RichardGibbons

Strangely, the outcome with this virus has made me more optimistic. The fact that we've been able to create a vaccine in 10 months is impressive, and gives me confidence that we could deal with an equally contagious disease with higher fatality levels. That's a pretty great realization. And, I've got to say, Trump deserves some credit for the fast vaccine. By minimizing the impact of the disease, discouraging people from wearing masks and other preventative measures, and generally helping the virus along, he's helped the number of cases to explode. Without that massive number of new infections, Phase 3 trials would've taken far longer-- to determine whether a vaccine is working, you need people to catch the disease, and he did his part to achieve that. So, credit where credit is due.

I don't know--perhaps. It sounds like a lot of stuff happens in the military while under supervision that isn't supposed to happen. So, is this disease that appears not to be taken seriously by young Americans the exception? And in any case, they weren't under supervision at home, nor on the trip back to the base. If I were to pick the groups that would likely have the among the infection rate for this disease under self-enforced quarantine, American Marines would be one of those groups. (Well, demented people would be worse. But individualistic, fit, testosterone-filled young men who think they're immortal would be next.)

I'm saying that you can instruct young American men to do something, but that doesn't mean that they'll do it.

I'm not sure there's actually new information here--basically a significant percentage of young Americans don't care about quarantines. Or, you could say the average American marine recruit is less disciplined than most New Zealand civilians. :)

Fair point.

And income mobility is better achieved through more regulations, more license, more barriers to entry, higher taxes, and more red tape? This is a very odd response to what I said. I was talking about income mobility, and you suddenly seem to believe that everything the government does is therefore about income mobility. (It isn't, you know. When the government prevents people from discarding cyanide into your drinking water, they're not doing so to increase income mobility.) That said, some government policies can help income mobility and some government policies can hurt it. Generally, America's pretty terrible at income mobility compared to almost all other western countries. I think it's a major contributor to the completely messed up political situation America is in right now. (If you like, read that to mean, "the rise of AOC" rather than "the rise of Trump". It's the opposite sides of the same "no income mobility" coin.)

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.

I think a couple other advantages of inequality are: a) You can occasionally get the super-rich building second businesses that no reasonable, non-super-rich person would be able to do, but end up benefit society as a whole. e.g. I don't think one would be able to purchase a mass-market electric car today if Elon Musk didn't exist. There are certain valuable things to society that can't be created by committees (i.e. governments) or rational profit-seeking corporations, but rather have to be attempted by risk-seeking super-rich maniacs looking to mess around. b) Better, innovative management of big companies. I think almost all the super-rich are super-rich because they grew a company successfully. If you take away their wealth, you're effectively taking away ownership and control of that company, and innovative management of some companies can benefit society a lot. (e.g. compare Apple with and without Steve Jobs, and the benefits society has received when he has been in charge vs. not in charge.)

If the inclusion rate is increased, I don't consider this the highest probability scenario. To my recollection, when the capital gains rate changed in the past, the rate change typically took effect the day after the budget was released, not the day the budget bill was approved through royal asset.

Yep. Anyone who understands how options work recognizes that if one could reliably predict the market even two weeks out, one could become unbelievably rich in a couple years. So, pretty well everyone sensible who's thought about it has low confidence even in their own short-term predictions, let alone others'.

I'm pretty sure you're trying to insult me, but I can't quite figure it out. Good luck, orthopa.

While the broad rhetoric of this post doesn't make much sense to me, this is a fantastic idea. Does anyone know if there's some way to get something like "excess business deaths"? That would certainly be a useful data point. I'm guessing it might not be possible because when businesses die, there's not nearly the same amount of rigor involved in documenting that bankruptcy as we would with a human death. Maybe we can get approximate numbers at the end of 2021 based on 2020 tax filings? Any other ideas or anything I'm missing?

For me, this one totally resonates, which makes me think that the only people who should actually believe in conversion therapy are bisexuals. :)

This would be a neat experiment to run. I think for now, the countries that would best meet your criteria are probably Denmark for the former and Somalia for the latter.

Money is taxed when it is transferred between individuals. When someone dies, their money is transferred to a new individual. It's as reasonable to tax that money transfer as any other money transfer like wage payments, capital gains, revenue. Plus, if you're actually going to use the word "entitled", it's unclear to me why anyone is entitled to the money, since the only person who was actually entitled to the money is dead.

Yeah, I agree. I think the real challenge is to make the wealth redistribution better, without killing the incentives that lead to the massive wealth generation. As of the last few years, I've been leaning toward "massive death taxes". Like, you can get as rich as you like, but when you die, your kids are only at the 99th percentile of wealth, but not 99.1th percentile.

