It’s about who owned the land in 2017 and who was governor. Some states were less corrupt than others, but as a general rule OZs were and are mostly political grift with a few legit trades thrown in for cover.
The reason that HUGE tracts of OZs make no sense is that the “for development of blighted areas” thing is very thinly veiled bullshit.
In many states OZs were selected as political handouts and were placed in areas where development was already planned. The characterization that they lifted up poor regions is pure horseshit.
It adds insult to injury that a billionaire real estate mogul made EXACTLY this argument when selling his tax policy and business conduct (I’m just being a good businessman, and I’ll fix the rigged system by getting rid of loopholes!), then turned around and got rid of special deductions for normal folks and created a massive special interest handout for real estate moguls.
This particular example inherited his fathers business, which was valuable enough that a half-share was sufficient to move him onto the Forbes 400 list.
Although his father also trained him not to be decent or honest.
I assume you're talking about the SALT deduction? The one that mostly benefits the highest income earners?
Interesting how when people personally benefit from a tax break it's "entirely justified", but when someone else does it's a "massive special interest handout".
A two earner household with a cop and a nurse benefited from SALT.
The average beneficiary of opportunity zones is generationally wealthy. A pair of tech workers pulling down 7 figures a year are stupidly wealthy and still would probably not have enough capital to be the primary beneficiary of an opportunity fund.
I’m not going to defend the salt deduction because I’m not a fan of it for the reasons you mention, but comparing SALT to opportunity zones is genuinely delusional.
Pitting the lower middle class against the upper middle class over a modestly regressive tax break while folks who haven’t worked in three generations pay a 0% tax rate on the fruits of others’ labor.
Haha, I totally get where you're coming from. From my perspective, I will say that compared to other "investments", I really felt like I could understand the risks with UST. I had money invested, but because I understood the mechanisms I understood how it could fail, and had an idea of the probability.
I wish it was possible to replicate this visibility for other investments - the lengthy "disclosures" are no where near as useful as full visibilty into market mechanisms, and real time data on assets / liabilities.
Also, Obama has two college aged daughters and that's where he gets his contemporary music from. Of all things to be cynical about... I'm sure a lot of parents have tried listening to what their kids listen to, and, on occasion, found stuff they liked.
I'm going to invoke Occam's Razor here that a guy who was by all accounts a teenage stoner probably does, in fact, 'derive joy from music,' lol.
I do not listen to a lot of music but it is usually up to 10-15 years old. I do not listen to the 80's crying over a lost youth.
The music they listen to is mixed - there is a big part just fro the looks and it is unbearable. This the of music everyone forgets after 2 years.
There are styles I do not like.
And then there are great songs I discover through them by chance. Last one was K.Flay, staring with "High Enough". I was surprised to hear "Can't Sleep" in The Suicide Squad movie afterwards.
Nixon is the only president in my lifetime who I would believe didn’t enjoy music because of his quaker beliefs. LBU was such an odd guy that I might believe it about him too if I didn’t grow up listening to rock and roll on KLBJ.
It's not 2008 or even 2013. You can get crypto at a coin counting kiosk in any grocery store in middle America.
The psychology driving crypto for the last half decade or so is the same sort of psychology that drives penny stocks and scratch-offs. The only people who don't understand this yet are sitting in SV/NYC/Miami and are totally out of touch.
Stablecoins were sold as "the stability of a savings account with the returns of dogecoin".
>> There's a certain delight [1] in watching increased market volatility exposing how understanding merkle trees and consensus protocols doesn't make you an expert on what the financial system is, how it works and why it is the way it is.
> These comments don't seem very relevant to stablecoins such as this one, which are algorithmic rather than backed
This is exactly right. In huge swaths of the US, your local county's Mosquito Control department is probably a small number of full timers (maybe one or even zero), some budget for seasonal staff, and some commercial F-150s with sprayers in the bed. They probably have six-seven figures a year in budget.
They don't have a PR budget, just trucks and sprayers. But they are absolutely the reason that there isn't endemic malaria in your county.
there is no doubt that government employees can innovate. Anyone can innovate. Provided with the correct competitive structure (large market rewards, big prizes, etc).
And yet, the F150 was built by capitalists, the sprayers are built with capitalists. The chemicals were built by capitalists.
so yes some problems are best solved by government, but innovation isnt one of them.
> so yes some problems are best solved by government, but innovation isnt one of them.
1. I've worked in gov labs, industry labs, and academic labs. Mostly industry labs. People and culture are the most important thing. The variability in innovation between companies is often WAY higher than the variability between the public and private sector. Gov labs can be insanely innovative or quagmires. Same for industry labs. It's all about the people and culture. Good people and good culture and possible in the public and private sectors. Bad people and bad culture are also possible in the public and private sectors. Anyone telling you otherwise is trolling and/or selling an idiology (sic).
2. The whole point of the above post was that there's ENORMOUS value in the "tried and true". Getting rid of endemic malaria has been possible for the better part of a century. It's a governance problem, not an innovation problem.
The reason that HUGE tracts of OZs make no sense is that the “for development of blighted areas” thing is very thinly veiled bullshit.