I agree with Maidak. Forbes is a trustworthy and reputable source. And unless they have a reliable informer who would confirm this news, Forbes would never publish any such news. And I believe that the news about 8 teams is true. Because for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the ICC has limited the women's competition to 8 teams (with just one team coming from the qualifier tournament). They want these competitions to be as small as possible, because else they are afraid that the attractiveness of their own global tournaments will go down. 

Biden's tax plan will take the wealth away from the upper middle class and distribute it among the poor. The rich are not going to get affected, because they almost never sell their assets and take loans against the assets to cover the monthly expenses. In the end, the rich and the poor are happy about the Biden tax plan, while the middle class get royally screwed. The rise in corporate tax means that almost all the commodities and essentials will become costlier. Also, families with one or two children are at a disadvantage, as the new tax plan favors those who have a dozen or so children.

The loopholes will be there, because many of the charity donations are just a cover used to bribe politicians. Many of the NGOs, which receive these donations have close associates of various politicians as the board members. In other cases, the bribing is more direct. For example, Hillary Clinton and her husband received a total of $153 million as speaking fees during 2001-16. And a large part of this contribution came from the organizations which received charity donations from the billionaires.

The best example is Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Originally Bill Gates owned around 10% of the shares of MSFT. He was never taxed for this holding, because he never sold any of the shares recently. Now comes the interesting part. Bill Gates has transferred most of his shares to BMGF, which means that these shares will never ever be taxed. Just from BMGF, the federal government lost around $20 billion in taxes. Now I am not going to deny that the BMGF did a lot of good work in places like Africa and South Asia. But at least a part of the money was used for salaries and for organizing conferences (indirect ways to bribe politicians).

Not sure about this. The tournament was organized by the ICC. Anything related to the tournament, including video footage, memorabilia.etc belongs to the ICC. I am not saying that Wasim Akram has no right to sell those NFTs, but at least he should seek permission from the ICC. There is no issue in listing an NFT in his name. But this time, he has used one of the global events to brand it. All that said, I am not a big supporter of the NFTs. For me NFTs make no sense. There is nothing called a digital memorabilia. It has to be physical.

I still remember the case in 2014, when one of my friends took out a loan so that he could make investment in cryptocurrency. All of us were against the idea and tried to deter him. But he was stubborn and adamant. He got the coins for around $800 per coin, and one year later the prices had fallen by 70%. But the good thing here is that he held onto the coins, rather than selling them in panic. And in the end, he got rewarded for his patience. The current exchange rate translates to a rise of 5,000%.

Players continue to put franchise cricket above national duty. Previously, the Australian players used to be an exception. But that is no longer the case. A record six Australian players have pulled out of national duty, to keep themselves fit for the IPL. These players are: David Warner, Glenn Maxwell, Kane Richardson, Pat Cummins, Marcus Stoinis and Jhye Richardson. I wouldn't balme them. Because after all cricket is like any other profession and these players need to earn as much as they can when they are fully fit.

And it was not just Ronaldo. Paul Pogba wanted to get some limelight for himself and he threw away bottles of Heineken that were placed in front of him. I don't understand one thing. These two players (Cristiano Ronaldo and Paul Pogba) were fully aware that Coca-Cola and Heineken are sponsoring the tournament. If they had any issue with the sponsors, then they should have pulled out of the tournament. Doing theatrics in front of the camera, just to grab attention is downright immoral. Coca Cola market cap went down by $4 billion yesterday. Will Ronaldo reimburse this amount to the investors?

This is actually very serious. The Americans have implemented regime change in Latin America for matters that are far less in significance. And here we have a president from an impoverished Latin American nation openly challenging the USD and indirectly proclaiming that cryptocurrency is better than inflation-prone US Dollar. I am really worried about the safety of president Bukele. And this is no laughing matter. The CIA has assassinated dozens of world leaders for standing up to the American hegemony. Patrice Lumumba is a prime example.

The situation in the United States has definitely improved, and now they are reporting between 150 and 350 cases per day. Even in India, there is improvement. The daily number of new infections has come down to around 60,000 from an all time high of 400,000 plus. However, the primary concern now is Brazil. They are still reporting some 70,000-80,000 new infections per day and around 2,000 daily deaths. And in case of Brazil, having one of the most incompetent presidents doesn't really help.

Lahore Qalandars got a boost from the excellent performances from James Faulkner and Rashid Khan so far. But they were unfortunate to lose their last two matches. Faulkner now have 11 wickets to his name, from just 4 matches. Rashid has only 8 wickets, but his economy rate has been unbelievable (5.50 per over). If LQ manages to lose despite the presence of these two players, then it means that their batting is just shit. Apart from Tim David, the others are not in good form (especially Fakhar Zaman and Mohammad Hafeez).

