Yes, I'd have thought so. And including policing practices.

Yes. Posting tens or hundreds of links to individual instances of crimes committed by black people, in a country of over 300 million citizens, is clearly absurd, and says nothing. Anyone could start a thread doing the same for any other reasonably-sized ethnicity. And I would argue that the point that the OP is trying to convey is racist: some black people commit crimes, therefore ... what?

Yes, the rumours about Russell replacing Bottas are hotting up. I think in large part because of Bottas' poor performance in the last race. The Mercedes hasn't been great for the last two races, but Hamilton nearly won in Azerbaijan, whereas Bottas was nowhere.

Mercedes have Hamilton fighting for the drivers championship, which is fine. But they need their second driver to pull in enough points so that they win the constructors title too. The moment it looks like they're not going to win the constructors is the moment they start to seriously think about letting Bottas go.

As for whether they'd make the change mid-season, I don't think so. It would be at the end of the season. Mercedes have made comments before - and quite recently - that they don't change drivers mid-season, 'other' teams do that (a clear dig at Red Bull).

Yeah, I'm aware of that. I was just making the point to the OP that the reason that Biden and Putin are more important than other leaders at the G7 is not because of who they are as people, but rather because of the countries that they represent.

You don't think it might have more to do with the countries they represent, rather than the people themselves? Whoever the US president is, they are the most important person in the G7... because the US is the most powerful nation.

I don't know if it's very likely. A sports cardiologist in the UK has said that if Eriksen were still at a UK club, he wouldn't be allowed to play again. Obviously other countries are different, and have their own medical authorities, but I'd be surprised if he played again.

It's a difficult one for England, because it's a local rival. You would normally expect a team like England to beat a team like Scotland fairly easily... but with such a fierce rivalry between the two nations, anything can happen.

A new level of insanity. You are truly a master of the art. I would respond to the points you've raised, but I can't stop laughing. I think my favourite part is the argument that Joe Biden is actually a hologram.

No doubt it varies by country, but general guidance here - after taking any medication, really - is don't drive or operate heavy machinery if you feel tired or unwell. Here, depending on which vaccine you've had, they don't let you leave immediately, you have to wait for 15 minutes to make sure you're okay to drive home.

On the face of it, the video does indicate that the driver having just received the vaccine might have caused him to pass out. This is unremarkable, and may suggest poor judgement on behalf of the driver. As responsible adults, we need to be accountable for our decisions and our actions.

If you are vaccinating millions of people, then likely some of them will get behind the wheel whilst not fully capable of driving. Doesn't say anything about the efficacy of the vaccine.

It's definitely true that teamwork is under-rated. When people try to evaluate the strength of a team, they look at the combined talents of all the individual players... but the key is how well those parts all fit together into a balanced side, which is not something you can see easily simply by looking at the team sheet.

I've not heard any recent rumours, but I think a big part of the Aguero signing was that they wanted to bring in Messi's friend to further encourage him to stay.
He's been at Barca since I think he was 13... it would take something huge to get him to leave. They had that awful 19-20 season obviously culminating in the Bayern debacle... but things have improved somewhat since then. I think he'll stay rather than try to make a new start somewhere else.

I don't think it's really appropriate to criticise Denmark's play, given the context.

I think that once Eriksen was stabilised, the players were given the choice of either continue the match now, or else continue it at noon the following day. They were certainly in no fit state emotionally to continue the game immediately... but probably the alternative would be worse, have a whole night probably without much sleep, and then return to the stadium the following day. I think they just chose the least bad of two bad options. I think a better option might have been to just abandon the match and call it a 0-0 draw.

Yes, this is the important thing.

This is certainly a part of the problem. Considered generally (regardless of this specific instance), there is a lot of political lobbying by companies that push unhealthy foods, and there are also plenty of studies that are funded by these companies. Studies that are funded by, or that have links to, individuals and companies that have a vested interest in obtaining a specific outcome are of course not to be trusted.

