Tesla is actually a Swedish company?

by philg

“Elon Musk says he won’t take coronavirus vaccine, calls Bill Gates a ‘knucklehead’” (New York Post) would warm the heart of any Swedish MD/PhD:

SpaceX founder Elon Musk stirred the pot yet again after claiming that neither he nor his family would take a COVID-19 vaccine even if it was readily available.

During the bizarre exchange, the Tesla CEO decried the nationwide lockdown as a “no-win situation” that has “diminished my faith in humanity.” Musk previously called widespread quarantines “unethical” and “de facto house arrest,” RT reports.

Instead of the current sweeping measures, the Boring Company boss suggested a more targeted lockdown where “anyone who is at risk” be “quarantined until the storm passes.”

Swisher criticized his suggestion, adding that humans could potentially die in the process.

“Everybody dies,” quipped Musk.

When you add the above to Dog Mode, it might be time for us to break down and buy a Tesla (a financially irrational decision in Maskachusetts where electricity per mile in a Tesla actually costs more than gasoline per mile in a Camry or Accord).

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Increasing percentage of American political funding from those who didn’t earn the money?

by philg

The folks who are the most irredeemably Republican are small business owners. The folks who embrace the new Democratic Socialism and the general concept of bigger government are a mixture, but one of the wealthiest components of that mixture has been people who inherited money. People who didn’t have to work for the money don’t seem nearly as worried about the negative effects of government restrictions on the market, e.g., minimum wage (make it illegal for those with low skill levels to work), more lavish welfare handouts (make it irrational for those with low/medium skill levels to work), and higher taxes (make it less attractive for anyone to work additional hours).

A classic example of inherited wealth is Laurene Powell Jobs. The person who made the money is Steve Jobs, not noted for his charitable inclinations or support for politicians. The woman who inherited the money, however, is all-in on one of the Democrats’ big goals. Her Emerson Collective‘s #1 “Priority” is increasing low-skill immigration the U.S. Steve Jobs might have been concerned that higher taxes to fund welfare benefits for low-skill migrants and their children would make it tougher for Apple to compete with rivals in China, for example. Laurene Powell Jobs, however, won’t be similarly constrained.

[Promoting low-skill immigration makes sense from her personal perspective (as it does for most elite Americans). She’s spending the wealth that her late husband accumulated through a charity and therefore won’t have to pay any taxes, regardless of what the rates might be. Regardless of the level of low-skill migration, her own lifestyle won’t change too much. How likely are the new arrivals to be able to afford a home anywhere near one of hers? Is it conceivable that she’ll have to wait for health care if the resulting larger population clogs up the health care system? How many in the next caravan of Hondurans to cross the border earn enough to compete with her for private jet transport and hangar space?]

The U.S. has always had citizens who were rich via inheritance and politically active. What’s relatively new, however, is the phenomenon of people who are rich via divorce litigation. Due to the no-fault divorce revolution of the 1970s, there are now a huge number of people who can spend money that a spouse-turned-defendant earned. Like folks who inherited money, therefore, they have zero personal experience with what it takes to build and run a successful business.

What’s an example of this new force in politics? Karla Jurvetson obtained financial independence by suing her husband Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist also known for having sex with a variety of cash-hungry young women. And in the 2020 election… “Mystery Warren super PAC funder revealed; Karla Jurvetson, a California physician, gave $14.6 million to Persist PAC in February.” (Politico):

In the last weeks of Warren’s struggling presidential bid, a super PAC called Persist PAC hastily formed and then swooped into Nevada, South Carolina and Super Tuesday states to run over $14 million in ads trying to resuscitate Warren’s campaign. Warren was in trouble after third and fourth place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.\Jurvetson is one of the biggest donors in the Democratic Party and has spoken openly about what she feels is her obligation to support female candidates. “I feel like it’s our moral duty, if we’re not going to run ourselves, to support the women who are brave enough to put their name on the ballot,” she told the Mercury News in 2018. Jurvetson also hosted a fundraising luncheon for Warren in 2018 — before the Massachusetts senator disavowed in-person fundraising events altogether during her presidential run.

