is currently more popular.

Wrong. In some cases, actually weakens those who are more popular, as shown in Wisconsin and North Carolina.

If congressional districts were assigned rationally, Democrats wouldn't do very well anyway

Yes, but that's because your definition of rational which is 100% Republican Agenda. You do realize your biases, however, are not supported in actual math that is independent of your partisan bias.

The only way Democrats could do well if the US went to strict national popular majorities, but that is utterly unacceptable and incompatible with federalism.

Or you know, actually voting. Of course, that is utterly unacceptable to the Republican agenda which relies on voter suppression.

In actual fact [people-press.org], liberals only make up about 17% of the US political spectrum and California is thoroughly unrepresentative of the country.

Actually, California is highly representative of the country, and it's only because of zealots like you that it gets demonized as some outside nemesis.

The reason Republicans are so strong is because Democrats have fallen out of favor with the political center: moderates and independents.

Also untrue, the truth is quite contrary.

It is actually the Republicans who have become more extremist, but they rely on moving the perceptual concept to turn the tables instead of embrace reality.

I'm a good example of that: I used to be a registered Democrat but loathe what the Democratic party has become over the last decade. I won't vote for Democrats again until they clearly disavow people like Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Corey Booker, and Elizabeth Warren.

You're actually a good example of the lying fraud of the GOP, as you vacuously and repetitively pretend to claim to be a Democrat and a moderate, yet entirely espouse the hard-core right-wing agenda, and blame Obama for creating conflict.

Tell you what, maybe people will believe you when you disavow individuals like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thoma

name a SINGLE government agency that is efficient at what it does.

The Department of Energy loan program which had Solyndra. Yes, that one is efficient and successful. Of all the loans it has given out, only four have failed. The loss rate for the program (as of 2014) was 2.28%. Right now that program is making money even though it was never intended to do so.

Further, Republicans were so sure the taxpayers would lose money on this program (which was started during the Bush administration), they set aside $10 billion to cover losses. Those four failures cost less than $1 billion.

Compare that to private industry which lost over $1 billion on Solyndra alone. Even Tesla paid back its loans nine years early, with interest.

You wanted one example, there ya go. Now go ahead and move the goalposts.

Magomedov's a billionaire and politically connected. This might be a problem for Branson if he doesn't get the investment from the guy (or can't keep it). His new board members include a representative of Russiaâ(TM)s sovereign wealth fund.

"The main immediate problem is the fight over the formation of the new government," said Igor Bunin about the arrest, here. "Until the Magomedovs' detention, the most likely scenario was that Medvedev would retain the premier's post. Chances of that now are falling steadily."

"It looks like someone is after Magomedov's business and this case of course doesnâ(TM)t increase the appeal of the Russian market", said Oleg Popov.

In Putin's Russia, hostile takeover mean what it says.

Mr Magomedov unfortunately committed suicide 6 months from now.

And then there's this... Facebook Says Data on Most of Its 2 Billion Users Vulnerable

https://www.bloomberg.com/grap...

However, their methods are inexact. They are doing the best they can without access to inside knowledge. Musk has inside knowledge, and there are laws against lying to the stock market.

that's an interesting theory considering Peter Thiel is bullish on bitcoin: https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Probably because Uber Disabled Volvo's SUV Safety System

Uber Technologies Inc. disabled the standard collision-avoidance technology in the Volvo SUV that struck and killed a woman in Arizona last week, according to the auto-parts maker that supplied the vehicle’s radar and camera.
...
Aptiv is speaking up for its technology to avoid being tainted by the fatality involving Uber, which may have been following standard practice by disabling other tech as it develops and tests its own autonomous driving system.

the "sex trafficking" laws. There are cam girls and whatnot that sell private shows, guess what some of them use? Yea. Microsoft's enemies (Facebook/Google/Apple) helped back this bill.

There's a lot of "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN@)(*#)$*" bullshit with this. This is how free speech dies, passing laws based on knee jerks that make people, or in this instance, platforms self-censor rather than repealing the 1st amendment.

When have 2nd amendment proponents ever done anything to protect people's privacy rights? I don't see them protesting data collection

Actually, gun rights proponents are almost certainly the most successful lobbyists against data collection in modern America, which, depending on your views, may not be a good thing.

