eudemonist
4mo ago
"Price tag attacks" seem to be a similar herring:
Such vandalism also embraces damaging the property, or injuring members of the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces....
The "price tag" concept and violence have been publicly rejected by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,[21][22] who have demanded that those responsible be brought to justice.
The settler leadership have "fiercely condemned" the price tag policy,[27] and the vast majority of Yesha rabbis have expressed their reservations about it.[28] According to Shin Bet, the vast majority of the settlers also reject such actions.
estimates of the extent of the perpetrator group vary: one figure calculates that from several hundred to about 3,000 people implement the price tag policy,[15] while a recent analysis sets the figure at a few dozen individuals, organized in small close-knit and well-organised cells[16] and backed by a few hundred right-wing activists.
eudemonist
1yr ago
They're not talking about something else, though. Did you read the full conversation? I just quoted that bit (and elided some) because I found Stepho's pulling out a dictionary and President Obama's swift about-face on "words have a meaning" amusing. But prior to that bit, it's quite clear they're discussing a penalty (Shared Responsibility Payment, "responsibility" being the buzzword) for not buying insurance:
STEPHANOPOULOS: ...during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't. How is that not a tax?
OBAMA: (evasion evasion)... we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's...
STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.
OBAMA: No. That's not true, George.
You're correct that in 2012 SCOTUS ruled the penalty (which is what makes the purchase a "mandate" rather than a friendly request) a tax--it's the only way Congress has power to impose such a thing. It's simply amusing because of how hard the administration has pushed "it's not a tax!", then subsequently had to go to court and argue it was a tax.
eudemonist
1yr ago
essentially no one thought of as a "tax."
Wait, what? Who thought that? My sense is that everyone knew it was a tax, but that label had been avoided by proponents of the bill.
It sure felt a lot like a tax, given that it was a box to check or uncheck when filing a federal tax return which changed the amount of the check one had to write to the treasury.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Are you an auditor? What you did with the names would be referred to as "vouching": taking a sample from your population and finding the source documents for those in the sample, to verify management's assertion that those transactions actually exist.
eudemonist
3mo ago
No law is perfect to the letter. The spirit of the rules would certainly prohibit backhanded insinuations via second helpings just as it prevents backhanded compliments--in fact I'd argue that clause does cover such a situation in letter, but that is debatable. Nonetheless, calling someone fat isn't okay just because you don't use the word fat.
eudemonist
11mo ago
Is there any reason to think one of the numbers is more accurate than the other?
Absolutely! They can't both be accurate, and the odds of them being equally inaccurate are small, s it seems likely one is more accurate than the other.
Which is which, now, that's a toughie.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Let the rabbits wear glasses condoms!
eudemonist
1yr ago
- Inflation is defined as an increase in the general price level.
I think you get off to a bad start here. Changes to prices are not necessarily a result of inflation/deflation, but rather a change in the relative availability of Dollars vs Goods. An increase/decrease in the availability of dollars (inflation) affects prices, but so does a lot of other stuff that isn't inflation.
If, for example, there's a drought and the grain harvest is half of what it usually would be (moving the Supply Curve for grain to the left), grain (and thereby bread, beer, beer, and fuel prices) rise, that's not really inflation per se; conversely, if a new process comes about which enables greater production at the same cost, prices will fall without deflation occurring as competitors
By the same token, if we write in a 0 after the numbers on all our accounts so that everyone has ten times as many dollars, prices will rise without any change in the actual cost of producing a bushel of wheat. THIS is inflation.
Consider the case where the fed wants to create deflation:
There really is no such case as regards actual deflation. As you mentioned, it mostly relates to the velocity of money: if my money will be worth more tomorrow, I have incentive to hold it instead of spend or invest it. Shoving it under my mattress incurs zero risk and zero costs, and makes me MORE WEALTHY tomorrow, without having done anything or accepted any risk. (Imagine the whole country does this, and the money supply shrinks as the Fed lowers the money supply--has anybody actually gotten any wealthier, or created any value, by holding cash? Nah.) If someone can make money with no effort and no risk, they're gonna, because that simply doesn't happen in nature. So everybody waits and demand falls even further because nobody is buying. This is a problem. And we haven't even talked about lending or international trade...
It's a truism of life that all things decay, and that you can't get somethin' for nothin'. In a deflationary environment, my money grows by sticking it under a mattress, a zero-risk zero-cost "getting something". If ya don't "work", ya don't "eat"--doesn't matter if you're a bee, a tree, a human, or a dollar.
The current system IS prejudiced, but the prejudice is toward people who pay their debts on time. This correlates to wealthiness, but isn't necessarily causative. Paying small amounts on time gives one preference when borrowing larger amounts, and leveraging larger amounts is how people get wealthy.
eudemonist
3mo ago
Interesting take. Nonetheless, we should acknowledge that the letter of the law prohibits implied insults, does it not? One such insult is illustrated, but it seems obvious there are innumerable forms such an insult could take. So we are left with two propositions: either the clause applies to all such implications, or it applies specifically and only to compliments given directly to an individual directly and exempts other forms of breach not specifically mentioned. The latter would support your premise of "secretly evil", I suppose, but it makes me wonder why outlaw backhanded compliments in one specific use case, and not outlaw, for example, complimenting the horse fatty rides riding for its perseverance? Is it that complimenting the mount is less obvious somehow? I think not. Thus I'm forced to believe implied insults, of whatever form, are prohibited by the letter of the law.
