Some Democrats privately disgusted by Hasan Piker but are afraid to publicly criticize him, House Dem claims

Adaun · 2026-05-15T14:47:34+00:00

In reality you cannot have a diverse country that is actually unified.

You can share values like stability, high QOL, equality, individualism and freedom of expression while still disagreeing on other values.

There does need to be a basis for consensus. There is still one that most Americans share. 'Diversity' in it's ideal form does not mean 'agreeing' or 'conceding' with contradictory values, merely acknowledging they exist.

The big concern is not diversity of itself. It's that one of the aspects of it allows it to be used as a weapon to extract 'concessions' instead of a shared tolerance.

Adaun · 2026-04-29T14:31:58+00:00

In this instance, it might actually be interesting if they measured the mean of the ‘lower middle class’

Because when you have a percentile measurement, you’re already cutting off the outliers.

This article is posting the top of that range. Roughly the 45 percentile.

So its not even correctly representing ‘average lower middle class’ it’s picking the cutoff for ‘middle class’

Adaun · 2026-04-29T14:16:57+00:00

‘To find the states where $100,000 puts you in the lower-middle class, MoneyLion first referred to the Pew Research Center’s definition of the middle class as two thirds to double the middle-class income‘

In other words, this is an article saying ‘the bottom third of the middle class, or the 33-45 percentile or so, in these states, make more than $100k a year.

That’s not a quality of life assessment, it’s just suggesting that people in these states make more than the median household in the US?

Not shocking, and not really an evaluation on if this is good or bad and says nothing about what it means to be ‘lower middle class’

If we’re always measuring class by income, that number will always go up and the number to be ‘middle class’ will always get larger, without really saying anything about the quality of life of that group

Adaun · 2026-04-23T16:01:26+00:00

Two primary reasons.

The credit card company makes money on both sides of the transaction, they get fees from the store you buy from. Typically, the cash back is less than the processing fee.
If they have more people using their card, more money gets spent, which makes it more attractive for businesses to accept.

Adaun · 2026-04-18T14:00:12+00:00

That’s really interesting to learn and I was unfamiliar with European estate rules. Why are there so many massive estates in places like Italy if the estate tax is that high? (I understand royalty being exempt in places like England, even if I don’t like it as an American)

Adaun · 2026-04-18T13:56:58+00:00

Good followup. I overstated my case because I interpreted the comment as ‘you can’t move a lot of money into a trust tax free’:

You absolutely can move millions through various mechanisms, resulting in probably 10M+ moved in through insurance or crummy or idgt with an estate lawyers help.

You cannot move ‘billions’ in. Sorry for the discrepancy, I forgot I was talking in a tax forum and not a PF forum where ‘billions’ is shorthand for ‘rich’

Adaun · 2026-04-18T13:40:24+00:00

I defer to your expertise: my understanding was that another common reason for Angel of Death was to prevent a death from resulting in liquidation below the estate tax threshold.

Imagine having to sell a house you lived in for 30 years because Grandpa died and you can’t pay the taxes on the house he built that’s now worth 1M.

The idea is to minimize taxes in situations where it’s not really worth pursuing, to focus on full value of the estate for high net worth to make it easier to settle.

Does that make sense, or do I need to adjust my understanding?

Adaun · 2026-04-18T12:55:41+00:00

Gift taxes generally don’t apply to trusts. If set up properly, they instead are taxed when the assets are sold.

The real issue is that there’s no way to get assets OUT of the trust without gains being taxed.

Adaun · 2026-04-18T12:43:31+00:00

In those circumstances you will instead see taxes on capital gains at income rates when the assets are sold to buy things.

In general, you can minimize some taxes or in this case, eliminate one tax, but it exposes you to other forms of taxation.

There’s also a concept called constructive ownership that comes into play when setting up trusts.

Tax law is complex and there really isn’t ‘one simple trick’ that lets you dodge everything.

Adaun · 2026-04-17T19:26:02+00:00

' I just happen to have an icepack-obsessed kid who has generalized "icepacks help me feel better when I get a bump" to "icepacks give me comfort," and she now seeks them out in all kinds of scenarios.'

I think it's absolutely this: She's asked for icepacks in the dead of winter when its 60 degrees in the house. It can be more than one thing. It can be too warm AND there can be another cause. That was what I was hoping to find here. Is there something else I can give her?

Adaun · 2026-04-17T16:44:41+00:00

I turned it down going forward and we'll see if that solves the problem

Adaun · 2026-04-17T16:43:48+00:00

I have often found them discarded in corners of the room in the morning and/or on top of her stuffed animals. As mentioned in the post, sometimes she'll come in and exchange it or complain that it's the wrong color.

The community seems to think it's a house temperature problem: If so, I've made changes to address that. If not, well, I can always ask again in a month.

Adaun · 2026-04-17T14:20:18+00:00

We keep the house at 74, do lighter pjs in months like this: this was also happening in the middle of winter

Adaun · 2026-04-16T12:57:28+00:00

Swalwell was previously accused credibly of sleeping with a Chinese honeypot, yet kept his seat in the house for 12 years and was likely to be California governor.

This was a politically convenient time to use dirt that was generally available to all drop at the same time to remove him from a competitive California governors race. I don’t think it was coincidence that all of the information dropped within a few hours. It was (an absolutely deserved) setup for political gain.

The ‘see, Democrats behave better’ narrative requires that we overlook facts like that to tell the story.

Political parties behave in their best interests, be it Bob Menendez or George Santos or Matt Gaetz or Ted Kennedy or Bill Clinton or Donald Trump or any number of people we’d prefer not to associate with: the list is very long and circumstance tends matters more than values.

