Federal Receipts as a Percent of GDP measures total government revenue relative to the size of the economy, serving as a standardized way to track the federal tax burden over time.
Although the top marginal tax rate in the 1950s indeed exceeded 90%, federal receipts hovered around 17% of GDP; this was nearly identical to current levels, because loopholes and high income thresholds (roughly equivalent to $2MM for single/$4MM for couples) meant almost no one actually paid that top rate.
The effective tax rate for the top 1% was closer to 42% rather than 90%, demonstrating that extremely high statutory rates on paper do not necessarily generate proportionally higher government revenue.
90% taxes on people with only 200% of the median wealth seems awfully excessive. For someone with $16,000 in assets, this would leave them with $1,600 -- just 20% of median wealth. I strongly suspect no tax system in history has ever worked like this.
Not to mention that taxes are collected and spent at the national level, not at the global level. If you are proposing a global government that administers taxes worldwide, that is an interesting idea, but it's not exactly a place to "start" a new tax policy, given that there is no political infrastructure in place to support it and likely couldn't be for decades even if the world made a concerted effort to make it happen.
As somebody who owns an EV, that thing won't catch on (Western or Chinese) unless infrastructure will start being operated by sane people. Currently the "app problem" instead of accepting a debit card on the charger is the biggest pain in the ass followed by unmaintained chargers, because government subsidized building them and not maintaining them. If these two pain points are not fixed, don't expect any kind of boom, more like slow withering out of EVs in western countries because it is constant PITA to use them.
A strange and anecdotal take. Infrastructure is already here. Millions of Americans are happily driving across the country charging their EVs just fine. You probably had a bad experience with a Chargepoint L2 charger in a garage that needed an app to operate and the FTUX on that is really painful. But, no one is using a L2 charger while roadtripping. L2 charging is primarily only for home or work use while parked for 8-12 hours. All the L3 chargers that people use during trips feature tap to pay.
As for maintenance, seeing 1 charger be down out of 10 is not an infrastructure problem. EV drivers figured out waiting in line and queuing just fine. And with most stations charging at L4 speeds, the wait time is short.
This is a US or local problem primarily. At least where I live there is a law in place requiring public ev chargers to be available with credit card payments and are forbidden from needing users to subscribe.
I just finished a road trip from Colorado to SoCal by EV and this was the first trip where I didn’t once need an app to start charging. It was a nice change from my last one.
Rivian’s network has been amazing now that non Rivian EVs can use it, and Ionna has appeared with delightfully retro futuristic looking equipment that doesn’t even have a backing app - just payment and go.
Non determinism of AI feels like a compiler which will on same input code spit out different executable on every run. Fixing bugs will become more like a ritual to satisfy whims of the machine spirit.
But how different? Compilers do, in fact, spit out different binaries with each run. There are timestamps and other subtle details embedded in them (esp compiler version and linking) that make the same source result in a different binary. "That's different"; "that's not the same thing!" I see you thinking. As long as the AI prompt "make me a login screen" results in a login screen appropriate for the rest of the code, and not "rm -rf ~/", does it matter if the indeterminism produces a login page with a Google login page before the email login button or after?
It is very similar situation to Russian ransomware gangs. They have a rule not to target Russian and sometimes Chinese companies and FSB will then let them operate. The thing is that constant ransomware attacks on companies in the last decade has forced victims to at least somehow adapt and become more resilient to such attacks. However Russian companies were protected and now Ukrainian hackers are able to penetrate them using exploits and techniques which were either patched or ransomwed into oblivion years ago.
Case and point - Attack on a submarine in Novorossiysk which was observed by Russian Navy security camera controlled by Ukrainians.
> If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe.
The main problem with US international politics is that they are looking on the problem through American lenses, i.e. why would Afghans refuse liberal values and either choose or tolerate theocracy? Does not make any sense from view of an average American.
Same like it makes no sense for average American why states in EU are banding together and slowly shedding its nationalistic values? What if same would be done by Latin America? Wow scary, need to throw a spanner into the things!
EU is on correct path. US decided to include in their doctrine to replace current governments in EU with right wing governments. So limiting hate speech and divisive content for Europeans is significantly curbing US ability to achieve that and as a bonus it is limiting Russians running around with their propaganda.
Mistaking redaction tool (replaces data with black square) and black highlighter (adds black square as another layer). If people doing redactions are computer-illiterate, they won't see the difference.
No. They deliberately programed entire generations of diesel engines to give the wrong smog emissions results by knowing the environment and duty-cycle of emissions testing.
On both total emissions as well as emissions/ton/mile metric, long-haul commercial fleet diesel trucks are far better than the millions of polluting and poorly maintained small displacement privately owned diesel cars and pick-ups.
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