FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

@mathias Anyhow, glad to see you back. Funny. I did not expect this Fediverse experiment to lead to feeling of a connection 🙂 , but here you go.

@mathias I did not hear from you since a very long time. Was your instance perhaps not federating itself properly?

@hellquist I really admire how much fun you get over time out of this single scene :-D.

@leah Schoen. Danke.

@piggo

Isn't that called "insert mode"?

@duponin

@piggo It's nice when again and again new generation discovers an old and almost forgotten technology which old farts use daily, but do not bother to blog about :-).

@timorl

Thanks for your response. I appreciate it. So let's get to the meat: _what exactly is the wealth to be taxed?_

* cash/money in bank, check
* real estate, check

But should I be taxed for owning a piece of paper which states that in 20 years I will inherit $20Mio (promisory note)? Or shall I be taxed for owning 50% shares of a company valued at €1Mio, while actually working as an employee director of that company which actually books loses year by year? It's not wealth I can anyhow use, but people would ascribe it as net worth to me. What's you take on this?

@jmw150 @freemo @ejg

@freemo Well, what is "extraordinary" is relative.

Anyhow, I do not know all the details of e.g., USA, but where I know how things work (EU mostly), transfers of shares between corporate entities are not taxed. Only when you convert those shares into money you get taxed either as revenue, or capital gains, or such. And here we speak about wealthy people owning primarily shares of companies which trade with the world.

@jlo

As I wrote in another comment to the original toot, the issue really is this:
* Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are on the record that they actually SHALL and WANT to pay more taxes. C.f., e.g., here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/2019/10/15/billionaires-more-taxes-gates-buffett-bloomberg/
* the thing is, their wealth is stored in shares, and other perfectly legal and practical constructions which serve a legal and positively pragmatic purpose
* even if they wanted to, they cannot just send an invented gift bill to the state. Even without tax optimisation tricks, they pay the max they can and it ends up being a paltry figure
* so it actually is the society/state which fails to extract the money from them
* and here we go with outrage at filthy rich billionaires.

Seriously, if somebody owns most of their wealth only on paper, how shall we tax them?

Personally I think it's the fault of the mid-level wealthy people (your usual backyard millionaires, which is maybe you, or your neighbour) who are blocking the right laws to be passed because they are afraid that their small nest egg will diminish.

@freemo @ejg

@freemo Actually there is another interesting angle on all this. Suppose everybody including those persons (Bezos, Buffet, et al) agrees that indeed they need to be taxed more (BTW, e.g., Buffet and Gates are on the record saying exactly that). Beyond certain level of wealth you cannot expect these people to have a savings account in a bank. So it's natural that they store their wealth in shares of companies, holdings, etc. So the question becomes: _How to create a tax setup which will cover these perfectly legal schemas?_ Or will we really force these people to own everything as a person?

@freemo @ejg I think the attitude to these issues really depends on cultural context. In the US obviously people think from their own perspective and if that society decides it's OK, it's OK for them. In EU and neighbouring countries the cultural view takes into account also the relationships of that wealth to everything else. You are having a house as a sovereign. The position is that the truly fundamental assets like land, air, water is owned by "the society" regardless of who currently has the right of use. Since your using the asset (house, land, what you have) has effect on the environment which belongs to all, the societies took the view that it's also fair to cover your share on costs your use of the asset create (access roads, pollution mitigation, water management, etc.). The view is that the more you own, the more you shall contribute to the society's wellfare.

From US perspective it might sound crazy, but in most EU countries people do not object that much and agree to pay their fair share. Different societies make different decisions, I personally do not see that there is any objectively "right" way to do this. Of course that view comes to its head when highly liquid financial assets are moved cross-border, etc. Hence the new corporate taxation ideas discussed at G7, etc. I personally this we indeed need to resolve this better than it is now. It will take time, but we'll get there.

@jlo

Yes, e.g., the Netherlands has that too. Over about €60k the government assumes that you had capital increase of 4% annual interest (whether that's true or not does not matter) and then tax you 30% of that (fictional) increase. Effectively it means 1.2% tax on capital wealth per year. That is, typically cash savings. In other EU countries, you have a tax applied directly on the interest you gain in the bank. But note, all these are taxing capital gains of a person when you had cash and then you receive interest in money too. If you own shares of a company worth $100 one year and $1Mio the next year, these "wealth" taxes are not touching that. And actually when we speak about Bezos, ro Buffet, we speak about their wealth stored mostly in their shares in various companies.

