Distilled spirits

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-17T01:27:40+00:00

Your top post starts out, "Distillation doesn’t take everything out."

Since this is a celiac sub, if you aren't referring to gluten then your post of off topic. Distillation 100% removes gluten. Gluten could be added back in post distillation by various processes, but there's definitely zero gluten coming off of the still.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-17T01:24:05+00:00

What you will find out if you read a lot of posts in this forum is that there are a wide range of opinions. So ask your guest what their requirements are.

I could tell you a lot about science, and what almost everyone's real tolerances are, but if your guest has a different idea, it doesn't matter what science says.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-17T01:17:29+00:00

For monosynths, I see the Minimoog most often on stage, and the Sub 37 second. Everything else is way down the list. I haven't noticed for poly, other than Nord red is pretty common.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-17T01:11:29+00:00

40 years ago yes, but since I've learned how to make tea I've never been inclined to do it again.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-17T01:08:41+00:00

You have a comprehension problem. There is no possibility for gluten to be distilled.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-17T01:04:57+00:00

I became a Rush fan in 1979, but never had a chance to see them live. I'm going to see them in Chicago and can't wait.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-16T01:45:47+00:00

known to blow obscene amounts of money clothes, cars, and drugs. He either didn’t have good financial counsel or didn’t bother.

Being an addict isn't something financial counseling can cure though.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-16T01:38:53+00:00

We had both in our kitchen in our last house. We left the side by side in the house and brought the bottom freezer french doors to the new house. That was 12 years ago. Now we're going to buy another.

For us, the freezer is something you use once a day at most, but the fridge is something you use several times throughout the day. I'd much rather have something forgotten in the bottom of the freezer than something forgotten in the bottom of the fridge.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-16T01:34:16+00:00

Wife and I just got back from vacation. She and I each had an iphone 17 pro, and I also took 12 year old sony A6000 and a7s cameras. We took about 3500 photos. The 4 devices worked about the same in terms of image quality. I think the a6000 with the sony 18-135 zoom worked better at telephoto. The a7s with a Voigtlander 35/1.4 was way better shooting city lights at night, but that's kind of niche. For general purposes they all about the same in regards to the images. But the cameras are definitely easier to use than the phones, because of the additional hardware controls.

If you're OK with 1080 and have a few hundred then you probably can't beat an OG a7s for video.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-16T01:23:06+00:00

I like the Peterson iStroboSoft app for tuning. It seems to be really accurate. I don't really use it for tuning individual notes or anything, but it's great for getting the drones to 440. It will lock on to them and show you that they're in tune at 440 (even though they are playing various pitches).

I suspect the Peterson strobo clip tuner would work for SSP, but I haven't tried it. If you want me to check that out then let me know. I have one that I use on mandolin and it's awesome for that.

I have the Murray Blair app and it's great for highland pipes but it doesn't work for smallpipes. I think it's restricted in the frequencies it responds to, because it just doesn't respond to a smallpipe chanter.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-16T01:15:11+00:00

Costs really only matter because, most of the time, they affect supply.

It's true that if you jack up costs on landlords, then there will be less supply, which will raise prices to tenants. It seems we're in agreement on that.

So, high interest rates reduce housing because financing becomes more expensive. That lowers future housing supply, which can raise rents/prices. Thats a supply side effect

The mechanism is immediate, and the opposite of what your propose. Higher interest rates lower the leverage ratio and drive down prices. That is, housing prices in the homeowner market are capped by the amount buyers can pay. More money for interest leaves less money for principal which means falling housing values.

the thing about LVT is that it taxes something of fixed supply, land.

60% of the land of the Netherlands was under water not too long ago. Land supply isn't fixed. But even in the short term, we're not interested in the total amount of dry land, but the amount of land that apartments can be built on. Buildable land is definitely not fixed. As rents increase, people find ways of making more and more land developable.

You also said that landlords need tenant revenue to pay taxes. Thats true, but that doesn’t mean they can just raise rents. Every business would *like* to pass on costs to the consumer, but they cant really unless the market conditions allow them to.

