patrick.net

I hear what you all are saying.

No, it does not assess the value of an asset and tax a percent of that.

But, as has been made clear in many discussions, that is eminently hard -- estimating the value of assets. However, what is not hard is to account for the income derived from those assets which are tracked in hard dollars.

What the NIIT does do is tax "passive income" or the income that results from assets. This includes income from rental properties.

The reason that it is a type of wealth tax, is it taxing the asset not directly, but the benefit that the owner derives from the asset. Ultimately if the owner cannot maintain or keep up the costs of the asset, and is deprived of enough of the income, he has to give it up.

Thus the NIIT is an indirect form of wealth tax (and the reason for much of the opposition to Obamacare since it is funded by the NIIT).

I have proposed that those states seeking more revenue add a SIIT -- or state version of the NIIT. Since people have to already track NIIT income, there would be little additional paperwork.

tr6 says

Again, way to ignore my argument. If you invested in a fund today, you will get 4.7% for 7 years as long as there are no defaults.

Bond funds are a little tricky compared to bonds. Yes, if you buy the bond, and it doesn't default, when it matures in 7 years you'll get your principal and it would have paid 4.7% per year.

But, a bond fund doesn't mature (with some exceptions). They sell bonds and buy new ones to stay at 7 years. So, you could buy a bond fund share for $100, at 4.7% yield. If the yield in 7 years is 7.4%, then the bond fund share price would decline. Maybe the 4.7% per year makes up for the decline, maybe not, depending on the new yield.

There are some defined-maturity bond funds like BSCE, BSCF, etc. These are ETFs that buy a collection of bonds, then the ETF itself liquidates in a set year. For example, one of these will liquidate in 2014. This has the diversification advantage of a fund, and the no-loss-of-principal-excepting-default of buying a bond and holding to maturity.

bgamall4 says

accumulated value over time.

Again, for anything other than financial assets, that's really hard.

And even with financial assets, we have lots of incentive to get people to invest...especially long term and in new technologies.

You don't want to undo that by adding taxes to make them have to sell those assets!

However, the NIIT shaves off just enough to get some of that back by taxing:

interest
dividends
capital gains
rental and royalty income
non-qualified annuities
income from businesses involved in trading of financial instruments or commodities and businesses

And it does this when the asset produces real dollar value...instead of trying to get some accountant to figure how how much say, a castle is worth, or a windfarm.

bgamall4 says

The French have no problem doing it.

Au contraire, mon frere.

The French did away with their wealth tax in the early 00s, perhaps because of just this reason.

What they are now calling a wealth tax is really a high earners tax on regular income.

I am against high earners tax because it tends to hurt the up and comers more than the established wealthy (in general for Democrats and Socialists, this seems to be the goal..target the Nouveau Riche and protect the Old Moneybags who fund their campaigns and social programs for the poor).

The NIIT tax is the best of all worlds.

Easy to estimate.
Low enough for people not to complain.
Taxes "passive income" or income that most would conceive as not being directly related to hard work, so there's a kind of moral imperative.

SiO2 says

But, a bond fund doesn't mature (with some exceptions). They sell bonds and buy new ones to stay at 7 years. So, you could buy a bond fund share for $100, at 4.7% yield. If the yield in 7 years is 7.4%, then the bond fund share price would decline. Maybe the 4.7% per year makes up for the decline, maybe not, depending on the new yield.

Effective duration and distribution yield are fairly accurate ways to approximate returns.

If the interest rates rise that much in the next seven years (another 3% from here), then returns on any bond fund would not be that great. Housing may do even worse.

i guess he had a good shot at beating the hillary, now the media is going to cook his fat ass rump roast, hehe!

Um, am I the only one who noticed the woman in question was 91 years old? Chances are she was going to kick off sometime this week anyhow. Christie just saved the taxpayers a big medical bill for useless extraordinary measures!

On an aside, anyone who wears their pants higher than their navel shouldn't be on a poster anywhere. Eww

The problem with Benghazi was that we were not standing tall, like when Reagan got those 300 Marines killed in Beirut, or when Bush had 3000 killed on his watch.

