Ahhhh, that was a typo. What they meant to say was “the Chinese government has a 95% approval rating among tankies!”

The real joke is that there’s no difference!

Terran vs Protoss. Flash (greatest Korean StarCraft player of all time) plays Terran.

PvP? No way, this is TvP! SK will just send Flash and Russia will be forced to gg immediately!

Why, mother, you are an odd fellow but you steam a good ham!

It’s woke not because of what’s in it, but why. It’s performative politics. Token ensemble casts. Empty signaling. It’s not meant to make the world a better place, it’s meant to make money. It’s like cheap pride merch at Walmart.

Yes, I have a whole basket full of towels. I use them all once and hang them up. After the basket is empty I wash them all

Doesn’t matter! Could get that thing NASA clean room levels of clean and I’m still not going to towel off my butt before my face. That’s just weird!

I do, but I still wouldn’t do that!

So you dry off your butt first and then your face with the same towel?

40yo single dude checking in. I think the government lost my assignment form!

I think in both cases you have a small and vocal minority within the group. Then you have the silent majority who never preach but just enjoy the lifestyle and the benefits it brings them.

Taxing profits just means the company will borrow from investors (by issuing bonds) and then instead of profits paying out as dividends the company shows losses from interest payments.

I would rather try land value taxes.

Putting a huge percentage of a company up for sale on the open market is going to tank the price no matter what the fundamentals are. It’s simple supply and demand: you’re putting a huge glut of supply on the market and not putting similar demand. All those sell orders will begin expiring as the offers drop in price.

The largest owner of shares putting everything on the market at once is strong signal that the stock is overpriced and so buyers will react accordingly.

By the way, TSLA has a P/E ratio in the 60’s so it’s not exactly a great deal anyway.

I’m neither defending nor attacking capitalism. I’m just pointing out that putting heavy taxes on illiquid assets leads to huge disruptions.

The increase in value of shares above book is called unrealized gains. They can be here today and gone tomorrow. Taxing makes no sense unless you’re going to reimburse the taxes if the shares drop in price.

Shares aren’t always given to you as a reward. If you are the sole founder of a company then you create the shares yourself and decide who to give (or sell) them to. If you choose not to take your company public on the stock market, then what your stake in the company is worth is unclear. Sure, the company may have assets (equipment, properties, resources) but that’s only the book value. The true market value of the company might be much higher.

Look at a software company. The software they create might never be sold, only used to provide services. The market value of the company could far exceed the book value of all the desks, chairs, computers, and other stuff the company has at the office. But you don’t really know that if the company never goes public. So how do you tax it?

if he were able to convert all of his $241.8B to cash

That’s the assumption everyone makes but it’s a false premise. If he tried to sell all his shares it would cause the stock price to collapse, his wealth would plummet, and his companies would be in jeopardy. Far from being able to give all of them $1.6M, they would all likely lose their jobs.

That’s also the issue with taxing them. If someone owns a billion dollar company (based on the price of their shares of stock) we call them a billionaire but they might not have very much money in cash (say a few million). Suppose we want to tax them 10% of their wealth: that’s $100 million! They don’t have enough cash to pay for that, so they have to sell shares, which causes the share price to go down, which negatively affects the company and the workers.

I think the issue is with how we view ownership of a business vs other things, like a yacht. The yacht can be sold to pay taxes and it won’t affect other people. The company cannot. In a lot of ways, the company isn’t just a possession of the owner, it’s a responsibility. These days I feel like we don’t talk enough about responsibility.

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I’m surprised no one has mentioned this: it’s a numbers game. It only takes a small number of cheaters to reach a critical mass where everyone is encountering them all the time. If only 1% of all players are cheaters and you play games against 10 people in one day, your chance of playing against at least one cheater is about 9.6% on that day. Play 10 players per day for a month (30 days) and your chance of meeting at least one cheater goes up to 95%.

Now consider the effects that cheaters have on the rest of the population: if people get frustrated by cheaters often enough they’re more likely to quit the game. Over time, this can cause the number of non-cheaters to go down, increasing the chances of everyone playing against cheaters. If cheaters are now up to 2% of the population then your chances of meeting at least one in a day (assuming 10 opponents again) rise to 18%.

Conclusion: Over a long enough time span the population of cheaters rises to 100%.

I switched from vim to emacs years ago. Then years later I switched back. Emacs is cool and all but it really killed my pinkie finger!

That’s a lot of lactose in human milk! You’re gonna have a bad time if you’re lactose intolerant!