Miscellaneous thoughts about miscellaneous matters
Recently the idea of taxing billionaires out of existence was brought up by Elizabeth Warren as part of her run for president. She wants to use the proceeds from this tax to fund her idea of Medicare for everyone, so she thinks that a tax that discriminates against some people is a good idea, even though it would be a statutory taking and a violation of due process. Such ideas have come up in the past, but the basic problem with it still is that removing the incentive to be successful will stop ...
Updated 11-17-2019 at 07:01 PM by PeterL
The One Who Dies Last Wins I realize that I wrote about this a while back, but it might be a good time to revisit the matter. As I am sure you know, one of the foremost experts in longevity declared a few years ago that the first person who would live to be 1000 years old probably was already alive. I don’t know whether he was right, but that may turn out to be true; I’ll let you know in about a thousand years. Even if humans don’t start making it to a thousand, there ...
Get Rich Quick schemes are always popular, and some of them actually work, but the “Rich” and “quick” parts make them doubtful. If someone approached me with a scheme to become reasonably well-off in not too long a time, then I would be more receptive to the idea, whatever it might be. But right now I would find it very convenient to become rich immediately or earlier, and it doesn’t look like the people who owe me money are inclined to become honest. Forbes suggests the stock market, ...
Updated 09-03-2014 at 08:34 AM by PeterL
There are people who say that people make their own luck, but I have found that to be false. People may methodically work their ways into the catbird seat, but luck is different. For some reason that was not apparent to me, this came to me as the next thing that I should blog about. Maybe because my luck is not as good as I would like. Whether one looks at the dictionary definition or the concept of luck that people use, it is a rather amorphous concept. The Wikipedia article (link ...
I don’t often think about the moral or other principles by which people live their lives, or try to live their lives, but the question came up recently as to whether or why people live according to what they read. Unfortunately, the question was poorly written, so the answers were not what was being sought; the asker intended to ask why people didn’t actually live by the moral principles that they had learned, and that is a valid question. There are several ways to regard the answers and the question. ...