Through a spokesperson, Jurvetson declined to comment on her involvement in Persist PAC, which only collected a half-million dollars from other sources in February, according to a new campaign finance filing. Warren did not respond to a request for comment.

In other words, this single divorce plaintiff was the source of 96 percent of Warren’s PAC money.

Maybe the age of enthusiasm for the Bernie Sanders platform (even if ultimately delivered by Joe Biden and other Democrats) is partly due to the fact that an increasing portion of the money in politics is coming from people who didn’t earn it?

Very loosely related, from the BBC:

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Did Joe Biden do well enough in the debate that companies might start hiring older workers?

by philg

Workers older than 40 are inferior, according to the Federal government, which is why employers need to be bludgeoned into hiring them. From the EEOC:

Age discrimination involves treating an applicant or employee less favorably because of his or her age.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination. It is not illegal for an employer or other covered entity to favor an older worker over a younger one, even if both workers are age 40 or older.

Discrimination can occur when the victim and the person who inflicted the discrimination are both over 40.

Joe Biden will turn 78 in November (unless IHME is correct and COVID-19 kills most Americans before then) and is therefore the oldest person ever to run in a U.S. presidential election. If he impresses viewers with his keen mind and quick wit, might that be enough to get American employers to question the official government position that older = inferior?

Second question: If your opinion, did Biden impress in this first debate?

Also, does at least one candidate get the questions in advance? The debates are moderated by TV journalists. One thing that we’ve learned since 2016 is that people whose job is to report the “news” actually yearn to editorialize regarding how Americans should vote. If they’re not afraid to present facts selectively, twist facts, and otherwise mislead readers/viewers, why wouldn’t at least one person within a news organization that is moderating a debate leak the questions to the candidate whom he/she/ze/they favors?

(A Democrat affiliated with CNN leaked “town hall” questions to Hillary Clinton in advance back in 2016 (Snopes).)

Multiple perspectives from Facebook:

  • I can’t believe the s**t that Trump is having to put up with tonight. Wallace lets Biden talk over him all the time. Nauseating.
  • Chris Wallace did an abysmally awful job. He’s more left-wing than I previously thought. His lack of knowledge is shocking. Wallace doesn’t know the basics.
  • Biden was such a terrible moderator of the Trump-Wallace debate
  • The debate. Trump hit a new low. Biden hit a triple: he acted like an adult, he didn’t get flustered, and he reached out to families around the country. I would not have been able to keep my temper that well. Oh, and Chris Wallace shamed himself.
  • (from a socialist Democrat) TBH, I think Trump did better than Biden in this debate. He was more cogent and concrete, Biden was too much “c’mon man” and just not hitting his target.
  • (from a cower-at-home schoolteacher who otherwise posts on the dangers of COVID-19, the hazards of school reopening, the merits of RBG, the stupidity of the unmasked, etc.) This is an absolute disgrace. How could we possibly expect our children to respect this President? Politics aside, the teacher in me would like to park his bully self in our class Think Tank to fill out a Reflection Sheet regarding his behavior. He is a bully, he is flagrantly ignorant of the facts, and he’s disrespectful in every way possible. HOW can we not be embarrassed and WHY are we tolerating it.

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Under a fair tax code, Trump should have paid $0 in income tax…

by philg

… because he would have paid all of his taxes via a land value tax.

My Facebook feed is alive with people complaining that Trump hasn’t paid sufficient taxes over the past decades for which the NYT has obtained his personal tax returns (see Holy Grail attained: NYT gets hold of Trump’s tax returns). Essentially they are complaining that the real estate industry is not taxed properly. For the first 39 years, for example, depreciation may cancel out much of the rental revenue (and this clock can be accelerated by the sophisticated, as I learned from a friend who owns a huge office building and will pay no taxes for the first 15 years). As with Warren Buffet’s fortune, as long as assets aren’t totally cashed out, any tax on capital gains can be deferred for decades or perhaps centuries.