@freemo @ejg

@freemo @ejg I agree with what @freemo points out. People get outraged about how rich somebody is. And that is true. Except huge part of that wealth is only on paper in the fluctuating value of financial (and other assets). But nobody pays taxes over their net worth increases, we pay taxes from realised income.

Anyhow, these concepts have issues. For instance where I live, it can happen that you own say 50 shares of a startup (let it be 50%) which is worth 1000 bucks starting capital, then the next day investor comes along, buys another half for 1Mio bucks and the third day you have the tax office on your neck to pay taxes from a wealth increase (income) of 999k bucks, while all along your cash position did not change at all.

What I am trying to point out is this: Whenever people complain about rich people not paying tax on their wealth increases, the real question to them should be:
1. So how exactly will you legislate it so as not to harm everybody along the way?
2. And suppose if we all pay taxes even over wealth increases which are only on paper (because the stock you own or control went up due to market fluctuations, or geopolitics), what will we do when next year a person's net worth actually decreases? Will the tax office reimburse us, or what?

These are just headlines to cause outrage, nothing else. What actually helps is to tighten up the laws about income taxation and also classification what constitutes income and what does not. If e.g., Bezos has a salary of 1000 bucks and that's all he lives off, he shall pay taxes as a 1k income guy. But if he besides that lives in a house owned by Amazon Inc, drives a car owned by Amazon Inc. and flies Amazon-owned aircraft in his private capacity, then those effects should be counted as his income too. There are countries where this is sorted (at least on smaller scale) better.

@Mr_Teatime I think this would help you: https://superuser.com/questions/1027608/how-to-read-an-acsm-file-on-linux#1531009

I was looking at this recently too, but my personal outcomes are somewhat bleak:
* I tried and gave up on the Linux workflow eventually (I think I am a superuser, but my patience with wine crap is bounded - if after 1-2 hours of work it just fails and I have an alternative, I won't waste more time)
* I discovered that there are (at least) 2 types of epub books available: text-based which read well on various readers and then a bundle of bitmaps (jpegs) in ePub container. I discovered that the first one typically does not have DRM on it, the second type is most of the Adobe DRM.
* now the thing is this: reading the bitmap epub ebooks on smaller (6") ereaders is a pain. It simply does not have text reflow, so you need to zoom and pan all the time. Experience on a modern tablet is somewhat better, but still not great. That is, even when you can decrypt the Adobe DRM-ed ebook and load it on your ereader, the experience will suck, so you don't really want to do it.
* since text-based ebooks are not (in my experience) DRM protected, you can load them just like that.

Okay, from this rambling I hope you get the message: technically speaking there are ways how to make Adobe Digital Editions DRM stuff work on Linux and your little old ereader, BUT you don't want to do it (unless you are a tinkerer), because there are other important reasons why it will not lead to an enjoyable experience for you.

Either way you decide, good luck there!

@barefootstache @academicalnerd

There's another angle to all this. Since many years (you see, I am an old fart here :-) ), I use A4 hardcover paper notebooks. It's partly for reference (only mid-term, at most weeks retention), but primarily I need it to simply "integrate" the information I am taking in. I.e., I understand stuff better when I externalize it, i.e., either say aloud (impossible in a talk or a meeting), or write it down in words. I do not expect myself to refer back to that information. I only need to externalise in order to to "own it". For that, paper notebooks are ideal: no boot up time, freeform output, available anywhere (if you make it a habit of course).

@barefootstache Thanks for the tip. I am using @Voice Aloud Reader TTS since a couple of years. Works fine for me, not only for reading long-form web stuff, but also Gutenberg books.

As for listening at speed, I do not like it. The point is not how quickly I can "absorb" the information. I need to think. So the speed of thoughts about what is going on needs to match the flow of information. For fiction books, that can be faster than for fact-literature where I often need to slow down, take notes, or even rewind often.

@academicalnerd @namark It's not arbitrary man! It's a major result with vast practical implications on e.g., software development.

@piggo Your sample size is truly representative of me