The US Yield Curve Since The Financial Crises (2007-2023)

You know, the entire US economic system is so messed up and so is a lot of your views of it (and I mean on both sides, I also include myself in this since I often don't realize until I *really* think about it) but like. Let's start by talking about taxes. There was a post going around lately that was like

Anyways this is not true. You can deduct INTEREST on mortgage from your taxes. Not mortgage itself. And for renters, in 23 states you can do the same. It's meant to be an offset for property taxes, which, in case you didn't know, are INSANE. Like my family pays more taxes on our house and property then on THE ENTIRE REST OF OUT TAXES, and we're in the top tax bracket. They don't tax you nearly enough on your ACTUAL INCOME but tax you way to much on your property and stock. It's basically based on, if you sold everything right now, what would we then be able to tax you. It's not measuring how much you make on a year to year basis, it's measuring how much you managed to save up over a long period in order to buy your big household a home that has enough space for everyone. It's definitely possible with housing/property taxes for them to cost so much that you can no longer afford your house and land, that you reasonably worked and saved up for. That's kind of unfair. Especially if you bought it when housing was cheap, and since the value on such things has gone up, so have your taxes. You weren't spending an insane amount of money on it. But now it's worth about 1.1 million and you've gotta move out or pay taxes on that. That's a thing that happens.

And meanwhile, a mega rich person who loves the city and therefore doesn't bother with a lot of land is taxed less than the moderately well off person in the previous example.

So the tax system is messed up, people need to pay more based on their actual income and less based on their homes.

Oh another thing with taxes is you know how charitable donations are tax deductible? Yeah only to a certain amount, meaning that there is no incentive for rich people to donate the proper amount given their income. Yes, I think they should give regardless of whether they're going to be rewarded for it, but people who hoard THAT MUCH money are selfish, and they're not going to. My family is not even that rich (dad worth something in the 10s of millions) but the amount we give (no big deal for us) is ALREADY well above the amount you can deduct from taxes. And we don't mind, but the super rich? Do you think they're going to go out of their way to support causes with anything more than petty cash and not be rewarded for it? They're not.

Ultimately, they shouldn't have such extravagant amounts of money in the first place, since they didn't work for it. My dad, which I mentioned previously, works 10+ hours a day, often including weekends. That's real work. His field is high paid and he in particular is high paid since he's the only one who can do what he does, and he gets extra for INVENTING most of the things his companies are based on, which he, you know SPENDS TIME STUDYING AND WORKING ON AND CREATING. He's not making tons of money just by owning something. That's wrong. All that excess cash should be going to the people who actually do the work.

And I think for the most part everyone acknowledges this, but y'all talking about killing the 1% doesn't realize how broad the 1% is. That includes doctors, lawyers, high level computer scientists, that WORK for their living, and are not exploiting you. Who you're looking to target is the owners, the people who hoard billions or trillions of dollars in wealth. Do you even know how much a trillion is? Let's say you take a rich person worth about 10 million. Ok how much more does someone worth a trillion make? They make 100,000 times more. What can you afford these days with 10 million? A nice house, decent cars for the household members that drive, some land, the ability to not worry about medical bills and to pay for college, plus a bit extra to save or give to charity. How nice. A lot of people don't have that privilege. What about 1 trillion? There is not a house in existence that will make a dent in your finances. You could send your children to any college they want for their whole lives and not make a dent in your finances. You could buy companies on a whim with almost no consequence. It's not right. It's especially not right when other people have trouble paying for both rent and groceries.

If we redistributed the 8 richest people's wealth (the 8 of them have more money than the poorest HALF of the planet combined), you all could afford a home, food, a good education, and have a reasonable amount left over.

And this is why, even growing up rich, I'm such a communist. It is not a fever dream for us ALL to be able to live, comfortable, reasonable lives. The current wealth in the world redistributed, and suddenly everyone could live like I do. It isn't lessening the average person's quality of living. For the vast majority of us, communism done right is nothing but an upgrade. Yeah so a fistful of billionaires and trillionaires will be really upset. They'd still have enough to live comfortably and yet they're the ones who own so much they can effectively block any progress in this direction. It's pure selfishness.

Private equity ghouls have a new way to steal from their investors

Private equity is quite a racket. PE managers pile up other peoples’ money — pension funds, plutes, other pools of money — and then “invest” it (buying businesses, loading them with debt, cutting wages, lowering quality and setting traps for customers). For this, they get an annual fee — 2% — of the money they manage, and a bonus for any profits they make.

On top of this, private equity bosses get to use the carried interest tax loophole, a scam that lets them treat this ordinary income as a capital gain, so they can pay half the taxes that a working stiff would pay on a regular salary. If you don’t know much about carried interest, you might think it has to do with “interest” on a loan or a deposit, but it’s way weirder. “Carried interest” is a tax regime designed for 16th century sea captains and their “interest” in the cargo they “carried”:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity is a cancer. Its profits come from buying productive firms, loading them with debt, abusing their suppliers, workers and customers, and driving them into ground, stiffing all of them — and the company’s creditors. The mafia have a name for this. They call it a “bust out”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Private equity destroyed Toys R Us, Sears, Bed, Bath and Beyond, and many more companies beloved of Main Street, bled dry for Wall Street:

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-06-02-days-of-plunder-morgenson-rosner-ballou-review/

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There has been almost two years of silence on GTA: San Andreas for Meta Quest, and even at Meta Connect 2023 there was no update. The post There is still no trace of GTA San Andreas VR for Meta Quest appeared first on MIXED Reality News.

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Bitcoin Sellers Lose Historic $7.3 Billion In Three Days of Pain

Everyone from short-term holders to mining companies have locked in huge losses as Bitcoin's price struggles to stay afloat.

It’s not clear if Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market have bottomed out at this point. While Bitcoin's price has risen above the $20,000 level that many analysts warned as a key price support, there are growing concerns that many key institutional players in the wider crypto ecosystem are illiquid and teetering on the edge of insolvency. 

In the aftermath of crypto lender Celsius Network freezing withdrawals on its platform, as well as other firms either facing insolvency or liquidity concerns, two major crypto lenders have been offered credit lifelines to prevent meltdowns that might further spark crypto panics. Crypto lender Voyager Digital announced a deal with Alameda Research last week, a trading firm created by crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, that would provide credit "intended to be used to safeguard customer assets in light of current market volatility and only if such use is needed." On Tuesday, Crypto lender BlockFi chief executive Zac Prince revealed the company secured "a $250M revolving credit facility providing us with access to capital that further bolsters our balance sheet and platform strength” with FTX—Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange.

Wow… much to think about!

Bitcoin saw a modest increase of 1.8% in the past 24 hours as of Dec. 9, 2023. Meanwhile, more than 17 crypto assets experienced much larger gains, ranging from 7% to over 35% in the same timeframe. Despite this rise in various altcoins against the

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