I don't think it's a matter of whether rich people can afford it. It's a question of what's optimal for the country long term. The evidence suggests that Investor20's points are correct: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/0dc035df-5637-4f47-84cf-c9f0a304f395/optimal-capital-gains-tax-policy--lessons-from-the-1970s-1980s-and-1990s.pdf https://www.iedm.org/sites/default/files/web/pub_files/cahier0218_en.pdf I think the stepped up in basis for capital gains taxation at death does make sense, as right now, that stepped up basis discourages people from moving capital into the investment with the highest future returns.

Hmm, Denmark vs Sweden. Why would anyone choose to just have Denmark's trashed economy when they can instead have Sweden's equally trashed economy and but also five times the death rate? (Note the grey dots, the Scandinavian countries that are the best comparatives for Sweden.) Like, is it really that important to Trump fans that a bunch of extra people die without actually improving the economy? And if you're going to say, we "we should be like that country", why wouldn't you just choose South Korea? A tiny death rate and a robust economy. What's not to like?

This is a very good point that I fear will be lost as a result of the politicalization of the pandemic (at least in North America. I'm not sure about other places.)

I try, but you're certainly better at it than I am. I do wonder if today, the divide isn't actually left vs. right but rather reasoned vs. ideological. And that the latter is in the ascent, effectively forcing people to decide which extremist position to take. Yeah, if feel like one of the things that's lost with this populism is the ability to change your mind when the evidence change. Like, on the face of things, that's clearly the sensible way to view the world, yet almost everyone seems to believe that changing your mind is a sign of weakness or hypocrisy. The populist issue is magnified by the fact that it's very hard for the population as a whole to change directions quickly. Plus, the fact that the public generally believes that their two weeks of reading online articles on a topic puts them roughly at par--or ahead of--people who have literally spent 8 hours a day, 200 days a year, for 20 years researching, analysing, and thinking about a topic. Yeah, I live roughly in the geographic center of Vancouver. That's interesting to me that people in the know are starting to view it that way, because I hadn't seen any reasons for optimism in the underlying numbers. It does make sense to me that if knock off causes one by one, it'll have an effect, and that the best way to fix drug addiction is to avoid becoming addicted in the first place.

Yeah, cigarbutt is one of the most impressive posters on here in his determination to remain fair and intellectually honest. It's quite admirable. If only a third of people were like him, the world would be in a much better place.

B. But my bearish view is based on a large amount of data points I track, not just based on COVID alone. Those data points led me to sell out in mid Feburary and I was feeling like a fool for two more weeks back then. Right now those data points look even more exaggerated than in Feb. However, I've been weighing the two scenarios since last night. Sector rotation vs everything crash. I start to lean against the case of a sector rotation right now. When AAPL, TSLA, SHOP etc go bust, traditional value stocks could have their day. People who bought AAPL and TSLA have never bothered to look at what happened in 2000. Cisco was the equivalent of AAPL and TSLA today. When Cisco went into bust, it went down 90% while traditional value stocks like BRK went up 100% Thanks Muscleman--given that premise, your point of view makes sense to me. Thanks for explaining it.

To me, your comment seems to imply that: A) you view the Fed much more influenced by COVID case numbers than employment numbers. Or perhaps, B) you believe that the COVID case numbers are so strongly correlated to the employment numbers so that they're basically the same thing (i.e. if COVID cases decline to zero, employment will quickly return to high levels). Or, C) the Fed cares a lot about asset bubbles and sees this one, so they'll reduce stimulus even if employment hasn't recovered. Is one of these views basically your position? Because the evidence I've seen seems to suggest that the Fed is likely to be reluctant to reduce stimulus until employment numbers return to levels that cause significant inflation. So, I'm curious if you think A, B, or C above is true, or if there's something else that I don't understand about your reasoning that will help bridge that gap for me. Thanks!

I'm not quite sure what you're disagreeing with 100%, since my view of "socialism + capitalism" is basically "basic medical + rich people can get extra/expedited service by paying". The key point is that 100% capitalism just doesn't work in healthcare, and that's pretty clear because the USA has way higher costs, the same or worse outcomes, large numbers of people having awful financial outcomes from as a result of bad luck, and perverse, grossly-suboptimal economic outcomes where people have to hold on to a particular job to maintain health insurance. It's basically indefensible. It's worth noting that I'm in Canada (a public system), and this year people in my family have had two surgeries, both done privately, one in a public hospital and one in a private clinic. I'm open to the idea of a hybrid system, and it seems plausible to me that that a hybrid system might be optimal.