Maybe this is the nudge that the U.S. needs to move to what might be a much better and fairer tax, i.e., one on the value of land. This won’t discourage investment in nice buildings because the value of the building isn’t taxed. As the U.S. gets bulked up via immigration to a Chinese level of population density, land per person should become more scarce and valuable. Already we’ve seen that much of the fruits of economic growth in the U.S. have ended up accruing primarily to property owners (i.e., as soon as wages rise in a city, rents rise so that landlords soak up most of the increase and leave the workers with little additional spending power).

An advantage of the land value tax is that the U.S. could shut down its income taxation scheme, thus encouraging people to work more. Note that everyone who isn’t homeless, unhoused, or living in a car would end up paying the land value tax directly (homeowner) or indirectly (renter). It is also easy for governments to collect property-based taxes. The government knows where all of the land is and who owns it. In the hysteria around Trump and his taxes, one thing that I haven’t seen mentioned is the extent to which the hated dictator has paid 50+ years of property tax on the various properties that he owns. According to the NYT, Trump is an arch criminal and a mastermind at tax evasion (so much so that the IRS hasn’t actually changed his tax liability, though supposedly such as finding by the IRS will come any day now). Yet there is no indication that Trump or his companies have managed to escape paying property tax every year.

What’s not to love about a tax that even Donald Trump is not smart enough to avoid?

(A federal land value tax might be awesome for redressing income inequality. Wealthy coastal elite states have a lot of valuable land so they would pay more than states where median incomes are low. Uber rich Californians who may be paying almost nothing in property due to Proposition 13 could finally be taxed on the rise in land value to which they contributed nothing.)

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Transmission of coronaplague among the fully masked Japanese

by philg

“Dynamic Change of COVID-19 Seroprevalence among Asymptomatic Population in Tokyo during the Second Wave” (medRxiv):

Objective: To assess changes in COVID-19 seroprevalence among asymptomatic employees working in Tokyo during the second wave. Design: We conducted an observational cohort study. Healthy volunteers working for a Japanese company in Tokyo were enrolled from disparate locations to determine seropositivity against COVID19 from May 26 to August 25, 2020. COVID-19 IgM and IgG antibodies were determined by a rapid COVID19 IgM/IgG test kit using fingertip blood. Across the company, tests were performed and acquired weekly. For each participant, serology tests were offered twice, separated by approximately a month, to provide self-reference of test results and to assess for seroconversion and seroreversion. Setting: Workplace setting within a large company. Participants: Healthy volunteers from 1877 employees of a large Japanese company were recruited to the study from 11 disparate locations across Tokyo. Participants having fever, cough, or shortness of breath at the time of testing were excluded. Main Outcome(s) and Measure(s): Seropositivity rate (SPR) was calculated by pooled data from each two-weeks window across the cohort. Either IgM or IgG positivity was defined as seropositive. Changes in immunological status against SARS-CoV-2 were determined by comparing results between two tests obtained from the same individual. Results: Six hundred fifteen healthy volunteers (mean + SD 40.8 + 10.0; range 19-69; 45.7 % female) received at least one test. Seroprevalence increased from 5.8 % to 46.8 % over the course of the summer.

COVID-19 infection may have spread widely across the general population of Tokyo despite the very low fatality rate.

In other words, nearly half of this (masked) population came up positive for antibodies to COVID-19. That’s after excluding anyone with symptoms.

If masks are effective when used by the general public, how did the world’s most competent and experienced users of masks end up transmitting this virus to each other at these rates?

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Doom by December for the wicked unmasked Swedes

by philg

From the scientists at IHME:

By the end of December, 200 Swedes will be dying every day from coronaplague, unless they see the light and convert to the Church of Shutdown and don the hijab.

The current WHO dashboard says that 4 Swedes have died from Covid-19 in the last 7 days (0.57 deaths per day). IMHE therefore is predicting a 350X increase in coronaplague deaths.

Readers: What’s your best guess as to where the Swedes will be at the end of December?

