DISQUS

Organizations have a cost structure that limits the deals that they can do.

Consider our host. He has 24 hours/day. To handle 2x as many companies as he does today, he has to do some combination of spend less time per company and spend less time doing other things.

Also, relative return (5x vs 10x) isn't the only consideration - absolute return also matters. For example, he can't afford to make 1000 $1 investments even if they all return $1000 one later.

How often do investors not answer the call for additional funds and what happens then? What if an investor called you today and said "I'm good for the next 10% or six months but beyond that I'm not so sure." (Yes, the answer probably depends on the age of the fund.)

Do you call from all investors the same way? What if an investor asked you to take (most of) their money earlier or later?

I think that the media industries lost when they weren't forced to choose between copyright protection and technical protection (DRM, encryption, magic monkeys). In other words, I think that a owner who claims copyright protection should not be able to use technical protection.

Yahoo says that it gets most of its revenue from outside the US.

There are at least two other things happening.
(1) The explainer is trying to communicate with someone else.
(2) The explainer is listening to the explanation.

(1) forces the explainer to look at the thing from a different angle. (2) lets the explainer see it from a different angle. (Most folks under-appreciate the latter, but try reading something that you've written and you'll be surprised at what you hear.)

> mention you probably wouldn't get laundry service, nanny care, restaurant dishes etc etc.

Sure you would - you'd just pay more. The fact that "cheap nannies for VCs" doesn't sound as good doesn't change the fact that that's what you're asking for.

We have lots of unemployed folk. Why should we keep them unemployed by importing low-skilled people.

I think that the US should make it easier to get more high-skilled immigrants, but that's a different issue than hard-laborers and household help.

> That they can make their homes, communities, and countries better by engaging in the modern world and taking advantage of the great equalizer that technology and freedom represents.

One big problem with the poverty causes terrorism argument is that the actual terrorists are well educated and fairly well off. (Osama is actually rich.) Many have lived in the West. They know what the modern world has to offer and they reject it.

I realize that you've got a lot invested in the "poverty causes terrorism" position, but what if it isn't actually true?

Fair enough.

One question though - are there any reasons one can prefer another candidate to Obama without being called a racist?

IMHO, this question is related to a "which service to use" issue that a lot of folks misunderstand. As Dave Winer points out, many folks prefer services that don't have lock-in. For example, the easier it is to get my data out, the more likely I am to put my data in.

How did Rev. Wright "stab" Obama in the back?

Wright didn't say anything different this week. He was saying the same things long before Obama chose him, over 20 years ago.

The betrayal is by Obama. He was completely happy with Wright's message as long as the association benefitted Obama. When the benefits stopped, Obama threw Wright under the bus.

Obama did the same thing the grandmother who raised him.

He'll to the same to the developer on trial in Chicago who has been funding him.

He'd throw his wife under the bus if she became inconvenient.

There's another biz here, analyzing ads for employers.

Trivial example - you can tell an employer that their ad looks like an ad for a $120k/year person. If you can tell them why, better still. (For the purposes of this analysis, you ignore any stated salary range.)

Bug Labs, while wonderful, is technology.

Govt technology projects, like other technology projects, rarely fail because of technology. They fail because of social problems.

Social problems are rarely solved by better technology.

> The guy in the house gets to stay there, and doesn't have to move out. He won't be making any profit on the deal for a long, long time, but at least he's not in the street telling his kids he's sorry.

Why should that guy be in the house instead of the guy who couldn't buy because he didn't lie on loan docs?

Right now, the second guy is still sitting in a rental. Or, he's living in an inadequate starter home. At the market clearing prices, he could buy.

Instead, you're going to tax him to protect a speculator. (Yes, these home owners are speculators.) You're going to keep him out of what he could otherwise afford.

Why?

> if you have no skin in the game, you will make bad choices

That's an interesting statement for someone who wants to protect people from the consequences of their decisions. After all, the topic of this post is how to save the skin of folks on both sides of bad mortgages from the previously agreed on consequences of bad mortgages.

If they can't lose what they invested, why should they vet their investments?

> And we will keep people as homeowners who have a vested interest in maintaining and improving their homes instead of putting them back into the rental market.

And we will keep those houses out of the hands of people who only buy what they can afford. It's unclear why that's a good thing.

Lenders and buyers both did these deals planning to make money, money that they were going to keep. Why shouldn't they take the whole loss?

If you insist on bailing someone out, how about folks whose investments took a hit even though they didn't buy what they couldn't afford or lend to such people?

> Other than tradition — why do I, someone many years outside of its target demographic, continue to care?

I don't know who you are, but I'm pretty sure that you're targetted by Disney. And, if you'd looked at your fellow guests, I'm pretty sure that you'd have seen lots of other people in your demographic.