Mind you, it’s their own privacy that they’re interested in protecting, but they’ve lobbied Congress so we’ll that it’s currently illegal for the US government to create or maintain databases of gun owners, historical gun purchases, or even the guns themselves, despite massive efforts by people on the other side of those debates to collect exactly that information. And even the paltry records that do exist (i.e. records from private gun stores that went out of business), are not allowed to be computerized. If you’d like more information, it’s easy to come by because the ways that the ATF has been hamstrung by the NRA get re-reported every time there’s another major shooting. And it’s not just at the national level either. Gun enthusiasts are quite active in protesting locally as well.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news... (paywalled)
https://www.informationweek.co...
http://www.heraldtribune.com/n...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...

I do agree with the overarching point you were trying to get at, but that particular argument you used to make your point was an extraordinarily poor choice.

Actually I think the federal government needs to radically downsize

We can start with the $716 billion we're spending on this shit. It adds up to $5682 for each household in the US. Every year. Year after year, and it goes up 10% every year even though the only time it gets used is for useless fuckery in third world sandboxes like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's not counting our nuclear arsenal, which doesn't get included in the defense budget.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Try looking at their numbers and see if it makes more sense
http://getfilings.com/o0001193...

Little difficult to make money with all that debt payment they didn't have before.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/e...

In 2005 they had $47m in long term debt. As of October 2017 it was $4.761B. Please explain to me how they acquired and additions 4+ billion in debt? Might it happen to have anything to do with a $7.5B buyout would it?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

From earlier in the year: Why Toys “R” Us Is Closing One-Fifth of Its Stores

But its collapse has been especially acute, due to terrible mismanagement by private-equity firms. After Toys “R” Us was taken private by KKR, Bain, and Vornado in 2005, it took on a lot of debt, leaving the company with repayments that have crippled it in a period of declining sales. Toys “R” Us has spent more than $250 million annually to pay back $5 billion in long-term debt. These repayments became unsustainable once revenue started to decline consistently, as it has each year since 2012. That left one option: for the company to declare bankruptcy and renegotiate the terms of its debt.

Reported earlier last year: Bain, KKR, Vornado Suffer Wipeout in Toys ‘R’ Us Bankruptcy

The three firms and their co-investors sank $1.3 billion of equity into the takeover of the Wayne, New Jersey-based toy company, financing the rest with debt, according to company filings. The debt included senior loans in which they held a stake.

Partly offsetting the loss is more than $470 million in fees and interest payments that Toys “R” Us awarded the firms over time. ...
KKR and Vornado, which are publicly traded, had previously written their investments in the company down to zero. As a result, the bankruptcy won’t affect their earnings going forward.

;TLDR
Bain and Co financed most of the purchase cost of Toys R Us with Debt, have made half a billion dollars in fees since then, and will suffer nothing from the closure of Toys R Us, unlike everyone that actually works for Toys R Us.

I'm really glad Trump is cracking down on himself because for a while there he seemed caviller and acted with a near psychotic neglect of personal culpability.

Priced yourself right out of a job, didn't you?

Guess what? You can't legislate what your labor is actually worth.

No, the minimum wage has absolutely nothing to do with this. It's about total cost per hour, it's about efficiency and machines are across the board more efficient than human beings, even if the human beings make next to nothing. Let's do the math.

The machine costs 60 000. Assume a pay of 5 dollars an hour and you're running the place 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. That comes down to 17280 a year. The machine will still be more cost-efficient that a human being., it will just take 3,5 years to pay for itself rather than the less than a year it will take on a 15 dollars an hour pay. Hell, China is leading the way in automation of production, and they're using it to replace workers that make around 10-15 bucks a day because the machines are simply more cost-efficient and reliable than human workers even at those wages. So your equivalents in China are essentially yelling: 'yeah, how about that, priced yourself right out of a job! If you only were satisfied with working at 3 dollars a day you maybe could have kept your job for another 5 years before it was automated!"

The thing to realize is that we're fast approaching a point in which untrained or lowly trained human labor will become essentially worthless, and even most positions requiring a higher education will be in the same situation a couple decades from now with the advances in AI. Anyone who thinks human beings can in the long term remain competitive with systems that are specifically designed to be more cost-efficient than humans, doesn't understand a thing about automation or economics, or what this shift means for economies overall.