My guess: 5-10 deaths per day. This is based on (a) Swedes being stuck indoors more, (b) Swedish Karens (even countries that give the finger to the virus must have some) who have been hiding in bunkers coming out, (c) travel picking up and therefore more people coming in from heavily plagued countries outside of Sweden, more people going from small towns to big cities, etc.

What does #Science tell us about our own country? Given that we change our minds every few weeks about shutdown policies, prediction can be more challenging. IMHE says that its projection is about 3,000 deaths per day by the end of December and it would over 6,000 if the U.S. were to give residents back what had been their Constitutional rights, e.g., to assemble.

Readers: Best guess for the U.S. daily COVID-19 deaths at the end of December?

My guess: about 700 per day… because that’s what it is right now and our shutdowns and mask policies are likely to ensure that the coronavirus always has a comfortable home somewhere in the U.S. (see When we wear masks, does the coronavirus thank us for our service?)

What else is interesting in the IHME data? 93% of Spaniards are (always) wearing masks:

(The WHO dashboard shows 453 deaths within the last 7 days. The population, 47 million, is roughly 4.5X Sweden’s while deaths are 100X never-masked Sweden’s. IMHE shows Swedish mask use at 1%.)

Follow-up: The IHME folks did pretty well in predicting the upward part of the exponential, but failed to predict that the virus would burn out, as it had in the spring 2020 wave. Here is the long-term picture:

If we zoom in, we find that I was off by a factor of 10 and IHME was off by a factor of only 2.

Keep in mind that anyone who tested positive for Covid in the 30 days prior to death was tagged by a computer as a “Covid death” and that Sweden ultimately had “less than half of Europe’s average excess death rate of 11 percent” (analysis).

What is the principal flawed assumption that resulted in my estimate being off by 10X? As there were no lockdowns, I assumed that nearly the entire Swedish population had been infected by SARS-CoV-2 in the spring of 2020 and, therefore, that those who could be killed by SARS-CoV-2 had already been killed. It may be, however, that Swedish efforts to isolate the elderly were reasonably effective and also that immunity to COVID acquired in April 2020 had already worn off by December 2020 (I would have expected immunity to last 2-3 years, which is also what people were saying about the vaccines at the time).

IHME got it wrong in the links below, but they got this one mostly right!

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RBG worked to maximize government while her husband worked to minimize tax payments

by philg

From the scholarly journal Vogue, “May Every Woman Find Her Marty Ginsburg”:

As he became a tax attorney and Ruth pursued advocacy work at the ACLU and professorships, he famously took on the domestic task of cooking for the family.

So the judge who sought to create a bigger government was married to an attorney who specialized in minimizing client’s tax payments.

(Separately, RBG flouted convention by marrying a guy who earned way more than she did!)

Can “every woman” find a spouse who earns as much as a tax attorney? (the successful ones earn at least $600 per hour; Marty Ginsburg was a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where profits per partner were over $3 million in 2018) “Broke men are hurting American women’s marriage prospects” (New York Post):

“Most American women hope to marry, but current shortages of marriageable men — men with a stable job and a good income — make this increasingly difficult,” says lead author Daniel Lichter in a press release.

Lichter adds that unless your dream man is an Uber driver, the dearth of would-be grooms is prominent “in the current ‘gig economy’ of unstable, low-paying service jobs.”

To investigate the man drought, researchers created profiles of potential husbands, based on real husbands as logged in American Community Survey data. They then compared these hypothetical spouses with actual unmarried men.

They found that a woman’s made-up hubby makes 58 percent more money than the current lineup of eligible bachelors.

“This study reveals large deficits in the supply of potential male spouses,” the study concludes.

“Many young men today have little to bring to the marriage bargain, especially as young women’s educational levels on average now exceed their male suitors’,” Lichter says.

Some ladies are even starting to date down in order to score a forever partner.

And sure, there’s the whole “love” factor in a marriage. But, in the end, “it also is fundamentally an economic transaction,” says Lichter.