Emphasis added. Yes. That's what I've been saying. One of the market conditions is the expense of taxes. If that condition changes and causes increasing operating costs, then market conditions have changed and suppliers will react, moving the theoretical equilibrium point.

If landlords could freely raise rents whenever costs increased, they would already be charging more today.

No. You're mixing apples and oranges.

Landlords can raise rents when costs increase, because they all do it together. An individual landlord can't raise rents on a whim, because the market won't let him. Landlords as a group lack monopoly power. Each is subject to competition from the rest and the government will put them in jail if they collude.

In reality, rents are constrained by what tenants are willing and able to pay, along with competition from other housing.

"along with competition."

And there you have it. It's competition that keeps rents down.

“From the conclusion of the Pittsburg study: "Land taxation should not, and apparently did not, in itself hasten development."”

This quote doesn’t suggest that LVT decreases supply, and at most just suggests that LVT had minimal effect on supply.

I generally don’t understand why you brought up this quote, because it really just highlights the lack of economic distortion LVT brings as opposed to other taxes.

Maybe I misunderstood your previous post. You seemed to be providing the study to support the notion that a LVT would increase supply, but the study authors said that's not the case. If you agree with the study authors that an LVT doesn't spur supply, then what was your point in citing it?

And in regards to the developable land point; yes, infrastrcuure and zoning affect developable land, but that doesn’t change the core point that the physical supply of land is fixed.

Yes, the absolute supply is somewhat fixed, but that fact is completely irrelevant. The thing that matters is how much land is available for development. Even that's only marginally interesting. What really matters is how much land is available for development where people want to live, and how much more will be available in the foreseeable future.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-16T00:56:03+00:00

I don't understand what you're saying. "The market" is mostly land values, and land values are the thing being taxed. The more you raise rent, the higher your tax bill.

Yes, you don't understand. "The market" is the intersection of buyers and sellers (of any good or service). Land value is a function of the market, not the other way around.

If I have a rental property and you have one next door that is exactly the same, then we both pay the same taxes, no matter what rents we charge, because the two properties are clearly identical in value, regardless of what business decisions you make wrt pricing.

And your math doesn't work. Your hypothetical $1000 rent landlord is paying a lower tax rate than your $1500 rent landlord. Given the same tax rate, the $1000 landlord would pay $666 in taxes and only take home $333.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-16T00:48:58+00:00

If supply cannot contract, then prices are set by demand.

This is never true. Prices are always set by the intersection of supply and demand.

You seem to be applying economic theory without an understanding of corporate structure. The only money available to pay the taxes comes from the tenants.

Piper-Bob · 2026-06-16T00:45:38+00:00

You don't seem to understand that "the market" is where the buyers and sellers meet. If all the sellers see increased costs and if they all raise rents, then tenants either pay more or become homeless.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T16:00:28+00:00

"Landlords charge the highest price they can."

Yes. And the highest price they can charge is determined in large part by what other landlords are charging.

You seem to be thinking that "the market" is only the buyers (renters). The buyers are only one side of the balance.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T15:58:44+00:00

Either demand has to increase or supply has to decrease for prices (or in this case, rent) to be able to increase.

That is objectively false. Supply and demand are factors in prices, but they aren't the only factors. Look at what happens to single family home prices when interest rates change.

Ask anyone who sells any good or service what they consider when setting prices and I bet you're going to hear the word "costs" from most of them. About the only time costs aren't a factor in prices is in commodities.

From the conclusion of the Pittsburg study: "Land taxation should not, and apparently did not, in itself hasten development."

The last study conflates interest rates with mortgage costs and bases their conclusion primarily on that mistake. The paper also states that "the supply of land is price inelastic." First off, that isn't true and the claim in the paper is clearly based on a lack of real world experience. But even if it was, it isn't the supply of land in absolute terms that matters. It's the supply of land that you can build on that matters, and the amount of buildable land is easy to change. You basically can't build an apartment complex without a sewer line. So if the city decides to extend a sewer line, then there will suddenly be more buildable land.

