Not really accurate. These chemicals are quite unreactive. Precursors from manufacturing waste can be very reactive, but most of the problematic contamination regards the forever chemicals themselves, not precursors. This paper is probably the best scientific review of what is going on in the human body. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...
Maybe sci-hub has a copy of the full paper. Not sure.
As briefly as possible, and therefore glossing over many many details, the toxic effects are mainly due to cell membrane perturbation, cell membrane transport disruption, and binding to hydrophobic protein cavities (thus disrupting the usual function of these cavities).
The budget wasn't appropriate regardless of tariffs. And OP's point is that 130B is a tiny number that no where near makes up for the loss in tax revenue from the very very stupid "OBBB".
You may be right, but the honesty has destroyed an insane amount of good will and privilege that the US previously enjoyed (deservedly or not). To throw that all away for literally no benefit is . . . not good.
If the OP had (incorrectly) rounded 130B to 200B, OP's point would have still been perfectly understandable and correct. Your odd quibble about rounding completely misses the point. Whooosh.
I am not in Russia, but I have friends in Russia and visit Russia once a year or so.
From what I see there is no visible economy problems in Russia. Yes, there are some temporary issues in some areas, but generally it's resolved promptly.
There is some decrease of real salary/price increase, but not that significant. Probably situation in EU is worse.
It looks like economic block of Russian government is really professional and know what to do. It's not typical for government in Russia ;)
Also it helps that people are locked in country by western countries, so many stays in country and drives the economy.
Russian unemployment of 2.2% is a bad sign, not a good sign.
For practical purposes, unemployment around 4% means full employment, because there's always a portion of the population not working for some reason: taking time off, too dumb, don't want to work, unable to for reasons of temperment or psychological health, etc. At 4% (as the US has often been in the last few decades) it's really difficult to fill menial roles or unskilled factory jobs with people who know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Russia at 2.2% means many needed positions are going unfulfilled, crippling productivity and planning. It's a sign that the manpower needs of the war are draining productive workers, slowing their own economy at a time when they need more productivity to overcome sanctions and other economic effects.
This number doesn’t take into account immigration. Russian economy is supported by several millions of immigrants from Central Asia (the number much bigger than number of mobilized people). There was low unemployment before the war.
correct. they've mostly shifted to a militarized economy and all available labor is now gobbled up.
salaries are pretty good, relatively speaking, if you're in engineering or other STEM fields.
excess labor is being drained off to die horribly to drones in eastern Ukraine.
it's kind of like a fat guy starving to death -- for a minute all that weight loss will bring improvements to blood pressure, insulin, etc., but in a couple weeks he's not gonna feel so great
Most of my comments on hacker news are to point out something incorrect or mischaracterized. All I can come up with here is that this is a brilliant and heartfelt and entertaining documentary. Thanks to OP for posting.
I agree with your overall point. But I find it odd that you consider sales taxes to be the "fairest". Similarly, I find it odd that you put "progressive" taxes in some tension with "fair" taxes. Folks in the highest income range arguably benefit the most from govt services (e.g., infrastructure, defense, R&D, rule of law). They also have a much higher ability to pay well beyond basic survival needs. And, they can reduce sales tax burden by saving versus consuming, a choice that is not available to lower-income.
I agree that a regressive tax like sales tax is not "fair" at all.
I had a coworker that argued for a flat tax—considered that fair. I explained that anything less than a progressive tax was going to make the poor pay more and the wealthy pay less. Really, that's fair?
You should be so lucky to have enough that you're in the highest tax bracket.
Yeah, I can't imagine somebody arguing in good faith that a flat tax is fair unless they are completely oblivious to the concept of the diminishing marginal utility of income.
A relatively high 'flat tax' might be palatable to the electorate as long as the first $85,000, give or take, was completely tax-free. People would only have to contribute once their own needs are met and they actually have something left over to contribute.
That’s progressive taxes. Consider that roughly the bottom 60% of Americans have no federal income tax liability, simply because they do not make enough. That 60% cannot meet their basic needs on their incomes, very roughly speaking. Any increase of taxes on them would be regressive.
It’s kind of progressive. Depends on how high the deductible is, it is definitely semi progressive. Tax bands would still be more progressive, it’s why someone making $50k is paying more state income tax in Alabama than they would in California.
Indeed. I should rephrase that I think it would be feasible to use propaganda/marketing to redefine what a "flat tax" is, and make the most popular definition one where the basic living wage is exempt and the "flat tax" only applies to the amount over that.
Through that confusion of language, it might then manage to be popular with both libertarians and progressives.
I believe everybody understands that a percentage means exactly that.
But if you account for minimum living expenses M, if you are under M, 30% of M is "more" than if you are at 10x M for the quality of your life. What scheme is "fair" is harder to figure out, though.