Maybe a Harris-Biden administration will help a lot more women realize the dreams expressed in the Vogue article. If tax rates are doubled, there will be a lot more tax attorneys.

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Holy Grail attained: NYT gets hold of Trump’s tax returns

by philg

“LONG-CONCEALED RECORDS SHOW TRUMP’S CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE” (NYT):

The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.

Finally all of the Trump-haters’ questions will be answered? Sadly, no. Much additional forensic accounting remains to be done.

By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.

If the tax returns don’t reveal Trump’s true wealth “by their very nature,” why was it so important to obtain and review them?

I’ve read through this article once and can’t find anything interesting. Trump seems to have had some winners and losers among his properties and took all of the deductions that good tax lawyers (such as RBG’s husband, a specialist in limiting payments to the government that RBG sought to expand) could find.

Actually, a close reading of the article reveals that Trump should actually be rich, as you might expect with someone who uses a Boeing 757 as a personal/family aircraft:

The newer tax returns show that Mr. Trump burned through the last of the tax-reducing power of that $1 billion in 2005, just as a torrent of entertainment riches began coming his way following the debut of “The Apprentice” the year before.

For 2005 through 2007, cash from licensing deals and endorsements filled Mr. Trump’s bank accounts with $120 million in pure profit. With no prior-year losses left to reduce his taxable income, he paid substantial federal income taxes for the first time in his life: a total of $70.1 million.

According to some previous articles that I’ve read, due to some crazy favorable contract terms and tax laws it seems that Trump was able to deduct losses on real estate that were actually incurred by partners (i.e., the $1 billion in losses for him might have been taken after only a $50 million personal loss). So if he chewed through this $1 billion with profits, that likely means that he actually earned $1 billion in profit circa 1995-2005 and didn’t have to pay income tax on that profit (due to the losses carried forward from the previous ventures in which he had not actually lost $1 billion of his own money).

Is it fair to say that the NYT’s long hunt for Trump’s tax returns has merely revealed that Trump was making roughly $100 million per year in a volatile industry and that his tax lawyers have been aggressive with the deductions? Who was a primary enabler of Trump being able to keep most of this $100 million/year?

Business losses can work like a tax-avoidance coupon: A dollar lost on one business reduces a dollar of taxable income from elsewhere. The types and amounts of income that can be used in a given year vary, depending on an owner’s tax status. But some losses can be saved for later use, or even used to request a refund on taxes paid in a prior year.

Until 2009, those coupons could be used to wipe away taxes going back only two years. But that November, the window was more than doubled by a little-noticed provision in a bill Mr. Obama signed as part of the Great Recession recovery effort. Now business owners could request full refunds of taxes paid in the prior four years, and 50 percent of those from the year before that.

What about the New York Times’s passion for learning more about how American women make money with their, um, natural assets?

The data contains no new revelations about the $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, the actress who performs as Stormy Daniels — a focus of the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena for Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial information.

How about the proven (by the NYT) fact that everything Trump has done has been bankrolled by Russia?

No subject has provoked more intense speculation about Mr. Trump’s finances than his connection to Russia. While the tax records revealed no previously unknown financial connection — and, for the most part, lack the specificity required to do so — they did shed new light on the money behind the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, a subject of enduring intrigue because of subsequent investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

The records show that the pageant was the most profitable Miss Universe during Mr. Trump’s time as co-owner, and that it generated a personal payday of $2.3 million…

So the guy who was earning $100 million per year from 1995-2005 added $2.3 million to his fortune via an event that occurred in Moscow?

Here’s the most shocking section to me:

Likewise the cost of haircuts, including the more than $70,000 paid to style his hair during “The Apprentice.” Together, nine Trump entities have written off at least $95,464 paid to a favorite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump.

That’s a lot of hair-related expense!

Readers: What new and important information did you take away from this article?

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NYT 2012: Voting by mail is a recipe for fraud

by philg

“Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises” (New York Times, October 6, 2012):

While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say.

The flaws of absentee voting raise questions about the most elementary promises of democracy.