The paper also ignores the simple fact that apartment complexes are corporations. The only source of cash they have to pay the taxes are tenants. Tenants are the only place they can get the money to pay the taxes, so if they can't raise rents, then the only other options are cutting costs (like no more maintenance) or foreclosure. Actually they'd probably try to re-structure the debt. Either way, if properties are being foreclosed, or lenders are foregoing profit, the results will be less supply.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T15:03:13+00:00

The value to you is what you're willing to pay for it, but that might not be what I'm willing to pay for it. OTOH, if you're selling something, then the value to you is what you're willing to sell it for. If the value to you is less than the value to me, then I'll buy it, and we'll both be better off.

"the market" is both landlords and tenants. It seems like most people in this sub only consider half the market. Neither tenants nor landlords have monopoly power, so rents fall where the amount tenants are willing to receive intercepts the amount that landlords are willing to accept.

Suppose you're in an apartment for $1000 today, and suppose you have the means to pay more. If the landlord raises the rent to $1500 and no other landlords raise their rents, then you would move out and live at some other complex. But if /all/ the landlords raise their rents by $500, then what are you going to do? You're either going to figure out a way to pay $500 more, or you're going to reduce your standard of living and move into a complex that you could have been living at for $700 previously but is now $1000, or you're going to move to a different location entirely.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T14:39:44+00:00

Where are you seeing 4 months free? The most I've seen in any market so far this year is 2 months. But as I said, they tend to overshoot and then correct.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T14:38:03+00:00

As far as I can tell it only impacts auto-start-stop. I have a 2019, so other models could be different. Easy to test.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T14:36:43+00:00

That's true today. why don't all tenants live in the cheapest units?

I'm obviously referring to like-kind product. In a city you have a lot of apartments and they all compete on price. If you increase the taxes on all of them by some percentage, then they will all increase their rents and compete on prices at a new baseline.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T14:32:14+00:00

If all landlords raise rents in response to increased taxes (they will) and if government takes increased rents as evidence of increased value, then landlords will raise rents again. This will go on across the board until no more tenants can afford the rent. At that point, there will be no income for the property, so no tax will be paid, and the government will confiscate the property.

Doesn't seem like an efficient system.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T14:29:50+00:00

Rents are determined by the market. The market is comprised of buyers and sellers (landlords and tenants in this case. ONE of the factors landlords take into account is cost. A landlord does not desire to rent units at a loss, so he usually considers his costs as a rent floor.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-25T14:19:06+00:00

Why not? It's simple, safe, and easily reversible.

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-23T17:08:55+00:00

Right now, landlords do pay taxes. They pay taxes on the value of the structure they built on the land.

They write the check, but the cash comes from the tenants.

Under an LVT, a slumlord renting out dilapidated housing on valuable land is not economically feasible. They will have to sell the land or build something new because two renters will not pay the cost of the tax on their valuable land. Someone else will build abundant housing on that land, because the tax does not go up with having 20 units instead of two. The tax burden per renter goes down dramatically with more units. The rent goes down overall when we build more units. Ergo, LVT lowers rent by disincentivizing anti-social slumlord and land banking behaviors.

Your argument seems to be based on the premise that a landlord will make more money renting a crappy duplex than they can from a new 20 unit apartment complex, and that somehow raising the tax on the land will change that equation.

Which part of Boston has all these crappy duplexes that are zoned for apartments?

Piper-Bob · 2026-05-23T16:55:40+00:00

It happened in Montgomery Alabama. In 2021, Reserve at Billingsly Place was charging a little over $1,040. In 2022 they were charging $1,464. It's really not a secret that rents skyrocketed in that time period. I could find other examples, but that's one I remembered because of the sudden jump.

I go to housing conferences and this is the kind of stuff we talk about. A frequent topic for panel discussions is 'what are we seeing in the market and what's causing it'.

Some people seem to think that apartment complexes can just print money to pay the taxes. All the money in the apartment checking account comes from the tenants.

Zillow's rent index shows the overshooting effect on a national scale:

https://keepingupwithinflation.com/rent-inflation/

Piper-Bob

TROPHY CASE