Yes, I object to that type of language too, but let's not ignore the context.
you literally said "cheap" and the comment said "cheap-er not cheap". I think the comment is correct and you are wrong. China is building the same design again and again and again. And it's still not cheap.
Doesn't really work that way. If you want to sue Abbot, then you have to reveal yourself. At which point, it will be clear that you were in fact using the product and did in fact agree to the ToS. If you never sue Abbot, then sure. But then it doesn't matter.
Gosh, they have statistics! By a man. A man from Goldman!
"I was quoted by a man from Goldman's in the mansion house, that in Hong Kong it cost them $70 to onboard a client. In the UK, it now costs them $10,000 to onboard a client just because of the regulation."
In the US about twenty years ago, there was a minor movement for a flat sales tax that would replace all other taxes. I lived in Georgia at the time, which was the epicenter of support for the idea. Proponents got themselves stuck in a metaphoric tarpit when they wouldn't accept that most people's way of calculating sales tax was different than what they promoted. At least in the US, if there's a 7% sales tax, it means if you buy something for a dollar, you pay seven cents in tax. Their flat sales tax would have been 30% using this method, but they wanted to promote it as being only 23% since $0.30 is 23% of $1.30.
I'm sure there were other reasons why it failed, but for the people I knew who supported it, claiming it to be a 23% sales tax instead of a 30% sales tax was a hill they were willing to let the whole thing die on (and it did die). Lots of people who casually supported it at first when they heard 23%, lost interest when it was clarified what that really meant. The difference between 23% and 30% isn't all that great but if you're going to overhaul the tax system, trust in those who are doing it is needed.
Laughing aloud at the thought of the average paycheck to paycheck consumerist blowing a gasket when they see a $24k tax bill for their $80k pickup truck.
Every time someone shares something it has to be new, otherwise it's not worthy of your attention? Couldn't you at least provide some constructive criticism why the argument falls short in your mind, instead of the sharing the first knee-jerky reaction that popped up in your head that just touches the surface?
> Couldn't you at least provide some constructive criticism why the argument falls short in your mind […]
For the flat tax, which is tax cut for the rich:
> This paper uses data from 18 OECD countries over the last five decades to estimate the causal effect of major tax cuts for the rich on income inequality, economic growth, and unemployment. First, we use a new encompassing measure of taxes on the rich to identify instances of major reduction in tax progressivity. Then, we look at the causal effect of these episodes on economic outcomes by applying a nonparametric generalization of the difference-in-differences indicator that implements Mahalanobis matching in panel data analysis. We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.
The quality of discourse on HN has been nearing the bottom of the barrel (read: mostly indistinguishable from Reddit) since the pandemic. It’s very rare these days to see citations or even arguments that explain personal reasoning. Just like Reddit and Facebook, commenters mostly write what they think or feel as if it were unyielding fact, and the most common denominator (read: boring, derivative, often oversimplified assumptions) rise to the top via the voting system.
> The quality of discourse on HN has been nearing the bottom of the barrel (read: mostly indistinguishable from Reddit) since the pandemic
That's very much not true, and it's also a tale as old as HN at this point. Since I started commenting on HN in 2010 sometime, the quality had stayed more or less the same, and hasn't drastically dropped in quality like Reddit has done as it grew. Also, the amount of comments that complain that HN is turning into Reddit seems to have stayed at the same level of frequency too, fwiw.
The constructive criticism is that this has been the economic policy of the US for the last 40 years.
It's been a disaster that's lead to wealth consolidation not seen since the gilded age while bringing back old terrible concepts (such as company towns [1]). It's wrecked the middle class.
The fact is, tax isn't what gets in the way of company growth and innovation. It shockingly is actually the opposite. When you have buybacks, low taxes, and easy mergers and acquisitions, it encourages companies to behave in manners not good for the company but good for the owners of the company. That means sending money to stock buybacks, buying out competition, suppressing wages, and cutting corners which overall kill quality. That's because the name of the game is capturing as much money as possible.
High tax and strong corporate regulations like we had in the 50s, 60s, and 70s changes the perspective of companies. If you give a company owner the choice to spend a dollar in taxes or spend it on employee benefits, they'll spend it on employee benefits. But leave a loophole for how they can circuitously capture that dollar for themselves and they'll do that every time.
The tax cut and deregulation era of Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden has been a trainwreck that has lead us right up to the problems we have today. Nothing is affordable and the unrestrained capitalism has made it more expensive than ever just to live with everything getting worse year over year.
This guy pretends like the economic policy he's proposing isn't what we've been running and that's why it's so laughable dumb.
Maybe sci-hub has a copy of the full paper. Not sure.
As briefly as possible, and therefore glossing over many many details, the toxic effects are mainly due to cell membrane perturbation, cell membrane transport disruption, and binding to hydrophobic protein cavities (thus disrupting the usual function of these cavities).
reply