But Benghazi was negligence and the 1983 barracks bombing was not, so there's no comparison.

bgamall4 says

tatupu70 says

What you meant to say was that he found a couple fall guys, right?

He needs to be indicted for someone dying. Hard to see how someone would not have died because of this extra unnecessary traffic.

Maybe it would be better to hold off on an indictment until we find out if Christie was actually involved or not.

On the other hand your standard of proof is pretty flexible. Obviously this is false flag operation northwood zionist jfk assisination 9/11 controlled demolition sandy hook related. It all ties together if you know where to look.

Oh my there was a political traffic jam in Jersey.

You wanna talk about a political traffic jam. You should have been here the first few weeks the express lane in Miami opened on i95 from North of the Gables all the way to the 826/Turnpike junction.

Traffic flowed like a dream for the first few weeks, it was like nothing happened. Traffic zipped along at 65mph at 5pm with no problem. Only a few self important losers were in the express lane, which were cheap because the traffic was good.

With in a few weeks, the FHP started setting up 4pm speed traps at the tightest bottle neck in the whole stretch of 95, a quarter of a mile past the junction and around a bend in 95 near Ives Dairy road. By 4:30 the traffic would be crawling from 3 miles South of the 95 entrance on US, all the way up the speed trap. So people would start using the HOV pay lane. The problem was too many people started using the HOV pay lane. While we had artificially created bottle neck traffic, the idiots in the HOV lanes were at a complete standstill because some idiot at the junction rear ended another idiot who was texting.

If you think about it, all long term traffic snarls are Political.

Is this thread a liberal guilt trip, a zionist guilt trip, a tea bagger guilt trip, a false flag guilt trip or a fat person guilt trip?

With so many liberals on Patnet, I get my guilt trips mixed up, I need a scorecard.

NO it worked so well the Cops have been there every week day ever since. Or it was the last time I drove that way.
There's a crash almost every other day, mostly in the HOV lanes, from people texing not ever once expecting to hit a patch of road, where the cars at a complete stop.

Ceffer says

With so many liberals on Patnet, I get my guilt trips mixed up, I need a scorecard.

You should feel terrible about that.

Call it Crazy says

Don't provide the liberal wild dogs with facts, it just bursts their bubble...

No kidding. Pretty pathetic how they try to exploit someone's death. "but but but........someone in Manhattan died of diabetic shock waiting on his pizza to be delivered." Stay classy Libs.

Anyway, looks like the girls at Patnet are getting pretty worried about 2016 already. How many threads have they started here on the same subject? Three? Four?

My Lib bro in Europe broke our 5 year hiatus of online political debate to breathlessly email me this story yesterday just convinced Christie would be forced to resign within the week.

So delusional.

CaptainShuddup says

the idiots in the HOV lanes were at a complete standstill because some idiot at the junction rear ended another idiot who was texting.

Which political party was responsible for texting?

You can't be a national leader without killing somebody somewhere, Krispy just got an early start.

Call it Crazy says

Did you see how cockeyed the joker's arm was??

I watched the video and it appears that Christie is actually being played by an actor, he obviously isn't distraught enough to be the real Christie watching his career go down the drain. I'm pretty sure this whole bridge thing is a false flag zionist conspiricy that never actually happened. The news reports of Sharon being in bad health is just to cover up the operation. Obviously the pictures of traffic jams are fake. There's never been a traffic jam at the GW bridge.

If you haven't gone from gambling debts, indictment, bankruptcies, failed businesses, ponzi schemes and negative net worth to multimillionaire status your first or second day after being sworn into office, you are just not listening to your electorate.

Why do they hate success?

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Neighbors speak out in the name of the Fort Lee that Krispy Kreme sentenced to death.

Named: Woman, 91, who died after paramedics were delayed by Christie bridge scandal

Florence Genova died after ambulance took seven minutes to reach her in traffic caused by Christie allies

http://splicd.com/yZWUa5OR3Ho/157/158

Christie vs Hillary who says we don't have great leadership ? Huh ?

