I don’t think the UK sales tax has an exception for primary residences, is that correct? That is the key ingredient that is missing: regular people should be able to buy and sell their homes to each other without a tax penalty, it’s only when corporations buy and sell that it should apply (well, individuals, too, if they buy more than one or two).
There is one huge flaw with the idea, whose aims I fully support: banks regularly own hundreds and thousands of homes through foreclosures. They need to be able to take back a home, because that is what makes it possible to have cheap mortgages. Banks are in fact some of the largest home owners in the country.
What might work better is a sales tax. Everybody pays some godawfully huge amount of money, like 10%, when they purchase a home. You add a 0% sales tax for a primary residence (which of course needs a resident, which is a physical person), maybe a 5% tax for a secondary.
The main goal is twofold: make homes artificially expensive when purchase is not tied to occupancy and discourage short-term speculation. This saves the ability of banks to repossess a home (there is no sale here), and it allows for expansion of rental housing, since the tax is one-time and not recurring, meaning its impact is minimized with prolonged ownership.
I am super proud to be late to the party and still have one useful submission: Flash Gordon, the 1980 hot mess that George Lucas passed on to make Star Wars.
The soundtrack is not the finest work by Queen, but is worth a tenth re-listen nonetheless.
What a shmuck. Rick Scott, the former governor of Florida, was CEO of a company that had to settle for more than $2 billion of health care fraud. Health care fraud: do a little, ten years in jail; do a ton, become governor of a state.
100%. I don’t miss mine, because I still have it, but sadly don’t use it anymore. Nokia really screwed up, they had the next generation of tech in their pockets and let it be crushed by Windows Phone.
It’s one of the massive screw-ups in tech that anyone in the field was absolutely horrified by back in the day. It was worse than Zuck’s legless Metaverse, or today’s vibe coding changes to production servers. Alright, no, the latter is worse.
I am in Kona, Hawaii. I am waiting for my flight to Los Angeles, connecting to Denver. I sit there and see they are about to board the direct flight to Denver. There are maybe 100 people there, so the plane is half empty. I jump to the airline’s site to see how much it would cost to switch flights. Only carry-on, so it is doable.
They would make me pay the same as the entire trip Denver - Kona and back just to get on the direct flight, that is half empty. Notice that if I went on this flight, they could theoretically sell the seats on the other two flights, so they’d rather lose money than let me get home early.
There is something deeply wrong with current Capitalism.
You said way more than the other ones, namely that the Jeff Bezos of the world believe themselves part of a superior humanity that allows them to treat the rest like garbage.
The reason Mozart became a great composer is that he pissed on his employer’s working conditions and went rogue. His Bezos treated him to a kick in the ass, literally, administered on his behalf. Allegedly.
The reason Einstein became a great physicist is that he got an outstanding public education and then worked a government job to make ends meet. The same government jobs that Bezos and Musk wanted to cut last year.
Bezos is not part of a special superhumanity. He is an extremely privileged lottery winner that is too vain to admit he got lucky and now pretends his opinion matters. As the meme states, the only useful thing he can provide is tax money.
I think the standard US phrasing is, “This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.” It is a warning to you, but also a concession from them that you may record, since it doesn’t say they may record the call, only that it may be recorded.
See, sometimes you really need the passive voice!
Honestly, at this point I don’t think Microsoft cares about Windows all that much. They make their money elsewhere, and even the control offered by owning the OS can’t be counted on, as the Internet Explorer wars showed.
At the same time, think about the weird coincidence that Windows 11 requires so much extra hardware firepower at the same time as said hardware firepower has become stupid expensive thanks to the same AI the company is pushing.
They made it unaffordable to run Windows 11, and that’s how we get the Year of Linux on the Desktop?
Ugh, the case file is absolutely chilling. The conversation is summarized (very well) and, if accurate, leaves very little room to interpretation. ChatGPT, according to it, created a universe in which this woman had to kill herself to be resurrected by God, who was ChatGPT. She actually killed herself thinking she’d come back, because ChatGPT told her so.
Silly you: no more wind farms means no more cancer! The Prez said so! /s
It’s weird that high tech CEOs didn’t learn the most valuable lesson from the Metaverse: people are not stupid. If they don’t like something, selling it to them harder is not going to make them like it more. It’s simply not solving their life’s problems.
AI behaves much the same way. It’s not that it’s useless, it’s that faced with the actual cost, its usefulness shrinks to almost nothing. People dislike AI because they know better, not because they are too stupid to see.
I am not sure that rapid weight loss is the healthiest possible thing for someone of Trump’s stats.
But then again, if it works the drug maker gets a big reward, and if it fails then there is nobody there to punish them.
Meta is different from IBM in that Zuckerberg made himself god-emperor and cannot be voted out of his position. IBM’s survival took guts and re-invention, Zuckerberg showed that he is a one-trick pony that stole the one trick from the twins.
My money is on Meta ending like Sun Microsystems or Yahoo! Bought for trinkets by some bigger brand, stripped for staff and parts, and then five years later you get an email saying that Facebook is going to be discontinued come January 1st, please join us at Amanvidia.
I’d just think that it’s a good thing I learned to cook.
The problem really is not the 40% tip, or 20%. It’s that the prices are high enough, they should cover generous salaries and wages for staff. If a burger costs $25, asking for a penny more in gratuity is insane. Make the burger $7 and then let’s look at a tip.
This is more important that just AI overviews and establishes that companies are responsible for the editorializing they do. That’s much more important in algorithmic suggestions, which drive people into doing things they never would have done otherwise (see: Trump voters).
I hope this stands through all instances and is applied generously, because so many people have been fucked up beyond recognition by following the trail of the algorithm, especially on social and video sites.
The way things are going, it’s starting to look like:
I swear I haven’t bought anything Sony since that happened. There are just betrayals that go too far to ever be forgiven.
It starts with “they are giving up the shares voluntarily,” then three months later Mike Johnson introduces the Artificial Intelligence Secure from Terrorism United Patriotic Information Delivery bill (AI-STUPID) that authorizes the emergency purchase of 16 Trillion US Dollars of AI shares on taxpayer dime. 14 go to the AI companies, 2 will water the swamp.
The White House Ballroom is the blueprint, and itself it is the brain child of the Mexican Safety and Security Border Wall.
I think most people would benefit from watching a lot less algorithmic slop, and unfortunately the younger ones are currently the most exposed.
I do get your point, though. Normally, I find that the rec center is a great place for the life experienced to hang out with real people. Another good choice is the Silver Sneakers class at the local gym.