Separate from my point above, it's worth considering sugar from the perspective of evolutionary biology. Sugar gives you energy. Fructose encourages the body to build fat. And, crucially, sugar was comparatively rare. Those of the ancient humans who had a strong preference for sugar (presumably, although I'm not an expert, this is where the reward-centre-stimulation comes in) could build more fat, and were more able to survive the leaner times. Sugar preference conferred an advantage in natural selection. Slowly, sugar preference spread through the gene pool.
So nowadays, after untold generations of evolution and selection, we very abruptly reach the modern age, where there is a superabundance of all types of food. We have evolved to prefer sugar. But it is no longer scarce, so we tend to eat more of it than is good for us.

I certainly believe that governments and companies could do more to encourage healthy eating, but even if we were somehow able to make free choices without any outside influences, we'd still tend to over-consume sugar.

I think BADecker will respond before Jet Cash does.

Sure. Let's not get bogged down by semantics. This is about the ultra-rich. I'd say it's unfair to tax wealth that has already been taxed as income. Or to define an 'ordinary' person as someone to whom a 'wealth' tax should be applied.

Hey, it was you who brought up Argentina! I simply pointed to an Argentinian example that was more appropriate to the point I was trying to convey.
Let's not go into Chavez again. I agree, as discussed previously, that he was part of the problem in Venezuela.

In an individual country, yes. If the threshold was $50m, you'd get a lot less from Argentina than you would from say the US. I'm not advocating a specific threshold, merely arguing the general point that the ultra-rich don't pay as much tax (proportionally) as normal people, that this isn't a good thing, and that a wealth tax on the ultra-rich is a way to address this. The higher you raise the threshold, the less you collect, yes. Same as with anything. But the amount can still be significant.

And I don't think that enforced absolute equality of outcome is a good thing. I think people who are talented, or innovative, or who work harder should be rewarded for that. I think that capitalism is the best system we have - it's just that I believe that governments should rein in some of its wildest excesses. Our respective positions, as you've mentioned before, whilst different, are nevertheless probably closer than they appear.

Wealth tax has to be considered not in isolation but as a component of the overall tax system. Many of the taxes in that article are taxation on property ownership, which we have in many countries, but generally by another name. I'm not familiar with the nuances of the Argentinian taxation system, but whatever that >$32k tax is, it's not on capital returns. Most people live off their income, and they pay tax on that income. Anything can be called a "wealth tax", but why I mean by the term - and as I believe it's generally understood - is a tax on those ultra-rich people whose main source of money derives not from income from employment, but rather from returns on existing capital.

I don't think this is valid; it's an ideological position that presupposes a result. And it's certainly not an argument against attempting to tax the wealthy. "We can't tax just the ultra-rich because that would involve taxing everyone" doesn't make sense.

Again an ideological position that presupposes a result. And $50m was an arbitrary 'high wealth' figure to illustrate a general point. See the example below for the results of an actual implementation.

Well, yes. If we are considering Argentina specifically, then a better example would be the one-off* wealth tax that they implemented as part of the post-Covid economic recovery:
https://www.businessinsider.com/one-time-wealth-tax-in-argentina-brought-in-24-billion-2021-5

*_{note that there is no suggestion of 5% as an ongoing annual levy.}

No, you'd pay nothing and could keep your painting. A wealth tax wouldn't affect people with a "normal" level of wealth. Progressive taxation of income is a good thing, but it is not an effective means of taxing the ultra-rich whose "income" derives in large part from returns on existing wealth rather than income in the true sense. Wealth tax as generally proposed is a very small percentage taxation on wealth above a certain threshold, $50 million, for example. It's a mechanism for ensuring that the ultra-rich can't avoid paying tax. And some of the ultra-rich are even asking for a wealth tax...

https://twitter.com/mills4humanity



Yes.

True, but we can't say that some correlations are spurious, therefore all correlations are spurious. If it seems logical that the datasets might be related, such as income disparity vs health or crime, and the patterns are similar both across and within countries, then the case becomes more compelling.