Although the question of the spirit of the law seems moot, given the explicit callouts in the text, I'm curious if there are other laws which you believe have a spirit diametrically opposed to their text? If we want people to stop at a given intersection, should we install Yield signs, or no signs? I don't quite understand how this works.
eudemonist
4mo ago
For a partial example, you can look at the Texas electrical grid...
I live just outside Houston, so I don't need to look very far. Unfortunately the Valentine Vortex would absolutely pale in comparison, I'm afraid.
Much overlooked in the interconnect and renewables conversation is the systemic nature of certain failure modes of solar, I feel like. Much like the 2008 financial crisis, where the odds of one mortgage failing were slim, but if it happened no big deal, one wind or solar farm underproducing or going offline is no big deal--but each one that is offline increases the chances of another being offline. If, say, all the solar in Texas suddenly has difficulty producing, it's highly likely that whatever the cause is stretches beyond Texas borders, be it weather pattern disturbances or atmospheric conditions or whatever, which sets up catastrophic and cascading failures. Interconnection advocates discussing the VV often gloss over the fact that neighbor grids didn't have power to spare either.
eudemonist
8mo ago
Okay, not missing one then. I suppose I just don't know Hobbes well enough to understand what hole in the discourse you're referring to.
eudemonist
9mo ago
Sure, and many of the early Levittown suburbs were built this way, effectively on a production line. Why did we stop doing it?
We didn't, really. We upgraded a bit to where there are a handful of floor plans and some modularity, but the vast majority of new developments are cookie-cutter repetitions of their neighbors, pre-cut and packaged, to be assembled simply.
eudemonist
11mo ago
I tried that fest and got a 49, pretty well below the bar. I got some points for not using a lot of movie or television quotes in my daily conversation, which I found odd. An online test at Clinical Partners was also pretty sure I'm not autistic. I wonder if it's simply my online persona: I do tend to care about details.
To me, though, details matter: in this case, the detail that
1, Yes, plenty of people claimed it was a tax from the get-go, and
B. Democrats swore up one wall and down the other it wasn't, and the President, ridiculed people for "making up words", then when shown the word in the dictionary ridiculed more instead of addressing the argument.
It was signature, huge legislation passed while wilfully deceiving the American public. I don't see it as an "autistic" or irrelevant detail at all.
the "it's a tax" argument was widely regarded as pretextual at best.
Again I'm gonna have to differ here, and I think the Stephanopoulos interview bears me out. George brought out a dictionary and Obama handwaved away the meaning of "tax", for gosh sake.
was up to my eyeballs in debates (mostly with other lawyers) about this issue at the time and I just never encountered a serious and well-developed claim that the question turned on "it's a tax."
What question, precisely? "Can Congress make people pay this" or "Is a penalty for inaction constitutional"? Because, if it's the latter, your lawyer friends missed the forest for the trees, I'd say.
this is all a weirdly autistic tangent
You know, I seem to be called/implied to be autistic fairly frequently online. Maybe I should get checked or something. Is there a test? To me, if it was important enough for you to use as a point in your post, it's important enough to warrant accuracy, or further exploration if needed. If we retcon the shit out of history, we can't learn much from it.
eudemonist
11mo ago
Would you agree it's an arrangement or agreement or deal between parties? What would you call it?
eudemonist
1yr ago
Out of curiosity, any Mottizens play Herzog Zwei on Genesis? I feel this crowd may have.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Ah, very cool. Sampling is a big part of auditing, as is directionality: vouching, for example, goes from final answer back to source documents, while tracing works the other way, from source to final, in order to verify existence and completeness respectively.
General auditing is directed more toward finding error than fraud, but forensic stuff interests me quite a bit.
eudemonist
1yr ago
From an accounting standpoint, depreciation expense would be the most likely way to offset income for an operation with multiple real properties, coupled of course with under-table cash deals and write offs of questionable "business" expenses. With an array of properties and investment backing, it's easy to grow the company, bring home plenty of dollars, and still be "zero income".
eudemonist
1yr ago
Many of the metal musicians in my hometown came to know each other through playing together at church, oddly enough. That doesn't make them not atheist, of course, but just a fun tidbit I felt like sharing.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Rarely is it mentioned that Shokin was then replaced with a prosecutor who dropped those prosecutions entirely.
Gotcha, I'll edit that--I wasn't clear on that detail, thank you!
I very much agree it was "assholes gonna asshole", for sure. But the guy was already standing outside when the Jeep pulled onto the street, before knowing what color of kids were coming to TP his house, so I have a hard time attributing it to racial bias.
eudemonist
11mo ago
Please give the Urban Pioneers a spin: https://youtube.com/watch?v=exykZ5Cfuso
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_md8hhW9khqUen3RVFkurQfLJO01d2CQoI
eudemonist
1yr ago
Would you agree that borrowing a library book is a type of contract one enters into with the library?
eudemonist
1yr ago
Yeah, I agree with everything you've said here. "Multiple genes could likely prejudice toward ideologies" is a better way to put it than "liberal gene", with the relative strength of that prejudice tough to decouple.
Those are the same bucket. Hispanic isn't considered a race (anymore); most Hispanics are actually white.
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