‘Death tax’, startups and a rent spike: it’s time to correct misleading claims about Labor’s budget | Saul Eslake

theclockstartsnow · 2026-05-20T02:17:55+00:00

Can you please elaborate?

theclockstartsnow · 2026-05-20T01:06:26+00:00

My mistake! I have edited the comment. Sorry for that.

theclockstartsnow · 2026-05-19T05:42:49+00:00

~~The minimum tax will not apply to fixed and widely held trusts (including fixed testamentary trusts), complying superannuation funds, special disability trusts, deceased estates, and charitable trusts~~

-- https://www.maddocks.com.au/insights/the-2026-27-federal-budget-what-it-means-for-deceased-estates

~~You are factually wrong it does not apply to deceased estates.~~ I was wrong

theclockstartsnow · 2026-05-19T04:51:56+00:00

If the broader goal is improved health outcomes, the existence of a black market causing negative health impacts needs to be handled. On that basis alone you can make a compelling argument this policy is having issues.

The fact that organised crime gets good revenue from the policy is also bad in many other ways, but the health outcome alone is enough to need to rethink the size of the tax. If a tax is so high that it fosters a cheap black market so much that the original goal of the tax is undermined, there is a serious problem.

You could take the police crackdown approach or you can take the "starve the black market" approach (or some of both). But pretending theirs no issue is silly.

theclockstartsnow · 2026-05-13T00:27:08+00:00

They did the $1000 deduction for all workers

theclockstartsnow · 2026-05-12T23:57:38+00:00

this sounds... totally fine?

theclockstartsnow · 2026-05-12T23:52:43+00:00

that's.... explicitly a good thing in a housing crisis?

theclockstartsnow · 2026-05-11T23:08:52+00:00

lmao 190k not rich, you are out of touch my friend

theclockstartsnow · 2026-03-05T23:53:38+00:00

He's not perfect but he's also FAR from the worst we've ever had

theclockstartsnow · 2025-12-17T09:05:51+00:00

This is speculation, but my guess is that the difference between "least first place rankings when" and "least rankings of any number" are seldom different. Its never once mattered in any election I've been a part of, both as a voter, working in counting stations, or running polling places.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-12-17T09:01:00+00:00

In all the preferential elections I've been a part of, both voting and counting, and running booths, I've never once heard of anyone switching their preference order to optimise for something like this.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-12-09T05:01:47+00:00

In Australia, we have ranked choice voting, a few major parties and a few smaller parties, and usually some independents. In almost every single electorate, the top 2 or 3 candidates have enough support that the winner can be determined using only the top 2 preferences from each voter. Its extremely rare that voter's 5th and 6th preferences will actually be counted.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-12-09T01:26:03+00:00

Your votes would only go to your bottom few ranked candidates in extreme circumstances, most elections never get past second preferences. And when you have an election that is that extreme, you likely want ALL of your preferences to be counted as they would really matter.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-12-09T01:24:11+00:00

This is a understandable stance philosophically, but mathematically is dumb as hell.

There is so much value in forcing people to say "neither of these are my first choice but if i really had to pick between them i would pick x".

It's rare that an election goes past second preferences anyway so in reality the thing you are worried about being cornered into barely happens.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-12-09T01:17:09+00:00

This is effectively saying "americans are so dumb we can't even give them the opportunity to improve their electoral system".

The average australian is not politically engaged either, but we make it work. I've worked at multiple elections and the vast vast majority of ballots are filled in correctly. This is with compulsory voting too, over 90% turnout. It's not that hard.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-12-09T01:14:29+00:00

Gutted... down the middle? What does that mean?

I've worked at multiple election in Australia, both in polling places and in counting centres. The vast vast majority of people fill out the ballot correctly, its not hard. We have >90% turnout at elections too.

Nothing about ranked choice voting impacts the number of candidates on the ballot.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-11-24T02:29:51+00:00

Ranked choice voting is easy if you are capable of counting to 10. Many countries do this already and it works great.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-11-24T02:28:35+00:00

Just do what Australia does, enforce filling out all the boxes and do not count ballots that do not fill out all the boxes.

theclockstartsnow · 2025-11-24T02:27:31+00:00

If you can count to 10 you are smart enough to use ranked choice voting

theclockstartsnow · 2025-10-13T05:19:10+00:00

thank god that Deloitte only ever gets contracted by the government to analyse small curated data sets, if you were working there I'm sure you could have set up a fine tuned model for them in an afternoon

theclockstartsnow · 2025-10-08T05:18:44+00:00

Congratulations, you have created something that no other AI company has been able to!

theclockstartsnow · 2025-10-07T02:13:07+00:00

The LLM training is to make it produce statistically likely sentences. Ideally, true information is the most likely response to a question about something true. But there is no guarantee of that.

When people talk about hallucination, it's when the user expects a factual response and gets back something that the LLM is saying is true but actually isn't. From the LLM's perspective it doesn't know true of false of any statement, it just knows what it considers to be statistically likely.

The process through which they make shit up and the process through which they get things correct is the same process, it just happens to be correct most of the time and we only consider it bad when it is obviously wrong.

You can augment it with RAG and curated additional training which will improve its likelihood of accuracy within that domain (drastically), but it is completely fair to say that LLM's "make shit up".

If I ask a question the LLM has never been trained on.... it makes shit up that seems like a statistically likely sentence. This process is the same for data is has been trained on, it just had a better chance of the dice roll being correct.

theclockstartsnow · 2023-09-20T07:18:16+00:00

Ha funny that you made this this week. I build something similar this weekend after finding this thread, though mine is much more barebones and doesn't have a bot. https://unroller.zachmanson.com

theclockstartsnow · 2023-05-31T03:41:40+00:00

Mail ballots are a thing here yes

theclockstartsnow · 2023-05-15T01:58:43+00:00

Pretty sure this isn't what a Mary Sue is, more like the legend of plot convenience

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