Uber's entire business model is based on (a) outright breaking laws duly passed by democratically elected legislatures

You've heard of gerrymandering, right? The USA is an oligarchy, not a democracy. There is more democracy the further away you get from Washington, but that still doesn't mean that all of those legislatures were democratically elected. If the democratic process is subverted, which it totally has been, then you can't say you've got democracy.

Since the rest of your comment is based on the fallacious notion that we have democracy in America, it can be ignored. ERR_NO_DATA

And hey, guess what! Maybe those crusty hidebound taxi regulators weren't quite a stupid as the tech world (or the tech world's boosters) like to think.

The argument is not that they are stupid, it is that they are corrupt.

Because another key to Uber's business model was convincing its drivers to ignore how freaking expensive it is to operate a vehicle as a taxi for any length of time, and to accept remuneration below the (total depreciation of the vehicle + hourly wage).

That's not anything Uber's done, though. They're simply taking advantage of the fact that the American economy is in the toilet, and rapidly circling the bowl and heading for the drain. Actual unemployment is at levels not seen since the great depression. The numbers are a lie as usual, but the particular nature of the numbers make them a bigger lie now than that usual state of affairs; since people drop off the statistics when they are no longer eligible to collect unemployment benefits. When people are so unemployed that the state has given up on helping them, they are no longer counted as unemployed. In an environment like this, are you surprised that people are willing to work for less than minimum wage? When there are no minimum wage jobs left, they will go looking for something even lower.

And speaking of lower, Some of these people are actually sleeping in their Uber car. It's not just a car loan, and a car in which to do business. It's a home.

TL;DR: I do not think you have any notion of just how bad things are in the USA right now.

Apple is already buying cobalt directly from miners to secure their own supplies for batteries.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundi...

http://www.capoliticalreview.c...

India has 50 GWs worth of coal plants in the construction queue, which I guess could be classified as a big effort, though it is in the wrong direction. They also have a bunch of unused coal capacity due to lack of sufficient distribution lines to get the energy to consumers. Once the wires are in place, guess what will happen to their coal consumption, and thus CO2 emissions?

Power producers have canceled some coal-fired projects as existing plants fail to sell all the electricity they can produce. Nearly 40 percent of the country’s coal-based capacity is unused because the core customers -- state-managed distribution companies -- struggle to increase purchases in the face of massive debts and losses through electricity theft, insufficient metering and selling power below cost.

Last year I heard Trump was Hitler and going to start up concentration camps, now Democrats want us to disarm.

Let's be clear: if there's any situation where who has guns matters, the Democrats will have already lost since they have far fewer weapons and far less understanding of them (witness for example the repeated statements about "assault weapons" like it is a real category of weapon).

As for climate change? They may "believe" two different things but they both live the same lifestyles. Show me how much you "believe" in climate change by how you live, not how you vote. I don't give a fuck what some dickhead says about CO2 emissions if they're driving a SUV, living in a large house and eating meat.

I agree that lifestyle changes are important. I don't own a car and use public transit for that reason, and while my wife and I aren't 100% vegetarians, our house is vegetarian- pretty much the only times we ever meat is on occasion when visiting a friend or relative. But even given that, lifestyle changes aren't the only thing that matters the Democrats generally favor policy differences that will matter. For example, both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton favored large-scale programs to increase solar and wind power as well as more use of electric cars, whereas we now have a President who has the stated goal of "bringing back coal" even in a country where there are already far more people employed in renewable energies than with coal http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-solar-power-employs-more-people-more-oil-coal-gas-combined-donald-trump-green-energy-fossil-fuels-a7541971.html, and where coal is being largely beaten down not just by renewable energy sources but also largely because natural gas is so cheap. And coal isn't the only example of this: Trump has actively encouraged further oil drilling off the coast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-11/trump-is-said-to-open-door-for-oil-drilling-off-u-s-east-coast (although not off of Florida because he and the governor there get along well apparently https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-says-no-drilling-off-florida-coast/2018/01/09/91981160-f5a8-11e7-a9e3-ab18ce41436a_story.html?utm_term=.7322b1e2b3b5 when we shouldn't be producing more oil in general.

Yes, the Democrats aren't perfect. Yes, some of them are pretty hypocritical. That doesn't stop them from being a far, far better option on climate issues.

I have been a pharmacist for many years.

