Just trying to get normies to understand that slot machines aren't "hot" and "due" for a jackpot because nobody has won recently is virtually impossible. Stats class is hard and people don't really trust what they've learned anyway. A huge portion of the public even believes in such a thing as a person having "good luck". It's nonsensical, tantamount to believing the god of fortune is going to intercede on your behalf, but people really do think this way.
Pretty sure the solution that US politicians will find will be to create new dollars out of thin air, so instead of increasing taxes they increase the money supply.
Of course this is going to increase prices, but then they can blame China / Russia / Iran whoever is the scapegoat at that time.
It would cause inflation, isn’t that sort of a tax on people who have more wealth than income? (Which includes people like retirees, so, I’m not saying this is a universally good thing).
> isn’t that sort of a tax on people who have more wealth
Classically, yes, particularly when that wealth is closer to productive capital. In modern economies, the rich also hold a lot of debt, which lets them benefit from inflation.
Theoretically yes, but in practice the wages of people already not making much have not tracked inflation and there's no reason to believe that they will now. That means any inflation is also a tax on them.
Poor people are hit a lot harder, but rich still have to pay capital gains on inflation even despite having no real change in value. So the rich pay inflation at the rate * 0.2. Poor pay it at the rate * 1.0 (5x the rate of the rich).
> rich still have to pay capital gains on inflation
“Pay” is doing a lot of work there. My house is half equity half debt. The debt gets to be paid off with inflated dollars. And I pay no capital gains on the appreciation. I can, however, tap it for liquidity if I need it.
Rich people don't tend to have a sizeable portion of their worth tied up in their primary residence (and even then, IIRC there is a cap on capital gains exception), otherwise property tax would turn into a wealth tax for them which obviously they want to avoid. Non-primary residences still require paying capital gains. The inflated value you paid off with debt for a non-primary residence still gets captured as capital gain in the end when you actually want to sell the house for money.
Oh, definitely. They could put the foot down and end this pointless charade swiftly. But if Google and Apple had the balls to go against the big media, the world would look very differently.
They are, in fact, the big media themselves now. They have the power, and more than enough of it. No streaming service can afford to skip having an app on iOS or Android - all Apple has to do is crack the whip. Say "this DRM is no longer compliant with our device policy and will be phased out by 2030" and there goes that.
But they still act like they're weird web teens who can't raise a voice against the big media boys without getting bullied for it.
That, or they believe this DRM charade serves them - and user experience can go suck a dick.
FYI Samsung was paid by MS to add DRM to the Galaxy devices ~2010. Source: I was part of the team that had to implement the customer-facing part, carrier billing integration and backend 4-way revshare accounting in zero time. Harder than it sounds, and probably never repeated since unless you're preloading it's against terms to introduce payments on Android. IIRC the real heroes were the Indian embedded engineers who were 10x better than the Koreans.
If tomorrow Claude pricing changes and they start charging real API costs like 2000+ USD, and there is another service: "NotReallyClaude" that is a bit less good but 200 USD, then what would you do ?
It's a short book giving obvious advice, that one needs to embrace change, using a metaphor of mice and cheese. It receives a lot of scorn for that, despite many needing to hear the message.
I'm ready to embrace change, however in this case no one cares. The cheese hasn't just been moved, it has been taken to another planet where us mice are not allowed to go.
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