Yes, I think so.


I'm sure we can agree in general that it's a question of degree. I would agree that too much emphasis on equalising outcomes can be a disincentive - but I'd also argue that there is a lot of fear-mongering here. Every time someone proposes even a very modest corporate tax increase, there are wealthy companies screaming that they can't possibly survive and would have to shut down their factories and move abroad, etc. In the same way that whenever anyone proposes anything even marginally left of centre, there are people screaming that it's communist.

I am in favour of reducing disparity of outcome somewhat, but at the same time I think that if someone is a self-made multi-millionaire they deserve to keep most of their money. But I don't see that progressive taxation, for example, is a bad thing. And I do think that the ultra-rich use exploitative and manipulative practices as a matter of course, notably to evade/avoid taxation:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

I think disparity of outcome should be addressed somewhat, but not excessively. And I think a small wealth tax (not just an income tax) might be a good idea. But my main problem is with inequality of opportunity. There is a widespread belief that the rich 'deserve' to be rich, and the poor 'deserve' to be poor... certainly this is true in some cases and to an extent, but in large part wealth is inherited, and opportunities are inherited with it. Did Trump become president entirely on merit, did it have absolutely nothing to do with inherited wealth? Same with Boris Johnson here. Most of the leaders of my country went, as children, to the same private school, an opportunity which is out of reach of all but the very richest in society.

I believe that we should strive to give everyone, not the same outcome, but the same chances... or at least close to the same chances. And I think this might result in fewer $5 billion yachts built from 10,000kg of gold, and more safe drinking water that doesn't contain faeces.

I suppose this might be a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_economic_inequality
Everything below is either on that page, or linked to from that page. For clarity, I'm presenting the charts from the Wilkinson/Pickett studies, but note that these are not isolated findings, and there are plenty of other studies linked to from that page that share the same conclusions. In order to counter any suggestions of a cultural explanation, we'll look at inequality within a nation as well as between nations.

I would say that -0.907 in particular is an overwhelmingly strong correlation, and particularly evident when visualised:





We can also look at crime (homicides) by itself. Obviously the US is a bit of an outlier here due to its extreme gun laws, but this doesn't detract from the overall trend, nor from the differences between states within the US.

Well, Swiatek lost. And Gauff lost.
If anyone wants to win a lot of money on the French Open, just take a look at what I predict, and then bet on the exact opposite




Nadal to win the men's.

Not in the context of poverty, no. We need also to consider availability of natural resources, good housing etc, which is not (and can't be) infinite.

But I think we need to try a different angle. If you believe that wealth is effectively infinite, then do you believe that poverty and inequality are entirely unrelated, and that it's not true that a way to reduce poverty is to reduce inequality?

Which benefits the economy most, and increases wealth amongst the population the most, a) one billionaire earning another $1 billion, and stashing it in a bank account in some tax haven, or b) 1,000 millionaires each earning an extra $1 million, stashing half of it in a tax haven and spending the other half on luxury goods from specialist retailers, or c) one million average people each earning an extra $1,000 and spending all of it on a huge range of normal everyday goods from everyday retailers? Is there a sliding scale of benefit here?

Even if you don't agree with that, do you agree that there is a tendency for the rich to exploit the poor? There are more people than there are jobs. If you as an owner of a large company have a vacancy that will earn you $500 per day, then do you a) decide what a fair wage would be, depending on skills/experience required and the cost of living in the society, and advertise the vacancy for say $300... or b) look at the labour market and work out what is the absolute minimum you could pay and still get someone sufficiently qualified willing to take the job, and then advertise for say $100? And if you think this is not exploitative, compare the income of Jeff Bezos to the horror stories from Amazon employees (and the nominally 'independent' workers who work for Amazon but who, through legal sleight of hand, don't get to enjoy even meagre company benefits and protections).

Or (don't make me get the charts out!) can you explain why for rich countries with roughly equivalent per capita GDP, there is a strong link between levels of inequality and life expectancy and criminality?