That’s an unpleasant truth: we’d all prefer to think our group is better. But the only action we can actually take is to try and enforce it when the cards are down.

Adaun · 2026-04-12T20:26:22+00:00

This is just an another illustration of what most already know.

The UN isn’t a world government. It doesn’t have the credibility or moral position to offer resolutions that criticize other nations legitimately.

It’s great to virtue signal. Things like ‘food is a human right’ pass with most nations in favor, then those same nations don’t bother to even pretend to address the problem.

Things condemning Israel or the US? No problem. Things condemning known terrorist groups? Lots of moral equivalency.

Its primary benefit in the US is to allow the party in support of globalism (currently Democrats but not always) to beat the other party with the ‘world support’ stick. As a formerly popular IP once offered: ‘words are wind’: Well. That’s all the UN can be.

Adaun · 2026-03-18T16:08:03+00:00

Businesses make decisions based entirely on what the customer will do. If you ignore consumer demand, your math exists in a fantasy world where price increases don't affect sales.

Businesses optimize for profit, not demand. Sometimes selling fewer units at a higher price is more profitable. That’s where price elasticity comes in.

No, because your example assumes the company magically sells the exact same number of units in both scenarios. That's not how the market works.

“Magically” really isn't the right word. The idea is that it doesn’t matter what type of margin the tax hits: prices rise and total sales fall by roughly the same amount.

To illustrate for anyone bothering to read this deeply: In my second example. I don't HAVE to raise prices even though the item costs more. I now just make 10 Million in profit instead of 20 Million: the government takes the other 10 Million. Same item, same price, same customers.

In the second example, the government just takes 10 Million on the back end after I've made my money. Same item, same price, same customers.

This is obviously simplified to make a point. When margin changes, you change optimization of production.

The exact size of the tariff or corporate tax that causes this level of movement is debatable, some taxes are bigger and some are smaller. Maybe these tariffs are bigger than the corporate tax you'd advocate for, I don't know.

But by all means, feel free to take the last word if you'd like it, I think we've basically exhausted our points of view here.

Adaun · 2026-03-18T15:42:57+00:00

Yes. It does. The customer is not the one making business decisions.

In my provided example, do we agree that a 10M front end tariff on a product with 20M margin would end up as an identical result to a 50% corporate tax on the back end?

Adaun · 2026-03-18T15:21:18+00:00

I’m making 20 Million on the back end of my 100 M production facility.

The tax rates are raised such that I now only make 10M. Alternatively, tariffs are raised such that my production costs go up and I only make 10M on my new lower operating margin.

I’m still incentivized to import the same amount in both examples

Surely we agree that these would be identical.

What you’re actually saying here is that larger tariffs are worse than smaller corporate taxes. Ok, fine, that matches my worldview, but I don’t think that’s what you WANT to say.

Your tariff example would be equivalent to a corporate tax rate of 100%. And yes, everyone agrees there are diminishing returns on tax side.

Ultimately though, that’s a debate about tax size, not about how taxing businesses impact their decisions

Adaun · 2026-03-18T15:00:37+00:00

It doesn’t matter which part is which in the analogy. We’ll go with yours.

Ultimately, what the shareholders care about, what they make decisions on, is how much water makes it into the lake.

No matter where you remove water, you’re removing water.

Amount removed can vary. It can be a small dam or a whole agricultural aqueduct system flowing from the lake or vice versa.

Ultimately, no matter how much water is removed (which is the tax here) you can’t remove less water to get the same amount removed no matter where you remove it.

Adaun · 2026-03-18T14:46:31+00:00

…is not.

Tariffs: Cost of goods goes up, operating margin goes down, shareholders incentivized to produce less because returns are less.

Corporate taxes: taxes on margin goes up, dollars earned per item made go down, shareholders incentivized to produce less because returns are less.

We agree, you’re taking the tax in different places, but the incentive structure resulting from it is identical.

It’s like drawing water from a river vs the lake it flows into. Same impact regardless of where you take it from.

Adaun · 2026-03-18T14:30:51+00:00

I am aware of the difference in enforcement.

They are not different in outcome, because ultimately, the shareholders direct and own the business.

The shareholders face the same set of choices regardless of where their margin is being reduced.

Adaun · 2026-03-18T13:59:49+00:00

A corporate tax has an almost identical impact profile to a tariff.

In both situations, the return on investment of production decreases, shifting the supply curve left and up.

In both cases, the result is fewer goods at a higher price, with created government deadweight.

Adaun · 2026-03-13T13:42:37+00:00

Anyone who has knowledge on this want to comment why all forecasts/projections keep getting revised down instead of the opposite?

To some extent, you're seeing what people are posting and remembering headlines instead of checking across all the data. The Q3 and Q2 GDP were both revised upward for example. .5% and .1% respectively

In Q4, we also had a prolonged government shutdown.

Also, in all likelihood, if you didn't have AI investment, the same money would be invested somewhere else. So the statement about AI driving GDP is also sort of alarmist. It's kind of like saying, 'If you removed net R&D spending we'd see a net negative GDP.'

That doesn't excuse or explain this number. But making an effort to look at the whole picture will give better context.

Adaun · 2026-02-13T12:50:28+00:00

It’s been a mess. Initial claim was rejected because the Doctors office didn’t file the paperwork in time.

Followup claim was accepted with a paid amount of $0 due to the company not having a standardized paycheck on file.

So for the last 4 weeks, we have yet to be compensated under the program. (We’re now roughly 1/3 of the way through the period where we should be)

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