That may be because he got most of his income in the form of salary or short term capital gains, rather than long term capital gains. Anyway, I would still say that it looks as if Elon hasn't used the loopholes that were used by the other millionaires. Forget about the "True tax rate" that is given in the chart. I understand that no one needs to pay tax on gains, unless they are realized. Here is the tax paid on realized income:

Warren Buffet: 18.96%
Jeff Bezos: 23.06%
Michael Bloomberg: 2.92%
Elon Musk: 29.93%

It can be seen that Buffet and Bloomberg paid a rate that is even below the long term capital gains tax. So obviously they have made use of loopholes. In Bloomberg's case, I am intrigued by the extremely low rate. I am not sure what sort of loophole he used.

 

LOL.. the companies seems to have realized that spending $80 for two doses of vaccine is much more economical, when compared to the losses they suffer while allowing the employees to work from home. Fortunately, my company has been more flexible with the work from home policy. I have received my first short of the Pfizer vaccine, but the company is not asking even those who got two doses to come to the office. And they are saying that the flexibility will exist until the end of this year. And the employees are happy about it.

At least on paper, Russia is stronger. If Finland manages at least one point today, their chances of advancing to the knockout phase would brighten. In that case, they will have 4 points from 2 games. Denmark has one game against Belgium remaining (and they have lost their first match). So I don't expect them to make more than 4 points max (for the game against Belgium, I would give them 1 point at the most). Right now, Finland and Belgium looks like the teams that may advance to the knockout phase from this group.

Yes.. this is a contentious issue. I am not in favor of including Ashwin, as he has performed poorly in overseas conditions. For the spin option, there is Jadeja. But then the question is whether India will be comfortable in going with 4 pacers + Jadeja? New Zealand are not very good against spinners and in case the match gets extended to the 4th or 5th day, then spinners may have some role to play. So the big question is whether they want to go with 4 pacers + Jadeja, or 4 pacers + 1 spinner (Ashwin) + Jadeja.

Surprising match between France and Germany. I was expecting a clear advantage for France, but in the first 20 minutes, Germany is having close to 60% possession. Kylian Mbappe looking good, but support is lacking from the other players within the French squad. My prediction right now is that Mbappe will be scoring the first goal of the match.

Edit: I was wrong. The first goal scored by Mats Hummels of Germany (note that he scored a goal in his own post). Although it is an own goal, Hummels should be proud of his effort. This will be his 6th international goal. 

North Macedonia also made the same mistake in their match against Austria. They had a meltdown in the last 20 minutes after playing so well until then, and this allowed Austria to score two goals. On the other hand, Sweden in their match against Spain held on to the last minute without allowing the opponents to score a goal. Perhaps this was due to inexperience. Both North Macedonia and Hungary had relatively inexperienced squads. On the other hand, Sweden had a number of veteran players who know how to handle pressure situations.

The exemptions need to be done away with. If needed, then the tax rates can be reduced. But the exemptions make tax calculation very complicated and it results in some people paying disproportionately higher amount of tax and some others paying almost nothing.

BTW, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as usual has gone in to ballistic mode regarding the tax leaks. He wants those who are responsible to be "hunted down and thrown into jail". I don't understand this over-reaction from the GOP. If you check the list of billionaires, 95% of them are left liberal. Their political affiliation ranges from moderate-left (Warren Buffett, Alice Walton.etc), to far-left (Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg.etc), with a considerable section being rabidly left (Jack Dorsey, Sergey Brin.etc).

I don't understand what the GOP is going to gain by supporting these left-wing billionaires. Times have changed and white working class make up the core support group for the Republican Party. Rather than siding with them, leaders such as McConnell are siding with the billionaires who never support the GOP.

You can go for gold ETF, which can be stored using a demat account. I have invested in various gold ETFs for the last 15 years, and never faced any difficulty with them. They can be purchased and sold with relative ease, unlike the case with physical gold. But obviously you need to go for the most trusted issuers and even then there is a very small chance that the fund may be confiscated or the issuer may go bankrupt. So you need to decide whether you want to go for physical gold (and the risks related to it), or to go for paper gold (with another set of risks associated with it).

A few days back, I saw a map which showed the 25 poorest countries in the world. 23 of them are in Africa and the other two are Haiti and Afghanistan. Now one thing is common with all these 25 countries - uncontrolled population growth. These nations have very few natural resources, and the exploding population makes it difficult for the governments to provide essential services to everyone. The only real solution to eradicate poverty is to implement a strict family planning policy across the third world nations.

The social media and most of the mainstream media are under the control of a handful of ultra-leftist billionaires. And they decide what we should read and watch. I am talking about people like Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos. The amount of radical leftist propaganda that is being dished out through these outlets is astounding. Two years back, in Netflix they had a movie named In the Shadow of the Moon. The subject was a mixed race woman doing time travel and killing those who have a conservative political view. Can you imagine this? A movie justifying murder, just because the victims were conservative. And given the current trend, this is not going to end here. Very soon the liberals will say that those who vote for Republican party should be murdered (we already have a thread in the Politics section). And then it will get worse. These people will say that anyone who is not a radical leftist doesn't have the right to live.