P.S. Will Hillary wear the $500,000 gold necklace, a present from the King Of Saudi Ararbia, at the inauguration....?

Yes She Can

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think."

- Adolf Hitler

bob2356 says

On the other hand your standard of proof is pretty flexible. Obviously this is false flag operation northwood zionist jfk assassination 9/11 controlled demolition sandy hook related. It all ties together if you know where to look.

Sounds like you did solid research by clicking on links to various conspiracy sites. Since your conclusions match my predetermined conceptions, this looks like sound research to me.

I will research this as well: I will find photos from actor publicity and Facebook shots which don't resemble Christie or his aides at all, and then claim it was all a production.

Ariel Sharon - The Official Vegetable of Israel - is probably pulling the strings on this one through eyeball movements and variations in peristaltic contractions.

HydroCabron is Kochel 271 says

Sounds like you did solid research by clicking on links to various conspiracy sites. Since your conclusions match my predetermined conceptions, this looks like sound research to me.

Yes, Bgmal has taught me everything there is to know about doing research to the highest standards of internet journalism. To think that I used to go to all the trouble of actually looking up facts and reading peer reviewed articles. So old school. The internet has changed everything. It's a brave new world since 1984 and bgmal is on the leading edge.

Call it Crazy says

1. Hilary is not responsible for the Benghazi attacks. Republicans are for responsible for those deaths because they lowered the funding of the embassy and that compromised its security.

2. The Republicans deliberately sabotaged the public saftey for political gain in NJ and that might have resulted in deaths. No Democrat deliberately sabotaged the embassy in Benghazi.

Put simply, this bridge scandal is a real scandal that affected real people. Benghazi is a made up scandal for political gain, much like the motive for crime, and yes it's a crime, in the bridge scandal.

So, Bridghazi, Bridghazi, Bridghazi!

Just the excuse the fed needs to call off the taper

Looks like Christie found a patsy. A lesson to all who feel going along to get along at work is the right move. When the US was the number one power, it was skill that determined who the leaders should be. Today, it's the people who are the best at sucking up.......

bgamall4 says

No, there are enough assault rifles to shoot down drones

Again, it's impossible to shoot down a bird with a rifle. Even more so for a drone. Adding "assault" to the definition doesn't make it more possible. To have a chance at shooting down a flying object you need, basically, to deliver a cloud of projectiles, which is achieved either by shotgun-type weapon, multi-barell machinegun (think 4-barrel DSHK or, better yet, Gatling), cannon with shrapnel projectile, or missile with shrapnel-loaded warhead. Rifles are useless against flying objects.

I was speaking theoretically anyway.

And showed your ignorance on the subject (and basic science really).

I have no clue if people would be motivated to shoot down drones, you troll.

The only people who would be motivated to shoot down drones with rifles would be people who have no education, common sense and knowledge about shooting. Having any one of three would be enough to understand how laughable the proposition is. BTW, why did you dodge the question about your profession and education level? Did you go to college? Heck, have you finished HS? Fess up, Gary, public wants to know.

CiC, don't you know you're not allowed to mention anecdotal evidence about cooling and AGW, unless it's about a heat wave or receding glacier or lack of ice cap in the Arctic, in which case anecdote away.

It's been much colder than usual around Baltimore so far this winter.

Ahem, excuse me, it is no longer referred to as Global Warming. (I mean really, that was so 10 minutes ago!) Please use the correct PC term--Climate Change. This accounts for all weather anomalies. Thank you for your cooperation.

Everything nominal to profile.

thunderlips11 says

Everything nominal to profile.

Normal except that according to your graph it looks like we are headed toward the next ice age.

They thought so in the 70s, after 40 years of cooling trends.

The BBC, Science, In Search Of, Newsweek, all ran articles in the mid 70s warning of the possibility of an impending Ice Age.