Pharmaceutical companies funding fake scientific journals to create the "look and feel of a peer-reviewed publication to serve as a marketing tool" or to elicit favorable study results is a far more common problem then you think...

https://www.the-scientist.com/...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Physicians prescribing medications because they are getting kickbacks from the pharmaceutics companies is nothing new either...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

And hell, your prescription coverage employs a formulary that is driven just as choosing drugs because they provide cost savings as it is by scientific data showing greater efficacy.

Science isn't magic but neither are scientists omnipotent grand wizards fighting for the side of good. They are just as corruptible as anyone else on this planet. Corporations are still driven by profit above all other concerns, even ones that are staffed by research scientists.

Blind faith in "science" (technology) is just as dangerous, if not more so, then blind faith in religion. Skepticism is a cornerstone of scientific inquiry. If you aren't practicing it, your doing it wrong.

The three suppliers who spoke to Bloomberg estimated Congo’s artisanal output at 10,000 to 20,000 tons last year.

Congo’s Ministry of Mines estimates 86,923 tons of cobalt was produced last year. There are no exact data on how much of that cobalt is produced at artisanal mines, but the figure is about 13,000 tons higher than the output reported by the country’s industrial operators and published by the chamber of mines this month.

Two-thirds of the world’s supply comes from Congo

Math: ((10000 + 20000) / 2) / (86923 / (2/3)) = 11,5% of the world supply from artisinal mines.

Most artisinal mines are just villages digging their own land to try to get some extra income to lift themselves out of the country's crippling poverty (as the wealth from the big mines has failed to trickle down to ordinary people). But some percentage of artisinal mines will be abusive; call that fraction P. So P * 0,115 = will be the fraction of the global supply that is troublesome and needs to be dealt with. Dealing with it, however, is difficult when there's so much profit to be had by unscrupulous suppliers slipping artisinal cobalt into their supply streams.

Of course, it's not present production that matters. It's future production. Where's that coming from? In the short term, there will be even more from the DRC - albeit in new large mines. Katanga just reopened. 2018 production is anticipated at 11k tonnes per year, and 34k tonnes per year in 2019. Also, Metalkol will start production late this year, ramping up to 14k tonnes per year by 2019.

In the longer term, however production looks to be moving away from the DRC. While cobalt deposits are crazy-abundant in the DRC (cobalt prices could fall to near zero and they'd still produce it as a byproduct of their copper production), today's prices support production all over the world. Eg., in Australia the Skoni project will start in the 2020s, while among the many plays in Canada, First Cobalt is the most interest (near the aptly named town of Cobalt). But it's not just new mines; a lot will be from adding secondary recovery streams to existing mines, like the $500M Vale nickel mine at Voisey’s Bay. Cobalt can be found pretty much everywhere that nickel and copper can be found , but most mines haven't bothered recovering it because of how cheaply it's been coming out of the DRC. But while that will meet short-term demand, the long term is to focus more on mining "cobalt for cobalt's sake", rather than simply as a byproduct. And that'll be the case until the supply curve catches up with the demand curve and prices slack off.

Even mines right "next door" to the Tesla Gigafactory, like Lovelock mine in Nevada, may be opening in a couple years. It's a boom time for the cobalt market.

Remember the days when the left were telling us the CIA/FBI/NSA were "Like totally something out of 1984, dude. They're coming for our weed and torrents and pretty soon we'll be living in a hellish dystopia. Edward Snowden is a hero for exposing their unconstitutional spying, and the Russians were great for giving him sanctuary out of the kindness of their hearts and in now way because they want his info. The 1980s are calling and they want their foreign policy back from Mitt Romney because everyone knows that Putin is our friend now. How dare you defend the CIA/NSA etc? Haven't you heard about COINTELPRO you bootlicker?".

It must have been so long ago, because now it's all changed. The FBI, CIA and NSA are all heroic for protecting us from Russian shills, you should check under the bed for Russians each night and Putin is Public Enemy Number 1 and anyone who questions any of that is clearly a Putin Shill, just like Trump.

Though, oddly enough according to the left Snowden is still heroic whistleblower, and totally not a Russian agent. And Assange has clearly been framed by the CIA and isn't just a fugitive rapist and nutcase. And Mitt Romney is clearly still wrong about Russia being a strategic threat, even though he actually agrees with the left.

And Trump is a Russian Shill even though US forces under his command have actually killed Russians on a battlefield in Syria

It's much more than just memes. Americans went on rallies organised by Russians.

