When people rent, they’re sort of paying a premium for the owner’s risk, liability, regulatory compliance, effort etc. So the rent works out to ~3x the interest + property tax divided by the number of apartments in the building. When people buy a house, they get tend to get way more space than they really need, and so also spend many times more than necessary. It seems like the only financially rational thing to do is to buy an apartment building and live in one of the units. It’ll essentially pay for itself. Interest plus property tax is ~5% of the sale value of the building, while combined rents are typically ~15% and the maintenance overhead is ~2%. Add to that the fact that mortgage interest is tax-deductible while rent isn’t (it’s crazy and regressive, but that’s the way the system works). A small 10 unit apartment building costs about the same as a nice house. Renting and buying houses seem like the largest and dumbest investments that most people make.
When double blind is not so blind
26 FebIf participants in a study are told what is being studied, and the non-placebo treatment has any obvious physical effects, regardless of what those effects are, it will effectively unblind the study. It’s far better to do the study without telling the participants what is being studied.
States that try to collect tax from internet sales can go fuck themselves
19 FebI am a tiny online retailer. In order to collect sales taxes for jurisdictions outside of my own, I would have to do the following:
1. Setup an account with each and every state, county, and municipal jurisdiction with a sales tax.
2. Report sales taxes monthly or quarterly with each and every jurisdiction even if my sales in that jurisdiction during the reporting period is $0.
3. Determine all of the jurisdictions that every shipping address I have is contained in.
4. Understand all of the tax rates and exemptions and exemptions to the exemptions.
5. Keep up with the changes in tax rates, exemptions, exemptions to the exemptions, and arbitrary boundaries that form jurisdictions for each and every jurisdiction in the country.
This is effectively impossible.
Source: Jeff Bezos says state sales tax changes violate the constitution
This is why we have the commerce clause of the constitution, which forbids all state and local governments from taxing interstate commerce.
The Skepgineer
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