Recent content by loseyourname

Steve McQueen and Richard Dawson Maybe Shatner but only once he's dead.

I lurk every now and again. Having some down time recently.

I tried to make phyllo dough a couple weeks ago and my food processor broke. Doing it with a blender was frickin' hard.

I met my first ex-wife at a writing workshop. Met my second ex-wife in grad school.

Why? I didn't say he should be taxed on unrealized capital gains. I don't realize most of my own capital gains in any given year and certainly don't want to be taxed on them, either. If it was up to me, there wouldn't be a capital gains tax or a corporate income tax at all (maybe keep the...

Berkshire-Hathaway has never paid a dividend. That's one of the reasons Buffett pays so small a percentage of his income in taxes. The vast bulk of his Haig-Simons income (consumption plus change in net worth) isn't even realized in a given year. It's not like he's selling class A shares all the...

This is like asking how a 22 year-old can be more like a 2-year old and the answer is he can't. Our challenge is to not become completely stagnant or even worse to collapse, but we're never going to see 10% annual GDP growth unless it's a recovery following a collapse.

There is nothing at all wrong with applying mathematics to economics. The issue with the accuracy of econometric models is a matter of paring down variables. It's very difficult to work with an equation that has several million independent variables, so we inevitably try to isolate those with...

Okay, I was apparently confused about that. I looked it up again and treaties can give the federal government authority to legislate in matters that would otherwise be the exclusive domain of the states according to the Constitution, but treaties cannot otherwise directly contradict the...

There is a far more fundamental problem with democratic government than that, namely that it's democratic. We gain representativeness and hopefully some level of protection of individual and minority liberties and degrade the ability of the government to become tyrannical, but at the expense of...

I wouldn't say their ability is very limited at all. The Fed is the entity doing the purchasing, so no, nobody else has to be willing to buy them until the Fed decides to reverse ship and dump these back on the market. But then it's a bid process and people can buy them as cheaply as the real...

Yeah, I didn't mean those are the only ways. Heck, I thought it was pretty clear I wasn't even advocating that. I was advocating means-testing. I just meant that Social Security with the current payout levels and retirement age and everything else will not remain solvent past two or three...

These things have always seemed a little murky to me. We're obviously a party to both NATO and the UN and international treaties are binding even above the Constitution. To just withdraw from a joint action is somewhat of a dereliction of duty, especially when it isn't costing us much in money...

No, they're not businesses. They're nonprofits given tax exemptions and eligibility for deductible donations for the specific purpose of advancing a social mission, not maximizing revenue or net income. I mean, unless you go to A Capella or Phoenix or some place that actually is a business.

Social Security will not stay solvent for more than a few decades given current trends unless the rate is raised or the cap on taxable income is raised. More to the point, Medicare might not remain solvent past this. I get that it's a separate component to the budget funded by its own dedicated...