That's true, including a "'Trump is NOT my President' rally in New York the week after the election and one in Charlotte, North Carolina, the following week."

So now, no Americans involved

News is still breaking today. This came out like ten minutes ago:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

This is an American who just plead guilty to helping the Russians with the identity fraud part of the conspiracy. He is now cooperating with the Mueller investigation.

When you say "no American involved", you should have said, "yet". Now we learn of the Americans involved.

You are the worst liar that has ever existed.

Don't try to flatter me.

Did anyone see this article in Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

It says the "worst case scenario" is preposterous.

"For example, the most extreme worst-case storyline assumes that by 2100 coal would grow to 94 percent of the world energy supply. In 2015, that figure was about 28 percent."

"One big problem with the amount of coal burning assumed by RCP8.5 is that there’s probably not enough extractable coal to make the scenario possible. “We don’t think it’s going to happen,” said Justin Ritchie, lead author of the University of British Columbia study and a Ph.D. candidate. “That’s extremely unlikely and also inconsistent with every year since the late 19th century.”

They make it practical for investors to 'park' their money into real estate and keep houses off the market.

Then allow rentals only in owner-occupied units.

And switch at least partially from property taxes to land value taxes in order to discourage banking of vacant land and end the reverse subsidy of suburban middle-class single-family homes at the expense of poor inner-city residents.

And if you're really concerned about home affordability, allow cities to upzone heavily trafficked residential streets (the ones you don't want your children to play on anyway) for multifamily homes in order to drive down home prices by flooding the housing market. You can further reduce rents by about $100-200 per month by abolishing minimum parking requirements.

These tax incentives are a Prisoner's dilemma. Each state does it because the other states do it, yet they would all be better off if no one did it. It would be a beneficial and legitimate use of the Commerce Clause for the federal government to just ban this economically damaging activity. It would be better and more fair for both states and businesses.

Better for who? The EU forced Ireland to charge Apple tax even though both Ireland and Apple had done a deal where Ireland wouldn't charge it.

The EU ruled it illegal state aid. The Irish government knew that if it was forced to tax Apple, Apple would start to look at other places to put its money.

Then of course Trump came along and took away the advantage for US firms to leave money overseas

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

If US companies don't get to save money by having cash overseas, they'll probably repatriate it and that would have happened regardless of what the EU decided. Still if the US had not have done that, it's possible that the EU forcing Ireland to have higher taxes than it wanted would have reduced tax revenue.

At some point you need to decide if you want to have Federal rules that stop regions cutting taxes, which will probably result in companies just setting up elsewhere. Or if you want to allow regions to do what they want which will result in some high tax, low economic activity areas and some low tax, high economic activity ones.

I.e. ironically the US is actually less Federalist than the EU when it comes to tax, and that is a good thing.

Look at it this way, You're an individual who normally charges $X per hour. You have no job, but people are offering $Y where Y is less than X. Do you take it? I'd say so long as as Y is above zero, the answer logically should be 'Yes'. And it's hard to claim that some company building a factory and employing 10,000 people is not going to bring in any revenue. Actually in this case it's more like 'they offered me $Y but the government set a minimum wage of $X so I couldn't accept'.

Don't worry Wisconsin is a Republican controlled state. As we all now Republicans are the party of low taxes, small government and restraint in state expenditure. We can therefore rely upon them to vote no to this vast expenditure of money from the state treasury on the grounds that it makes no sense from a business point of view, that it is an intolerable government interference in the workings of the free market and that it is not in harmony with their long treasured Republican ideals of small government and limiting expenditure from the state treasury. Sir, you may rely upon the Republicans to be the voice of reason in this matter.

There are different factions in the GOP. The one that believes in free trade and no subsidies has essentially lost out to a populist wing which wants to use tax and tariff policy to bring jobs back.

Will it work? Well it did for Apple - they were forced to pay US taxes on their offshore cash which convinced them to bring it onshore and invest it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

A mix of tighter controls on immigration, higher tariffs on imports, lower taxes on US companies and higher taxes on US companies overseas operations in low or no tax jurisdictions is being pursued. It's completely the opposite of the free market approach where you have open borders and low tariffs. Both sides aimed at having lower taxes. Trump cut corporate taxes massively and most individual taxes but not by as much as most Republicans would have wanted. That's because the plan had to be revenue neutral so it could be pushed through under reconciliation rules.

