temp1831

Consider these 2 possible opinions of folks who don't care too much about fighting climate change:

1. Climate change is an unsolvable problem, requiring coordination on a massive scale by billions of actors who have been shown to defect whenever given the chance. Any plan we are likely to implement is unlikely to succeed. Humans overall are adaptive, adrobust to change, and when the changes caused by climate change happen, we may suffer a bit, but it will not be immense suffering.

2. Climate change isn't real.

Often when I've tried to argue position 1, which I actually believe, my friends are extremely frustrated and essentially think I'm trying to argue for position 2. Left-leaning folks are too idealistic to understand that position 1 is an entirely internally-consistent position.

When I see this, I wonder if the shaving industry is fated to always have high margins, just due to the fact that brand power is very strong in the shaving industry.

People don't trust razors they've never heard of. Too dull. I really like my chinese Weishi brand double edge safety razor w/ standard barbasol, and have shaved for about $5 per year for the last 5 years (capex included), so I feel like an outsider looking in.

>This time, organizers said they based the budget on “real” dollars, looking across the next decade to predict expenses and revenues in terms of when the money is actually spent or received.

To be interpreted as: It takes multiple revisions of the budget before somebody in the city government was even realistic enough to apply a discount rate to future cash flows.

When posts mentioning obesity crop up on HN, some people advocate personal responsibility to prevent your own obesity (taking the individualistic position) and some people argue that it is a society-wide problem, where changes in our culture have caused this problem to expand over time (taking the social position).

The synthesis of these two ideas: It's easier to get fat than ever before, so you are even more responsible to avoid it than ever.

Do you regret how much you drink?

The U.S. has more rich suckers to prey on.

If you go to a high level of abstraction, you remove useful distinctions. That is not a productive line of thought. Not all income is the same, and not all expenses are the same. Excise taxes and any "nudge" tax laws make this obvious.

It is true that there are some tax deductions that are abused. However, the effect of encouraging investment by businesses is much more important.

>If you happen to be the owner of a corp you can also use those things to your individual benefit.

This could be considered an abuse. However, the benefit of encouraging investment by businesses far outweighs the negative of this abuse. We tend to focus our attention on a few big individuals who cheat, and this excessive focus throws off our moral intuitions. Heck, the gas station owner might have deducted the cost of buying a toolbox needed at the workplace, and then borrowed a wrench from that toolbox to go home and fix his plumbing. That would be fine with me, to the extent that all the damn tax paperwork stops being worth keeping track of.

Let's say you run a gas station, which is a notoriously low margin business. You have $1,050,000 in revenue this year, and $1,000,000 in expenses, so you make $50,000.

Let's say you run a small software company, which is a high margin business. You have $1,050,000 in revenue this year, and $500,000 in expenses, so you make $550,000.

You should be taxed on the $50,000 and the $550,000, not on the $1,050,000. Otherwise, if business expenses were not deductible, low margin and capital intensive businesses would be punished severely. We would have decreased investment in the economy and everyone would suffer for it.

If individuals could deduct their expenses, it would encourage people to spend every penny they make. The mortgage interest deduction is one example where this nudge becomes apparent (albeit real estate has merit as an investment, not just consumption). We already have a low enough savings rate as it is.

No, and I don't think you did a decent job trying to interpret what he said.

Most bosses that retaliate do not view it as retaliation. I know that when I have acted immorally in my own past, I felt justified about it.

It is not true that he stated women are less suited to the job. It is possible that he was implying it. Firing him for something he did not say, but may have implied, is weak. Destroying a person's livelihood for an imagined offense WHILE the company releases a statement that they encourage widespread opinions is even weaker.