Voting by mail is now common enough and problematic enough that election experts say there have been multiple elections in which no one can say with confidence which candidate was the deserved winner. The list includes the 2000 presidential election, in which problems with absentee ballots in Florida were a little-noticed footnote to other issues.

Still, voting in person is more reliable, particularly since election administrators made improvements to voting equipment after the 2000 presidential election.

“Trump Is Pushing a False Argument on Vote-by-Mail Fraud. Here Are the Facts.” (August 31, 2020):

President Trump has begun pushing a false argument that has circulated among conservatives for years — that voting by mail is a recipe for fraud.

That’s the beauty of #Science… the truth evolves until eventually there is a scientific consensus.

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Frontiers of Canadian divorce litigation: alimony without a marriage, children, or shared residence

by philg

“Unmarried Ontario couple had no children and no house but man must still pay support, appeal court rules” (National Post):

Under Ontario law, an unmarried couple are considered common-law spouses if they have cohabited — lived together in a conjugal relationship — continuously for at least three years. But that doesn’t necessarily mean living in the same home, the court found.

“Lack of a shared residence is not determinative of the issue of cohabitation,” the Appeal Court said. “There are many cases in which courts have found cohabitation where the parties stayed together only intermittently.”

The decision comes in the case of Lisa Climans and Michael Latner, both of Toronto, who began a romantic relationship after meeting in October 2001. At the time, she was 38 and separated with two children, court records show. He was 46 and divorced with three children.

Although they maintained their separate homes, Latner and Climans behaved as a couple both privately and publicly. They vacationed together. He gave her a 7.5-carat diamond ring and other jewelry that she wore. She quit her job and would regularly sleep at his house. They travelled together and talked about living together.

Latner proposed several times and Climans accepted. He often referred to her by his last name. However, he insisted she sign a marriage contract and came up with several drafts. She refused.

Throughout their relationship, the two kept separate bank accounts and never owned property in common. Nevertheless, Latner gave Climans thousands of dollars every month, a credit card, paid off her mortgage and showered her with expensive gifts. He provided her and her children with a “lavish lifestyle,” the court found.

When their 14-year relationship finally broke down in May 2015, Climans asked the courts to recognize her as Latner’s spouse and order him to pay her support. He argued she had been a travel companion and girlfriend, nothing more. As such, he said, they were never legally spouses and he owed no support. An eight-day trial ensued.

In her decision in February 2019, Superior Court Justice Sharon Shore sided with Climans. She ruled they were in fact long-time spouses, finding that despite their separate home, they lived under one roof at Latner’s cottage for part of the summer, and during winter vacations in Florida. Shore ordered him to pay her $53,077 monthly indefinitely. Latner appealed.

The Appeal Court did find Shore had made an error in deciding how long Latner would have to pay Climans support based on when they first began cohabiting. While Shore had found that to be almost from the get-go, the higher court said it wasn’t earlier than their first stay together at his cottage, meaning they didn’t reach the threshold for indefinite payments.

Instead, it ordered him to pay her support for 10 years.

So, the gal who refused to sign the prenuptial agreement will end up with CAD$6,369,240 (about $5 million U.S.). Canadians who identify as “women” and who work full-time full-year earn about CAD$52,500 per year (statcan). Thus, for her work as a travel companion, jewelry recipient, and (presumably) sex partner, Lisa Climans will receive, in addition to gifts already banked, 121 years of salary at the average wage paid to a Canadian identifying as a “woman” who endures the drudgery of 40 hours per week in the labor force.

In the Distillery District of Toronto… Love (possibly convertible into cash).

What was the old/conventional understanding of the law? From a group of divorce, custody, and child support litigators in Ontario:

In Ontario, Canada, two people are considered common law partners if they have been continuously living together in a conjugal relationship for at least three years. If they have a child together by birth or adoption, then they only need to have been living together for one year.

In Canada, a “conjugal relationship” is more than just a sexual relationship. A “conjugal relationship” in Canada is one in which two people share a home, finances, friend groups, and an emotional connection on top of having a sexual relationship.

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