Still there have been studies that show that reducing corporate tax rates increase growth. E.g. this one of Canadian provincial governments

https://ntanet.org/NTJ/65/3/nt...

We examine the impact of the Canadian provincial governments' tax rates on economic growth using panel data covering the period 1977-2006. We fi nd that a higher provincial statutory corporate income tax rate is associated with lower private investment and slower economic growth. Our empirical estimates suggest that a 1 percentage point cut in the corporate tax rate is related to a 0.1-0.2 percentage point increase in the annual growth rate.

I.e. what Trump is doing is pretty different from standard small government Republican policy.

Stand down, there. You weren't conned into funding Bernie. Bernie was the better candidate in almost every way. We should vote for the better man. We should fund the better man.

There's fake news and there's problematic news. The bots will push both if they think either is useful, but that doesn't make problematic news fake news. The Democratic party really did shoot itself in the ass by intentionally hamstringing Bernie. If they hadn't for example delayed the debates (which are massively helpful for putting candidates on the map such that you start to look into what he/she candidate offers) Bernie's numbers would have been enough to win. If you look at his progress as a graph you can see he passes Clinton if the race goes on longer or starts earlier -- and the race really only gets started after the first debate, so delaying the debate made Clinton, who had more brand recognition at the outset, inevitable. And there's no way Trump could have beaten Bernie -- He was shown in multiple polls to be significantly further ahead of Trump than Clinton. (The polls had a systematic anti-Trump bias, but in a Trump vs. Bernie vs Clinton poll that would even out and so doesn't matter for these polls.) We have the Democratic party to thank for Trump.

So long as you didn't vote for Trump or stay home, you did the right thing.

As for your money needing to go to Hillary, it wasn't lack of money which kept her from winning. She outspent Trump almost 2 to 1. In large part it was HOW she was spending it. TV advertising costs a fortune, doesn't do much to move people, and is the primary expenditure for most campaigns (second to payroll for Clinton). It gets the most spending because the campaign folks who place the ads get a percentage back from the TV stations. It's TV spending that makes campaign folks rich. For numbers, look at these URLs: http://metrocosm.com/where-doe... and https://www.bloomberg.com/poli... In retrospect, it's clear she needed more legal staff to contest voter suppression and more ground staff to get people to the polls.

The politics of building offshore wind isn't much better. There will ALWAYS be people fighting any new development, and slowing (or, in the case of Cape Wind, killing) deployment of new power sources. So you might as well go "for the best" because going to a lower-grade solution won't relax the difficulties in the first place.

Thanks -- yes, let's hope for the best!

On poor quality clothing:
"Used clothes: Why is worldwide demand declining?"
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
"Manufacturers know that customers are more interested in low prices than durability, because they increasingly expect to wear their clothes just a few times and throw them away. "So the quality's not as good, so when our customers get [an item] they're not getting two or three hundred wears out of it - they know it's only going to be a couple of uses," he says. That means, according to Fee Gilfeather, head of marketing for Oxfam's trading division, "more [clothing] is getting incinerated than there used to be.""

Also on that:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view...
"For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing. In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing.
Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the secondhand trade. Without significant changes in the way that clothes are made and marketed, this could add up to an environmental disaster in the making."

I agree that we could be a lot happier with less stuff. It's an abundance mindset though -- to stop feeling the need to hoard.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors whose needs and desires were few relative to their skills and the abundance of nature relative to their populations lived more in that mindset of abundance:
http://www.primitivism.com/ori...
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times. ...
Above all. what about the world today? One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an [institution]. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger in. creases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied.
The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo."

For example:
http://marcinequenzer.com/crea... FIELD OF PLENTY
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physi

First, thank you for a rational reply, and not just snark.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin-whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market

http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

I would think that with ownership so concentrated -- 1,000 accounts hold 40% of all value -- with another 30-50% estimated to be lost and out of circulation, I question a psychological model based off of so few possible sample sets. That's just crazy.

Billions of dollars are at stake with the NFL. You think that is just going to evaporate?

Like it or not, the evaporation is well on it's way, to the point where NFL stadium are full of paying customers disguised as empty seats:

There were so many empty seats at the start of the Cowboys-Redskins game

Thursday’s game between the Redskins and Cowboys in Arlington kicked off in front of a mostly empty stadium. Reporters at the game certainly took notice.