For example, you probably saw a lot of DINKs.

What kind of person brings his spouse to one of these press conferences?

We can argue about whether Spitzer's crime is serious, but hiding behind his wife at every opportunity shows that his character is seriously lacking.

Hey - a strawman - I didn't say "tax the poor", I pointed out that the poor don't pay taxes and quite a few of the "not poor" don't pay either.

And, as far as "I was so poor", I've got you beat. (I've been a farm worker and my parents did it as migrants.)

This whole thing started with the assertion that "the rich" should pay more. We've since found out that the proposer doesn't know how much the rich currently pay and didn't know that they pay more now than they did during some supposedly better time. So much for the basis for the claim, but I digress.

We could probably arrange the tax system so all of the taxes were paid by the top 5%. Would that be good? If not, how about the top 10%? If not, how about the top 25%?

Why are these questions so hard to answer?

It's not just taxes paid, it's what we do with the money. If the vast majority of people don't pay taxes, are they likely to spend them effectively?

While there are multiple definitions of progressive, the Bush tax cuts made the system more progressive by all of them. (Never confuse tax rates with taxes paid.)

As to the "multiple definitions", I started by asking how the tax burden should be allocated. In a one-person, one-vote system, should we get all of the money from 25% of the population?

> i think people who can't make a living on their before tax income shouldn't be paying taxes

Good for you, but since they're not, it's unclear why you felt compelled to write that. (In fact, thanks to the EIC, many of them are paying negative tax rates.)

The Bush tax cuts increased the fraction of the population who pays no federal income taxes. (It was under half before. It's close to half if not over half now.) They also increased the share of federal income taxes paid by the affluent.

Never confuse tax rates with taxes paid.

The fact that the average house is approaching the 3k "luxury" supports my claim that 3k is not luxury but actually fairly typical.

I think that it's a good thing when a family can afford to move from an 1500sf trailer to a 3100sf house, even if that's not possible in urban america.

It's so easy to disprove my comment about the effect of the luxury tax on yachts that Steve didn't bother....

Do you really want to argue that very few recreational fishers use boats? Or, are you going to argue that the recreational fishers who use boats are affluent?

Do you really want to argue that the very rich won't buy boats and houses overseas? Or, are you going to argue that folks who buy timeshares are affluent?

Do you want to argue that massive taxes on non-commercial boats (most are small and cheap today) and vacation houses (which includes hunting cabins, tiimeshares, etc) won't reduce demand? If demand goes down, what happens to folks who make those things?

> one way or the other the affluent class has to take on more of the cost of the general welfare.

Even if that's true, it doesn't imply the tax policies advocated.

I'll retry my "income cohort" question. Would it be good if all of the cost of "general welfare" was paid for by 10% of the population? How about 5%?

I find that folks who argue for "more progressivity" generally don't know how much each income cohort actually pays. Feel free to prove me wrong, but remember, SS doesn't count because it's just time shifting for folks in the middle and a net benefit for folks on the bottom. (For folks on the top, it's a capped loss, which SS advocates believe is a good thing.)

If more taxes are good, as you claim, the good occurs when you pay more, regardless of what other people do.

I note that you ducked the progressivity question. The tax system is more progressive under Bush than it was under Clinton. Is it really good when most Americans don't pay for the federal govt? How about if all of the taxes were paid by 10% of the people?

We tried a luxury tax on yachts. It almost killed the domestic industry and the "fat cats" just bought overseas.

The "non commercial" boat tax will hit 10s of millions of folks. It will cripple the recreational fishing industry. Going after hunting cabins won't be nearly as destructive, but taking out timeshares (technically second homes) will do wonders for many people. (Newsflash - the folks who have the pricey vacation homes will just get them in other countries.)

And, outside of urban areas, 3k feet isn't luxury, it's what folks move to from trailers.

However, it's refreshing to see ignorance of or disdain for flyover America so openly stated.

> And I am happy to pay them.

What's been stopping you?

WRT Equity, what fraction of the total income tax burden should be paid by each income cohortt? (No, you don't get to count SS because the poor get that money back.) Right now, half of the folks don't pay anything and the lion's share is paid by the top 10%. Should they pay it all?

Boomers are going for Obama because he's their opportunity to vote for John Kennedy.

This is a nightmare for Sen Clinton. Governor Clinton won the presidency as Kennedy's successor. Now she has to run as the brains behind the sequel against a remake.

I'm willing to stipulate that all Andy's are bad people.

However, it's still true that Nick's chart omits govt programs that cost more than defense.

And, if you want to change the constitution, amend it. What? You don't trust Congress and the states? They are elected - what is your claim to power?