DMac87
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6 years ago
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on: Teaching College-Level Mathematics in Prisons [pdf]
DMac87
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6 years ago
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on: Some tea bags may shed billions of microplastics per cup
This. How does one tell whether this affects a particular brand or not?
DMac87
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7 years ago
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on: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat
Even more obviously absurd: 15 million animals saved is how many per employee?
DMac87
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8 years ago
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on: Uber, Mired in Corporate Scandals, Sees Uptick in Bookings
Decreasing the company's cost of equity capital...
DMac87
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9 years ago
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on: Changing San Francisco is foreseen as a haven for wealthy and childless (1981)
Also, the city allows buyers to take what used to be a family home (e.g. 4-5 bedrooms), tear it down and put up a 1-2 bedroom house (more modern, more amenities, e.g. garage, sauna, etc). Why policymakers allow this if they believe there's a supply problem is beyond me - on my block the number of bedrooms has gone down by about a quarter in the last few years as a result...
DMac87
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9 years ago
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on: Wall Street's Frantic Push to Hire Coders
The issue is that the same argument made for programmers can be made for back office & middle office as well, which when added up are much more than 1000 programmers. I agree that the bonus:salary ratio should increase drastically for trading/sales vs other roles, but for corporate culture/uniformity and practical business (need to quickly reduce costs) reasons it's done this way to some degree.
DMac87
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9 years ago
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on: Wall Street's Frantic Push to Hire Coders
It makes sense when you think about their business - because banks are extremely pro-cyclical, they need an 'out' to reduce compensation when their profits blowup or economy turns. Easiest and quickest to drop bonuses.
DMac87
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9 years ago
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on: Senator Elizabeth Warren joins call for Airbnb probe
Isn't this effectively what, e.g., San Francisco is doing - once you rent out for X days, you face more burdensome requirements?
DMac87
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9 years ago
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on: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy
Yeah, I'd imagine the founding fathers would see today's voting populace as quite educated, relative to theirs...
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: Warren Buffett: “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich” (2011)
Any tax on wealth would have similar effects: You own a business with notional value $2M? Pay X% of that each year, whether or not the business generates that amount in cash. You are a retiree with $2M in CDs or bonds, generating your retirement income? Pay taxes on the capital before you feed/clothe yourself. Etc, etc. Yes, property taxes may impact the middle- or non-1%-upper-class more than a wealth tax, and [a modest degree of] shelter is a basic human need, but market-based property taxes are significantly easier to implement (how to value privately-held businesses? how to deal with offshore assets?). Perhaps good + implementable > perfect + unachievable.
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: Warren Buffett: “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich” (2011)
How about starting by taxing many people's main part of wealth, their house, at market value (i.e. no Prop 13)? Let's not let perfect get in the way of good..
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: My Take on FBI's “Alternative” Method
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: RegData: A database quantifying federal regulation by industry over time
How so? I understand that doing research on regulation is by its nature political, but that doesn't mean 'ideology driven'. For instance, you may argue from this data that Obama is the most-regulating president in history. Or, as some researchers have done, you may argue that regulation hasn't killed dynamism (see work by Goldschlag and Tabarrok). Data is data, what you do with it may be ideological or not...
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: Google Raids Threaten Canada's Lead in Artificial Intelligence
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: Unit Economics
This doesn't seem that unreasonable - weren't/aren't medallions over $1M in NYC, which is a factor more expensive than labor, fuel, or maintenance of a vehicle...
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: Quantitative Economic Modeling in Python and Julia
"Solving Problem X" is not an exciting headline if the community is aware that Problem X has already been solved. The point is that the community may not be aware that tool/approach Y can solve problem X, and might want to see how it is done, to learn about Y, and consider how Y is better/worse than existing tools/approaches.
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: Captain401 (YC S15) Wants to Make Creating a 401k Easier for Businesses
My understanding was that employers have fiduciary obligations to their employees when they setup a 401k plan - does offloading 401k administration remove those obligations or transfer them to Captain401?
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: ‘Flash Boys’ Programmer in Goldman Case Prevails Second Time
Really? Someone who worked at GS probably wouldn't refer to it as "Goldman's"... just sayin'
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: Toronto Condos: Should you rent or buy?
1. RRSP & TFSAs have limits much lower than the assumed contributions, so there are tax differences between the two alternatives.
2. Even slight tweaks to your assumptions (e.g. reduce investment returns to 6%, increase condo returns to 2%) equalize the two scenarios. If you're going to use such an ill-conditioned model, you really must spend significantly more time justifying all of its assumptions, or else show sensitivities to them.
DMac87
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10 years ago
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on: Toronto Condos: Should you rent or buy?
The assumptions made by the author are ridiculous, namely:
- In the 10-year comparison, rents paid are not factored in at all.
- In the forward-looking comparison, condo prices are assumed to be flat, mortgage rates go up (why? can't they be locked in now?), while equity prices go up 6-8% per year
- Taxes are not factored in at all - capital gains on a primary residence are tax-free, while investment gains will be taxable (eventually, even if buy-and-hold)
- Mortgages allow an effective leveraged investment on home equity, so your gains (and losses!) on home values are magnified
It's a worthwhile debate, and there are merits on both sides, but such blatant bias has to be pointed out.
Also: in the US, unlike Canada, there are tax benefits for a mortgage...