That's one of the most heated rivalries in the entire NFL - by two teams that pretty much avoided the politics of the NFLs national anthem protests no less - and there were empty seats. Not only that, the Cowboys and Redskins are two of the most valuable NFL franchises because they both have large, rabid fan bases.

Used to be there wouldn't be an empty seat in any Cowboys-Redskins game no matter what the team's records were.

And TV networks are having to rebate ads because of missed ratings:

Fewer NFL Viewers Force TV Networks to Give Away Ads

Oh, yeah, that's from 2016 and it was worse in 2017.

They paid the $38 billion so they could bring offshore money back to the US where they intend to create 20,000 jobs. They'll spend $30 billion over five years doing it

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Apple Inc. said it will bring hundreds of billions of overseas dollars back to the U.S., pay about $38 billion in taxes on the money and spend tens of billions on domestic jobs, manufacturing and data centers in the coming years.

The iPhone maker plans capital expenditures of $30 billion in the U.S. over five years and will create 20,000 new jobs at existing sites and a new campus it intends to open. The Cupertino, California-based company's shares rose 1.7 percent to a record closing price of $179.10.

and if you look further down the total expenditure is much larger - around $200 billion

Apple has the largest offshore cash reserves of any U.S. company, with about $252 billion at the end of September, the most recently reported fiscal quarter. The tax rate indicates that Apple is likely bringing back a majority of its overseas cash back to the U.S., leaving only a small portion for international investments like retail stores.

"They're going to have well over $200 billion by the end of this year that will be available for incremental investments, capital returns and M&A," said Matthew Kanterman, a New York-based Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. The new tax law lets U.S. companies bring overseas cash reserves back home in one year and pay the resulting tax bill over eight years. "And Apple hasn't historically done big M&A," he said.

Five-Year Spending Plan

The $30 billion in capital expenditures will come as part of $350 billion that Apple expects to spend in the U.S. over the next five years. The 20,000 new jobs include additional Apple employees at its campuses, data centers, and retail stores, but not third-party developers for iPhone and Mac apps, an economy Apple has touted in the past.

Apple said that part of the $30 billion in capital expenditures will go toward a new U.S.-based campus, new data centers and additional supplier investments. The company, which opened a new headquarters in Cupertino last year, said its new U.S. site initially will be focused on employees who provide technical support to Apple product users. The new location, which Apple said it will announce later this year, will be similar to the company's existing campus in Austin, Texas, for supply-chain and technical-support employees.

Can This Tax Proposal Lure Companies and Cash Home?: QuickTake

Apple said it will increase its local manufacturing fund, announced last year, from $1 billion to $5 billion, indicating that it will be sourcing more components for its products domestically. As part of the original fund, Apple invested in Corning Inc. and Finisar Corp., companies that make components for iPhone glass screens and lasers for Face ID and AirPods, respectively.

Now as I have often pointed out Apple is not a charity but a fairly ruthless profit making entity that would slaughter its users and sell their organs if it could do so without causing expensive class action lawsuits that would make such a course of action unprofitable. It is therefore reasonable to think the Apple board expect to make substantially more than the $38 billion it lost in taxes by moving money on shore.

If Apple wanted to leave the money dormant it could leave it offshore. They're obviously bringing the money back to the US because they think they can sweat it more there as the Bloomberg article explains.

Apple also paid a one time $38 billion tax bill to bring overseas money back into the country. Where it will employ people and generate profits that are taxed

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

It's almost like reducing corporate tax rates increases economic activity and future tax revenues or something.

I couldn't agree more. My usual MO is to load a bunch of tabs in the background, in the expectation they'll be done downloading/rendering/jumping around before I open the tab. This way, I rarely have to wait for a webpage to finish loading, which is bliss. RAM and bandwidth are cheap enough that I can afford to have lots of background tabs, all fully rendered and waiting for me. This 'feature' would break that.

And while we're on the subject, look at this shit:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-31/facebook-really-wants-you-to-come-back

Load this page with Javashit turned off - you load the same 2-megabyte full-sized .GIF as you do with Javashit turned on. Because it's tagged as .lazy-img__image { ... filter: blur(5px); }

Fucking webdevs. Same bandwidth cost to end user and to the publisher; the only difference is that the site is intentionally degraded to people who don't enable Javashit in order to support the webdevs' lazy loading.