I think the key point in the post was "If 'unrealized gains' can buy stuff-then they're realized. Tax them."
Essentially, because the unrealized gains held in their stocks could be realized through a loan, all of their capital gains should be considered for taxation.
As opposed to just the assets used as collateral, that is now effectively liquid, should be taxed as realized.
I personally think we should do everything we can to disincentivize wealth hoarding, even if it's an "unfair" or possibly somewhat broken system that does so, but it also doesn't seem feasible as a kind of legislation you could convince anyone in the government to enact, since they'll still be focusing on things like if it could possibly lead to a higher loss than the initial investment if they're taxed on the gains for years, but it drops low enough to wipe out all the value they paid in tax and their gains, even if the actual price is higher than the purchase price.
I personally think it's because a lot of people, to a degree, are still stuck in binary thinking.
Sure, they might acknowledge that gender is a spectrum, and people can identify anywhere on that spectrum, but they can often still perceive the underlying traits often associated to that gender as inherently tied to it.
So while someone might accept that trans girls exist, and are, in fact, girls, they might also carry with them the assumption that wanting your gender to be that of a girl means you also naturally want your body to replicate the stereotypical form of one.
It's sort of like a secondary wall that they have to break down. The first was regarding how gender itself is tied to identity, not solely to biological characteristics, but they've yet to break down the second of assuming that because you identify as something, you also want everything stereotypically considered to be a part of it.
I'm no expert, nor am I trans myself, so take this with a large grain of salt, but considering years ago, I once had similar inclinations before getting closer with various trans people I now know personally, this is the best explanation I can come up with.
Always demand a human support representative until it gives you the option to, then the actual human will usually manually process your refund if you complain about how the initial refund never happened.
Bonus chance of success if you're a Prime member and say you're thinking about cancelling.
I think if I found out my country was doing a genocide with an unimaginably higher ratio of civilians murdered, I'd decry both acts, and not actively support the ongoing justifications made for a genocide by an apartheid based regime.
Undocumented immigrants can't file income tax, because they are undocumented. However, they also can't utilize the majority of our costly social services, because they, obviously, don't have documentation. They can't sign up for welfare programs, utilize police resources for fear of being deported, etc.
Overall though, they are also human. They produce similar economic demand to Americans. They pay sales tax. Their landlord pays tax on their rent. They are also often paid less than Americans because they have no ability to enforce the law through legal means (again, for fear of being deported), but still have to buy things like food, which is taxed.
Thus, they tend to, at a bare minimum, take roughly about what they put in, leaving a mostly neutral effect on the economy.
Immigration is generally regarded to boost innovation overall, lead to higher education rates within the workforce, and creates higher overall economic productivity., which is an effect on the economy that isn't just taxes in, taxes out.
Of course, the best option we have is to grant them amnesty, because that then means they can file & pay income taxes, can more easily be statistically measured and analyzed as a group, and can engage in class solidarity through union organization, which raises working conditions and wages for all workers.
Hey, I actually missed that part. (I assumed it was deaths relating to the pregnancy itself, not including additional procedures like abortions)
Still, 17.4 - 0.45 = 16.95, which is still substantially higher than the case fatality rate of abortion-related fatalities alone.
As much as it fills me with joy to see fascists like JD Vance get mauled by their own past words, I hate how much this will be propped up as an argument against him today.
I think we can all agree that people change their minds, whether it be from propaganda, malicious intent, or genuine education, so the only thing he has to do to escape this line of attack is just say "my opinions changed."
I'm sure that to a degree, he still believes what he originally wrote, but has simply repressed it in favor of being able to do less thinking about his political positions, and garner more public attention and power.
This is kind of just a bad argument.
Nobody is arguing that an abortion can save a woman from all consequences.
Nobody is arguing that death is impossible as a result of abortion.
But when somebody dies because something prevented them from getting a procedure that would have been highly likely to save them, that doesn't come into conflict with the possibility of death from the procedure. It's a matter of personal choice.
Especially considering the maternal mortality rate (# of deaths per 100,000 live births) is 17.4, while the case fatality rate for abortions (# of deaths per 100,000 legal induced abortions) is just 0.45
Now imagine how much higher that rate gets when abortions are performed illegally because legislation like this stops safe abortions from being possible, without curbing demand.
Yes, people die from abortions. Yes, people die from pregnancy. Yes, this woman could have died from the abortion procedure even if she was able to get it.
But her chance of death was significantly lower if she had been capable of getting an abortion, which she was not.
Wait, it'll actually let you use local LLMs?
That would legitimately help me out. I use LLMs a lot for simple data restructuring, or rewording of explanations when I'm reading through certain sources. I was worried they would just do a simple ChatGPT API integration and have that be the end of it, but maybe this will end up being something I'd actually use.
@ArchRecord
@lemm.ee