For the record, I believe there has been some warming, at least in the past century. The Devil is all in the details of how the statistics are compiled (the Hockey Stick graph is absurd, as in any graph that compares multiple different proxies to actual measurements in the past few decades. For example, we've only been measure the Arctic Ice Cap spread since about 1980, so we have no idea how large it was nor how long into the year it lasted before then other than snippets of anecdotal evidence), and I believe it's a travesty that the Scientific Method, that should be treating the primarily Anthropogenic-driven Global Warming hypothesis with repeated challenges and skepticism, has neglected Ocean Currents, Sun Emissions, Ocean Outgassing, and a myriad of other known or potential climate forcing measures - even if it ends up proving AGW.

The Earth is so complex, that a few years to make a consensus is meaningless, as there is no possible way we've explored the topic anywhere near comprehensively.

We need to answer why past CO2 levels have fluctuated widely in the total absence of human activity, also, and eliminate any natural cause as the prime driver. I don't mean back when meteorites were pounding the earth, nor in the Jurassic Era, but in the Quaternary period itself.

It should be noted that the IPCC was largely formed through the efforts of Maggie Thatcher, who was in the throes of an epic battle to replace labor-voting working-class unionized British Coal with tory-voting college-educated engineers running Nuclear Power Plants at the time.

In short (too late) - I'm leaning towards this guy's position:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/my-global-warming-skepticism-for-dummies/

And I believe in aggressive pursuit of alternative energy, but we have to beware of the enviro fanatics and the lawyer-get-rich-quick scheme of suing over every alternative energy project (ie Nantucket Sound, or any hydro project). If we have to kill more salmon to create renewable energy, with our lousy other choices being Nuclear, Oil/Gas, or live like unwashed hippies, I have to say "Goodbye Salmon". The lesser of two evils and all that.

Also, a Maunder Minimum is more a threat than Global Warming. Most of the arable land is in the Northern Hemisphere. If the temperature drops a few degrees fahrenheit, with 6 Billion people, we have a major problem.

I think we are focusing on wrong issues - the more pertinent question is who will win in nfl divisional playoffs this weekend.

Quigley says

On an aside, anyone who wears their pants higher than their navel shouldn't be on a poster anywhere.

No exceptions?

We need to investigate who sent Piers Morgan. Why does he always talk about guns on his show? Something doesn't jive with him. Waterboarding should be useful to dertermine his intentions and the identity of the puppeteers.

marco says

Christie vs Hillary who says we don't have great leadership ? Huh ?

P.S. Will Hillary wear the $500,000 gold necklace, a present from the King Of Saudi Ararbia, at the inauguration....?

Yes She Can

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think."

- Adolf Hitler

Wow, so Christie turns out to be a common thug who exacts retribution on his political enemies, and he's STILL your hero. And the only defense you have for him is to attack Hillary Clinton.

Sad.

thomaswong.1986 says

Bellingham Bill says

just for the record, my retired Apple millionaire friend was priced out of Los Altos, and that was 2-3 years ago.

real millionaires live in SilverCreek... even back in the day, why buy a chicken shack in LA when you can buy a modern home in SC.... whats the point, are you looking to bank roll the retailers on University Ave so they can charge you $5 cup of coffee ?

It's true that for the same $, you can get a nicer place in SC than in PA/LA/Cupt/Sara/LG. But;

- schools are not as good in SC. Some prefer a less stressful school, so in that case SC is better. But many people buying $1m+ houses look for high academic achievement schools. Private school is an option, but...

- traffic is worse in SC. Commute to North SJ, or Cupt, or PA; it's much better in the Fortress area than from SC. And there's more routes; in the last two days there's been a fire and series of crashes on 101N. Not a lot of other good options. But if going from LG to North SJ (for example), you can take San Tomas if 17/880 is bad.

- Not only that, but traffic is generally worse around evergreen and sc. just going to the store or shopping is more troublesome than in other areas.

After all, Thomas, you live in LG; obviously you see some benefit there compared to SC.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

At least Killer Krispy didn't murder all those people in Benghazi

How can we be sure about it? I mean, with the demonic coverup skills he demonstrated....